Let’s say this hypothetical child has been fearful, angry and selfish his entire life to the extent that his behavior has polluted our entire family.  His selfishness over the years spread among his brothers and sisters to the extent that they became fearful, angry and defensive too.  There seemed to be no end to the strife and anguish they caused each other as the years passed.  Their inability to love one another finally reached such proportions that they began to blame me (their father)  for all of their difficulties.  They became ungrateful for the things I had given them and rejected all that I had tried to teach them.  They eventually became convinced that I was the reason for their unhappiness and began to curse me.

 Even as my children hurt one another and curse and blame me for their unhappiness I still love them.  They are unaware of what drives them to be what they are and do what they do.  In one sense, I can see why they would think their condition is not their fault, but it results from their free will and the choices they make every day.  They fact that they want to deny responsibility for their condition does not change them from being the way they are. 

 I love my children but my wrath against them is just and is based in the truth.  My judgment is that I will not leave them an inheritance I know would be wasted and abused because of their selfish, fearful nature.  But my wrath is not directed personally against my children.  My wrath is against the evil fear and selfishness that drives them to hurt each other and me.  My heart goes out to them in their condition, but justice requires me to judge them unworthy of an inheritance and to cut them off.

 If righteousness and love are the foundation of God’s character, justice must proceed out of that condition.  Perfect righteousness and perfect love produce perfect objectivity and the twisting of truth is impossible under those conditions.  Perfect objectivity that erupts from righteousness and love must support truth in every case.  Upholding truth is justice, and if justice is fostered out of perfect righteousness and love, then God’s justice is perfect too.

The final result of love, righteousness and justice is judgment.  Without judgment there can be no justice.  And without justice, righteousness and love cannot be preserved.  All of this creates a problem for humanity, because the Bible reveals that eternity itself is rooted and sustained by God’s perfect righteousness and endless love.  The perfect righteousness of God cannot tolerate unrighteousness in His presence or in the eternity He occupies.

Out of His perfect righteousness and love, which is fearless and unselfish, God has justly judged that unrighteousness will not be allowed to pollute his eternity.  Since human beings are fearful and selfish it means we are unrighteous.  Our unrighteousness bars us from being in God’s eternal kingdom.  This is a hard judgment for people to accept but it is the price of failing to achieve perfection.

The bottom line issue is that human beings are inherently selfish and God is not.  Selfishness is the root of the human problem and is the source of our unrighteousness.  Conversely, perfect righteousness is produced from a condition of being perfectly unselfish.  This requires a bit more explanation.

The Bible clearly establishes righteousness as the foundational characteristic of God’s nature, and also describes God as love.  Human beings tend to interpret these words in a way that makes it difficult to develop an understanding of their close relationship.  Most of us equate love to the feelings we experience in our relationships with the opposite sex and we think righteousness is all about how we behave and the things we do. 

But love is really about selflessness and righteousness has much to do with our deepest motives and thought.  Now we can begin to understand how love and righteousness are joined together.

 Fear and concern for self, which is a characteristic of every human being walking the face of this earth, produces emotions that detract from our honesty with others and ourselves.  As long as that condition is a reality we will demonstrate selfishness and will probably do some “unrighteous” things along the way.  The only way Iwe might avoid being unrighteous is to be perfectly unselfish and be absolutely fearless.  That kind of perfection as a result of human effort isan impossible goal to achieve.

We (human beings) justify our lives within our own experience, and evaluate our behavior in accordance with our own ideas of right and wrong.    If we only think of righteousness in human terms, it will never accurately line up with the righteousness of God.  Human standards of righteousness are usually related to whatever we think constitutes acceptable behavior.

If the defectiveness of one person is greater than that of another, we conclude the person with fewer defects is more righteous.  When we compare the specific defects we find everyone has them, and we tend to discount their serious nature unless they have produced some obviously extreme behavior, such as a criminal act.  Because of this, humans cannot establish a perfect standard of righteousness.  Human standards will fluctuate with individual fears, opinions, cultures, and situational issues.  However, the righteousness of God does not vary and is based in perfection.

When you see the righteousness word in the Bible as it is attributed to God, it is usually describing God’s character, or His nature, or His actions, or His attitude.  And, you usually find it used in conjunction with three other words: love, justice and judgment.  Of the three, the most difficult word for me to associate with righteousness was love.  The two did not seem to fit together.  However, understanding righteousness unlocks the door to eternity for humanity.

