Finding God is a bit like the men in the above two parables discovering treasure or finding a pearl of great price.  God’s told us to ‘seek first his kingdom and his righteousness’ (Mt 6:33, NIV), and that we will find him when we seek him will all our heart (Jer 29:13, NIV).

But nowhere are we told to keep God a secret, like the first man hiding the treasure again after finding it.  Nor can we buy the kingdom of God, like the man who bought the field or the other that bought the pearl, even if we were to sell everything we have.  I’ve always thought these two aspects of the above parables were a little odd.  Of course, it wasn’t that Jesus gave a couple of sketchy, imprecise parables.  It was my understanding of the parables that was the problem – I got things the wrong way around.

We are the treasure; we are the pearl of great price.

Because it was Jesus who first sought us out, like a shepherd after lost sheep.  He came  ‘…to seek and to save what was lost’ (Lk 19:10, NIV), which is us.

And Jesus redeemed us, bought us, by giving all he had: himself.  It is sung of him in Revelations,  ‘… You [Jesus, the Lamb of God] are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.”’ (Rev 5:9, NIV)

And finally, like buried treasure, God’s plan for our salvation was a mystery hidden from the beginning, only fully revealed when the purchase of our souls was completed.  Otherwise, as the apostle Paul notes, Satan and his forces would not have crucified Christ, inadvertently selling us back to God.  It was all part of God’s grand design, his ‘…secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began.  None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.’ (1 Cor 2:7-8, NIV)

We love God because he first loved us; because he sought us and found us, and gave all he had to redeem us.  We are the treasure, the pearl of great price.  And more than that, we are his.

– Joey

Someone once pointed out to me that, according to the above passage, remembering that we have been cleansed from our past sins (in a sense, where we come from) enables us to possess such great qualities as goodness, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness and love.

How such a principle worked baffled me at first – until I read the parable of the unforgiving servant one day.

In Mt 18:23-35, Jesus tells the parable of a servant who was forgiven an enormous debt which he owed to his master, but who later could not forgive a fellow servant who owed him an insignificant amount.  When the master heard of what had happened, he called the first servant to account, and handed him over to the jailers until such time as he repaid his debt.

A key to understanding the behaviour of the unforgiving servant lies in the following verse:

“The servant fell on is knees before him [his master].  ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’” (Mt 18:26, NIV).

Well, the master instead chose to forgive the debt entirely.  But it didn’t seem to have dawned on the servant, who had pleaded for patience rather than the gracious act of forgiveness.  It seems that he was still trying to repay his debt, getting whatever money he could scrounge up.  Or at least the enormity of his master’s goodness towards him had not sunk in.  If he really understood how much he was forgiven, he wouldn’t have acted the way he did.  As Jesus said of a woman who washed his feet, “…her many sins have been forgiven – for she loved much.  But he who has been forgiven little loves little.” (Lk 7:47, NIV)  If only the servant understood how much he had been forgiven, he would have loved much, and in turn forgiven his fellow servant.  Because forgiveness and love are inextricably linked.

And so if we remember where we come from – if we can fully appreciate the extent of God’s forgiveness (which is never little) and the price God paid – well, apart from being humbling, it has to help us better grasp God’s love.  And that’s the start of great things.  As the apostle Paul wrote:

“… I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” (Eph 3:17-19, NIV).

The “fullness of God” – that must include faith, goodness, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness and love.  Ours, If we could just know his love, and fathom his forgiveness.  And never forget.

– Joey

Instead, it would be a story of Jesus setting someone free.

Jesus challenged the accusers: “If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” (Jn 8:7, NIV)  And with that, they slowly left, one by one – until only Jesus and the woman remained.

Jesus:  Woman, where are they?  Has no one condemned you?
Woman:  No one, sir.

I can only imagine how the woman felt as she realised that Jesus had vanquished every last one of her accusers – how he had silenced them and sent them all away – and how a crowd that knew her shame and condemned her for it was replaced by one man who offered forgiveness.

It makes me think of the accusers and the accusations we face in life.  Often the worst accusations leveled against us aren’t the false ones but the ones that are true, and often the worst accusers aren’t other people, or even the devil, but ourselves.

Perhaps that’s why Jesus asked, ‘Woman, where are they?  Has no one condemned you?’  God says amazing things with questions, and here he’s drawing the woman’s attention to the fact that no one stood to condemn her any longer.   If the ‘holiest’ of scribes and Pharisees did not condemn her, then why should she condemn herself?

