Another great take on a the well known parable of the "Prodigal son" from one of our favorite authors, Robert Farrar Capon

Robert Farrar Capon




"The Father Who Lost Two Sons"    by Rober Farrar Capon


This is about what’s normally called The Parable of the Prodigal Son. That's only one of the two sons in the parable, the younger boy. The older boy is the one—the other son—who is lost. And the point about changing the name of the parable is that the parables are almost always misnamed. The Parable of the Lost Sheep is not about the lost sheep. All the sheep ever did was get lost. The parable is about the passion of the shepherd who lost the sheep to find the sheep. His passion to find is what drives the parable; and consequently it isn't the Prodigal's lostness, wasting all his money on wine, women and song in the far country; and it isn't the elder brother's grousing and complaining and score keeping that stands against him. What counts in the parable is the father's unceasing desire to find the sons he lost—both of them—and to raise both of them up from the dead.
The story, of course, you know. The story begins with the father having two sons and the youngest son comes to the father and says, "Father, divide the inheritance between me and my brother." What he’s in effect saying is, "Dear Dad, drop dead now, legally. Put your will into effect and just retire out of the whole business of being anything to anybody and let us have what is coming to us." So the youngest son gets the money and the older brother gets the farm. And off the younger brother goes. What he does, of course, is he spends it all—blows it all—on wild living. When he finally is in want and working, slopping hogs for a farmer and wishing that he could eat what he’s feeding the pigs, he can't stand it. When he finally comes to himself he says, "You know, I've got to do something. How many hired servants of my father's are there who have bread enough to spare and I'm perishing here with hunger? I know what I'm going to do."
Almost every preacher makes this the boy's repentance. It's not his repentance. This is just one more dumb plan for his life. He says, "I will go to my father and I will say, ‘Father, I've sinned against heaven and before you.'" That's true. He got that one right. "And I'm no longer worthy to be called your son." Score two. He gets that one right. But the next thing he says is dead wrong. He says, "Make me one of your hired servants." He knows—he thinks he knows—he can't go back as a dead son, and therefore he says, "I will now go back as somebody who can earn my father's favor again. I will be a good worker or whatever." This is not a real repentance, it's just a plan for a life. What it is, is enough to get him started going home, and consequently when he goes home, what happens next is an absolutely fascinating kind of thing.
What happens next is that the father (you must remember this) is now sitting on the front porch of the farm house. The farm house doesn't belong to him anymore. The front porch doesn't belong to him. He’s sitting in the rocker that belongs to his oldest son who is now, you know, the owner of the farm. He’s sitting there and he sees the Prodigal, the younger boy, coming down the road from far away. He sees him coming. What does he do? He rushes off the porch, runs a half mile down the road, throws his arms around the boy's neck and kisses him.
Now, this is all that Jesus does with this scene. The fascinating thing in this parable is that in the whole parable the father never says one single word to the Prodigal Son. Jesus makes the embrace, the kiss, do the whole story of saying, "I have found my son." The fascinating thing also is that when the father embraces the boy who has come home from wasting his life, the boy never gets his confession out of his mouth until after the kiss, until after the embrace. What this says to you and me who have to live with the business of trying to confess our sins is that confession is not a pre-condition of forgiveness. It’s something that you do after you know you have been forgiven. Confession is not something you do in order to get forgiveness. It’s something you do in order to celebrate the forgiveness you got for nothing. Nobody can earn forgiveness. The Prodigal knows he's a dead son. He can't come home as a son, and yet in his father's arms he rises from the dead and then he is able to come to his father's side.
What happens next is that the father, saying not a word to the Prodigal, turns to the servants and says, "Bring the best robe, bring a ring for his finger and shoes for his feet, kill the fatted calf and let us eat and be merry for this, my son, was dead and is alive again. He was lost and is found." Now this is the point in the parable at which everything is going well. The dead son, the no-good Prodigal Son, is home. He has been raised from the dead by his father's embrace. He has done nothing to earn it, but now all that matters is that the father has called for the party to celebrate the finding of the lost and the resurrection of the dead.

