Responsibility: a word to men first, and the church at large.

How many of us actually feel fulfilled within ourselves?  I’ve heard the vain repetitions and religious refrain my whole life: “It was for freedom that Christ set me free.  It’s so good to be free!”  But in my humble observation of the lives around me and the ‘freedom’ they’re living in, I am convinced there is a disconnect between the concept of freedom and the very freedom for which Jesus actually died.  As is the condition with most revelation, we are willing (for the most part) to hear it and even believe it as far as we are comfortable with its implication.  But the absolute absurdity of every far reaching victory accomplished in the cross is the land very few have ever been willing to venture into.  Galatians 5:11 says “Brothers and sisters, if I am still preaching circumcision, why am I still being persecuted?  In that case, the offense of the cross has been abolished.”  What Paul was saying here, in context of the whole of Galatians 5, was addressing the Galatians returning to the concepts and practice of the law when they had been set free by the message of offensive grace; a grace that gives too much permission on purpose.  This is why he said “In that case, the offense of the cross has been abolished.”  Paul understood the offensive nature of true grace to the regime of religion, and preached it as such.  Using the issue of returning to the practice of circumcision to speak to the greater problem of returning to the law and falling from grace, Paul goes on to say that he wishes those who were throwing them into the confusion of circumcision (the law mixed with grace) would go the whole way and castrate themselves!  This is the foundation for the gospel of grace, not the extent.  We have hardly scratched the surface of just how ridiculous the glorious goodness of the gospel truly, truly is.

As a human, and a male in particular, much of life hangs in the balance between what we’ve known as passion and what we’ve learned as responsibility.  For most of us, both of these concepts have been diluted and perverted by a performance bred in religion.  Now, let me clarify.  Every time anyone, particularly a younger person, uses the phrase “religion” with any negative conitation it seems that someone has to respond with every verse they can possiby find that points to religion being a good thing.  Using Jesus life of devotion, practice of the law, and even His commitment to intimacy and prayer to make some backhanded remark about this generation only disagreeing with “religion” because its trendy to do so.  Most of the time, these accusers would use the logic of the mind to make their point, and wave their seminary degree around in the air, declaring that religion is actually the byproduct of God.  I agree.  If you want to call your relationship with Jesus a religion, it is absolutely a good thing.  It’s the best thing.  However, the religion I am speaking of in this text is the DEMONIC SPIRIT that seeks to control the people of God; to keep them from the pure knowledge of grace, and thus freedom.  I don’t care who you are, or what you think…in the same way that God exists devoid of our faith in Him, the kingdom of hell utilizes religion to castrate the people of God without our comprehension of it.  It has effected the way we have taught our congregations, and therefore the progression of freedom in our midst.  Our passion for Jesus is dead largely because of the subtle and cultivated practice of religion masquerading as a pursuit of holiness.

Passion, culturally within the church, is typically defined solely by a persons degree of abandonment to the “cause” of the gospel.  Within the four walls of the institution we call the people of God, being “sold out” is of highest regard.  The only problem is that we tend to decide for ourselves who is sold out and who isn’t.  We most commonly base our verdict on a few over-arching ideas that blanket the general thinking of all of our church friends, most of which are actually just standards of performance.  For the record, God calls those sacred cows of our thinking sin.

In the context of the unbelieving world, passion is mostly ascribed to sexuality, which is actually closer to true than most of the church ever got.  When it isn’t, its  otherwise attributed to an individual who is, or group of individuals who are, resolved to attain to preeminence in their field of expertise or interest.  It is human nature to base passion on the performance…not on the heart that motivated it.  This is why we have single mothers all over the country, working three part-time jobs, and raising 4 kids who never see the screen.  But as soon as a twelve year old girl can sing an impressively performed rendition of a Mariah Carey song, she gets national coverage, and usually a record deal.  Listen, i’m not saying the little girl spotlight moments are bad.  I actually love it when stuff like that happens.  I love it when the unlikely are exalted to positions of honor for their abilities and gifts.  Its what God always intended.  All I’m saying is the most passionate man who ever lived died a criminals death, and His exaltation at that time wasn’t a stage…it was about 8 feet in the air, dead and nailed to a cross.  He was far from the human idea of the most excellent of his field…as a matter of fact, those touted as the experts were the very ones who made sure He was murdered.  He very intentionally opposed the ruling thought and structure that was the law in His teaching, living to become the fulfillment of it; to reveal to mankind their inability to adhere to it, and by way of that impotency, their need for a messiah.

