JESUS DREW A LINE

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What line did Jesus draw? He drew the dividing line between God’s Kingdom of Light and Satan’s dominion of darkness. He didn’t draw this line philosophically—leaving it open to discussion or to the shifting definitions of human opinion and religious ideology. Because Jesus was the Messiah King, His arrival on the scene of human history created the real, spiritually tangible existence of that dividing line. His incarnational coming inaugurated the earthly debut of the Kingdom of God, and that Kingdom’s ongoing spiritual presence calls for human wills to respond. Putting off or making excuses to avoid a decisive response was then and is now to make a negative choice.

John the Baptist—sent by God as a prophetic voice to prepare people for receiving the coming King—preached, “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!” Jesus preached exactly the same message with another intent. He was now calling people to participate in that Kingdom by putting their trust in Him. True repentance or metanoia [“change of mind”] is not an emotional sorrow over personal sins or an intellectual adaptation to a new concept. It’s the full human person—body, soul, and spirit—fully surrendering to Jesus Christ as the Savior King. The choice of repentant faith in response to the Good News of God’s Kingdom initiates in the believer’s heart the actual Reign of Almighty God, “the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” (James 1:17). Forgiveness of sins and a renewed mind are the results of that surrender, for both are found only in the King.

Satan is at work 24/7 to prevent sinners from crossing over that dividing line by their surrender to Jesus. For all human history, he’s avidly studied our fallen nature, learning how to play every field in order to cater successfully to each human inclination. “Satan disguises himself as an angel of light” (2 Cor 11:14), not pure and holy light, but creational forms of light and enlightenment tinted to individual human taste with various degrees of darkness. He offers as many shades of gray as there are human personalities to be duped by them. He still uses his old forbidden-fruit promise that “your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Gen 3:5), and it still yields the deadly blindness of multiple moralities, all independent from God. Long before humans fell into it, the devil chose this path to moral independence from God. By leading us into it too, he became “the god of this world” who not only “blinded the minds of the unbelievers” in Eden, but continues to blind all the unbelieving, “to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” (2 Cor 4:4).

Scripture reveals that by God’s Son “all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him.” (Col 1:16). Jesus drew a line symbolically in the beginning when He “divided the light from the darkness,” (Gen 1:4). But in the human birthright of moral conscience, from the beginning until now, He has faithfully been “the true Light which gives light to every man coming into the world.” (John 1:9). All creation, including those made in His image to be servant-leaders and caretakers of creation, were described by God as “very good” (Gen 1:31). All creation, including us, would have remained “very good,” if human leadership had remained living in the truth, walking in the light of the Lord. But we listened instead to the liar Satan and were deceived into the spiritual death and damning darkness of his lies.

Jesus described the deceiver: “… He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies,” (John 8:44); and He contrasted the deceiver’s works to His own: “The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly,” (John 10:10). Satan extends his own rebellion against God through us by luring us to sin against the God of light, thereby capturing us as prisoners in his dominion of darkness. Jesus unmasked the devil’s goal in tempting us to sin—“Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin,” (John 8:34)—and the Apostle John told the end result: “He who does what is sinful is of the devil.” John continues by telling why no human can enter the territory of self-will and autonomy from God without falling under Satan’s influential power, and sometimes, his full control: “because the devil has been sinning from the beginning.” Because he got there first and is the mastermind of rebellion against God, he rules over the domain of sin. But these explanations from 1 John 3:8 conclude with the divine intervention that is humanity’s only hope: “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.”

Why does God’s work of salvation boil down to this one thing: destroying Satan’s work? It’s because sin means “missing the mark,” and the divine mark, God’s true target for humans, is to walk in truth by living and thriving in the God of truth. Through lies, Satan tempts people to use their God-given desires in God-forbidden ways. He uses creation itself, or his manipulations of created things, to lure those “good” human desires into “missing the mark.” And the result? “Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death,” (James 1:15). The incredible but inconceivably gracious response of our loving God to our sins and spiritual death was the Cross and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. By personally paying for our sins on the Cross, Jesus drew a line in human history between sin’s damnation and sin’s forgiveness. By His Resurrection, which completed His work on the Cross, Jesus drew a line between the spiritually dead and the divinely alive, between slavery in Satan’s dominion of darkness and the abundant life in God’s Kingdom of light.