All right, now, what we've got now is everybody dead in the parable. The father died at the beginning, the Prodigal died in the far country: he came home dead and the father raises him. Everything is fine. And now what we've got is Jesus' genius as a storyteller. The party is in full swing, so Jesus brings back in the only person in the story left who still has a life of his own: Mr. Responsibility, Mr. Whining, Mr. Elder Brother. He comes up and hears the music and the dancing and he probably sees the waiters scurrying around with roast veal platters and everything else. And he asks one of the servants, "What is this all about? I didn't commission a party." The servant says, "No, no, your brother has come home and your father has killed the fatted calf because he received him safe and sound." And the older brother is angry and he will not go in. He will not go into the house. He is right out there in the midst of the party. He is part of the party but he will not join the party. And the next thing that happens in this: when he comes in with all this bookkeeping he says, "Look," to his father, "all these years I served you and I never broke one of your commandments and you never even gave me a goat that I could make merry with my friends. But when this your son (notice he doesn't say, this my brother) cuts off his relationship, this your son has wasted your substance with riotous living, has wasted your substance with harlots, when this son comes home you kill the fatted calf!"
I think that one of the things you could do with this is make up a speech for the father. The father goes out in the courtyard to plead with the older son. He goes out there in order to find him as he is and to raise him from the dead. He never gives up on any of them. He says to him, "Look, Arthur (let’s call the older brother Arthur), what do you mean I never gave you a goat for a party? If you wanted to have a great veal dinner for all your friends every week in the year, you had the money and the resources. You owned this place, Arthur. You have the money and the resources to have built 52 stalls and kept the oxen fattening as you wanted them to come along, but you didn't. Why didn't you do that, Arthur? Because you're a bean counter, because you're always keeping track of everybody else. That's your problem, Arthur, and I have one recipe for you." (The father is pleading with this fellow to come out of the death of bookkeeping.) He says, "I have one recipe for you, Arthur. That is, go in, kiss your brother, and have a drink. Just shut up about all this stuff because, Arthur, you came in here already in hell, and I came out here in this courtyard to visit you in the hell in which you were."
This is the wonderful thing about this parable, because it isn't that there was a Prodigal Son who was a bad boy and who, therefore, came home and turned out to be a good boy and had a happy ending. Then the elder brother—you would think Jesus, if he was an ordinary storyteller, would have said, "Let's give the elder brother a rotten ending." He doesn't. He gives the older brother no ending. The parable ends with a freeze frame. It ends like that with just the father, and the sound goes dead—the servants may be moving around with the wine and veal—but the sound goes dead and Jesus shows you only the freeze frame of the father and the elder brother. That's the way the parable has ended for 2,000 years.
My theory about this parable is that if, for 2,000 years, he has never let it end, then you can extend that indefinitely, that this is a signal, an image of the presence of Christ to the damned. When the father goes out into the courtyard, he is an image of Christ descending into hell; and, therefore, the great message in this is the same as Psalm 139, "If I go down to hell, You are there also." God is there with us. There is no point at which the Shepherd who followed the lost sheep will ever stop following all of the damned. He will always seek the lost. He will always raise the dead. Even if the elder brother refused forever to go in and kiss his other brother, the Father would still be there pleading with him. Christ never gives up on anybody. Christ is not the enemy of the damned. He is the finder of the damned. If they don't want to be found, well there is no imagery of hell too strong like fire and brimstone and all that for that kind of stupidity. But nonetheless, the point is that you can never get away from the love that will not let you go and the elder brother standing there in the courtyard in his own hell is never going to get away from the Jesus who seeks him and wills to raise him from the dead.


