(by Dustin Smetona)

One of God’s most important qualities—especially for sinners like us—is His forgetfulness. Where would we be if God were not a forgetful God?

Our Unintentional Forgetfulness

We use the word forget to refer to something we lose track of unintentionally. In 3rd grade I competed in a spelling bee at the new school I had started attending that year. In the later rounds as the numbers were whittling down, I was starting to feel confident that I might be able to win. I came up to the mic and the judge said, “Please spell the word forgetful.” I began to spell, “F-R…” and immediately stopped as the auditorium erupted in laughter. I was devastated and embarrassed, but I’m better now. That mental spasm demonstrates precisely what we mean when we say “forget.” We don’t typically desire to forget things, but we do because of our lack of capacity to remember.

God’s Intentional Forgetfulness

God, on the other hand, only forgets when He intends to. This is because His capacity to remember is infinite. He can’t forget anything! That is, of course, unless He means to.

So if God can only forget on purpose, what does He forget? Consider the following three verses:

Isaiah 43:25
“I, I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.”

Jeremiah 31:34
“And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”

Ezekiel 33:16
“None of the sins that he has committed shall be remembered against him. He has done what is just and right; he shall surely live.”

The only thing that God willfully forgets is sin. But how does He actually do that? If His capacity to remember is infinite and infallible, how can He make something disappear from His memory?

He does not magically wish our sins away. Instead, He “remembered” your sins on Christ, and as a result He “remembers” Christ’s righteousness on you! This forgetful act on our behalf is the supreme display of His abundant love. It is incalculably wonderful to consider and to savor.

Heading into 2012

Since we are at the very beginning of a new year, I’m convinced this truth has special significance. I don’t know what 2011 was like for you. My guess is that there were some monumental achievements and some crushing defeats. If you are beginning 2012 with any guilt from sins committed this past year, I hope you will embrace the gospel again and be renewed. God has removed 2011′s sins “as far as the east is from the west” (Ps. 103:12) and you have complete assurance of that reality because they were nailed to the cross back in the 1st century. Find freedom, joy, and comfort knowing that God delights in you as a father does his precious child. His plans for your this year are for His glory and your good. Trust your loving, forgetful God as you move ahead into 2012.

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Are you busy here and there, or have you discovered what He wants you to do and are staying focused and faithful on that? …As I scan the church leadership landscape today, I have come to the conclusion that busyness has not gotten better but worse…but with His help and grace, it doesn’t have to continue.
—Dave Kraft (source)

What is a surprisingly difficult task for some pastors to do with their wives?

Brian Croft writes:

As I talk to pastors and aspiring ones about why this is a struggle, there seems to be a universal answer, “I do not know why it is hard to do, it just is.”  I am sympathetic to this answer as there was a time where I experienced this same awkward, intangible, uneasiness in approaching my wife to pray for her with her.  I think there is an intimacy and vulnerability in a husband’s effort to care for his wife in this way that is uncomfortable for most men and pastors fall prey to this also.

FREE Online Course: Theology of the Reformers

BiblicalTraining.org has added a new class to their lineup of free courses. The class is titled Theology of the Reformers and is taught by Timothy George.

TGC: Top 10 Most Read Articles of 2011

10. What Does It Look Like to Receive the New Testament for the First Time?
9. Twitter Slander
8. It Was Not Wicked for the Lord to Take Our Son
7. Grieving, Rejoicing that Osama bin Laden Is Dead
6. Why Youth Stay in Church When They Grow Up
5. Pray for Sayed Musa: Afghan Christian Set to Be Hanged within Days?
4. Dude, Where’s Your Bride?
3. Beware Romantic Pornography
2. Parenting 001
1. Rob Bell: Universalist? / God Is Still Holy and What You Learned in Sunday School Is Still True: A Review of ‘Love Wins’ / Two Thoughts on the Rob Bell Brouhaha / To Hell with Hell / MSNBC: Martin Bashir’s Interview with Rob Bell

(Click through to read Collin Hansen’s synposis of each)

TGC VIDEO: Bad Art and the Tortured Beauty of the Cross

The rise of younger Christians embracing the arts is encouraging to observe!