The vicarious Sacrifice of Christ on the Cross went beyond taking away sins. It also put the sinner to death. A crucial dimension of destroying “the devil’s work” was for Jesus vicariously to take into His own death the false humanity that Satan had fashioned with lies: “For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin,” (Rom 6:6). But, while the forgiveness of sins is God’s instantaneous act, the emancipation from slavery to sin is chronological, progressing in earthly time as rapidly as believers in Christ let the truth of Christ set them free. In promising believers this liberation, Jesus inferred this progressive pattern: “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free,” (John 8:31-32).

Many have knelt at the Cross of Christ for forgiveness without completely surrendering to the abundant life He brought to them by His Resurrection. Death to the “old self”—the false self created by Satan’s lies—is not a one time event. In Galatians 2:20, the Apostle Paul made an amazing claim based on Christ’s work on the Cross: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” In this statement, he was describing his victorious walk “by faith in the Son of God”—his experiential journey in daily manifesting his new life in Christ. In our union with Christ, we can live life “more abundantly,” but not automatically. Day by day, even moment by moment, we must choose to follow Him, choose to obey Him. In the same way, while we have been “crucified with Christ” we do not automatically die to the individual lies that shaped the false self. We must, by a choice of our new will in Christ, reject any lingering lies. This is why the Apostle Paul exhorts us, “Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry,” (Col 3:5).

Placing our faith in Jesus brings us across the line from death to life, because “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new,” (2 Cor 5:17). But Satan doesn’t easily give up on repentant sinners who were once his slaves. If he can’t keep us in his realm of darkness with the old lies he once used to enslave us, he invents a million others—appealing half-truths, innocent-looking gray areas—to lure us back across the line into his territory. This is why Jesus said, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword,” (Mat 10:34). He came to draw a line that meant spiritual warfare for the rest of this fallen world’s history. Believers are to be warriors commissioned to help others find their true selves in Christ. In order to do that, without themselves becoming spiritual casualties in the battle, they must keep their minds and hearts fed on the truth God has revealed in His Word. They must become skilled in resisting satanic lies with “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God,” (Eph 6:17).

This dividing line is absolutely precise. There is no middle ground, no room for a mixture of the brightest light of truth with the faintest tint of shading. Divine truth has no tolerance of a compromise between the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the most appealing precepts of ancient or modern wisdom. Therefore, it can never ever be Jesus plus something else, for the very person and presence of Christ the King defines the Kingdom of God. He alone is the King of Kings, Who said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” (John 14:6). From that exclusive stance, Jesus drew a line, and everyone’s eternal destiny depends on what side of the line they choose to be on.

[If you found this helpful, you might also want to read, Finding and Becoming Our True Selves, “Question Autonomy!” and Identity Amnesia.]

“QUESTION AUTONOMY!”

The slogan, “Question Authority!” captured many young minds in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Its popularity rose with the Hippie Movement’s protest that political ties to business interests were fueling the Viet Nam War. Despite that logical suspicion, their historical gesture of turning their backs on society, through counter-cultural behaviors, did not make them truly independent. Symbolic autonomy cannot quench hunger and thirst or provide shelter and warmth. Even to “beg, steal or borrow” shows dependence and betrays the claim of autonomy. John Donne is still right: “No man is an island.”

This epic “Hippie” departure from the social status quo shouted another appeal: “Make love, not war!” But it was a new kind of love — a “Free Love” that questioned the authority of accepted moral standards and replaced them with those of “The Sexual Revolution.” Urged on by The New Morality’s denial of absolute moral truth, sexual promiscuity spread like wildfire and free love began changing modern Western thinking about human sexuality.

