Monday, April 4, 2016

The Promise

Lately I've been reading a lot of C.S. Lewis, but a that comes with the territory of taking a Theology of Lewis class. I've also had the idea of "Promise" on my mind lately. This could be because of the connection to covenant and that I'm getting married in less than 6 months, but I think there's more to it than that. I was asked to speak on Hope a couple weeks ago on campus, which didn't happen because you can't just down right speak on Hope. Hope by itself is nothing, yet connected to everything else it can be considered the key to Christianity. I'm not sure though, that's something I'm still trying to figure out. But while I spent two weeks thinking about Hope I came away that it is no more than just wanting something, but more than that, it's a deep desire for something, usually a specific outcome. In Christianity what do we hope for? That God exists? That we've done the things we need to so we can get into Heaven? That we've received salvation or grace or forgiveness?

What if we hoped in the Promise of God? The New Covenant? What is the New Covenant? Well Jeremiah 31 has a lot to say about it. God's going to put his law in us, not on tablets but on our hearts. He will be our God and us his people. All will know of God, he will forgive us, and forget our sins against him. I think there's a lot to what is written there, but I also think there's more. Looking at the idea of where the Law is, and adding that to what Jesus preaches his first sermon on in Luke 4, I think a major aspect of the New Covenant is freedom, like what we looked at Monday.

Imagine if you carried the Law on tablets of stone. That's 613 laws, etched out on stone tablets. That's a lot, and heavy. But in this new covenant, they're written on our hearts. While painful, a lighter burden. But God does not just offer a lighter burden, he also offers a fuller life, one that we can't obtain ourselves.

Lewis writes in Mere Christianity that evil is not done for evil's own sake, but instead evil is done for something good, some kind of gain or pleasure. No one steals just because they feel like stealing. They may enjoy stealing, but then they're gaining pleasure from it along with whatever they stole. As seen Monday, we're released from that type of action in our freedom, because God wants to give us a great life. God says that he'll be our God and us his people, but he goes more intimate with that in the NT. He uses language relating to adoption, making him not our God, but our Father, and us not his people but his children. And God is the perfect Father. So how does this lead to us having a fuller life? Check out the beatitudes. What do we see God doing there? Reversing fortune. Our God will reverse our fortune, those that mourn will be comforted, those with a poor spirit will be filled. And this is a point that I continually saw in Lewis's writings: God wants to give us the fullest life imaginable. This doesn't mean we'll be devoid of hardships, or that we'll get whatever we want. This is no health and wealth gospel, God, Lewis, and myself are not like Joel Osteen, there may be times where you life downright sucks. But we can take pleasure in our sufferings because compared to the riches we will receive in heaven they are nothing. But more than that, we have the perfect Father that wants what's best for us, and will make sure that we will never go without what we need (Matthew 6). Not want, but need, big difference.

I challenge you to look through the Gospels and see what it is the Jesus promises, and tell me that God himself is not promising you the fullest life imaginable.

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