just be

At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” And calling to Him a child, He put him in the midst of them and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

“Whoever receives one such child in My name receives Me, but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.”

Matthew 18:1-6 ESV

One of my favorite things is watching Clara get lost in her own little world of play. She appears to forget all about me as she unstacks blocks, pulls apart puzzles, pretends to burp her baby dolly, or examines the intricacies of a stick of lip balm. She is sometimes silent, but more often chatting softly to herself and her toys. “Bah! Tickatickaticka. Oooh.” Sometimes one of the cats, watching a bird or a squirrel through the sliding door, catches her attention. “Tor!” she might exclaim, and make a beeline to enthusiastically pat him on the head, which he endures with a longsuffering grimace. When he inevitably loses patience and saunters away, she picks up her tiny Lowly Worm Word Book and practices pointing to each little picture, pretending to read the words.

Before Clara, the only real experience I could call upon to interpret a Bible passage like this one from Matthew 18 was my own dim memories of being a young child. That helped some, to be sure, but I obviously can’t remember anything from the purest childlikeness of being just a year old, all my needs lovingly met and not a care in the world except whether I could coordinate putting one block on top of another without toppling them both over.

Now I think I see: Jesus’s disciples wanted to know what kind of rankings exist in God’s kingdom—what kind of righteousness demands the highest reward—and Jesus pointed them to the ones who never would have thought to ask such a question.

Clara’s life is about 60% sleep, 30% play, and 10% food. She doesn’t have any goals or checklists when she gets up in the morning except to grow, to learn, and to let me meet her needs. She’s not concerned with being good at anything or earning her keep or leaving a mark on the world. She’s content to just be.

Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

We get a glimpse of this as God’s initial intention all the way back in Genesis, when He charged His image-bearers to “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it” (Genesis 1:28). They were to be cultivators and keepers, partners with Him in the joy of creating and caring for what was created; they were to increase the numbers as well as the borders of this garden paradise until it covered the whole of Creation.

Obviously, the story went awry, and that was never achieved. But the vision is still pertinent, for the King has come, and He is taking His Creation back! This is not the time for distractions of legalism or delusions of grandeur. It’s time to become children again.

It’s time to rest in the generous provision of the Lord. It’s time to do away with self-important pursuits of individual impact. It’s time to stop asking what more we can do to please God and simply trust Him, for in this, He is pleased.

I think He delights in watching us love our spouses, raise our children, care for our neighbors, and create beauty in the world much as I delight in watching Clara interact with her toys and learn how to be a person. I’m not annoyed with her for not helping me make dinner; her job is merely to receive dinner once it’s done, and to enjoy her little world in the meantime. Likewise, it’s not about what I accomplish in my lifetime to show for the years God gave me, but about what He is accomplishing over the course of millennia as He guides history to its stunning climax: to a New Creation, an everlasting reunion of God and His people who were rent apart by sin. My job is to rest in Him, to receive from Him, and to glorify Him, which in its most honest form is usually a rather un-glorious-looking matter—but nonetheless beautiful.

the unbelieving believers

What do fully-vaccinated mask-wearers and a lot of Christians have in common?

This question popped into my mind while I was reading one of my favorite books on walking with God called Sidetracked in the Wilderness, written by Michael Wells. In the first few chapters of the book, Wells makes the case that most Christians, despite their miraculous born-again status, are living in a state of defeat borne out of none other than the original sin: unbelief.

Stay with me.

As we’ve probably all heard by now, the CDC recently changed their guidelines regarding masks for the vaccinated population, causing a lot of businesses to relax their rules about wearing masks indoors. At Spuds, we are no longer requiring customers to wear masks, under the assumption/ideal that those who choose not to have had the Covid-19 vaccine.

Inevitably, this has created yet another us-them dichotomy in the general population. Over the course of this pandemic we’ve had the maskers and the anti-maskers, the vaccine-enthusiastic and the vaccine-hesitant, and now we have the “masked vaxxed” vs. the “unmasked vaxxed.” Today during my shift, we had two middle-aged women with two completely different approaches; one of them saw our “Masks Optional” sign on the door and immediately took her mask off, saying she was vaccinated; the other pointedly told me at the cash register, “I’m vaccinated, but I’m not taking this thing off.”

One of the women believed that because she had received the vaccine, her body had created the antibodies necessary to protect her from the virus, and her mask was therefore unnecessary. The other probably also believed in the efficacy of the vaccine, or she wouldn’t have bothered to be vaccinated—but she did not trust that her body would do its job if she came in contact with the virus. She kept her mask on.

