God
smiles upon us and enjoys us though we are yet spiritually immature.
 Too many of us judge ourselves prematurely. Most believers only expect
to love themselves when they get to heaven, when they are fully free
from struggles and fully mature in love. They imagine the resurrection
as the day they will finally be free, the day God will be fully happy
with them, the day they will achieve full acceptance by the Godhead.
They long for that day because they haven't allowed themselves to
experience God's enjoyment in them now. Beloved, we don't have to wait!
We have His enjoyment at this very moment. Sincere love always starts
out weak. You don't become a believer on Tuesday, and by Wednesday your
love for Jesus is fully established. Love is sincere and genuine many
years before it becomes mature and strong.
In
Luke 15, Jesus addressed angry Pharisees who were miffed at Him for
eating with and fellowshipping with sinners. In reply, Jesus said His
Father rejoiced and the angels that did His bidding were glad;
therefore, we ought to be glad. Over and over in this chapter Jesus
revealed the joyous atmosphere around the throne. In verse 10, He said,
"I say to you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over
one sinner who repents." He was speaking of the repenting sinner who is
still very immature. If the sinner repents at 3:00 in the afternoon,
the angels are singing and rejoicing by 3:01. That sinner is still
profoundly immature in his faith, but the angels are abundantly glad.
His repentance is absolutely sincere though his maturity is
nonexistent. The "yes" in his spirit is imperfect, but it is eternally
significant.
God
does not say to the sinner, "You have sincerely repented, but look at
all these unsettled issues in your life. We will see how you do. Come
on in, I guess, but we will be keeping a close eye on you." We think
God is this way because we ourselves are this way. People clap with
excitement the day a man gets saved and testifies of his desire to
leave his old ways and follow the Lord. They cheer and shout, "Praise
the Lord! It's real! It counts!" But within a few months, the same
crowd is ready to censure him for issues of immaturity they see in his
life. Within days their theology changes, and they no longer delight
over his growing faith. They turn into grumpy Pharisees, saying, "Bah
humbug! Get it right. We're keeping our eye on you now."
The
Lord says the opposite: "I delight in you when you have zero maturity."
Remember, God can enjoy you even while disapproving of an area of sin
in your life. He surely disapproves of any number of things you and I
do, but that doesn't interrupt His enjoyment. If His gladness were
based on our performance, He would be a sad God indeed! But the
Scripture proclaims that "whom the LORD loves He corrects, just as a
father the son in whom he delights" (Prov. 3:12).
Our
own patience is so insufficient. We spot one thing we disapprove of in
another believer's life, and then we struggle to enjoy him. He may have
a good history with us, but we push him away because of one or two
things that bother us. That is the limit of our patience. We feel
justified in kicking people out of our hearts and lives when they
bother us. Why? Because we secretly believe that God does that to us.
This is not the heart of God. When the Lord finds something about our
character that bothers Him, He doesn't cut us out of His heart. Rather,
He is filled with patience and slow to anger. He does not reject us
when something awful in our character comes to light.
When
Jesus told the story of the prodigal son in Luke 15, He revealed to the
religious leaders what God's emotions are like. The leaders of Jesus'
day were very much like the leaders of the body of Christ today. They
had totally wrong ideas about the way God feels. Jesus continued:
"There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father,
'Father, give me my share of the estate.' So he divided his property
between them.
"Not
long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a
distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. After
he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole
country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out
to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs.
He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating,
but no one gave him anything.
"When
he came to his senses, he said, 'How many of my father's hired men have
food to spare, and here I am starving to death! I will set out and go
back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven
and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me
like one of your hired men.' So he got up and went to his father.
"But
while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled
with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him
and kissed him.
"The son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.'
"But
the father said to his servants, 'Quick! Bring the best robe and put it
on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the
fattened calf and kill it. Let's have a feast and celebrate. For this
son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.' So
they began to celebrate.
"Meanwhile,
the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard
music and dancing. So he called one of the servants and asked him what
was going on. 'Your brother has come,' he replied, 'and your father has
killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.'
"The
older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out
and pleaded with him. But he answered his father, 'Look! All these
years I've been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet
you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my
friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property
with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!'
"'My
son,' the father said, 'you are always with me, and everything I have
is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of
yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found'" (Luke
15:11-32, NIV).