Not only that, but the one righteous person whose judgement mattered, the one who would judge all the earth at the end of time, the one who stood alone with her, said, “Then neither do I condemn you.”

He even went so far as tell her, “Go now and leave your life of sin.”  If he believed that she could live a better life, and leave her sin behind, then maybe she could.  There were no more accusers, no more condemnation – nothing to hold her back.

The same man who answered the accusations against that woman, both without and within, now stands with us to do the same.  And so the apostle Paul writes:

“Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen?  It is God who justifies.” (Rom 8:33, NIV)

– Joey

“For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do – this I keep doing.” (Rom 7:19, NIV)

It’s a bit of a relief to hear that such a great man of God still struggled with sin.  But too often we just stop there, content to know that this internal struggle is common to everyone.  In fact, there’s more.

In the midst of describing his internal struggle with sin, Paul makes a crucial distinction.  He says:

“As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me.  I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature…” (Rom 7:17-18, NIV)

“Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it… For in my inner being I delight in God’s law;” (Rom 7:20 & 22, NIV)

Like Paul, our sinful nature – where sin lives and from which sin oozes out – is not the true us.  On the contrary, our true self – our inner being – delights in God’s law (the law of the Spirit of life, as mentioned in Rom 8:2).  And though these two natures are at constant war, it’s the sinful nature that’s the foreigner, the impostor – the one that doesn’t belong.

Of course, this doesn’t absolve us of our sin, or of our need to repent.  But understanding this gives us a clearer picture of who we are as Christians, despite the sin that clings on like dead skin.

Jesus illustrated it in another way when he washed his disciples’ feet (Jn 13:8-10, NIV):

“‘No,’ said Peter, ‘you shall never wash my feet.’

Jesus answered, ‘Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.’

‘Then, Lord,’ Simon Peter replied, ‘not just my feet but my hands and my head as well!’

Jesus answered, ‘A person who has had a bath needs only to wash his feet; his whole body is clean.  And you are clean…’”

What Peter said sounded very humble and holy – “not just my feet but my hands and my head as well!” – but he missed the point.  He only needed his feet washed.  It’s the same when we become Christians: we are bathed, washed completely.  Sure, we sin and we get dirty, but it’s just our feet that need washing.  If Jesus declared Peter clean, who would shortly go out and deny him three times, perhaps we too are clean.  And if God has made us – our hearts – clean, can we deny him his glory?

“…Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.”  (Acts 10:15, NIV)

– Joey

“You will seek me [God] and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” (Jer 29:13, NIV)
“Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” (Deut 6:5, NIV)

More than anything else, it’s the heart that God’s interested in – after all, it’s who a person really is.  Someone who has a generous heart is, by necessity, generous, while someone with a deceitful heart is, well, deceitful.  How we see our hearts, then, is how we see ourselves – Prov 27:19 says, “As water reflects a face, so a man’s heart reflects the man.” (NIV)

Many people view their heart based on a verse from Jeremiah:
“The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.  Who can understand it?” (Jer 17:9, NIV)

That’s not a very consoling thought; in fact, it’s somewhat bleak.  Because if our hearts are ‘beyond cure’, what hope do we have?

But God’s answer to a deceitful heart has always been, and still is, in a sense, a heart transplant.  He says to the Israelites in the book of Ezekiel:

“I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh.” (Eze 11:19, NIV)
“Cast away from you all the transgressions which you have committed, and get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit…” (Eze 18:31, NIV)

A new heart and a new spirit are at the start of our transformation into new life.  For whoever is in Christ “… is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”  (2 Cor 5:17, NIV)  That includes a new heart – and a good one at that, which we’ll need if we’re going to grow in God.

Jesus confirmed the possibility, and indeed the necessity, of us having a good heart when he explained the Parable of the Sower.  Without a such a heart, we would not be able to take in and understand his words.  He said:

“But the seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart, who hear the word, retain it, and by persevering produce a crop.” (Lk 8:15, NIV)

And perhaps it’s because we have a new heart – a noble and good one – that God’s willing to fulfil its desires.  So he says in Psalms: “Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” (Ps 37:4, NIV)

If God’s happy to go with our hearts, then perhaps they’re good enough.

– Joey