The Bible repeatedly states that God is righteous and  God is love.  God is also just and  righteous – meaning that he is loving and just in all of His judgments.  Indeed, of these four words (righteousness, love, justice and judgment) two of them go right to the heart of God’s revelation of Himself to the world.  The two words are righteousness and love.  They are bound up together almost as if they are one.  Righteousness and love describe God’s personage, His heart, His essence, His throne, His Kingdom, and His eternity.  In fact, God’s foundational nature is characterized by righteousness and love.

The Bible states that we must attain the same righteous perfection to enter eternity with God.  It also says we can’t attain righteousness by our own efforts or works.   It can only be acquired by “faith”.

C. S. Lewis discussed this fear, or awe, at length in his book, “The Problem of Pain.”  He pointed out that two facts have always accompanied the thinking of human beings:

1.  An instinctive sense of the concept of morality, and; 2.  An awareness of the Numinous, or all powerful eternal deity.

Lewis also said the last thing man is willing to do is admit a link between this eternal omnipotence and the concept of morality.

The moral codes created and established by human beings cannot be perfectly fulfilled and humanity knows this to be true.  That is why there have always been laws or cultural standards of behavior.  Humans have always made provisions for punishment, imprisonment and other methods that exclude “violators” from the rest of society.

The possibility of an absolute standard of morality is a fearful thought when linked to an eternal God.   Lewis makes the astute observation that the link between morality and deity, if it exists, would have to be brought to light by revelation.  It is the last thing humans would include in a theology of their own making.

I think the feelings and atmosphere surrounding my divorce were no different from what others experience when they divorce.  At the time a divorce is initiated, hate, anger, bitterness, jealousy, frustration, exhaustion and hopelessness are the dominant feelings.  The pain is so intense you will do just about anything to make it stop.  The only thing we seem unwilling to do is consider what God would have us do.  Most Christian people who get a divorce know that it is not God’s will for them to divorce, but they still divorce.  They do not search God’s word or His Spirit for solutions.  And, most importantly, they are unwilling to be obedient to His command not to divorce.

1. That God will give me wisdom.
2. That God will show me the truth I need to accept.
3. That God will give me the power and grace to daily accept and apply His wisdom and truth in my life.

I am convinced that any person willing to sincerely pray this prayer on a daily basis and accept its results will begin to experience radical change in their life almost immediately.  However, I warn that such a prayer is not for the faint of heart.  God will employ methods of response that will be difficult and spiritually painful to experience.  He will use this prayer to help us learn how to crucify our self will and that is a matter of death.  It is a bloody business that eventually produces new life, but we must persevere through the pain that accompanies the acquisition of real truth and Godly wisdom.

In this blog I have discussed the concept of living Life on a Cross.  To crucify self, the process of taking thoughts captive must be integrated with the Life on a Cross model.  When we are able to do that a powerful transformation begins to take place at our spiritual core.  The power of God to really change us at the level of thought and motive becomes evident to us.  As we become more patient, more kind, more forgiving and more obedient, we begin to authentically reflect God in our lives for the first time.  This is real Christianity.  This is the purpose of God.  This is how we are putting on the mind of Christ.

Are you willing to allow God to deal with you at the level of thought and motive?  To allow God to deal with us at such a deep level begins with learning what it means to take our thoughts captive and bring them in obedience to Christ.

The truth is this:  I think things I hate to admit I think.  How about you?   Years ago when I struggled with addiction, anger and depression, very little of my thought life was pleasing to God.  My thoughts were nested in anger, resentment and getting what I wanted when I wanted it.  My thoughts came in an endless stream and were constantly goading and leading me into behavior that produced spiritual beatings that tortured my soul and my spirit.

I  once heard someone say they considered their mind to be like a bad neighborhood and they avoided going there alone!  I’ve found a lot of truth in that remark.  However, as I have learned to better submit to God’s purpose, the greatest single example of His work in me is the transformation of my thought life.  I still think thoughts that I need to surrender to God but they do not begin to approach the character and nature of my thoughts as they existed long ago.  The change in my thought life is factual proof to me that God’s grace has changed my heart to the extent that I am no longer the man I used to be.