These two women remind me of what Michael Wells writes:

Let me explain that an unbelieving believer is someone who is a Christian, is born again, and will arrive in heaven; the problem is that this person has never believed in the Lord Jesus with his whole being. That is, with his mind he receives and believes all that is told him about the grace, care, concern, and love of the Lord Jesus; he is a believer. Yet at the same time, he feels that he is in charge of every aspect of his Christian life, that he must change the lives of those around him, bring transformations into his own life, and work to make himself pleasing to God. That is, in his emotions he is unbelieving.

- Sidetracked in the Wilderness

I think we can all identify with the concept of the “unbelieving believer” at some point, or perhaps at many points, in our walks with God. We are all sometimes the fully-vaccinated mask-wearer—the wholly-justified do-gooder. We are all sometimes tempted to add our own works of righteousness to the complete work of Christ on the cross, even though “all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment” (Isaiah 64:6). We all have days of fear, doubt, and uncertainty when we’ll slap a germ-laden cloth over our mouth and nose just in case the power within us isn’t as powerful as we once believed.

For some, the lifestyle of the unbelieving believer, like that of the masked-vaxxed, becomes a religion—a system of rules that slowly blinds him to the truth, binds him with fear, and ultimately leads both himself and others away from God. Have you ever wondered why, as a “Covid precaution,” your takeout at McDonald’s is now handed to you on a tray—when you know that someone had to touch the bag to get it on the tray in the first place, so what’s the point? Then you might also be apt to wonder why the Pharisees tithed “mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier provisions of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness” (Matthes 23:23a) or, more pointedly, why you can read your Bible and pray every day but still walk through life in the defeatedness of legalism and stubborn self-reliance.

I will venture a suggestion: It’s because you—we—do not trust that the power of God is truly within us, or that if it is, it’s truly enough.

If you’re vaccinated, the scientific research currently indicates that you are at extremely low risk of contracting Covid-19. If you somehow do get sick, you are almost certain to have an extremely mild or even asymptomatic case. There is no data to suggest that vaccinated people pose a risk to unvaccinated people. So your mask, if you choose to wear it (which is totally fine, I’m not here to tell anyone what to do), does nothing but betray your fear, inhibit your breathing, and signal your views to others.

So it is when we try to layer our self-powered good works onto the perfect sacrifice of Christ. He paid our debt in full; our mere pennies of righteous acts are an insult to that magnificent price, and if we insist on throwing them at His feet anyway, it’s because we are acting to appease our self-focused fears and to impress those who might be watching, not because they have any value with which to pay the debt we owe.

It is Christ alone who has done the hopeless work of reconciling our lost souls to God, and it will be the Spirit alone who does the equally hopeless work of sanctifying us into His likeness. Jesus says, “Unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:20b). How can any of us outdo those who followed the letter of all 600+ commands of the Law, right down to the very last jot? Only by receiving our righteousness from Someone else, and then living freely and wholeheartedly in the reality of it.

the gospel of the kingdom

“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

John the Baptist first, and then Jesus Christ Himself both speak these exact words in the first few chapters of the Gospel of Matthew. Jesus goes on to refer to the kingdom of heaven some four dozen times throughout His ministry as recorded by Matthew. It’s the primary focus of His teachings. Matthew 4:23 says, “Jesus was going throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness among the people.”

As I follow this thread through the book, highlighting each use of the phrase “kingdom of heaven” or related terminology, I wonder: Where did this all begin? What does He mean, “the kingdom of heaven”? What is its gospel?

Of course, I know the Sunday school answers to these questions. I could give you a few verse references that define the Gospel from Paul’s letters, for example. But far too often we fill in the spaces between the lines with our Sunday school knowledge instead of the rich backdrop that Scripture itself provides. So I ask—how did we arrive at Matthew 4 from the pathway of 39 books of the Hebrew Scriptures? What would Jesus’ contemporary Jewish listeners (who had never been to Sunday school) have heard when He said “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand”? John and Jesus didn’t pull this phrase out of thin air—it must have a context.

Matthew gives us a clue into that context when he introduces John the Baptist:

Now in those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea, saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” For this is the one referred to by Isaiah the prophet when he said,

“The voice of one crying in the wilderness,
‘Make ready the way of the Lord,
Make His paths straight!’”

