Isaiah 55 is one of the more uplifting chapters in what is a fairly gloomy book.  Many Christians are familiar with God’s self-description in vs. 8-9 of the chapter, but vs. 10-11 are also worthy of our attention.

In them, God declares, “For just as rain and snow fall from heaven and do not return there without saturating the earth and making it germinate and sprout, and providing seed to sow and food to eat, so My word that comes from My mouth will not return to Me empty, but it will accomplish what I please and will prosper in what I send it to do.” (CSB)

At first glance, this promise seems strange to Christians.  God wants all men to be saved, and He has sent forth the gospel so that they might be.  However, we know from experience that not everyone who hears the truth obeys it.  In fact, most do not.  How can we reconcile these apparently paltry results with the absolute nature of God’s declaration?

The answer, I think, is that we need to take a more complex view of God’s purposes in the gospel.  God wants us to be saved, yes, but even more fundamentally than that, He wants us to make a choice.  He wants to see whether we will use our free will to seek Him or to reject Him. 

The gospel is the means that He uses to compel humankind to make that choice.  We can exist in a spiritual no-man’s-land until we hear the word, but once we do, our reaction reveals what kind of people we are.  Either we have chosen to obey, and that will be obvious, or we have chosen to rebel, and that will be equally obvious.

Sometimes, in fact, God uses His word primarily to drive the wicked out into the open.  This is especially obvious in the book of Jeremiah.  In Jeremiah 18:11-12 (and many other such places), God instructs Jeremiah to warn His people while simultaneously predicting that they will not listen.  He does this to mark them as His enemies and to deprive them of any claim that He is being unjust in destroying them.

Certainly, we should present the word to sinners as persuasively as we can.  However, when they harden their hearts against it, we should not feel like we have failed.  We have done what God intended for us to do, just as His word has done what He intended it to do. 

His purpose is worked out in the salvation of the humble, but it also is worked out in the destruction of the proud.  As His word left the wicked people of Jeremiah’s day without excuse and ripe for judgment, it leaves the wicked people of our day without excuse and ripe for judgment.  Everybody who hears His word will glorify Him.  The only question is whether His glory will come from redeeming us or putting us to everlasting shame.  

While most of us have been paying attention to sports and the political drama in Washington, a quiet medical revolution has been taking place.  Since the sequencing of the human genome about 20 years ago, medical researchers have been using this newfound understanding to develop treatments for genetic disorders.  These treatments employ what is known as gene editing.  Gene editing involves the use of a virus or some other vector to remove a harmful mutation from a patient’s DNA and replace it with genes that will function correctly.

As abstract as this sounds, its consequences have been profound.  This year alone, the FDA has approved genetic therapies for spinal muscular atrophy and cystic fibrosis.  I know Christians whose children suffer from these afflictions.  They are burdened both with the care of a medically fragile child (which is far more time-consuming and expensive than most of us can imagine) and, often, with the knowledge that their child’s disorder will lead to premature death.  For those in such a position, the appearance of these transformative therapies must seem like a miraculous dawn of hope.

However, some brethren are uneasy with the moral and spiritual implications of genetic editing.  Once we start monkeying around with DNA, haven’t we trespassed into areas that properly belong to God?  Aren’t we defying His will?  Also, how do we draw the line between genetic editing for these reasons and genetic editing for any reason?  What’s the difference between curing SMA and creating a future NBA All-Star?

To answer these questions, I think we must consider the events of the first three chapters of Genesis.  When God created Adam, he held within his seed the potential to give the vast diversity of mankind that we see across the globe.  Every race, every individual difference, all of those things were part of God’s original intent.  He saw all of them and pronounced them good.  I will never be an NBA All-Star, but I still reflect God’s plan for mankind.

However, genetic disorders appear on the scene not in Genesis 1, but in Genesis 3.  They are part of the curse that Adam’s sin invited.  We die not because our deaths please Him and fulfill His will, but because our rebellion left Him with no other choice.  If the wickedness of Adam’s first, long-lived, descendants was so great that God had to destroy the world with water, how wicked would we become with an eternity to perfect our wickedness?

I am skeptical of efforts to do a better job with God’s creation than He did, but I see no problem with fighting against sickness.  Ultimately, such efforts will prove vain.  Even children who have been relieved from the burden of genetic illness will someday die.  However, if resisting the great enemy of humankind is wrong, then Jesus Himself was wrong.  How many hopeless people did He heal?