When
He told this parable, the Pharisees were extremely nervous. They knew
Jesus was talking about the personality of His heavenly Father, but
that picture did not work within their religious system. Their whole
careers were based on a God who was mostly mad and mostly sad, but
never glad.
The
father told his servants, "Let us be glad." This is God's command to
all His servants about this returning son. We can't imagine being glad
when the son's motives are so obviously off. We lean toward putting him
on probation and watching him carefully for a year, then throwing a
party after it all goes well. In the meantime, it seems best to us to
take notes on his behavior and scrutinize him to discern if he is
sincere. The Father takes the opposite approach. He celebrates
immediately.
In
verse 28, the older, religious brother refused to join he celebration,
so his father approached him and pleaded with him to join the party.
This elder brother would have made a good leader in most churches
today. He kept all the rules. He tried very hard, yet he never knew
what it meant to enjoy his father at the heart level. He was angry and
would not go to the party. The father begged his religious son to
understand his heart.
Again,
the Lord speaks to us in this verse, saying, "Please, My leaders,
understand My gladness for the recovery of broken people." The leaders
of the church say, "They are selfish. They just want free forgiveness."
The Father says, "I know. I will conquer them with My love! I will
transform them by My kindness!" In this parable, the Father is pleading
with His church to celebrate the homecoming of broken people. In verse
32, the father looks at his religious son and says one of the most
powerful statements in the kingdom of God: "It was right that we should
make merry and be glad, for your brother was dead and is alive again,
and was lost and is found."
This
is often called the parable of the prodigal son, but it's primarily
about a father who lost his son and what he did when his son returned.
It's describing the proper dynamics of a functioning family. We apply
this to unbelievers, but the primary point is God's strategy in
recovering His own lost children. Jesus was talking about a son,
someone inside the family of God, who wasted an anointing and an
inheritance. The prodigal was a believer living foolishly before God,
and Jesus was teaching His church how to respond to those brothers or
sisters who stumble. We all know what to do when a new convert comes
into the kingdom. We rejoice and throw a party. Yet we don't easily
enter into God's gladness when one of our brothers stumbles or, far
worse, when we ourselves stumble. And yet our ability to enter into
God's patience and lovingkindness when we stumble is determined by how
much patience and lovingkindness we have toward a brother or sister who
stumbles.
What about Holiness?
Some
would ask if I have gone too far, portraying God as too lenient. When
believers blow it, are we right to "reward" them as the father did the
prodigal son? What about holiness? I am deeply committed to holiness,
and yet I believe there is only one kind: happy holiness. Religious,
cranky holiness doesn't work. "I'm-in-a-bad-mood" holiness has no
sustaining power. Happy holiness has all the power in the world. Though
we experience times of true repenting and weeping over sin when we
stumble and fail, our Father runs to us with a heart to restore us.
This
was the case when Jesus, blazing holiness Himself, walked the Earth. He
drew sinners to Himself and fellowshipped with them. He was the exact
representation of the heart of the Father (Heb. 1:3). He walked in
perfected holiness that could not be improved upon, and He still
enjoyed the company of people with imperfect holiness. That means that
the more we are separated to Him in holiness, the more our hearts will
enjoy the weakest believer's journey into mature love. It sounds like a
contradiction, but it's the example Jesus set. In Psalm 60:6, David
said, "God has spoken in His holiness: 'I will rejoice.'" The gladness
and holiness in God's heart are not opposed to each other; David said
they are one and the same thing. God's gladness is an expression of His
holiness, and vice versa. This is called holy gladness, and it leads to
happy holiness.
Happy
holiness speaks of a transformed heart of obedience that is the
overflow of encountering the gladness of God's heart. We become glad
with His gladness and this energizes our life of holiness. Some of the
traditional approaches to holiness lead to what I call "cranky
holiness," which is an outward form of holiness without an invigorated
heart. Cranky holiness is usually the result of living with a wounded
and rejected spirit while seeking to live right in your own strength.
It's
time to throw away our religious negotiations to earn our way back into
His embrace. We must shatter false paradigms of what He is like. We
will never earn His favor through our religious lists or our attainment
of maturity. We have His enjoyment right now, and it is that very
enjoyment that will carry us through our stumbling.
It's
difficult for us to imagine what the Father's gladness looks like in
people. That's why He gave us a perfect representation of His gladness
as a Man: the Man Jesus, the happiest Man ever to walk the earth (Ps.
45:7).
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