Category: Gospel

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The Writing on the Wall

There is no unforgiveable sin except for the sin that we deliberately refuse to seek the Lord’s forgiveness. 

Have you ever wondered if you have, somehow, trespassed into a place where you are beyond the reach of God’s mercy? Is there such a thing as an unforgivable sin? Is it possible to exhaust God’s patience and mercy? The life of King Belshazzar, the infamous ruler of ancient Babylon, provides us with an interesting vantage point from which to consider these kinds of questions. 

In the opening verses of chapter five of the Old Testament book of Daniel, we read, “King Belshazzar gave a great banquet for a thousand of his nobles and drank wine with them.” This was nothing too much out of the ordinary for a man of his position.  But then he makes a move of supreme arrogance. “While Belshazzar was drinking his wine, he gave orders to bring the gold and silver goblets that Nebuchadnezzar his father had taken from the Temple in Jerusalem, so that the king and his nobles, his wives and his concubines drank from them. As they drank the wine, they praised the gods of gold and silver, of bronze iron, wood and stone.” This extraordinarily sacrilegious act did not go unnoticed. At verse 5 we read, “Suddenly the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall, near the lampstand in the royal palace.” This was a troubling interruption to the party. Eventually, Daniel was brought in to translate the supernatural script that neither the king nor the wise men of Babylon could decipher the meaning of. At the center of Daniel’s interpretation were these ominous words to the king: “You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting.” (verse 27). 

So what had Belshazzar done that was rendered unforgivable? To understand Belshazzar’s predicament, we need to consider three questions:

1. What had he forgotten? In response to God’s mercy, King Belshazzar’s father had finally been able to say, “Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and exalt and glorify the King of heaven, because everything He does is right and all His ways are just. And those who walk in pride He is able to humble.” (Daniel 4:37). Belshazzar had spectacularly disregarded this extraordinary spiritual inheritance. He had chosen to forget where his power and authority was derived and he had chosen to forget the Lord’s extreme mercy toward his father. 

Belshazzar’s pride in what he perceived as his total self-sufficiency was even more extraordinary than we may have first imagined. Yes, the banquet was certainly ostentatious, but what is perhaps more outrageous is that even as this Gatsby-like party was taking place the city was under siege by the Mede army. While the king and his guests were drinking themselves under the table, a huge army was literally amassing around the city walls, waiting to break in and seize power. 

2. What had he wasted? Belshazzar was the epitome of the prodigal monarch. His behavior was a blatant transgression of his responsibilities as a king whom God had privileged with wealth and authority. We see this not so much in the size of the banquet as in his motive for it. That he “drank wine in the presence of the thousand” conveys a sense of the theatrical — a sort of obscene inflation of self. All eyes are on him (which is what he wants) and, with their full attention secured, he leads the nobles of the largest nation on the face of the earth in debauchery. Daniel had warned Belshazzar’s father, “Renounce your sins by doing what is right, and your wickedness by being kind to the oppressed. It may be that your prosperity is continued.” (Daniel 4:27). King Nebuchadnezzar had heeded the warning. His son, however, ignored this counsel and spectacularly wasted his authority and the provision that God has placed in his life. Everything we have is given to us by God’s hand. He is generous with us so that we can be generous to others. He brings blessing to our lives so that we can be agents of His healing and transformation.  

But this squandering of wealth and position was not the unforgivable sin. King Nebuchadnezzar’s restored life was testimony to the extreme love and mercy of God. So why does it appear that God’s love and mercy runs dry for Belshazzar? This is found in the answer to our last and most dangerous question.

3. Whom had he cut off? We are told very specifically that Belshazzar “gave orders to bring in the gold and silver goblets that Nebuchadnezzar his father had taken from the Temple in Jerusalem” and that as he and his guests drank from these goblets they “…praised the gods of gold, silver, of bronze, iron, wood and stone.” Belshazzar’s heart was a factory of rebellion against God but in this single act he chose to burn all his bridges. At this point in the history of God’s salvation, the Temple was the one place where God’s forgiveness could be sought. There God was acknowledged, blood was shed, mercy was dispensed and forgiveness given. Under Nebuchadnezzar, the Jewish people had been driven from their homeland and taken into exile in Babylon. These goblets were more than religious trinkets; they were the very expression of the mercy of God. Belshazzar had taken those instruments of God’s forgiveness and praised the gods of gold, silver, bronze, iron and stone. Ironically, through the whole of the book of Daniel, these lifeless elements have pictorially represented the rebellion of man in the face of the living God. In simple terms, Belshazzar was communicating, “God, I defy you and I reject your mercy.” In so doing, he cut himself off from the one place where he could have found mercy. And this is exactly what Jesus was referring to when He said, “… anyone who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.” (Luke 12:10b). There is no unforgiveable sin except for the sin that we deliberately refuse to seek the Lord’s forgiveness. 

