Victim & Victimizer

"The father heart of God passionately searches the earth for those who would be voluntary lovers of His Son. God's heart is ravished by my love. And life is all about Jesus prying open the locked heart of a wounded girl (his bride) so she might have intimacy with Him forever." (David Keesling)

Someone shared this quote with me recently and, as so often happens, it spawned a reaction. I will be accused of not being very sentimental when, in reality, I’m a real softie and very much a sentimentalist in some things.

The view of ourselves as “a wounded girl” who needs to have her heart pried open by the love of God is certainly a compassionate thought. And I think that one can perhaps claim that from God’s perspective He realizes our sin has wounded us in a way that cannot be healed apart from His medicinal grace. He offers this love to us in overwhelmingly unconditional grace.

However, to view ourselves as nothing more than helpless wounded victims is to flirt with a rather unbiblical view of how we came to be victims in the first place. From this perspective we discredit the reality of our own wicked, deceitful, rebellious hearts. In claiming our status as wounded victims of sin we must never forget that the assailant who has viciously victimized us is none other than ourselves. We are both victim and victimizer.

We have sinned against a holy God and in the process wounded ourselves fatally. However, God has demonstrated His infinite love in that while we were yet “victimizing ourselves in sin” Christ bore the fatal result in Himself on the cross.

“Oh, to grace how great a debtor daily I’m constrained to be.”

God Cannot Be Not God

In a recent response to one of my blogs, a commentor said, “But don’t you think God could manifest Himself as an African-American woman if He wanted to?” My response was, “But He wouldn’t want to, because He has already manifested Himself in visible form to us in the Person of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, once and for all.”

While pondering this idea further I wandered in my mind to Hebrews 6:18, which says, “it is impossible for God to lie.” The obvious question is “why?” If God truly is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, etc., then is there truly anything that He cannot do? To put it in the words of my commentor, “Couldn’t God lie if He wanted to?” Or, to say it another way, “Couldn’t God sin if He wanted to?”

The answer to both questions is “no” — but why? Why can’t God lie and why can’t God sin? The answer is so patently obvious that we, including myself, are tempted to miss it in its glorious simplicity.

The reason God cannot lie is because God IS Truth! He is not only truthful, He is Truth itself. Everything God says is truth. Anything contrary to what God says is a lie. In very simple terms two plus two equals four because God said so, i.e., He created it that way. (All you higher, quantum types can insert your realities, if they really are true, here also.) So, when God speaks, whatever comes from Him is truth.

Correspondingly and consistently, the reason God cannot sin is because God IS perfect righteousness. Whatever He does is righteous, by definition, because He is the One doing it. If God regenerates a lost sinner, it is a righteous act. If God creates a life in a womb, it is a righteous act. If God punishes sin in any way, it is a righteous act. If God disciplines those He loves, it is a righteous act. Why? Because He is righteous.

So we see that for God to lie or sin, He would have to cease being God, and that is something He cannot do for He is the eternally Self-existent One — The I Am. All God’s attributes and characteristics are wrapped up in the reality of Who He is.

It really is “that simple.”

OOPS! Sorry

One of our faithful web ministry guys just informed me that I had an incorrect link to the FITP sermons. It's correct now. Sorry.