The voices proclaiming autonomy did include a qualifying addendum — “Do your own thing, as long as no one gets hurt.” But that tacked-on safety clause was generally ignored, as people pursued “sexual freedom” without restraint. Unwed pregnancies skyrocketed. Abortions and single parents multiplied. Unstable relationships became a norm. Many more children now grew up in homes without the balancing bond of couples committed to the challenging work of marital love.

The so-called “sexual revolution” only resuscitated the old morality of free lust. Real love is not free, nor is it just a good feeling. It’s a moral choice, a self-denying behavior, a lifestyle bound to others. To adopt this new idea of “free love,” people had to question and reject the authority of the Bible, which gave us love’s true definition: “God is love,” (1 John 4:8). But the ultimate authority of the Creator’s love was also qualified by another definition: “God is light,” (1 John 1:5). Divine Love’s caring creativity is simultaneous with divine Light’s perfect truth. Humans, made “in the image of God” (Genesis 1:27), find their significance, purpose and direction only by following God’s lead in creative caring and truthful living. Our true identities — our authentic selves — must forever be subordinate to the life-giving Source of love and light, or we’re spiritually dead.

If we accept the Bible’s definition of God as “light” and “love,” we must also accept how it defines us. From the beginning, we were created to be servants. Bearing the image of our Maker, we were equipped to serve in a variety of ways: 1) reproducing and filling creation with more images of God (Genesis 1:28a); 2) serving as governing representatives for Him (Genesis 1:28b), 3) cultivating and protecting His creation (Genesis 2:15); 4) building a human knowledge-base by categorically naming what He had created (Genesis 2:19); and 5) doing these duties in the context of loving marital union (Genesis 2:24).

All these dimensions of being servants were to be performed in the context of a relationship with the Ultimate Servant, God Himself. After creating the universe, God continued serving as its ongoing Sustainer. That job required an even more energetic, personal involvement after His chosen human representatives failed in their leadership role by choosing the disaster of autonomy over the safety of His authority.

God’s servant nature of caring creativity united to enlightening truth bountifully expands forever, while the self-limiting attitudes and activities of human autonomy become ingrown: 1) parents raise children to image themselves rather than God; 2) servant leadership erodes into tyrannies of self-will and personal power; 3) caring for creation is lost in controlling and exploiting it; 4) pride enthrones knowledge as a god, making science its temple; and 5) marriage devolves from an organic union to a contract easily dissolved by changed feelings.

Painting by Albert Edelfelt

God demonstrated the full extent of Love’s willingness to serve by His personal commitment to repair the tragedy of human autonomy. When His Son became one of us, Jesus exemplified servant leadership by stripping down, as a slave would, to wash His disciples’ feet. He told them to do likewise (John 13:14-15). God made it unmistakably clear that His kind of love was not just in attitude or word but in deed. He said, “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many,” (Mark 10:45). How far did Love go in serving us? All the way to the Cross! Jesus said, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends,” (John 15:13).

The Cross wasn’t the end of God’s incarnational strategy. Christ’s death and resurrection redeemed His failed human project. But now, the Leader of human servant leadership is God Himself. As the Father lived in Jesus, so Christ now indwells His followers. Instead of doing Kingdom work in one isolated body in Palestine, Jesus has been living and serving around the globe in multiple billions of human bodies. In Christ, God’s original plan for us — to image Him as a growing community of body-spirit beings, blessing creation with loving, God-directed service — has become our restored destiny.

Autonomy is a boring alley leading to a dead end. It’s also a self-deception. No one got here on their own. We rely on so many things we ourselves did not invent. We learn by standing on the shoulders of preceding generations, and the knowledge discovered on our own always seems to increase what is unknown. We don’t know the future, can’t agree on the past, and enjoy the present only through good health, which is often out of our control. We claim to know the facts, but they keep changing. We deceive ourselves by saying, “well, it’s true for me anyway,” when we’ve altered our “personal” truths a dozen times in the last decade. We claim to be truthful, loving people but regularly fail at honesty and compassion. If such a distinctive background allows us to say, “I’ve got this…. I can make the best decision for myself here,” then we’re fooling ourselves. Autonomy is worse than a bad joke! Don’t question divine authority! Question human autonomy!