“Bad art encourages escapism among Christians. Good art, epitomized by the Psalms, helps us long for the new creation even as we learn to love all God’s creatures.”

VIDEO: Frontline Missions International

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I’ve heard this passage preached two ways: (1) The first ways says that it’s all about accepting licentiousness, in a don’t-judge-others kind of way. (2) The second way says not to pronounce judgment on someone else’s sin. However, it’s about neither one of these.

So, which is it?

The first way focuses in on verse 1, “judge not, that you be not judged,” but ignores verse 5, “then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.” If this is Christ’s message, then we ought to ignore the sin of others, hoping that our own sin will be likewise forgotten by God. The second approach does the opposite, thus exegeting the text in such a way that verse 1 is essentially negated. Though I am guilty, as many, of interpreting Scripture in a way that causes it to be in a battle with itself, I hope to shed some light on this text that shows verse 1 and verse 5 as different angles to the same point. I hope that my brothers and sisters will be kind enough to do the same for me when I am doing this elsewhere in Scripture.

In Christ, away with sin!

The problem with the typical dichotomy that is placed on this Scripture is that both extremes leave sin in the equation. One has us allowing sin, and the other has us condemning it. Christ, however, is speaking of iron humbly sharpening iron in such a way that, rather than bondage to sin, there is deliverance and freedom. Christ takes issue not with believers sanctifying one another, but with the odd brand of delight in evil that comes when one sinner points out error in another sinner for no other reason than to show that he is right and the other is wrong. The gospel is not a thing that is content to go about pointing out wickedness simply for the sake of argument. The gospel doesn’t just point out sin, it drives out sin. John says it this way:

“For God did not send His son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him.”
John 3:17

It’s about holiness

Therefore, it should not be our desire that people be judged. It should be our desire that people be saved, and by being saved become holy. Just as we do not want ourselves to be judged, we ought not to want others to be judged either.

This is proven by verse 5, when the first man does not simply point out the speck in his brother’s eye, he removes the plank from his own, and then takes the speck out of the other’s. At the end of this story there is no license to sin, and there is no judgment upon others. There is merely holiness—wonderful holiness—brought about by grace and love.

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Thanks be to the God of all grace. Amen.

Enjoy the turkey, family, and friends!

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The older we get, and the more knowledge and experience we accrue, the more need we have to be joyfully humbled. When Paul uses the word “fathers,” he could be (and probably is) referring to a few groups of people:

1. Men who have fathered children
2. Older members of the church
3. Those who are originators (ie: founding fathers)

The first really two fall under the general umbrella of the third, and therefore John’s statement here is quite appropriate. God is from the beginning. Though some may be old by our standards, they shouldn’t boast in their years, because God has more than anyone. A lot more. While some may have given a beginning to something, God himself is the beginning of everything.

Truly, this redirection of thought is an encouragement to all fathers. In this sentence from Paul, fathers are gloriously invited to leave their feeble thrones and reminded that they know the One who is the true originator of all things. Therefore, their joy is both better founded and more greatly enjoyed. Praise be to God!

Now, I am a young man and without children, so what do I make of this? Well, it changes the way I love fathers, and the reason why I value them. I do not value them because they have managed to live for a long time, or because they started something that I value. We ought to be encouraged when we look to our spiritual fathers because they remind us that there is something greater, older, and more original than them. Fathers are signs to me of my heavenly Father, who is from the beginning. The truest of all spiritual fathers teach me not to cherish them for who they are but to actively redirect my eyes upward to God. They do this best by the joy that they have in knowing him.

Other posts in this series:

• Introduction: Why did John write his first epistle?
• I am writing these things that you may not sin.
• I am writing these things that your joy may be complete.
• I am writing these things because your sins are forgiven for his name’s sake.

