Our Attachments Tell The State Of Our Heart

Like a lot of Jews at that time, James and John thought that Jesus was going to establish a kingdom in Jerusalem. There was the expectation shared by most that he would declare himself as a king and the people would have the Jewish kingdom they had long sought and hoped for. James and John therefore decided to meet Jesus and get first dibs on the political appointments in the soon to be established kingdom.They wanted to be the people that would seat on his left and right hand side signifying that they were his most trusted advisers.

Jesus was at pains to explain to them that his kingdom was not of this world. At his resurrection, he set up the kingdom he had been talking about and invited us to take up positions in the kingdom. Our positions in the kingdom are not determined by an appointment or by how much we do. Our positions are determined by the depth of the relationship we have with the king of the kingdom. Being a member of the kingdom is voluntary. However, once we declare allegiance to the king and bow the knees to him we have to live according to the rules of the kingdom. But the great thing about the kingdom is that there's something called grace that offers us forgiveness for our mistakes.

I believe that when we say we are Christians, our first allegiance is to the kingdom that we say we belong to. However there is a tendency we have to try to force other people who do not belong to the kingdom into living by our terms. However, people do not get converted into a new way of thinking or living by force. If you had asked me last year whether legislating was the best way to get people to change I would have said yes but I changed my mind after a conversation with my brother. While it is right to speak out when unrighteous and man made laws are being drawn up, we really have no right to try and force a form of fake godliness down other people's throats. That's why I worry when like James and John Christians seem to think that one political party or the other embodies our vision of Christ's kingdom.

Following Christ is a choice we decided to make and no law we make in this world can legislate righteousness. Christianity is a choice and there can't be a worldly version. Also righteousness is a state of the heart. It cannot be forced. While we should seek to make the world a better place we shouldn't be too attached to the things in this world. When we get more attached to Christ, we grow more like him as we grow in love, grace, truth, peace and joy. When we grow more attached to the things of this world we grow more like the world. We grow angrier, we are less graceful and grow more entrenched in the things we do. We get more entrenched in our position and we are less filled with the love of Christ. And we are more likely to try and force people to our own way of thinking. And we are less like Christ. The things we are attached to tell us who we are. And what we are. Our focus should be on Christ and him alone.

JC Cruz is the author of DECEPTIO published by WestBowPress, a division of Thomas Nelson publishers, http://bookstore.westbowpress.com/Products/SKU000194087/Deceptio.aspx and LOST, BUT FOUND available at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DPLLEUQ/. You can follow him on Twitter @Cruz_JCReal.  

God is Love But is Love God?

To ask that God’s love should be content with us as we are is to ask that God should cease to be God – C. S. Lewis

When people mean when they say that God is love is often something quite different; they really mean love is God – C. S. Lewis

Recently I saw a tweet that brought a wry smile to my lips. On the 24^th September this year Nicole Scherzinger tweeted the following passage of the Bible from her account:

“A new commandment I give unto you, That you love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.”

The above passage is John 13:34. Jesus was speaking to his disciples during the meal known commonly known as the Last Supper. Jesus knew that he was about to be crucified and he was effectively given his last sermon to the disciples before he would be taken away. Earlier in his ministry, he had broken down the entire law that had been given through Moses, comprising over 600 rules and regulations into two, to love God with our whole heart, mind and soul and to love our neighbours as ourselves. After Jesus died, even Paul wrote an entire chapter in the book of Corinthians on the topic of love. One then might be forgiven for thinking that the only important thing in Christianity is love. However, while it might be the most important thing, it’s not the only thing.

The Bible says that “while we yet sinners, Christ died for us”. He died for us because he loved us. The Bible also says we love him because he first loved us. That means we are able to love him back because he first loved us. The Christian group had a song that said, “Love is a Verb”. That means that you cannot say you love without doing something to show it? How do we know he loves us? Because he died to save us from our sins. But he also wants us to love him back. In the book of John 14:15, Jesus said: “If ye love me, keep my commandments.” Therefore, the only way we can show we love God is by keeping his commandments.

I've said before that I do not believe that Christ came to establish a religion called “Christianity”. I believe that Christianity is a contraption formulated by man to allow us fall short of what Christ expects of God since we are “just men” even though Christ said that greater works than he did we would do. Christianity is a crutch we lean on that allows us to conveniently fall short of what God expects of us. Christ came to set up a kingdom known as the Kingdom of God (or the Kingdom of Heaven) with the Holy Spirit as his representative when he left, not to set up a religion. From the book of Acts, we understand that Christians were called by that name first in Antioch. I believe the people who started using the term were not people of the same faith and there is every likelihood that the term might have been derogatory. We shy away from the concept of a kingdom with a king because somehow prefer the concept of presidents and democracy where everybody is “equal”. However, God is not some equal opportunities employer, he is a king.

Romans 8:2 talks about the “law of the Spirit of life”. Isaiah 9:6 talks about the government being upon the shoulder of the child that is born. If there is a kingdom or government, it presupposes that there must be legislation. We seem to think that the kingdom of God has no rules. However, what kingdom, or government can stand without rules? We seem to think that because we operate a new covenant that we are under no obligation to keep any of God’s commandments. While I will admit that quite a number of the laws were personal to the Jews, the laws known as the 10 Commandments are not. For instance, from Jesus words, it’s quite clear that God is still interested in us honouring our parents. So, if we still need to obey laws, how then is this dispensation of grace different from that of the law? The main difference is Holy Spirit. Under the law, we tried to please God with our own efforts. We did all we could and we still fell short. When we sinned, we tried to pacify God with the sacrifice of animals because the Bible says the wages of sin is death. Therefore we needed something to take our death when we sinned. Under grace, before we even sin, we understand that Christ has shed his blood for our past, present and future sins. We also understand that God himself through the Holy Spirit is working in us to help us keep the laws. We also don’t need to beat ourselves up when we fall or run away from him when we sin. We are to run toward him and fall at his feet and receive his forgiveness.