Interview with Robert Farrar Capon
Interviewed by Floyd Brown
Floyd Brown: I always enjoy your dealing with the parables the way that you do, but you always leave questions in my mind and that, of course, is planned. Right?
Robert Capon: Yes, but my whole point is if you give a person an answer without raising the question then they never remember the answer, so you have to raise the question first. You have to be ahead of them. They have to be wondering what does that mean until then you tell them what it means.
Brown: Ok. You got some questions in my mind. I've got to ask you a couple of them. You started out saying that the Prodigal came home. He did two things right. What did he do wrong?
Capon: Well, in the far country. You have to distinguish when he was in the far country and then when he came home. When he was in the far country, he made up his confession this way. "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you." Correct. "I am no longer worthy to be called your son." Correct. But then the third part: "Make me a hired hand in your house." Incorrect. Wrong. It's not a repentance. It's a plan for life. His father could no more make him a hired hand. He would either be a dead son or a son raised from the dead, a lost son or a found son, but a son, not a hired hand. And the brilliance of Jesus as a storyteller is that the father kisses him, the boy, when he gets home. Before he makes his confession, the father kisses him, embraces him, accepts him. That's the whole image of grace right there. Then the boy finally, in his father's arms, makes the confession. He says, "Father, I've sinned against heaven and before you, and am no more worthy to be called your son." Period. Jesus has him leave off the clunker the second time around.
Brown: The second time around. Well, what about the other side? First, tell me, a lot of people are confused. What does prodigal mean?
Capon: Prodigal means a wastrel, a person who foolishly and improvidently spends all his money. You know, a sower of wild oats.
Brown: Okay, I assumed as much. Let's talk about the other brother. You called him Arthur. We'll call him Art here. Did he really benefit from this experience later?
Capon: I think this is a good question. The trick is the parables were never meant for us to imitate or admire the character of the human race character. What’s there to admire about a lost sheep? The dumb sheep got lost, that's all. What does it tell me I must do in order for the shepherd, the Divine Shepherd, to find me? Get lost. That's all. It doesn't tell me fancy lost, a good lost, an ethical lost. Just get lost, then he will find you. He finds the lost. And the same thing is true of the Prodigal and the elder brother. It's the shepherd who is the God character in the sheep parable. It's the father who’s the God character in the Prodigal Son.
So the Prodigal and the elder brother are both us. I can find myself in the Prodigal. I have sown my wild oats. I have wasted lots of time in the world. I have lost all kinds of stuff that would have been better that I kept. And by the same token, I can see myself in the older brother, the whining, complaining, poor me, you don't understand me, you've been mean to me.
Brown: The bean counter. I like that!
Capon: The bean counter keeping score. We are all both of these people and what Jesus shows us in this parable is that it doesn't matter which one you are; (a) you are lost, and (b) he will never stop finding you.
Brown: We can't earn it, can we?
Capon: You can't earn it and the thing is you can avoid it. In all of Jesus' other parables of judgment, the imagery for hell is separation imagery: out of darkness, kick him out, throw him away. This is the one place where Jesus has a Christ figure descending into hell to visit the damned, the elder brother, in which they're in the same place. The hell in this imagery, in this parable, is eternally at the party of heaven. Hell is somehow inside heaven. You want to know where I put it? You got a minute? I'll tell you quickly.
Brown: Half a minute.
Capon: In the nail hole in the left hand of the risen body of Jesus is all the room you need to contain all the zillions and billions of people who ever would be in hell because they are so thin and wispy. They don't spoil the party in there either. You can find them in that nail hole and if they want some day, maybe they can come out.
Brown: Thank you, for a marvelous, marvelous message.
Capon: Thank you, Floyd.

I am so impacted by this story, his mother is my hero! Life is so precious

Faith IS an Essential Virtue for any Belief

C. S. Lewis on Faith from Mere Christianity

Roughly speaking, the word faith seems to be used by Christians in two senses or on two levels, and I will take them in turn. In the first sense it means simply belief--accepting or regarding as true the doctrines of Christianity. That is fairly simple. But what does puzzle people--at least it used to puzzle me--is the fact that Christians regard faith in this sense as a virtue. I used to ask how on Earth it can be a virtue--what is there moral or immoral about believing or not believing a set of statements? Obviously, I used to say, a sane man accepts or rejects any statement, not because he wants or does not want to, but because the evidence seems to him good or bad. If he were mistaken about the goodness or badness of the evidence, that would not mean he was a bad man, but only that he was not very clever. And if he thought the evidence bad but tried to force himself to believe in spite of it, that would be merely stupid.
Well, I think I still take that view. But what I did not see then--and a good many people do not see still--was this. I was assuming that if the human mind once accepts a thing as true it will automatically go on regarding it as true, until some real reason for reconsidering it turns up. In fact, I was assuming that the human mind is completely ruled by reason. But that is not so. For example, my reason is perfectly convinced by good evidence that anesthetics do not smother me and that properly trained surgeons do not start operating until I am unconscious. But that does not alter the fact that when they have me down on the table and clap their horrible mask over my face, a mere childish panic begins inside me. I start thinking I am going to choke, and I am afraid they will start cutting me up before I am properly under. In other words, I lose my faith in anesthetics. It is not reason that is taking away my faith; on the contrary, my faith is based on reason. It is my imagination and emotions. The battle is between faith and reason on one side and emotion and imagination on the other.....
Now just the same thing happens about Christianity. I am not asking anyone to accept Christianity if his best reasoning tells him that the weight of evidence is against it. That is not the point at which faith comes in. But supposing a man's reason once decides that the weight of the evidence is for it. I can tell that man what is going to happen to him in the next few weeks. There will come a moment when there is bad news, or he is in trouble, or is living among a lot of other people who do not believe it, and all at once his emotions will rise up and carry out a sort of blitz on his belief. Or else there will come a moment when he wants a woman, or wants to tell a lie, or feels very pleased with himself, or sees a chance of making a little money in some way that is not perfectly fair; some moment, in fact, at which it would be very convenient if Christianity were not true. And once again his wishes and desires will carry out a blitz. I am not talking of moments at which any real new reasons against Christianity turn up. Those have to be faced and that is a different matter. I am talking about moments where a mere mood rises up against it.
Now faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding onto things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods. For moods will change, whatever view your reason takes. I know that by experience. Now that I am a Christian, I do have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable; but when I was an atheist, I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable. This rebellion of your moods against your real self is going to come anyway. That is why faith is such a necessary virtue; unless you teach your moods "where they get off" you can never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion. Consequently one must train the habit of faith.

