Tuesday, March 18, 2014

The Integrity of God: God’s Point of Reverence vs. His Point of Contact




One of the most common mistakes of believers is the cultivation of the misconception that God is somehow sentimental or moved by emotions. This ostensibly small misconception has an immense potential to confuse and mislead believers into believing that God can be swayed through sentimentality or that He rules from an impetus of anger. God is not and has never been capricious in his actions. One of God’s primary attributes is immutability — meaning that he does not change or waver in his character. His dealings with His creation is always just.

Many believers have been taught about God from two polar extremes that present Him as either a sentimental softy or an easily angered tyrant. The former is the base teaching of what I call the “love” movement. These erroneous doctrines focus on the love of God without giving any considerations to His complete essence. Thereby creating the fallible expectation that God will deal with his human creation from a position of emotional sentimentality — creating the belief that God could never sentence those that he loves to eternal damnation or allow them to suffer as a consequence for their wayward actions.

The latter assumption is derived from the fire and brimstone preaching that creates a situation in which people are falling in and out of “salvation” incessantly, accompanied by a belief that God is sitting on high waiting for them to make a mistake so that he can lower the boom.

We must understand that although God is love, His love is not his point of contact with humanity, it is His point of reference. His love and the fact that He is love (1 John 4:8), reveals why he engages us, but it is no longer His direct point of contact. When God created Adam and placed him in the Garden, His point of contact with Adam was is perfect love. Because man had not yet sinned, God could allow His love to be the point for contact without concern of the compromise of His holiness. However, after man sinned God’s justice replaced His love as the point of contact between Him and mankind.

Justice is the attribute of God’s essences that stands guard over all of the rest. God’s essence is expressed through 10 primary attributes: veracity, love, eternal life, omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience, immutability, sovereignty, righteousness and justice.

In order to avoid misunderstanding how God deals with humanity, we must understand how His justice guards His integrity. The word “holy” is used incessantly among evangelicals; however, if you were to ask the average believer to define holiness, you would get some pseudo-spiritual, asceticism, straight-laced, self-righteousness or some other form or pseudo-spirituality.

When the Bible speaks of being holy, it is definitely not speaking of self-righteousness or self-denial. The word holy is like any other word in any language; it evolves, changes and loses its original meaning — becoming anachronistic. The English language over the last 400 years (the length of time it has been since the original King James Version of the Bible was written and the English term “holy” introduced) has been no exception to the rule of etymological development. The word “holy” does not carry the same connotation that it did in 1611. We must also keep in mind that English is not the original language of the Bible so there is no reason to get sentimentally attached to a particular word that was simply used to express the meaning of another word in a completely different language, especially when there is a much better word that clearly provides the lucid understanding of the term. That word is “integrity”. When the Bible speaks of God’s holiness, it is speaking of His unwavering character and integrity as it relates to His absolute standard of righteousness — simply meaning that God never deviates from His standards for no reason whatsoever. His integrity is absolutely impeccable. What He has promised He would do, He will do.

With this understood, you are able to see that God does not allow emotion to dictate his behavior. When the bible speaks of God’s anger, it simply provides a clear understanding that God was displeased with a wrongful action or misdeed that had been committed. The action that will follow will be dictated by God’s standard of righteousness and executed by his justice.

Dr. Rick Wallace
Allow me to explain. Imagine all of God’s attributes in a box, and at the bottom of the box there is a hole that services a funnel to mankind. Everything that God does concerning his creation passes through this one hole. Standing guard at this hole is God’s justice. Contrary to many teachings, the justice of God is impartial and neutral. It does not act on its own, but carries out what the righteousness of God demands. What God’s righteousness approves, God’s justice blesses. What God’s righteousness condemns, God’s justice curses. What this means is God’s justice ensures that God will never rule as a tyrant because his righteous dictates that he not, but it also ensures that God will not become emotionally sentimental and allow sin to go unaddressed.

To elucidate the principle here, I will simply say that God’s integrity ensures that His actions are completely fair and just. This should provide the spiritual equilibrium that is necessary to live an effective Christian life.
The integrity of God ensures that He is the one constant in the entire universe. Although humanity continues to change, God’s expectation and standards have not changed. God is perfectly cognizant of our fallibility and imperfection — providing the means to bridge the gulf that these imperfections created between He and His creation — accomplished through the magnanimous gift provided through Christ at Calvary. While this is true, we must never take the approach that God’s love will allow Him to ignore sin. The moment that He ever does that, He will cease being God and immediately His integrity would come into question. God’s justice will execute what His righteousness demands. ~ Dr. Rick Wallace

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