While we don’t know with certainty all realities, all situations, all circumstances, with all their interactive relationships and contingently interwoven possibilities, God does. We don’t perfectly know others or even ourselves, but God does. We can’t get near loving ourselves as deeply as God loves us. So, which is more logical: to submit ourselves to the direction of perfect Love guided by omniscient Wisdom or to follow our own imperfect love, further handicapped by a limited human knowledge of everything? The logical reply is a no-brainer, yet often we trust and follow our own judgment, when God is pointing us in the opposite direction. This makes our confident autonomy a sad form of insanity!

Autonomy distrusts the idea that “God has a wonderful plan for your life.” Here’s an even more accurate statement: “You are a wonderful part of God’s plan.” Why do I express it that way? It’s because God created you specifically. There’s no one who ever lived, is now living or will someday exist who was, is or will be exactly like you. You are unique, and so is everyone else that descended from the original union of Adam and Eve’s DNA. The fantastic diversity of personality and giftedness in all of human history was not canceled by the sinful failure of our first parents. They left Eden disconnected from God, but still retaining their nature as servants and still propagating offspring with individually unique abilities to serve.

"Come, Follow Me" by Brent Borup

Autonomy keeps that unique servant-leadership potential, inherent in all of us, from being fully realized. We can only find the fullness of our true servant selves in union with the Supreme Servant Who made us. Creation now, and “the new heavens and the new earth” yet to be (Isaiah 66:22), will be uniquely blessed by your special contribution of service… or not. If “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good indeed,” (Genesis 1:31), then the potential for humanity’s entire future was all “very good.” But by allowing us to choose or reject His will for us, God put the ball in our court. Either we become the true serving selves He intended for His wonderful human plan, or we don’t. We can repent of our autonomous ways and surrender our autonomous selves to the saving work of Christ, or we can maintain the delusional, distracting, diabolical deception of human autonomy.

I pray that everyone reading this, who has not done so already, will stop doubting the divine authority of Perfect Love and Eternal Light and start questioning the illusion of autonomy. Finding and exploring our real identity as God’s servants, created to serve eternally alongside Him, is an endless journey of joy with ever-expanding horizons. The call of Jesus — our Servant God Who became our Human King — is authoritative and redemptive. The creative adventure of everlasting servant leadership begins with our obedient personal response to His call to us: “Follow Me.”

POEMS BETWEEN DARKNESS AND LIGHT - Introduction

(My books are available on Amazon at this link.)

(Before becoming a preacher, a nurse, an amateur artist, or a massage therapist, I was a poet. I still am. Getting my poetry published in more than homemade binders had been a dream for years. Health challenges and the rise of modern book-publishing technology merged to motivate me to make the effort. This and my other books are published through Kindle Direct Publishing in both paperback and Kindle editions.

I wanted to put the introductory essays for each poetry collection on my blog. If you want to know what makes me tick, my poems tell it better than a biography.

This "Introduction" and the concluding poem are from my 2nd book of poems. To read the posts from my others, click on these links:

Poems Between Heaven and Hell;

Poems Between Death and Life;

Poems Between Birth and Resurrection;

Poems Between Here and Beyond;

Poems Between Fear and Faith;

Poems Between the Beginning and the End.)

“Introduction” to

Poems Between Darkness and Light

Everyone appreciates sleep, and along with it, the darkness of night. For those like myself, who work at night and sleep in the day, closing the eyelids is not sufficient for escaping light. Most of us also darken the room for sleeping. Yet upon waking, if we found neither sunlight nor lamplight to dispel the darkness, we would panic. Darkness is fine for the inactivity of sleep, but for the business of living, we need light. All people, even the blind who have learned to see with their ears and hands, want to know what is going on around them, who is present nearby, which direction is clear to walk in. Whatever lies in the darkness or in the unknown becomes apparent with light or with enlightenment.