We are told that when Belshazzar saw the writing on the wall, he was so terrified that the joints of his hips were loosened and his knees knocked. But his terror still did not manifest in him seeking God’s forgiveness. When hefinally called for Daniel and demanded a translation for the mysterious message, he said to him, “…If you can read this writing and tell me what it means, you will be clothed in purple and have a gold chain placed around your neck, and you will be made the third highest ruler in the kingdom.” (verse 16). Daniel told the king that he could keep his gifts but he would read the writing and tell him what it meant. And this is what Daniel said: “God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to the end. You have been weighed in the scales and found wanting. Your Kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and to the Persians.” (verse 26). Consider Belshazzar’s response to this news, “Then at Belshazzar’s command, Daniel was clothed in purple, a gold chain was placed around his neck, and he was proclaimed the third highest ruler in the Kingdom.” (verse 29).

In Nebuchadnezzar’s darkest hour his response was one of surrender and repentance, and the love and mercy of God flowed. Not so his son. Belshazzar expressed no remorse, no penitence; there was no acknowledgment of God. Nebuchadnezzar raised his eyes to heaven; Belshazzar looked only to Daniel and then continued to exercise his own willful authority. That same night, the Mede army stormed the palace and Belshazzar was slain. “A troublemaker and a villain … who plots evil with deceit in his heart … disaster will overtake him in an instant; he will suddenly be destroyed — without remedy.” (Proverbs 6:12-15)

So, what about us? Where is our remedy? The apostle Paul wrote, “For all have sinned; all fall short of God’s glorious standard.” (Romans 3:23). The clear implication here is that we all certainly need one. Daniel was robed in purple by a king who mocked and rejected the love and mercy of God. John’s gospel tells us, “Then Pilate took Jesus and had Him flogged. The soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on His head. They clothed Him in a purple robe and went up to Him again and again, saying, ‘Hail, king of the Jews!’ and they slapped Him in the face.” (John 19:1-3) and “Carrying His own cross, He went out to the place of the Skull (which in Aramaic is called Golgotha). There they crucified Him… (John 19:17-18a). On the Cross, blood was shed, mercy was dispensed, and forgiveness of all our sins was made possible. There is our inexhaustible, unrelenting, continuing remedy. 

Charles Spurgeon wrote, “God’s mercy is so great that you may sooner drain the sea of its water, or deprive the sun of its light, or make space too narrow, than diminish the great mercy of God.” The Psalmist assures us of the same good news: “For thou, Lord, art good, and ready to forgive; and plenteous in mercy unto all them that call upon thee.” (Psalm 86:5, King James Version).

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An Invitation to Rest

Paul reassures us that “we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:37-39)

I have always been encouraged and strengthened by this promise. It moves me to rest, when I’m agitated or afraid. My inclination, however, is to read these verses from an external perspective, to think about the measure of what could come against me if not for His protection. That’s not wrong. Jesus does stand over us to protect us. “Because he holds fast to me in love,” God says in Psalm 91:14, “I will deliver him; I will protect him, because he knows my name.”

But today as I read Romans 8, I find myself drawn to the inner workings of this promise; specifically, what it means to be “in Christ”. We are more than conquers because Jesus both stands over us and lives within us and we, through the mysterious work of the Spirit, live in him. This is the foundation of our rest. Paul encourages us, in his first letter to the Corinthians, that we “are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption.” C.S Lewis wrote, “A live body is not one that is never hurt, but one that can to some extent repair itself. In the same way a Christian is not a man who never goes wrong, but a man who is enabled to repent and pick himself up and begin over again after each stumble – because Christ’s life is inside of him, repairing him all the time.”