Certainly, the technology used in genetic therapy can be abused, but I believe that the therapies themselves are something to celebrate.  In this fallen world, even the innocent often suffer, but when we use understanding and skill to relieve their suffering, it is a godly act.  I rejoice in the hope that genetic therapy offers to Jayden and Abigail and Sam and their families, as well as to many others whom I do not know.  This is a new kind of healing, but it still comes from the One who gives all healing.

We live in an age that values authenticity above all else.  It’s perfectly OK to practice whatever sin, so long as you’re Really You while you’re practicing it.  Conversely, through the years I’ve heard a number of indictments of brethren as being Not Really Authentic.  Supposedly, members of churches of Christ are the spiritual heirs of the Pharisees.  They’re so focused on following the rules that they forget about loving God.

That’s never sat quite right with me, so I decided to put it to the test on that impartial arbiter of wisdom, Facebook.  Is this actually a Scripturally intelligible concept?  Anywhere in the Bible, do we see people who follow God’s rules without caring about Him?

When I posed this question on Facebook, it generated a great deal of discussion, but nobody could come up with a clear Biblical example.  The Pharisees weren’t heartfelt followers of God, but they weren’t obedient either.  Instead, they were hypocritical lovers of money who won their reputation through self-promotion.  The church in Ephesus had left their first love despite having all sorts of good works, but the cure to their disease was still repenting and doing the works that they had done at first.  And so on.  It seems to be universally true in Scripture that everybody who has a heart problem has an obedience problem too.

On the other hand, being on fire for God, passionately sure that you’re doing what is right, showing everybody how much you care, does not appear to be a guarantee of righteousness.  Saul of Tarsus thought he was doing good by zealously persecuting Christians.  Apollos thought he was doing the right thing by preaching the baptism of John.  Both learned that they had some changes to make.

It seems to me, then, that the cultural idol of authenticity isn’t actually a very good way to evaluate somebody’s spirituality, whether our own or somebody else’s.  Saul was a really authentic enemy of God.  Somebody else can spend all day long gushing about God’s goodness, yet be at best misled and at worst a hypocrite.  We ourselves can be 100 percent convinced that our feet are on the path to heaven, yet be 100 percent wrong.

Instead, if we want to learn the truth, we have to turn to the time-honored pastime of fruit inspection.  We learn who people are by what they do.  Somebody who loves God will keep His commandments, and nothing but love can provide the motivation for an obedient life.  Faithfulness reveals the truth, both without and within.

You want to indict Christians or churches for hypocrisy?  Fine.  You want to criticize them for loving tradition more than the Bible?  Go ahead.  You want to condemn them for Malachi 1 apathy?  Sure.  However, recognize that all of these are fundamentally obedience problems, and they are measured by the word.

On the other hand, saying that somebody cares more about the rules than they do about God is logically incoherent.  Failure to emote appropriately is not a spiritual problem.  Some people simply aren’t emoters.  I preached both of my parents’ funerals without a single catch in my voice or a single tear.  If you want to conclude that I didn’t love my parents, you’re at liberty to do so, I guess.

Rather than pointing to a spiritual weakness, concern with obedience points to a spiritual strength.  People who truly do want to get everything right in their service to God are people who care about God and are committed to Him.  That might not read as authentic, but it’s as real as godliness gets.

I know that one should not have high expectations of religious memes, but the one above grinds my gears.  Every time I saw it, I rolled my eyes a little bit harder, until I knew that either I’d have to write about it, or my eyes would get stuck that way permanently, just like my Communications teacher said they would.

Certainly, the meme is in line with the pop-culture understanding of the parable, and even in line with the hymns we sing.  I think “Love for All” is a moving hymn.  Indeed, it makes a better hymn than a hymn about the actual point of the parable would!

However, we need to be better Bible students than that.  First, I don’t think Jesus ever said anything to make “one simple point”.  His teaching has so many layers to it that I think it’s the most difficult thing in the Bible to understand fully.  You can get the surface meaning pretty quickly, but the deeper aspects take years or decades (or never, this side of Jordan) to understand.

Second, if the parable of the prodigal son has a simple point, “Just come home,” isn’t it.  I think you could make the argument that “Just come home,” is the point of Jesus’ entire ministry (as per Luke 19:9), but He’s doing something different here.  Luke 15:1-3 tells the story:

  Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear Him.  And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, "This man receives sinners and eats with them."  So He told them this parable:

Then, immediately following, you’ve got the parable of the lost sheep, the parable of the lost coin, and the parable of the prodigal son.

Notice that the context begins with the observation that the tax collectors and sinners were drawing near to listen to Jesus.  There was no need to tell those prodigals to come home.  They already were coming! 