Many people have poisoned themselves by taking medications in the dark. False assumptions can be dangerous. I remember one of my nursing instructors insisting on our doing “under-cover rounds” for all our patient assessments. It meant to pull back the covers, lift up the gowns and examine bare bodies. Merely presuming that all was well could result in negligent care. At first, I felt uncomfortable crossing a stranger’s normal boundaries of privacy to gather the physical facts. But as a seasoned nurse, I would now feel uncomfortable and even delinquent in not doing so.

Sufficient light banishes both doubt and inaccurate conjecture. It endows us with the priceless knowledge of reality. After all, we want the truth, don’t we? Without the light of truth, the world of humanity is dysfunctional and abusive. Purposeful lies, sly half-truths, ignorant falsehoods, or whatever else wields the power to mislead thought and action: these are the central agents of disintegration in a friendship, a home, a nation, a world. Although the gift of imagination is magnificent, we fail at life if we live in a world of dreams which are never brought into reality by our planning, prayer, and personal sweat.

In keeping with the thematic title of my first book, Poems Between Heaven and Hell, I have entitled this one Poems Between Darkness and Light. On earth we are in the midst of a tension between the forces of good and evil, between the holy influence of Heaven and the damning incitements of Hell. There is such complexity in life’s mixtures of good and evil, so many shades of darkness, so much filtering of light’s intensity, that ultimate choices become confusing. Humanity’s common plight in this world of thick mist and shadow is a lost sense of direction and destiny. At the core of our muddled thinking is a divided heart. We were created for and crave unity with our Maker, yet, at the same time, try to avoid Him. Perhaps our sleep has become too precious. We fear a God whose light obliterates the comfort of dreamy pillows and the secrecy of thick blankets. But our only legitimate fear is that of not fearing, not heeding, not obeying such a loving God whose commitment to truth causes Him to call us to, and insist upon, the same commitment.

The God who is love is also light. Light is not subtle or complex, but simply pure and revealing. If the God of light hides Himself at all, it is for our own preservation. In our inner selves, we often house such a turbulent amalgamation of good and evil, truth and error, light and darkness, that His fully directed focus, like the blast of a high-powered laser beam, would blow us away in an instant. In His love and kindness, God bestows little glimpses of truth here and there during the course of our lives in order to turn us away from the darkness of selfishness toward the light of holiness and love. But often this slow process is only to prepare us for an essential “crisis” experience where a sudden pouring in of His light catches us off guard, exposing our true situation and our danger. At such moments, the choice is clear. We either turn back willfully toward the deceptive comfort of our darkness or enter a new, bright journey on the highway of God’s will. At such a crossroad, choosing not to choose is by default to sink back into the darkness, which may not only be costly, but even damning.

This book has been compiled without categorical or chronological arrangement. As in my first book, I have included some older poems, along with others which do not necessarily follow this introductory theme. Some of them are merely poetic experimentation. But for the most part, the poetry in this volume captures my insights on the human condition, in which light and darkness are so intertwined. I have tried to embody in poetry a message that exposes the blind spots that prevent our world from recognizing the truth. In these areas especially, I pray that my poems succeed in pointing readers away from darkness and toward the light. Where I have included poems of a personal nature, whether humorous, sentimental, or descriptive of life experience and observation, I hope they do not detract from the central theme of this introduction.

As a Christian, I am not ashamed to state my absolute confidence in God’s Word, the Bible, as His guiding light for our lives in this world of shadows. Many of these poems express my longing for closer union with God, and I hope they engender that same desire in all who read them. Above all, I want my readers to know that God’s invitation is open to everyone for a new life in His Son, Jesus Christ. This God of love and light waits for all of us to come to Him, and the nearer, the better—the closer, the brighter.