British missionary to China, Hudson Taylor, wrote the following: “As I read I saw it all! ‘If we believe not, He abideth faithful.’ I looked to Jesus and saw that He had said, ‘I will never leave you.’ ‘Ah, there is rest!’ I thought. ‘I have striven in vain to rest in Him. I’ll strive no more. For has He not promised to abide within me – never to fail me?’ And He never will!” Surely, our struggle lies in putting our trust in the one who loves us, the one in whom we live and have our being. Through believing this, we are empowered to rest in the love that never fails and conquers all our enemies.

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The Fellowship of the Spirit

Just recently, our family decided to take the perilously long journey to Mordor and to Mount Doom via J.R.R Tolkien’s grueling adventure The Lord of the Rings. Rather heroically, we voted for the extended editions of Peter Jackson’s legendary three films. And so for 682 minutes (over eleven hours!), we were gripped by the nearly hopeless quest of Frodo Baggins and his unlikely companions. We managed about an hour of their adventure each night!

The Lord of the Rings was written as a sequel to Tolkien’s 1937 classic, The Hobbit. Between 1937 and 1949, as the Second World War raged on, Tolkien crafted a larger work of far greater depth and complexity. The Lord of the Rings is one of the best—selling novels ever written, with over 150 million copies sold. The trilogy has become widely recognized as classic literature, among the best written in the 20th century.

Over the years, there has been much ink spilled over about whether or not the series is an allegory for Christianity. Tolkien was certainly a man of deep faith – indeed played a very significant part in leading his close friend, C.S Lewis, to the Lord. So do the characters of Middle-Earth represent different Biblical figures? Did Tolkien set out to seize the hearts of 150 million readers with the message of salvation through a story about a Hobbit? 

J. R. R. Tolkien

According to Tolkien himself, the answer is no. Tolkien’s biographer, Humphrey Carpenter, sets out Tolkien’s genuine motivation: “He wanted the mythological and legendary stories to express his own moral view of the universe, and as a Christian he could not place this view in a cosmos without the God that he worshipped.” Tolkien himself explained, “The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Christian work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision.” He added, “God is the Lord, of angels, and of men—and of elves.”

As our family traveled together through this fascinating adventure, I was struck once again by Tolkien’s portrayal of the extraordinary power that lies at the heart of authentic “fellowship”. Dr. Ralph Wood wrote, “In the unlikely heroism of the small and the weak, Tolkien’s pre-Christian world becomes most Christian. Their greatness is not self-made. As a fledgling community, the Nine Walkers experience a far-off foretaste of the fellowship that Christians call the church universal… They are united not only by their common hatred of evil, but by their ever-increasing, ever more self-surrendering regard for each other.” 

In much the same way, Paul wrote about the community of the Church and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit: “There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call— one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.” Ephesians 4:4-6

So, what might Tolkien be showing us about the fellowship of the Spirit? 

1. To begin with, it is a fellowship in which everyone shares the load. Every member of Tolkien’s fellowship has a critical role in bringing the Ring to its destination. No one member would have been able to do it alone. It is a fellowship that continually bears hope, strength and accountability to one another and to the mission. They encourage one another with hospitality — a safe place to sleep, good food and celebration of small victories. In the midst of these brief interludes we see their fellowship deepen; the open hand of hospitality becomes the outstretched hand to rescue in the midst of the fiercest battle.   

2. It is also remarkable that in the darkest and most hellish moments, members of the fellowship continually bear light to each other with the gift of humor. In stark contrast, none of their many adversaries ever says anything witty or funny. Not once. C. S. Lewis suggests the reason for this. In Lewis’ understanding, “humor involves a sense of proportion and power of seeing yourself from the outside…we must picture Hell as a state where everyone is perpetually concerned about his own dignity and advancement, where everyone has a grievance, and where everyone lives the deadly serious passions of envy, self-importance, and resentment…”

3. It is also a fellowship that is distinguished by a culture of mercy and acts of self-sacrifice.There are many forces at work in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, but when the wizard Gandalf is asked what it is that keeps evil at bay, he answers: “Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.” Frodo concurs,“It is useless to meet revenge with revenge: it will heal nothing.”

Tolkien lived through two World Wars; he knew that no victory comes without a cost. The theme of sacrifice permeates his writing, and is represented in the life of Frodo, who gives up everything to fulfill his calling. It is poignantly illustrated in the last moments of the trilogy where the fellowship rides out to what they believe will be their own destruction in order to distract the enemy from Frodo’s final ascent to Mount Doom. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lays down his life for his friends [John 15:13]. 

