People tend to underestimate the radical nature of their sinful condition, which truly is a “sickness unto death.” However, even the metaphor of lethal sickness itself is not strong enough, since the spiritual condition of the natural man is the state of being spiritually dead… Apart from direct divine intervention on behalf of the individual soul, a person is literally unable to respond to God and receive the gift of eternal life. That is why Yeshua taught that we need a spiritual rebirth in order to see the Kingdom of God (John 3:3).

This is the new principle of life from God (i.e., chayim chadashim: חַיִּים חֲדָשִׁים) that operates according to the “law of the Spirit of life” (Rom. 7:23, 8:2). God loves His children with “an everlasting love” (i.e., ahavat olam: אַהֲבַת עוֹלָם) and draws us to Himself in chesed (חֶסֶד, i.e., his faithful love and kindness). As it is written: “I love you with an everlasting love; therefore in chesed I draw you to me” (Jer. 31:3). Note that the word translated “I draw you” comes from the Hebrew word mashakh (מָשַׁךְ), meaning to “seize” or “drag away” (the ancient Greek translation used the verb helko (ἕλκω) to express the same idea). As Yeshua said, “No one is able to come to me unless he is “dragged away” (ἑλκύσῃ, same word) by the Father” (John 6:44). We are chosen from above (John 15:16). God’s chesed seizes us, takes us captive, and leads us to the Savior… Spiritual rebirth is a divine act of creation, “not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:13). God is always preeminent, and the salvation of a particular soul is ultimately His prerogative.
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“I never knew you…” O dreadful vision to consider that we, even though we profess faith in God, may become strangers to the truth, and that the essence of our life was discovered to be a lie, a vanity, everlasting loss…

That is the substance of Yeshua’s warning to each of us. “The inner is not the outer.” Not every one who says that he believes in him truly does so, and not every one who thinks he knows him does so truly (Matt. 7:21). Truth is revealed by what a person does with his or her life, since this manifests who they are and what they really believe, far more than mere words. We can say a lot of things about what we may believe, but the test is whether we are doing the will of God – or not. Those who “enter the kingdom” are those who seek to do the will of God as the utmost passion of their existence.

Clearly none of this is about religion or religious “scrupulosity.” It is far more serious than that. Yeshua warned that many people do various religious activities, “good deeds” such as feeding the poor, protesting social injustice, or ministering to the oppressed, and so on. Some may even teach or preach the very gospel message itself, but alas! all these may be outsiders who break the inmost law of truth by refusing to surrender to God.

Hear Yeshua’s words: “Many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, didn’t we prophesy in your name, and in your name cast out demons and do many powerful deeds?’ (Matt. 7:22). But note the plural pronoun used in this self-reference. Why does the crowd speak on its behalf regarding what “they” have done to justify themselves? Are these people trusting in their religious associations or virtues to make them right with God? Do they identify themselves with some church or righteous cause and assume that should suffice to obtain favorable judgment from heaven? Be careful. Yeshua always speaks to the individual heart, not to groups, tribes, or political parties… “I never knew you” is spoken in the plural: Οὐδέποτε ἔγνων ὑμᾶς.

But Yeshua is saying something more. In this admonitory vision of judgment there is a surprising twist. There is no indication that he denied that some people objectively did such things. Many did prophesy (or teach) about God; many did cast out demons and do “powerful” or miraculous works. The essence of the judgment, however, is that despite all this, despite their ostensible allegiance to God, they were really practitioners of lawlessness, workers of iniquity, and therefore they were cast out: “I never knew you” (Matt. 7:23).

Yeshua had warned us before. He made the matter clear: “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. But the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few” (Matt. 7:13-14). The “wide” gate is the way of the crowd, spacious enough to accommodate the masses. It’s the way of open-ended “tolerance” coupled with the unthinking repudiation of moral convictions. The “paradox of tolerance” is that absolute tolerance is self-contradictory and ultimately leads to self-destruction. As Karl Popper said: “If everyone is tolerant of every idea, then intolerant ideas will emerge. Tolerant people will tolerate this intolerance, and the intolerant people will not tolerate the tolerant people.”