— David L. Hatton

*    *    *    *    *    *    *

THE PERFECT POEM

When a poet is a prophet,

When the singing strikes and stings

At the shifting social conscience

Modern foolish thinking brings,

We’re reminded of the Poem

From God’s lips of love sublime:

Jesus Christ, the Word Incarnate,

Perfect rhythm, perfect rhyme.

God spoke nature into being:

Beasts and rivers, rocks and hills,

Trees and sunsets, stars and seasons,

Human passions, human wills . . .

Then, because we failed to listen,

God in perfect harmony,

With Himself the Song and Music,

Sang to us His Melody.

Passions twisted and perverted

By our wills that went astray

Wander blindly through a wasteland

That we know so well today.

But God’s law still speaks within us

By true guilt when we are wrong,

And true grace will only greet us

At the singing of His Song.

There is hope for our confusion—

Dissonance from sins we sung.

Hear the rhapsody of passion

On the cross where Jesus hung:

Perfect words for perfect healing,

Peace throughout eternity

In the chorus choir of Heaven,

If we choose God’s Poetry.

— David L. Hatton, 5/19/92

(Poems Between Darkness and Light,  © 1994, 2014)

For more single poems from this volume, visit my website's “Poetry Page.”

THE PROBLEM WITH HELL

Christians who think about what they believe have usually thought about the problem of “Hell.” Why does a loving Creator allow such a place? Some try dancing theological circles around the doctrine of Hell revealed in Scripture. But Hell will not go away, and for a very good reason.

In my journey of faith, I’ve many times been helped by the writings of C. S. Lewis. While reading The Problem of Pain, I made a giant step in understanding Hell. Later, in his book The Great Divorce, I found these words that many will recognize:

“There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’ All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened.”

Before ever seeing that popular quote, I heard a sermon on the “love of God” which downplayed the reality of “hell.” During the message, I thought about how the words of Deuteronomy 4:24, “For the LORD your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God,” related to 1 John 1:5 and 1 John 4:8, where John says, “God is love,” and “God is light.” I got this sudden insight on Hell: God, as Light and Love, reveals the truth and is so passionately jealous of its integrity that He consumes the darkness of lies. Our God of fiery Love is also the God of consuming Light. Hell is not the result of His absence, but an effect of His ongoing presence. Love and Light are omnipresent.

Later, when studying the doctrine of Hell in graduate school, these previous meditations congealed into the following poem that describes God from two opposite perspectives:

HEAVEN AND HELL

“Consuming Fire, Eternal Light,

 Who shines Your grace to heal our sight;

 Life-giving Flame and Loving Blaze,

 Our open hands to You we raise,

 Secure within Your purging gaze,

 With joy we praise: we sing our praise!”

“Unquenching Heat, Infernal Light,

 That fries our souls, disrupts our night;

 Tormenting Blast and Burning Fate,

 Our fists we raise in stern debate,

 Enraged beneath your scorching Weight,

 In pain we hate: we scream our hate!”

 

— David L. Hatton, 3/8/1983

(in Poems Between Heaven & Hell © 1991 by David L. Hatton)

As C. S. Lewis explains, Hell is God’s last mercy to the unrepentant sinner. The perpetual pain of Hell is Love’s endless commitment to teach the truth to free moral agents who forever choose to ignore or deny it. Ignorant skeptics may zealously hate the concept of Hell. But in His own perfect hatred for it, God confronted the realistic results of humanity's misuse of free-will with the only remedy that could maintain human freedom: His personal incarnation, death, and resurrection in Christ. At His own expense, God offers us an escape from the self-made choices which brought Hell into existence and make it such a hellish place.

So, the familiar question stands: “Where will you spend eternity?” The Gospel of Jesus Christ lays the ultimate responsibility on each human soul for individually determining the answer.

[One of the best sermons I've heard on this subject, from a totally Biblical viewpoint, is "Hell Explained" (a bit over 40 minutes long, but well worth listening to). ALSO, see my other blog article: "A HOLY HELL, NO LESS..."]