During the years when Nazi Germany stood ready to overshadow the world, Tolkien witnessed ordinary people perform extraordinary acts of heroism. Dr. Ralph Wood observes of the Fellowship, “They are not death-defying warriors like Ajax or Achilles or Beowulf; they are frail and comic foot-soldiers like us. The Nine Walkers – four hobbits, two men, an elf, a dwarf, and a wizard – constitute not a company of the noble but of the ordinary.”

The ordinary home in the Shire for ordinary Hobbits…

And out such a fellowship, whom would you have chosen to bear the ring? That a child-like Hobbit is the hero in this story is perhaps the most fantastical facet of the novel. Knowing that another Child would be born for our salvation, Tolkien may have drawn his confidence from this scripture, among so many others: “You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.” 1 John 4:4

Jim Ware writes, “This idea—that God uses small hands to accomplish great deeds—could almost be called the heart and soul of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. It’s Moses and Pharaoh, David and Goliath, Gideon and the Midianites all over again. But the mission of Frodo and Sam isn’t just your typical ‘underdog’ story. It’s something much more. In a way, it’s a desperately needed reminder that God’s ways are not our ways—that when the power of evil confronts us with overwhelming odds on its side, the answer is not to fight fire with fire, but to look for deliverance in unexpected places. Hope and salvation, Tolkien seems to say, often arise in small, unnoticed corners. Like a hobbit-hole in the Shire, a manger in a Palestinian stable.” 

4. And Tolkien would remind us that The Fellowship experienced victory. Whatever was true, honorable, just, pure, loving, merciful, kind, courageous, commendable and excellent, all that was so worthy of praise [Philippians 4:8], ultimately prevailed over evil. As followers of Jesus, we know the final victory over evil has already been won for us through His death upon the cross, and it is in His risen Body that we are made one in the fellowship His Spirit. 

In contrast to the Narnia Chronicles and other writings of C.S Lewis, Tolkien does not point us to a clear Christ figure; but Lewis himself understood that Tolkien was working at a level beyond the simply allegorical. Of Tolkien’s work, Lewis wrote, “Here are beauties which pierce like swords or burn like cold iron. Here is a book which will break your heart.”

In the depths of Middle Earth, we are invited to have our hearts broken, to recognize ourselves, the battles we face, the weaknesses that besiege us and the frailty of isolation—even as we are empowered to rejoice in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and a foretaste of His Heavenly Kingdom.  For it is in the fellowship of the Spirit that we find the strength, security and courage to both make our way home, and to play our full part in the transformation of this world through the power of His love. 

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The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Atonement

In his satirical science fiction novel, The Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams plays with the popular aspiration that the world could be a happy place if we could only fix whatever it is that prevents us from being nicer to one another. He writes of a young woman in a tea-room in Rickmansworth, England, who, in the very moments before she unexpectedly dies at her table, discovers the solution to this problem. “This time,” we are told, “it was right, it would work!” And with a glancing reference to the crucifixion, Adams writes, “…and no one would have to get nailed to anything.” 

Michael Lloyd points out in his wonderfully accessible volume, Café Theology, that if “niceness” were really the answer to the world’s problems we’d be truly doomed, because we just don’t have enough niceness in us. The Biblical solution to the human condition – the fault in our souls – is not niceness but something called “atonement”: the reconciling, sacrificial love of God poured out on the Cross. This love, expressed in the atonement, is the love that repairs and restores broken relationships. The Apostle John writes, “This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” (1 John 4:10). 

We certainly did not love God. In fact, when we came face to face with our Creator in human form, when we finally got our hands on Him, our response was to kill Him. Tom Smail puts it this way: “When the divine love that we see in Jesus comes among us, not only do we fail to imitate it, we turn upon it; not only are we not like Him, but all the priorities by which we live turn us against Him.” 

The Russian theologian Alexander Schmemann arrives at the same bottom line. He concludes, “Christ is crucified because His goodness, His love, the blinding light that pours from Him, is something that people cannot stand. They cannot bear it because it exposes the evil they live by, which they conceal even from themselves.” 