C.S Lewis

Oh, YE Saints! by Danielle Aceino

Here is a cool thought from my friends blog:Danielle Aceino's blog

 Oh, YE Saints!
So, interesting discovery.  I was making my way through blueletterbible.org with enough surface skills to make a quick discovery.  I am not sure about the organizational and theological study aids, but I if you give it to me plain and simple, I can understand the revy with the best of them.  Word of the moment: SAINT.  I wanted to know what the word meant, because, well, we ARE saints.  When Paul addressed believers he called them SAINTS.  However, what I really want to know is how did the trend come about of calling ourselves sinners?  We, the righteousness of Christ, redeemed and delivered are called sinners?  Is it humility? No, it is heresy- plain and simple.
Well, I found the word SAINT on blueletterbible.  Here it is:
hagios
and it means:most holy thing
Then, I found other uses of the same word.  You know where else this word pops up?  Matthew 1:18, when he talks about the HOLY Spirit.  That’s right.  The word for HOLY Spirit is the same word used for SAINT.  It’s the SAME word.
I am not even going to explain it.  Just think about it.  How do we view ourselves?  We need to talk highly of ourselves because honestly, it’s Christ we are talking about.  He IS our identity.  He is the only ONE who matters, and HE died to make us righteous.  So, let’s claim it.  Own it. Oh, and say THANK YOU!  :)



 

A Case for Divine Complacency. Fully Satisfied in the Finished Work

A Case for Divine Complacency
Fully Satisfied in the Finished Work
The word “complacency” gets quite the bad rap in the church today. But I would encourage you to kick back, recline at the table and enjoy the feast as we consider the complete satisfaction Christ has provided to the believer.
Old puritan preachers and many classic revivalists were strong proponents of divine contentment – when you read the words of Charles Spurgeon, Jonathan Edwards and others, the term complacency was used often. It was considered a virtue.
Edwards wrote, “Since I came to this town [Northampton], I have often had sweet complacency in God in views of his glorious perfections, and the excellency of Jesus Christ. God has appeared to me, a glorious and lovely being chiefly on account of his holiness. The holiness of God has always appeared to me the most lovely of all his attributes.”[i]


R.C. Sproul points to Edwards’ use of the word complacency in its basic Oxford Dictionary definition as, “the fact or state of being pleased with a thing or person; tranquil pleasure or satisfaction in something or some one.” Adds Sproul, “I labor the earlier English usage of the word complacency because it is used in a crucial manner in the language of historic, orthodox theology.” Sproul writes:


If we take note of Edwards’ language, his choice of words to describe his enraptured delight in the glory of God, we observe his accent on the sweetness, loveliness, and excellence of God. He reports of enjoying a “sweet complacency” in God. What does he mean? Is not the term complacency a word we use to describe a certain smugness, a resting on one’s laurels, a sort of lazy inertia that attends a superficial sort of satisfaction? Perhaps. But here we see a vivid example of how words sometimes change their import over time.

What Edwards meant by a “sweet complacency” had nothing to do with a contemporary dose of smugness. Rather, it had to do with a sense of pleasure. This “pleasure” is not to be understood in a crass hedonistic, or sensual, sense but rather a delight in that which is supremely pleasing to the soul.[ii]

The Key to Contentment


Holy complacency is all about being satisfied in the divine pleasures of God.


They will be intoxicated with the fatness of your house, and you will give them drink from the wadi of your delights, because with you is life's fountain; in your light we shall see light (Ps. 36:8, Septuagint).

In writing to the Philippian church, Paul urges them to be anxious about nothing (Phil. 4:6) and presents himself as an example of a man who has learned to be content in times of plenty and in seasons of external lack (Phil. 4:11-13). How did Paul muster up this contentment?