The “narrow way,” on the other hand, leads to life. It is not the popular way. It is not the way of the masses or the “politically correct” crowd. It’s not amenable to the way of the jaded skeptic who has no faith in truth. It is not the path of the proud or arrogant. Nor is it the way of “religion” or social justice organizations. It does neither “jihad” nor affect compassion through worldly philanthropy. It is certainly not the way of the State nor political movements driven by mass appeals of the tyrants and demagogues. Nor is it the way of the “institutional” churches. It is not a mass “Christian” movement. It is not concerned with teachings of theologians, or professors, or even preachers who are simply “interested” in the things of God but who never engage in raw personal struggle and agony of heart to do the will of God. No, the way of true surrender involves confessing your brokenness and poverty – your need for deliverance from yourself – and in humility coming before the light to ask God for the miracle of salvation, “life-from-death” deliverance, resurrection, and newness of life…

Something more is therefore needed than merely thinking about God or doing various forms of good works, and that “something more” is having an honest and genuinely tested relationship Yeshua, knowing him in the secret communion of your heart as you live whatever remains of your days in surrender to his will. Doing so will nake you a wise person who “builds his life upon the Rock” – the solid foundation of God’s heart given in Christ – and you will thereby be able to weather the inevitable storms of life without failing (Matt. 7:24-27).

So do you truly know the Lord, friend? Or better – does He really know you? Again, this is not some abstract knowledge about God or the practices of religion, but constitutes the passion of the heart. It is the “knowledge” of knowing someone that you truly love. And that is the key: love. To know God is to know his love and to receive his passion. You simply cannot know Yeshua apart from knowing his love for you, for these are bound together as one.

God loves you despite yourself. It’s not your love for God that saves you but God’s love for you: ῾Ημεῖς ἀγαπῶμεν αὐτόν, ὅτι αὐτὸς πρῶτος ἠγάπησεν ἡμᾶς. “We love him because he first loves us” (1 John 4:19). We were born into this world alienated, lost, spiritually dead, and therefore unable to know the truth of God’s heart. Our love (and knowledge) of God comes from God’s love for us, and we receive that love by the miracle of his intervention in our lives. There is no other way. We do not ascend a “stairway to heaven” to find God, but he descends to the depths and rescues us from the shadowy world of exile and fear.

Yeshua was once asked: “What shall we do to do the works of God?” and he answered: “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he sent” (John 6:28-29). This, then, is the will of God; this is what the Lord requires from us; this is the key that opens the door to enter in the Kingdom: to believe in God’s personal love for us given in Yeshua and to live the truth of that love humbly and in all our ways.

If you forget the essence of your soul you begin to lose sight of your reason for being, the “why” that underlies all other whys… This essence, however, is not discovered by means of reason, but by revelation — it is a divine disclosure that awakens you to newness of life. Teshuvah is a return to the arms of your Heavenly Father…

 

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Psalm 139:23-24 Hebrew page (pdf)

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The traditional Jewish expectation of the Messiah (מָשִׁיחַ) was that he would be a great king of the line of David who would overthrow Israel’s enemies and establish the Kingdom of God upon the earth. This expectation was founded upon various promises written in the Torah of Moses as well as various oracles of the Hebrew prophets. For example, in the scroll of Isaiah it is written: “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; and the government will be upon His shoulder: and his name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end, upon the throne of David and over his kingdom, to order it and establish it with judgment and justice from that time forward, even forever. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will perform this” (Isa. 9:6-7). On the face of it, this prophecy says that the Messiah would establish the Kingdom of David as an everlasting kingdom and that all the promises of Zion would be fulfilled: the Temple would be restored in Jerusalem; the exiles would be regathered; the world would experience peace and the knowledge of God would flow to the nations (for more on the Messianic expectation, see “As the Day draws Near“).

When Yeshua therefore proclaimed “Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand,” the Torah scholars and religious leaders of Israel wondered what he meant. Didn’t Moses say that God would one day raise up someone “like him” who would spectacularly lead the people? (Deut. 18:15). Didn’t the prophets say that Messiah would restore Israel to greatness beyond that known in the days of King Solomon? Would he not restore the Holy Temple? Gather in the exiles? Is it not written of the day of Messiah: “God will be King over all the world; on that day, God will be one and His Name will be one” (Zech. 14:9)?

