Is There Really Anything New?

[HKHaugan]

Media news comes and goes.  It’s sensational for a few days and then disappears until something more novel comes along.  There’s the illusion.  News is not really new at all.  The novelty is not in the reported event but in the way the event is packaged and even the packaging is not necessarily novel.  It’s just different.  The themes, the human dynamics driving an event, are nothing new.  No matter how you clothe the exterior you don’t change the interior.  Biblical wisdom applied to news events tells us clearly “There is nothing new under the sun (Eccl.1:9).”  The human nature that is contained in an event has been the same since Adam, sinful, in need of its Creator. 

There are only three exterior changes since Adam, population, technology and optionality.  As far as population is concerned more people have lived since 1910 AD than in all previous time in history and they are living longer.  Obviously technology has progressed significantly from the cave to the condominium and the wheel to jet travel.  What technology and population have introduced is the myriad of options in every field from communication to travel, health and convenience.  Now the options to exercise interior sin and evil are compounded and multiplied.

Loneliness, fear, morality, identity, purpose, meaning and significance are still the inner conditions needing to be dealt with in every individual born into this world. The bottom line is this, it is man’s fallen nature confronted by God’s offer of eternal life in Jesus Christ that pits evil against good, the devil against God and defines our personal choice to be either a reckless sinner or a humble believer.  Pride with its secular social encouragement and self-indulgence is the historic constant in fallen humanity.

History continues to record fraud, murder and a host of other crimes.  Remember the recent buzz in the money world when three financial whizzes bilked investors out of billions.  Many of the so-called socially elite lost their fortunes and are hocking their possessions to survive.  Not only that but one of them preyed on his very own religious community and at this point seems remorseless.  Just what did this gigantic effort show? He chose to trust a ‘ponzi’ system that doesn’t work and garnered others to trust him because he promised big returns.  Both spurred on by a spirit of greed and self-denial, they brazenly entered invisible reality thinking they were in control (the essence of sin).

 

Remember that line from the movie Wall Street?  Gordon Gecko, played by Michael Douglas, speaks before a group extolling the accumulation of wealth for the sake of wealth and justifying it by proclaiming, “Greed is good.”  His prideful proclamation was his attempt at confident self-justification.  This is what he believed, what he put his ultimate trust in.  He staked his existence on what he could get for himself and called it good.  Scripture nails it, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil…Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight (Is.5:20, 21).”  In other words acting apart from God, people act as their own god.  They forget just who the Creator is, the giver of each mind, heart and spirit and the ability to use them. 

 

The history of mankind acting apart from God is the picture of a massive train wreck.  Thus, at the peak of man’s self-destructive condition Jesus arrives on the scene.  Unlike anyone before or since, His life was a life lived totally for His Father to please His Father by trusting Him, trusting His will and His Word regardless of the outcome.  If it meant death He was willing to let it happen.   

 

Here is Jesus’ method for living, His way of life.  He trusted His Father completely.  He obeyed His will. He obeyed His Word. He stood against the invisible forces that ruled man’s aloneness, the spirits that drew man away from God.  When tempted He stood on the Word of God.  When falsely accused He proclaimed the truth.  When His enemies conspired against Him He did not lash out against them nor was He defensive or self-pitying.  He didn’t take offense when lied about, accused and insulted.  He never complained. He didn’t give excuses, argue or try to manipulate any situation or look for someone or something to blame.  He never acted out of pride or guilt or anger.  He never exhibited the first inkling of fear.  When He saw a need He met it.  His only desire was to do His Father’s will, be the light of the world to glorify His Father and give every person a return passage to the Father.  This was His Father’s will and He lived it.

 

The key to His mind and His heart was His absorption in trusting the Scripture and believing totally in the presence of His Father.  His justification came from perfect faith in His Father.  Jesus’ everyday life was justified by faith.  Jesus was the only person who ever lived that never had to kick Himself.  He never had to apologize or ask forgiveness for anything He ever said or did.  His whole life was a fulfillment of what the human heart was created to be like.  He was the exact image of the invisible One God living in a visible body in this world (Heb.1:3).   His life was spiritually lived trusting His Father in the power of the Holy Spirit.  In faith without hesitation, He confidently said, “I am the way the truth and the life (John 14:6).”

 

How does that help us who have a problem getting right in our hearts, getting right with others and getting right in an unseen spiritual atmosphere?  Death is the end of imperfection; only the grave waits for those who don’t get it right.  There is no justification in dying and especially no life after death, which is the final judgment of sin, total aloneness. 

 

This is where God does something great for each of us.  He brings good news, great news.  He raised Jesus from the dead even after Jesus embraced our aloneness, its sin and its spiritual death penalty and bore it all on the Cross.  It was His perfection and faith in His Father and His Word, His obedience even to death that makes the risen Jesus the key to our becoming right, justified and navigable in the invisible dimension.   This is why the Cross adorns churches and is worn over the heart. 

 

When He rose from the dead He defeated the spiritual power of sin that separates us from God, others and our own being whole.  Even as you read this He roams the spiritual dimension all around us and when we accept the offer He gives to accept him as our Lord He comes into our heart.  As a constant companion in the unseen He leads us, guides us with His Spirit and gives us an interior stability, peace and also a discernment to perceive evil and avoid it.  What He enables us to do is be right within, in our minds and hearts.  It is faith in Him that justifies us, makes us right with God, others and ourselves.  We let Him live through us by submitting to Him the way He submitted to His Father.  He leads us out of self-indulgence and focuses our minds and hearts on Him and the needs of others because that is being right, right to the core of our being.  In that rightness God and others become more important than us. 

 

What He did to bring us back to Him was to give His life as a personal sacrifice for each and every alone heart.  He embraced the sin of others but never committed any sin.  In His perfection He gathered all the imperfection in the invisible dimension and, like a sponge gathers water, He absorbed all mankind’s sin and its tendencies and took them to the Cross.  As Paul describes it, “God made Him sin who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God (the faithful in God) 2Cor.5:21.”  He gives Himself to us in a relationship in the invisible that, with Him in our hearts, we might be right and faithful in the visible.  Having that sense of being right within we are given confidence to put God first in everything we think and do just as Jesus did. 

 

So the question for us is not WWJD (What would Jesus do?) but rather WDJD (What did Jesus do?) He died and rose from the dead so that He would be available to restore us to God, to others and to ourselves in a life of confident faith and action.  As He said, “I have come that they may have life and have to the full (John 10:10).“