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The following is the first guest post from Nate Palmer, author of the excellent book Servanthood as Worship: The Privilege of Life in a Local Church (Cruciform Press 2010).

O! beware my lord, of Jealousy;
It is the green-ey’d monster which doth mock
The meat it feeds on.

—Iago’s speech in Act 3, Scene 3 of Othello by Shakespeare

Shakespeare’s allusion to green-eyed jealously in the play Othello was undoubtedly taken from the Roman Poet Ovid’s book Metamorphoses. Ovid wrote about a green monster named Envy that a goddess enlisted to carry out murder. No doubt that in some conversation or another you’ve either used or heard the saying, “green with envy.” It is a little innocuous phrase we throw around without little pause to its meaning and even less to its origin. But why use the color green? Why not beige or turquoise? How come we don’t say, “Yes, I am periwinkle with envy”?

“Green with envy”

The answer lies within the human body. An excess amount of bile within the body will tint human flesh with a green hue. Bile is an alkaline fluid produced by the liver and stored in the gallbladder. It aids the body in primarily digesting foods by breaking down fats within the stomach so they can be absorbed into the blood stream. If the liver produces excess amounts of bile, which is yellowish green, human skin can seem green.

Greek physicians thought that all diseases and emotions came from an imbalance in one or more of four essential fluids; black bile (earth), yellow bile (fire), blood (air), and phlegm (water). To heal an affliction or temperament, these fluids needed to be brought back into balance by eating certain foods, exercising, and bloodletting.

Envy, however, is not caused by fluid imbalances. We cannot just eat some watermelon, attach some leaches, and watch our envy melt away. It does not work that way. What is ironic about envy being associated with a color is that biblically, it is given an actual color. To understand the truth of this mixed marriage of emotion and color, we must first uncover the true nature of envy and the eventual judgment of sin.

Envy Fought the Law and the Law Won

What is sin? What are criteria used to categorize something as sin? Does envy fit that criterion? Simply put, sin is any thought or deed that does not comply with God’s law. We can sin through either commission (doing or thinking something against God’s law) or omission (not doing or thinking something required by God’s law). Sin consists of both acts as well as attitudes that are contrary to God.

The law provides God’s standard and definition for sin. God instituted laws based on his holiness as a mercy to his creation, so that we might fully see his separateness from us. Law gives a standard to determine and approve what is good and right. (Romans 2:18) There are many places in the Bible where we could start our pursuit of God’s law. The best place is to examine how Jesus did this in Matthew 22:34-40. Jesus summarizes God’s law into two distinct commandments:

1. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with your entire mind.

Envy according to Webster’s Dictionary is the painful or resentful awareness of an advantage enjoyed by another joined with a desire to possess the same advantage. Synonyms would include covetousness, invidiousness, and jealousy.  There are two distinct and disturbing words which stand out within this definition: resentment and desire.

Envy involves a resentment of someone because they have something we desire but do not posses. The nature of envy contains several serious attacks on God’s character and on his sovereign rule. Envy is idol worship, then unbelief, and lastly rebellion. As we lust after things God has withheld, we first stop worshipping God and start worshiping something else (idolatry). We stop trusting in God (unbelief) to provide our idol and seek to replace Him with our own kingship (rebellion) so that we may obtain our desire. Let’s break that down concept by concept.

In New Testament, Paul makes a clear distinction that envy is idolatry – that instead of worshiping God when we envy we are worshipping our own desires, Colossians 3:5 and Ephesians 5:5. Our sinful desires convince us God is wrongly withholding good things, things that we have earned. Our sin concludes the only way to solve this problem is a regime change. In this warped view, God must be replaced so we may be free to worship our new god, ourselves. Then and only then will we obtain that which we think we so rightly deserve.

“Covetousness is an inordinate desire of the heart after the creature; which is a fruit of man’s apostasy from the Lord. No longer finding in God the supreme object of his soul’s delight and confidence, fallen man loves and trusts in the creature (mere things) rather than the Creator.”[i]

Our envy speaks to how we see and feel about God. When we engage in envious thoughts we doubt God’s justice, detest His grace, rebel against his rule, and replace him with an idol. We fail to love God with our heart, nor our mind, nor our soul.

2. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

Eighteenth century German novelist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe described envy as, “Hatred is active, and envy passive dislike; there is but one step from envy to hate.” The Bible has a different categorization for envy than just passive dislike. The Bible declares it as nothing less than murder. (Romans 1:29)

In our envy, we strain to see others removed, killed, murdered so that we may obtain our desire. Even if we never act on the murder that our envy alludes to, it is as if we actually did (Matthew 5:21). Under God’s law, our envy is not only liable for judgment for our rebellion against God but also for the murder (albeit psychologically) our neighbor.

Thus, envy has failed God’s law at every point. But in case further persuasion is needed, the Bible specifically names envy as a sin in the Ten Commandments. The Bible also directly associates envy, in several passages, along with other evil and sinful actions.

“Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.” – Galatians 5:19-21 (underline added)

The Bible does not define envy as some cute and cuddly form of jealously. Rather envy is detestable to God in the same refrain as anger, murder, and adultery. The Bible recognizes that the very nature of envy is of anger and murderous actions towards God and our neighbor. Envy is a sin comparable to other sins like murder and sorcery

When looking at the statutes of the law, envy violates God’s standard on every count. First it fails to love God and secondly fails to love our neighbor. Envy is not just passive dislike, as we would like to believe. To God, envy is active sin.

The Justice and Righteousness of God

God’s holy nature is separate from sin; he cannot sin nor can he tolerate sin in his presence. Separation from evil and sin is intrinsic to God’s nature. The prophet Habakkuk writes about God’s holiness: “Your eyes are too pure to look on evil, and you cannot tolerate wrong” ( Hab. 1:13). God is completely pure, without the faintest hint of sin. God and sin are totally and infinitely separate and incompatible. For God, to sin or be in its presence would be to forego his holiness. As Puritan era writer Ralph Venning writes, “It (sin) goes about to ungod God.”^[ii]

Sin is not only a direct affront to God’s nature and his sovereignty; it also contradicts God’s character. “God cannot be indifferent to or complacent towards that which is the contradiction of himself. His very perfection requires the recoil of righteous indignation. And that is God’s wrath.”^[iii]

Since sin by its very nature is contrary to God, the sinner thus found guilty must there be punished a physical and spiritual death. “For the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23).. Even the slightest sin is an act of cosmic defiance, an insult to his holiness. God’s pervasive Holiness demands pervasive justice for sin that manifests itself in pervasive wrath against both for the sin itself and one who is guilty of it.

The consequence of the wrath of God is the true and unyielding meaning of both physical and spiritual anguish. Sinners will die in the body, and then suffer in separation from God. There they will not see—not hear, nor feel, nor perceive—the slightest inkling of God. Absent are his goodness, mercy, love, grace, and presence.  To be found guilty of sin is to be sentenced to an eternity apart from holiness, apart from peace, apart from God. We can easily rewrite that last sentence to say, “To be found guilty of envy is to be sentenced to an eternity apart from holiness, apart from peace, apart from God.”

Our Only Hope

Herein lays a problem: God desires that his people know him, but they are justly separated from him because of their sin. Yet God makes a way so that his people can come into His presence despite their sin. That way is through blood. “Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins” (Hebrews 9:22). The shedding of blood leads to the atonement and cleansing of sin.

In the Old Testament, the only acceptable blood was found in an unblemished animal like a ram or calf (Hebrews 9:18-21). But even under this system, a problem still existed. Animal blood was only atonement for sins committed in past, so as new sins were committed animals must be continually sacrificed. The cycle seemingly never-ending, as the atonement merely cleansed God’s people temporality and did nothing to change the source and cause of sin in their hearts (Hebrews 9:8-10).

