We Don’t Hack God But Submit to His Word
The Bible is clear that Jesus is the Word made flesh. God's Word became flesh and blood and came to his people, but his people did not receive him. (John1:1-11) That means when God's Word comes to us, we reject him. That's our default position as sinners. We don't want God speaking to us, especially not face to face, so we refuse to welcome him into our churches, homes, and communities. The One who created everything—who, out of his great love for creating things, created each of us—is the One whom we will not welcome into our lives.
God's Word creates life, so we invent abortion, suicide, and euthanasia. God's Word creates man and woman, so we invent hundreds of different genders. God's Word is the big “T” truth, so we invent our own truths. God gives us leaders, so we invent rebellion, revolution, and sedition. God gives us marriage and family, so we invent divorce and schisms. Read through the Ten Commandments, and it's not difficult to see how many different ways we've come up with to distort God's Word.
From our perspective, God needs to shut up so we can fix His mistakes. Better yet, God needs not to exist at all. Then, we can create new gods who will take better care of us. We need gods who will ensure we receive our daily bread, are kept safe from all kinds of evil, and imbue us with the power to make the world a better place. But only one god is running around campaigning to be God's replacement: Satan.
Far from being forced to accept Satan as our new god, we gladly welcome him into our homes, churches, and lives. Our society is satanic for this reason. He's the reason for suicide, gender confusion, and rebellion. We've come up with a hack to improve upon God's Word. It's Satan.
That doesn't mean we worship a guy in a red suit with horns and a pointed tail. It means we take what God's Word creates, what is good and righteous, and invert it. We flip what God does upside down, so it’s the opposite of God's Word and gifts. It's the opposite of Jesus Christ. It's the opposite of what the Holy Spirit does with His words, sending a preacher to declare: “The world is boiling over with sin and evil. All people, according to God's Word, are evil all the days of their lives. This is the result of our choosing Satan as our god and believing we could improve upon God's work.”
So what's to be done? Is it hopeless for us Christians? Are we doomed to march in step with others who welcome Satan into their lives? NO. We don't argue, we don't complain, and we don't apologize for worshipping the true God. Instead, we preach and teach. We proclaim to the world that there is only one God, the man, Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ already suffered and died for the sins of the world. The job of God and Savior has been filled, thank you very much. No one else needs to apply, especially not a welp of a god, like Satan. Jesus was raised from the dead so that all of us may be reconciled to the true God.
Who is Jesus, whom you call God? We confess: Jesus Christ is for us wisdom, redemption, justification, and holiness. In Him, we live, move, and have our being. In Christ, there is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female, because all are united in him. Jesus Christ is our God. He determines our values. He leads and guides us into the resurrection to eternal life through his Spirit, words, and gifts, which we receive week after week, year after year, and into eternity. Our values, lives, and everything else are from Jesus Christ and given to us as gifts.
God's Word, the One who created us with a word, is the One that bears our burdens. He is the Truth that unmasks the lies for us. He is the permanent Life that undoes our temporary death. He is Jesus Christ, our God and Savior today and always. Nothing can defeat us, not our sin, this evil world, or its god, Satan, because he has defeated them all for us in his death and resurrection.
When we try to hack God's Word, all we end up accomplishing is increasing our suffering, adding to the death count, starting more wars, and stirring up more conflicts. When we decide to permanently fix the things that God got wrong, it will eventually end up going catastrophically wrong for us instead because we are not God. Our words are not God's all-powerful word that creates life from nothing. We are not saviors of God's good creation. We are the architects of its doom.
And yet, in faith, we confess this biblical truth and pray: Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief! And by the power of his Word, through the work of the Holy Spirit sending us a preacher to create faith in us, we boldly confess our sin and even more boldly proclaim the One who blew open the door to his tomb, who is on the loose in this world even now, creating from nothing that which is pleasing and beloved to him.
We don't debate life, satiety, or how to fix the world's problems. Instead, we preach Christ. God's Word creates life, satisfies our every need, and gives us peace that the world cannot understand. The kind of peace that can only be had through the forgiveness of sin, new life, and eternal salvation in Jesus Christ.
Originally published in the November 7 edition of The Sounder.