Matthew 3:1-3

The prophetic quotation comes from Isaiah chapter 40 and is what rabbinic teaching would have called a “remez”—a hint. The quote contains only Isaiah 40:3, but it is intended to guide us to a much broader passage, possibly even the entire sixth scroll of Isaiah (which would encompass chapters 40-48). So let’s pull back from verse 3 for a wider view:

“Comfort, O comfort My people,” says your God.
“Speak kindly to Jerusalem;
And call out to her, that her warfare has ended,
That her iniquity has been removed,
That she has received of the Lord’s hand
Double for all her sins.”

A voice is calling,
“Clear the way for the Lord in the wilderness;
Make smooth in the desert a highway for our God.
“Let every valley be lifted up,
And every mountain and hill be made low;
And let the rough ground become a plain,
And the rugged terrain a broad valley;
Then the glory of the Lord will be revealed,
And all flesh will see it together;
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”
A voice says, “Call out.”
Then he answered, “What shall I call out?”

Isaiah 40:1-6

The poem paints us a picture. Can you see it? Watch! The very earth is smoothing the way for a mighty King’s arrival. The valleys rise and the mountains flatten so that the path for His royal procession may be clear. A voice urges—“Call out!” But what’s the announcement? What is the news?

Get yourself up on a high mountain,
O Zion, bearer of good news,
Lift up your voice mightily,
O Jerusalem, bearer of good news;
Lift it up, do not fear.
Say to the cities of Judah,
“Here is your God!”
Behold, the Lord God will come with might,
With His arm ruling for Him.
Behold, His reward is with Him
And His recompense before Him.
Like a shepherd He will tend His flock,
In His arm He will gather the lambs
And carry them in His bosom;
He will gently lead the nursing ewes.

Isaiah 40:9-11

There it is—the good news, the gospel of the kingdom, the source of John the Baptist’s cry for repentance: “Here is your God!” Here is the King! He is returning to His domain, to the kingdom that has been shattered by the enemy, and taking it back from its foes. He is rescuing His people from their imprisonment—their “iniquity has been removed” (Isaiah 40:2) and “The people who walk in darkness will see a great light” (Isaiah 9:2a).

How lovely on the mountains
Are the feet of him who brings good news,
Who announces peace
And brings good news of happiness,
Who announces salvation,
And says to Zion, “Your God reigns!”
Listen! Your watchmen lift up their voices,
They shout joyfully together;
For they will see with their own eyes
When the Lord restores Zion.
Break forth, shout joyfully together,
You waste places of Jerusalem;
For the Lord has comforted His people,
He has redeemed Jerusalem.
The Lord has bared His holy arm
In the sight of all the nations,
That all the ends of the earth may see
The salvation of our God.

Isaiah 52:7-9

Your God reigns—source of salvation, author of restoration, pursuer of redemption.

He is mighty. He is sovereign. He is generous. He is gentle. He is holy.

He is coming.

The King is coming. This is the good news. And there is only one appropriate response to His imminent enthronement: Repent.

When John the Baptist and the Lord Jesus Christ preach, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand,” they aren’t handing out tickets to paradise or get-out-of-hell-free cards. They aren’t even calling for the overthrow of Rome and the return to Israel’s golden age, which is what the Jewish people desperately hoped. Instead, they are announcing that the God of the Universe has come to reclaim the world from the clutches of death, and summoning each and every soul to declare an allegiance.

It’s an invitation to become a citizen of a different country, to be adopted into the Royal Family, to claim an undeserved inheritance of eternal life.

In this kingdom, it is the helpless who are most powerful, the meek who are richest, the hated who are blessed. In this kingdom, “the wolf will dwell with the lamb, and the leopard will lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little boy will lead them” (Isaiah 11:6). In this kingdom, “the last shall be first, and the first last” (Matthew 20:16), and “whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave” (Matthew 20:26-27).

This kingdom has been won by a King whose crown was made of thorns—who was raised up not on a throne, but on a cross. He was a Prince who came to be a servant. The Creator of all life who came to die.

Friends, I have good news: Your God reigns! The King has come, and He is coming again. He has won back His kingdom, and He is returning to rule over it. It looks nothing like the kingdoms of this world, but it is the kingdom our souls hunger for. We are all welcome in. We must only repent, exchanging our trust and allegiance to ourselves for trust and allegiance to the King, and receiving His forgiveness for our sins.