So this was an imperfect solution to an eternal problem. God’s people needed a permanent solution that would not only atone for sin once and for all but change their hearts as well. So God solved that dilemma by sending Jesus Christ, the perfect spotless lamb who sacrificed himself for us. Christ came to be that final solution to reconcile once and for all a holy God to sinful men and women.

As Jesus hung on the cross, he endured the wrath of God as payment for our sins. He suffered in our place so that we may be cleansed of guilt and found sinless before God. Jesus came to earth as both fully God and fully man to shed his blood in order to be our substitute in the wrath of God. He purchased the forgiveness of our sin, including our envy.

“But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.” – Ephesians 2: 13-16

Our friend Ovid, the Roman Poet, accurately stated that “Envy aims very high.” Envy aims high because it targets God himself. Our envy seeks to replace God so that we may bend the world to our own will. Envy is a sin because it misses the mark God set for how we are to treat him and our neighbor. To engage in envy is active hatred towards God.

Yet Envy is sin not only because God declared it to be, but because it is opposite, and strikes against, the very nature of God himself. Sin must be judged and removed from God, because his holiness and righteousness demand it. The judgment for sin is the penalty of death because God cannot and will not tolerate its existence.

Blood-red envy

Therefore, if envy is sin which must be justly punished by God, and if the punishment must be paid in blood, then the true color of envy is not green, it’s red. For the non-Christian, they are without substitute to take their place in judgment for sin. They must stand in judgment for their sin without defense or an advocate. Without Christ, the color of their envy is the red of their own blood being justly poured out in punishment for their envy.

Yet for those who by faith trust in Jesus, the penalty for our sins was covered by Christ’s blood. He shed his blood for our sin, our envy. He was our substitute and advocate who diverted God’s wrath from us onto himself. For those in Christ, it is the red of his righteous blood covering us, hiding us from God’s wrath and forgiving our envy. Therefore, the true color of envy for a Christian is also red but not from our own blood. It is the redemptive red of Christ’s.

In Othello, Iago’s statement about envy mocking the meat it feeds on turned out to be rather prophetic. It is Iago’s envy for Cassio—who was promoted over him—which drives all the lies and bloodshed in the rest of the play. In the end, Iago is sentenced and tortured by the very object of his envy—Cassio himself. Iago’s own words came back to haunt him in ways he couldn’t have imagined.

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I am writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven
for his name’s sake.
1 John 2:12

It’s simple, is it not? John says he is writing because their sins are forgiven. What more needs to be said? This alone is reason enough to write volumes upon volumes. Our sins have been forgiven for the sake of God’s name.

We live in a world full of people who are quite caught up in their own good. I know this because I am a person, and I am obsessed with my own good. We are not people who are prone to even considering that something could be good unless it is good for us. Unfortunately, this is not consistent with reality. In this one little sentence John is confronting the problem of grace with the reality of God’s only motivation—His love for His name.

Everything is done for the sake of God’s name. We could rephrase this by saying that everything is done for the sake of God’s reputation. Not that God is concerned with building up a false view of His greatness. The truth is that God is eternally concerned with communicating an accurate view of His glory. If we know this—that God does all things for the sake of His glory being known, and not ultimately for the sake of anything else—we can see with greater joy the truth of the gospel. God is going to exalt His name. Period. The great miracle is how He chose to do this in His children.

The miracle is that John did not say, “I am writing to you, little children, because you have been damned for His name’s sake.” Or, “because there is no hope.” The miracle is that John said, “I am writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven for His name’s sake!” When we understand that God’s name will be exalted no matter what and that our forgiveness is not necessitated by justice, we will be more joyful in the gospel. When God glorifies His name, He is simply doing what He is always doing. The children of God are the joyful recipients of the greatest news anyone has ever heard: that God has chosen to do what He absolutely must do by giving us what is immeasurably good for us.

Let us be thankful that, of all the ways that God could have chosen to lift up His name, He chose the most costly for Himself and most joyful for those who would believe.

Other posts in this series:

• Introduction: Why did John write his first epistle?
• I am writing these things that you may not sin.
• I am writing these things that your joy may be complete.

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