The problem was that the religious elites who saw all this, rather than rejoicing, were grumbling because Jesus was associating with riff-raff, which they themselves surely would not have done.  They are so obviously in need of a dramatic attitude adjustment that it is to the “righteous”, rather than to the sinners and tax collectors, that Jesus relates His trio of parables. 

First, He uses the parables of the sheep and the coin to show that even if the Pharisees aren’t rejoicing over all the repentant sinners, all of heaven is.  God has invited the angels to share in His celebration!  Contextually, then, the point of the parable of the prodigal son is that if the Pharisees don’t join in the rejoicing (as the older brother didn’t), they will remove themselves from the household of the Father, refusing to come in, even as He begs them to do so.

The parable of the prodigal son, then, isn’t a lighthearted offer of reconciliation, complete with cute cartoon pigs.  It’s a sobering warning from Jesus to the Pharisees (and indeed to everyone who is “religious”) to check their hearts.  We, not the sinners around us, are the ones who are in danger of ending up on the wrong end of the parable. 

The only people who are going to enter the kingdom of heaven are the ones who share the goals of the King of heaven.  Even though sinners have grieved Him by their rebellion, He longs to be reconciled with them.  We are His chosen instruments for doing exactly that.

How do we feel about our work?  Are we as zealous for the lost as God is?  Or, instead, are we indifferent to them, or even actively hostile, like the Pharisees were?  Are we the kind of Christians who, deep down, don’t want messy people in our neat little church? 

Jesus wants us to understand that that spirit will leave us on the outside looking in too.

Yesterday’s discussion about family withdrawal was notable both for its length and its civility.  It certainly made me think a lot about what I had written, and eventually I realized that the back-and-forth was about one underlying theme:  the tension between holiness and reconciliation.  In our dealings with those who have fallen from grace, should we be more concerned about restoring them or protecting ourselves from temptation?

If we wanted to, we could create a long list of Scriptures arguing both sides of the point.  Paul’s incredulous question in 1 Corinthians 5:6, “Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?”, appeals to the Corinthians to consider their own holiness.  On the other side, Jesus’ declaration in Luke 5:32, “I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance,” certainly affirms His desire to reconcile.

What are we to make of this?  Is Jesus’ example not one we are to follow?  Is Paul instructing the Corinthians to be un-Jesus-like (not that they needed much help with that)?

I think the answer has to do with the spiritual condition of both Jesus and the Corinthians.  In our interactions with anybody, our first concern has to be our own holiness.  Worldly people are dangerous; lapsed Christians are even more dangerous.  They are on a downward spiritual trajectory, they have a pre-existing relationship with us, and if their sin is not identified, they potentially can corrupt an entire church.

In our dealings with such people, we shouldn’t try to pull them out of the water if they are going to pull us out of the boat instead.  This, of course, was the Corinthians’ problem.  Instead of condemning sin, they were celebrating it!  As a result, Paul counsels them to protect what little holiness they have left by cutting off contact with the sinner.

Jesus’ conduct was very different because His spiritual condition was very different.  Rather than shunning covenant-breaking Jews, He sought out the worst covenant-breakers he could.  He ate and drank with prostitutes and tax collectors. 

However, this doesn’t reflect foolishness on the part of our Lord.  It reflects righteousness and love.  He knew that those wicked people wouldn’t drag Him down.  Instead, He would lift them up.  Because His holiness was secure, He could afford to seek reconciliation.

As we make decisions about how we should approach erring brethren, especially erring family members, we must ask ourselves whether our spiritual condition is closer to Corinth or to Christ.  This is not an easy question!  It is often true that those who are closest to the fallen-away are on spiritually shaky ground themselves.  If we lie to ourselves about our own strength and minimize the danger, they will drag us down too.  Let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall, indeed! 

On the other hand, it may be that we have the spiritual maturity we need to follow the example of Jesus.  Again, never should we reach this conclusion lightly!  Otherwise, like Peter, we may be out of the boat before we figure out we don’t have what it takes.

However, if our faith is strong enough, we may have opportunity to engage in that most praiseworthy of Biblical pursuits:  turning back the sinner from the error of his way.  Maybe cutting off all social interaction is the best way to accomplish this (and if our holiness is not what it should be, it’s the only tool we have); maybe continued contact and loving admonition is.  I’m not here to judge anybody else’s judgment calls.  I am certain, though, that we must keep the goal in mind and seek it as best we know how.

Truly, blessed are the peacemakers, but so too are those who suffer loss while they themselves are saved.  Let us seek the first, if possible, but let us never forget the second, always bearing in mind the wisdom of Galatians 6:1:  “Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness.  Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted.”