The Bible says Christ is returning for a Church without spot, wrinkle or blemish. If Christ died for us while we were yet sinners, do we presume to think that God is happy if we continue doing the same things that made him consider us sinners even after we accept Christ?I think not. God said that in these times, he would write his laws not on tables of stone but on the tables of our heart. The heart is a symbol of love. It means therefore that in these days, God’s laws will be dear to us. His laws will not be grievous to us because we love him and want to please him and because we understand that they are for our good.

God is a God of love. But he is also a God of judgement. Any attempt to gloss over this is wrong. While God is love, love is not God. We should stop trying to excuse or justify the wrong we or others do by saying “God loves us the way we are”. It's even funnier when people who don't acknowledge Jesus as their Lord and Saviour try try to preach love to Christians. If there was a man who was married but had an anger problem and every time he got angry he beat his wife. When he’s asked why he doesn't deal with his anger issues, he replies, “God loves me the way I am”. I wonder which one of us would agree with that. Jesus said he did not come into the world to condemn it. However, he did say that in the end, we would be judged by the words he had spoken. Everything we do should flow out of love but we should use love as an excuse not to move on to maturity. How does maturity come about? By being obedient to God’s laws.The Bible makes it clear that one day, Heaven and Earth will pass away and we all we will stand before God’s throne in judgement. Then we’ll discover just how far God’s love extends. But by then, it might be too late. 

JC Cruz is the author of DECEPTIO, a political thriller about the persecution of Christians. DECEPTIO is published by WestBow Press, a division of Thomas Nelson Publishers and is available at http://www.bookstore.westbowpress.com/Products/SKU-000194087/Deceptio.aspx. He is also the author of LOST, BUT FOUND a story about love, loss, rejection and redemption available on Amazon http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DPLLEUQ. You can follow him on Twitter at @Cruz_JCReal

The Gospel of Jesus Christ or the Gospel of The Kingdom?

The other day I was reading Exodus Chapter 20 and I was going through the twelve commandments and something occurred to me. It struck me that each law was not so much in respect of the whole nation but in respect of each individual in the nation. Going through the verses in the chapter, it occurred to me that the “Thou” that began each verse at the beginning of each commandment was in really in respect of the whole nation but in respect of each person reading or hearing the words. God gave Moses the law in the Old Testament but he promised in the book of Jeremiah that the days would come when the laws would no longer be written on tablets of stone but on the tablets of our hearts. He also promised that God would give us hearts of flesh instead of hearts of stone.

That was Jesus agenda when he came. Jesus did not come to give us a religion but he came to offer each and every one of us a personal relationship with God. Jesus spoke out against religion. According to him, people set up religion to stop people from getting to know God and they didn’t get to know God themselves. However when Jesus talked about that new personal relationship with God, nowhere in the Scriptures did he refer to the new relationship as the “Gospel of Salvation”, “Gospel of Jesus Christ” or Christianity. When Peter or Paul referred to the new relationship, they also never referred to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. They all talked about the Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of Heaven which as Christ had taught was in our hearts.

We seem to have a fixation with getting people saved and getting them to on the road to Heaven. But Paul taught that as a result of us getting saved, our spirits are seated with Christ in heavenly places. If God wanted all just be in Heaven, then he would have translated all of us like Enoch. The fact is that as Christ said, we are in this world but not of this world. The question then is, if we are not of this world, then of which world are we? We are definitely not of Heaven because only spirits live in Heaven. The fact is that we are citizens of the place which Jesus talked about which starts in our hearts the moment we accepted Jesus as our Lord and Saviour. The Kingdom of Heaven is not a geographical place so to speak like Heaven or Earth but a place in our hearts where God dwells. We carry God in our hearts from the moment we were born of the spirit. While the liberals in America argue for the separation of Church and State, God doesn’t want us to do so. Peter says we are a royal priesthood. God wants us to carry the Kingdom of Heaven wherever we go and to establish outposts of Heaven as ambassadors.

While Jesus came to bring us the message of the Kingdom of Heaven, he himself said he wasn’t the be all and end all of the message. Jesus described himself as the door, the way into the Kingdom. We need to press past the “Gospel of Jesus” and walk into the kingdom. Jesus is our perfect example. He reached out to the all those who needed him and brought the kingdom to them in the form of healing, joy, peace, salvation, food. He exerted the power of Heaven on the Earth and created heaven on earth. He brought about the Kingdom of Heaven. He fed thousands, calmed the seas, walked on water, raised the dead. He was able to that because he had a deep and personal relationship with the Father. That’s what we have been called to do. To have a deep and personal relationship with the Father and by that relationship cause Heaven to exert on Earth and to bring others into the Kingdom. That is our mission. Not to have religion.       


JC Cruz is the author of DECEPTIO, a thriller about persecution of Christians. DECEPTIO is published by WestBow Press, a division of Thomas Nelson Publishers. The book is available here
http://bookstore.westbowpress.com/Products/SKU-194087/Deceptio.aspx. He is also the author of LOST, BUT FOUND available here http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DPLLEUQ