Scripture says that it was “for the joy that was set before Him…” that He endured the cross, and did not consider it His shame to bear.  It was indeed His proficiency that allowed Him the capacity to fulfill the thing to which He was driven.  There hadn’t been a man since Adam who had not tasted of the emptiness of sin.  I would venture to say, as far as proficiency goes, He was the most proficient human to ever walk the earth.  However, the difference with His work is that it was for our sake.  It was from love, for the sake of love.  It was born of God, fulfilled in God, and carried out by God.  His passion did what it did because it was not only His own…it originated in the heart of His Father, the God of the universe.  It wasn’t just because He died, although even that reality went completely unrecognized by the majority of His time.  It was what He died for.  It was the why behind the action that denoted passion, not solely the action itself.  Yes, it was fruit of the driveness of His heart, but action is too easily manufactured.  There were two other men hanging on crosses right next to Him, dying the same death.  But they died for other reasons.  We could even say the other two men were passionate enough about their lifestyle of crime to get them to that place.  But most of humanity would never call a disregard for other people and moral common sense a passion.  Yet in our blindness as the church, we have maintained the idea that although He gave Himself to His passion unto death so we might have freedom from the need to perform, we are only passionate about Him if we DO the things that we’ve deemed passionate.  In otherwords, if a believer steps out of line, He is a backslider.  He needs to repent and return to His holiness.  He has fallen from grace.  I’m sorry…that is an ABSOLUTE abuse of the knowledge of grace.  It is the law, mixed with grace, and it is the line of thinking that Jesus Himself attributed to Satan.

As a man, the Lord has been taking me through a season I didn’t see coming, and didn’t think I’d make it through until recently.  Growing up for me was a pretty common church kid story.  My family loved Jesus, but we were broken.  We prayed at dinner (when we ate together) because we were supposed to, but the spectrum of health in our interpersonal relationships was very limited.  My father and I struggled to even exist well together, living a reality riddled with the deception of Satan and his relentless efforts to uphold our miscommunication.  Though my dad REALLY WAS and REALLY IS a good man, I learned very little of manhood from him.  The parts I did take away left a bitter taste in my mouth.  Painful memories, failed efforts, and not having what it takes defined me in my own mind for years. Responsibility for me was the things you HAVE to do, but are far too ill-equipped to ever accomplish.  The word itself became the rhetoric of obligation, and it slowly but surely worked itself into my relationship with Jesus.  But in these last few months, leading up to marriage, the Lord has been teaching me sovereignly about what it TRULY means to be a man; the JOYS of responsibility, as opposed to the deception of obligatory mandate that I was brought up in.

This concept of responsibility, I believe, has invaded the majority of society.  Unfortunately, because the church has yet to live in TRUE freedom as a body, we adopted (again) a twisted idea of responsibility, instead of living in the reality of what Jesus did on the cross.  It produces strife, and a strife we have learned to honor.  It is the belief system behind a nation who gives validity and respect to a man with a good job before a man with a good heart.  It’s why we’ve learned to love with money rather than our actual person.  The consequences and implications are endless.  However, Jesus bled out the cure for such insanity over two millenia ago.  HIS idea of responsibility, the only definition that isn’t a lie, was established in the garden and won back on the cross.

The root concept of the word “responsibility”, evident in it’s spelling, is the ability to respond; “response-ability”.  All of human existence is built on this single reality.  It is the likeness of God written into our DNA.  It is the freedom of will.  Simply put, your ability to make choices, let alone the right to and inevitability of doing so, are the evidence of the God who is love in your frame.  Responsibility, rightly understood, is the essence of true love.  In the garden of Eden, God placed two trees.  One tree was forbidden, the other was promised.  If God had not given man the capacity and option to choose the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, He would not have given man the truest opportunity to love.  True love is always a choice, because true love is given.  It is a choice made that denotes the deeper longing within the heart.  Love is, in essence, a response.  Responsibility is a gift, not an obligation.  It is not about duty, and it is not a barometer of character.  Yes, it is the capacity to make choices that build character.  But it has to come fromt he reality of who God is and how He feels, or it can ONLY end in strife.  1 John 4:19 says, “We love Him because He first loved us.”  God is the only self-existent being, and therefore truth, in all of what we know and have yet to know.  He is the only foundation of reality, because He existed before and outside of our frame of reference.  There had to be, and still has to be, an invitation to respond to.  The foundation of responsibility is the immovable actuality of the love of God for you as a person.  It is also the purpose of responsibility, and from it flows every other decision.  He gave us the ability to percieve His love, so that we might respond to it, so that we might further know it.  Responsibility actually has little to do with you at all.  It is in the freedom of only being required to be loved as our created purpose, and by way of it respond to love Himself, that responsibility becomes the joy of a man’s heart.

When performance dies in a relationship, what remains is revealed for either the fabricated montage of false identities that it is, or the fixed affectionate gaze of a heart that has been sincerely romanced.  Believing you need to “be holy as He is holy” (a scripture famously twisted to keep the church in the bondage of needing a “holy man” to keep them in line) will cause you to live as though you are not already righteous.  It will make you perform to try to attain to what you’ve already been given. Hebrews 10:14 says that “…by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified.”  He did it all.  It is finished.  Now we GET to respond, not have to.  Its the GOOD in the good news.  It is and always has been about love, not performing to get it.  Let the men of the earth rise up into true responsibility.  Jesus…call your sons back into being loved and loving well.