In light of this, it’s understandable that the Pharisees and religious leaders were confused. This shouldn’t scandalize us, for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that the prophets were regularly misunderstood and persecuted by the sages in Jewish history. Still, the sages missed the coming of Yeshua because there are two distinct pictures of Messiah given in the visions of the prophets. On the one hand, Messiah is portrayed as a great king, a deliverer, and a savior of the Jewish people who comes in triumph “in the clouds” (Dan. 7:13), but on the other he is depicted as riding a donkey, lowly and humble (Zech. 9:9), a suffering servant, born in lowliness, despised and rejected of men (Isa. 53). These two images of Messiah eventually lead to various oral traditions that there would be two Messiahs: “Messiah ben Joseph” (מָשִׁיחַ בֶּן־יוֹסֵף) and “Messiah ben David” (מָשִׁיחַ בֶּן־דָוִד).

When Yeshua said that the Kingdom of God was “at hand,” then, he clarified that this meant something more than the establishment of the kingdom of Zion on earth but further involved the sacrificial ministry of Messiah who would serve in a priestly function to atone for the sins of the people before the kingdom would be realized. This was alluded to in Torah itself with the offering of the Passover Lamb in Egypt as well as the need for blood sacrifices before the covenant was given to Israel at Sinai. In other words, just as Moses enacted the sacrifices before the establishment of the theocratic kingdom of Israel, so Yeshua would offer up himself as the LORD’s Suffering Servant to atone for the sins of his people and to establish the new covenant (Isa. 52:13-53:12; Jer. 31:31-34). “The kingdom of God does not come with observation, nor will people say ‘Here it is!” or ‘there it is!’ because the kingdom of God is to be within you” (Luke 17:20-21). The kingdom is a matter of the heart. The King was now present, at hand; and the LORD had prepared him a body to offer up so that his people would be made whole (Psalm 40:6-8; Heb. 10:5-9; Isa. 53:4-5).

Read more “Parables and Perseverance…”

The Torah teaches that a personal, all-powerful, and all-loving God exists and solely created the universe “yesh me’ayin” (יֵשׁ מְאַיִן), or out of nothing. As his crowning creative achievement, God created free moral agents – both angels and man – who could choose to do what is good or what is evil. For reasons that are not entirely clear, however, some of the angels chose to rebel against God (chief among them Lucifer, later renamed Satan), and these angels, in turn, conspired to seduce human beings to do likewise. When Adam and Eve disobeyed God’s moral law, they effectively joined the angelic rebellion. The consequence of this was catastrophic, and the mankind “fell” away from God as their King into a state of alienation and exile called “spiritual death.”

Since God had created man to exercise lawful dominion over the earth (שׁגח), however, as the steward and “federal head” of creation, the effect of his apostasy affected not only his life, but also that of the entire created order itself, as Satan then usurped the authority given to man and began his reign of terror upon the earth. With the spiritual and moral order usurped, mankind was under the hegemony of Satan, and anarchy resulted. The natural order likewise broke down and dissipated. The original transgression of man therefore affected not only his relationship with God but also that of the entire created order itself. Natural evils and chaos erupted as the earth became a rebel outpost from the original Kingdom of God. Satan enthroned himself as the “god of this world” (ὁ θεὸς τοῦ αἰῶνος τούτου) and humanity has subsequently suffered under his tyranny of deception and malice ever since.

Now this general account of the origin of evil may be considered philosophically, and indeed it is often discussed in such terms, since the main objection to the idea that an all-powerful and all-loving Creator exists is the concurrent existence of evil, and in particular, pain and suffering that seems to be omnipresent in the world. How could such a God allow evil in his creation? And doesn’t the prevalence of such evil impugn faith in God?

The contrary challenge being made here is that the following four propositions: 1) God exists; 2) God is all-powerful, 3) God is all-loving, and 4) evil exists are together logically incompatible and therefore one (or more) of them must be false. So the first order of business regarding this critical challenge is to consider each proposition (and its negation) to determine its credibility (or lack thereof), and then, after better understanding the meaning of the propositions, to decide if they are really inconsistent or not.

As for the first proposition, namely, that God “exists,” we need to consider various rational arguments for the existence of God, for instance, the cosmological argument (argument from cause), the teleological argument (argument from design), the ontological argument (the a priori argument), the argument from intuitions of beauty, morality, and logic, the argument from mystical experiences, arguments from fulfilled prophecies, evidences for the historical reliability of the Scriptures, and so on. Working through these arguments is beyond the scope of this short article, since my goal here is to briefly explore how “evil” and the existence of God are not only compatible, but are in indeed complementary to sound theology.

Read more “The End of Evil…”