There is much about the Cross that we may never understand or see clearly, but what is clear is that, because of the toxic state of the human heart, Jesus found it absolutely necessary to die for us. The Apostle Paul writes, “But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8 NIV). In other words, the Cross is both the demonstration of God’s love for us as well as the act of supreme love by which we are saved. 

Of such a love, Lloyd concludes, “We need, like the prodigal, to come home, to know the running, embracing, forgiving, accepting, re-clothing, dancing, love of the Father…and for that, someone did have to get nailed to something.”

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The Spotlight of God’s Grace

In a chaotic time when we must be persevering in God’s grace more than ever, it is possible that you may feel you’re going backward in your walk with God. Perhaps certain things you were sure you overcame have returned, and maybe there are a few new things that you are beginning to recognize as contrary to God’s best for you. I want to suggest that this is not your “going backward” but is actually an answer to our prayers for more of God’s grace. 

Let me begin (thanks to Fleming Rutledge’s theological masterpiece, The Crucifixion) by talking about the nature of sin. Sin is a verb. It is something that we perform or engage in. Paul reminds us: “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23). But sin is also a noun, a dominion under which humanity exists. Paul also wrote, “Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin.” (Romans 3:9). Sin is, therefore, not so much a collection of individual misdeeds but an active, malevolent agency bent on undoing God’s purposes in the world and in our lives. Rutledge writes, “Our misdeeds are the signs of that agency at work; they are not the thing itself.” Sin is not something we merely commit; it is something that we are in. Jesus said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.” (John 8:34). As slaves, we are in need of deliverance, to be liberated by a greater power.

The New Testament teaches that Jesus Christ came in order to atone for our sins by his death on the cross but also to overcome the power and dominion of sin through his resurrection. With reference to both Paul assures us, “You who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.” (Colossians 2:13-15). It is the grace of God that engendered the whole thing, including our subsequent repentance. When we come to recognize this collusion with the power of sin, we find that we are already standing in God’s grace. 

So how can we respond to this grace? 

First, we need to understand that we are in the middle of a very large battle. There are two natures at work in every follower of Jesus and they are in daily conflict with each other: 

  • The Spirit: a renewed Christian heart made new by the Holy Spirit; and  
  • The sinful nature (“the flesh”): the aspect of our hearts which are not yet renewed by (or yielded to) Jesus’ Spirit. 

Paul stated this plainly: “For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other…” (Galatians 5:17). This very large battle is one that I cannot win in my own strength. Although my will is necessary, my will alone is not sufficient to overcome it.

Second, to the very best of our own efforts, we are invited by God to respond to His grace and release our attachment to the strong desires that lead us away from God. This process has a lot to do with humility. David prayed, “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.” (Psalm 51:1). David’s plea for mercy is grounded in God’s “steadfast love” and “abundant mercy.” Rutledge observes that while David’s spirit is crushed by the knowledge of his sinfulness, stronger still is his confidence in God’s desire and ability to cleanse him from his sin. 

I am humbled by the fact that God’s grace pursues me, notwithstanding the fact that my collusion with sin is ultimately against Him. “For I know my transgressions,” writes David, “and my sin is ever before me. Against you [God], you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight…” (Psalm 51:3). 

I am humbled by God’s Word as it gives me understanding of my sin and I am given the opportunity to be really honest about where I have failed. So, standing in the spotlight of God’s grace, I do the very best I can in the moment to confess my sins and release them to Him. Under his warm and bright light, I can contemplate in prayer how to move away from them. What can I do to turn off the sirens in my life? How can I bring my will to bear upon this release? You may be wondering how our feeble attempts to let go of these desires can be helpful in a battle that we are powerless to win on our own. How can five loaves and two fish feed a hungry crowd of thousands? In Jesus’ hands, somehow, they did. We are powerless to win our battle with sin by ourselves, but standing in the grace of God we are supernaturally empowered to do just that by the power of His Spirit. Through the death and resurrection of Jesus, the way has been made for us to accept His mercy, love, and guidance in our lives.

This is why, even as more sin in our lives may come to our attention, in reality we can know this is an answer to prayer for more of God’s grace. Only by the light of His grace can we recognize the power of sin within us and bring it to God for his mercy and healing. Rutledge concludes, “The grace of God prepares the way for the confession of sin. It is present in the confession, and even before the confession is made has already worked the restoration of which confession is not the cause but the sign.”