The Five Part Story – Part Five – We Follow the Way of God’s Love

    The Biblical story, as I have pointed out in previous articles, is organized as a meta-narrative. It has a beginning, a middle and an end. It has a problem (sin) which needs to be solved. It has adventures and great heroes (Abraham, Moses, David among them). It has a savior (Jesus of Nazareth) who rescues humanity and begins reclaiming them for God. And it has a conclusion which describes the restoration of God's good creation (the book of Revelation). The issue with scripture however, is that it is very easy to miss this overarching story. Readers can easily find themselves bogged down in the details of the Temple, the list of Kings, the minutia of the Law of Moses or the theology of the Apostle Paul in his letters. In order to help people understand the meta-narrative, our staff developed the Five Part Story.

    Part One is that God loves the world. This is the foundational belief upon which entire story rests; that God as creator desires that creation fulfill its potential to be a place of peace, justice and love. Part Two is that we wandered far from God. Human beings wandered away from the life giving ways God set before them and chose instead to follow ways that led to death and destruction. Part Three is that Jesus is the way to God. In the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth a path is opened which makes it possible for human beings to once again live into the life giving ways of God. Part Four is that the Spirit leads us to God. The Holy Spirit takes the potential of living into the life giving ways of God and makes that potential a reality. The final part of the story is that we follow the Way of God's Love.

    This final part of the story may come as a surprise to many Christians. I say this because the end of the story for many Christians is heaven. In other words the end results of God's love, Christ's death and the Spirit's work all lead to a final end…eternity with God in heaven. That would indeed make for a nice neat conclusion but, as was noted above, that is not the ending the scriptures offer us. The end for scripture is a new heaven and earth on which men, women and children live fully, and eternally, into lives which demonstrate love of God and neighbor. Thus the end of the story is that we are to follow the way of God's love such that we demonstrate the fullness of being God's children.

    This ultimate end to the story then helps to determine how we live in the interim as we head for the completion of God's work. We are to live in the interim as those doing our best to follow the way of God's love as shown to us by Jesus of Nazareth. Stories such as the Jesus eating with sinners and tax collectors (Luke 5:27-32), the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:29-37) and the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31) offer us glimpses of what this Jesus-like life ought to look like. In the Gospel of John (15:12) Jesus tells his disciples that "This is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you." This same idea (loving one another) is continued in the letters of John. (1 John 2:7-12; 4:7-12)

Paul addresses this in the "ethics" portion of Romans (12:1-2) where he writes, "I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters,
by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual
worship. Do not be conformed to this world,
but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect." He continues in 12:9-13. "Let love be genuine; hate what is evil; hold fast to what is good;
love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord.
Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer.
Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers." For the Apostle the outcome of all of Christ's work is that we become capable of and willing to let the love of God shine through us in what we say and do.

    You and I are part of this Five Part Story; the greatest story ever told. The challenge for us is to be intentional about following the way of God's love in response to all that God has done for us.

Part Four of the Five Part Story: The Spirit Leads Us to God

    Over the past two months we have been discussing the issue of salvation. This discussion came immediately after our examination of Part Three of the Five Part Story; that Jesus is the way to God. The basic understanding of salvation is that God applies the work of Jesus on the cross to human hearts such that those hearts are transformed. This transformation allows human beings to move from self-love to loving God and neighbor. In that way people experience salvation in this moment (becoming the persons God designed them to be) and for eternity (they enter into a never ending relationship with the living God). The question becomes then how does God continually realign human hearts so that, in the face of the siren calls of the world, they continue to love God and neighbor more and more.

    The answer is that it is the work of the Holy Spirit that does this. For many of us Presbyterians the Holy Spirit is a concept/entity/person around which it is hard to wrap our heads. We are much more comfortable with God (creator) and Jesus (savior) because they are easier to imagine. The Spirit on the other hand often seems much more like "The Force" in Star Wars; a force which permeates everything and everyone. This view of the Spirit, while somewhat helpful, does not do justice to the complex, personal nature of the Spirit in scripture. The Orthodox view of the Spirit is that it is one "person" of the Trinity. The Nicene Creed (381 CE) puts it this way, "We believe …in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life, who proceeds from the Father, who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified, who spoke by the prophets." In other words the Spirit has a life of its own…it blows where it wills. With all of that having been said let's take a look at how the Spirit leads us to God.

First the Spirit leads us to God by changing us. In Romans 5:1, 5 we read, "Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we
have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ…because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us." What Paul wants us to understand is that the reconciliation we have with God is the product of the Spirit's work of sending the love of God into our lives. This in-pouring of love by the Spirit essentially changes the orientation of our hearts so that we willingly turn to God by seeking the new relationship which God desires to have with us.

    Second the Spirit leads us to God by giving us the ability to follow the way of Jesus. In 1 Corinthians 12:3 Paul writes, "Therefore I want you to understand that…no one can say 'Jesus is Lord' except by the Holy Spirit." The willingness to acknowledge Jesus as Lord is the first outward demonstration of a new heart; a heart which is oriented toward God through Jesus. By declaring that Jesus is Lord we begin putting the will of God in Christ first and our own wills second. We follow the way of Jesus toward God.

Third the Spirit leads us to God by making us part of God's family. In Romans 8:15-16 Paul writes, "For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, "Abba!
Father!" it is that very Spirit bearing witness
with our spirit that we are children of God." You and I are now given the opportunity to have an intimate relationship with God. We are able to respond to God's love as a beloved child to a caring parent.

    Fourth and finally the Spirit leads us to God by helping us to pray. Romans 8:26-27 puts it this way. "Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes
with sighs too deep for words. And God,
who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit
intercedes for the saints according to the will of God." In a sense the Spirit enables us to have a deep and profound relationship with God because the Spirit takes our needs and desires, which we cannot fully express, and lays them before God.

    God's love for the world is so deep that it does not end with the sending of Jesus Christ to die on the cross. Rather God's love is expressed in the never ending work of the Spirit which not only applies that work to our lives but creates an eternal connection between ourselves and God.