Traditional religionists will strive for the annihilation of desire. But that is both gnostic and existential – okay for a buddhist but not a Christian. Paul did not learn to desire “less,” so he could be content with less. In fact, the apostle’s appetites were hot and furious – not lessened. But fulfillment to those desires came neither through worldly ambition nor his own religious efforts.


Paul had learned to be fully satisfied on the fatty ashes of Christ’s sacrifice.


I will satisfy fully the life of the priests with abundance, and My people will be satisfied with My goodness, says the Lord (Jer. 31:14).

Blessed (happy, fortunate, to be envied) is the man whom You choose and cause to come near, that he may dwell in Your courts! We shall be satisfied with the goodness of Your house, Your holy temple (Ps. 65:4, AMP).

Paul found everything he had ever wanted in the person of Christ – the source of his bliss and fulfillment. Those in Christ truly lack nothing. He had been plugged into an eternal wellspring of grace.


Maybe this satisfaction – this divine complacency – sounds good to you on paper. But how do we tangibly feast on this abundant grace in our daily lives? By faith. That is, simply by trusting. The flavor of faith is not striving, contending or “pressing in” for something. The flavor of faith is rest. It is to trust in what someone else has already accomplished for us. His work was enough to satisfy you perfectly.


Christ has now become our eternal Sabbath Rest.


Satisfied with the Sin Problem


Staunch legalists, strivers and will-power advocates get itchy when you speak too often of grace. They are hell-bent on ridding the church of the wrong type of complacency. Their fear is that you will promote the ever-taboo notion of greasy grace. But I’ll be the first to say that grace is far greasier than anyone would have suspected! Slippery, buttery and dripping with ease and fatness – no one could exaggerate how free and glorious is this grace. Grace is not cheap – it cost Jesus everything.


Your own everything couldn’t afford it.


However, if we are speaking in terms of “license to sin,” that is where the misconception about grace lies. Grace is not simply a “hiding” away of sin – or even a mere forgiveness of your sinfulness.  Grace is not just a cover up – as if God the great Santa Clause in the sky is covering his eyes from your wrongdoings – acting as if they don’t exist. He’s not choosing to put you on the “nice” list when you deserve the “naughty” list. Grace does not hide God’s eyes from your sinfulness. That’s what we’ve been taught – but the true gospel is far better.


Grace actually eradicates sinfulness itself. It’s not a cover up – instead it’s an absolute removal of your old heart. Grace is not a freedom to sin, but it is freedom from sin. On the cross, your sinfulness itself was destroyed in His death. Your old sinful self was co-crucified together with Christ. Grace mystically transformed your identity from a sinner to a saint. There’s no mixture left.


Grace does not merely “cut you slack” while leaving you with indwelling sinfulness. Grace fully nailed that “indwelling sinfulness” to the tree – your entire old corrupt nature was abolished as a free gift (Rom. 6, Gal. 2:20).


What I am saying is that there is nothing left for you to do, but simply be who you are – that perfect new you who is one spirit with the Lord (1 Cor. 6:17). Now your chief end is to glorify God simply by enjoying Him forever. As John Piper often says, “God is most glorified in you when you are most satisfied in Him.”


Does Grace Produce Apathy?


Keeping these things in mind, we must depart from the ridiculous, but sadly common misconception that grace breeds sinfulness. This was the same faulty argument that Paul addressed concerning his Judaizing opponents in Galatians 2. For the Jews to admit their need for grace was an admission of the inadequacy of the law to justify them. The law, being found insufficient, was therefore abandoned as a justifying agency. To invalidate the law - did this mean that Christ therefore was a promoter of sin?


If, while we seek to be justified in Christ, it becomes evident that we ourselves are sinners, does that mean that Christ promotes sin? Absolutely not! (Gal. 2:17, NIV)

Let me explain this tricky verse from the top. Paul is not suggesting that “we” believers must continually seek justification – nor is he saying here that believers are still sinners.  He is speaking of those who are still bound in religion, who have not yet found the complacent satisfaction of their perfection in Christ. Bible translator Kenneth Wuest opens up this verse:


The Christian Jews, in seeking to be justified in Christ, were shown to be sinners just like and in the same class as the Gentiles. When they sought justification in Christ and thus by grace, it was an admission on their part that there is no justification by works, that the seeker is not justified, and is therefore a sinner. The attempt to be justified in Christ awakens the consciousness of sin, and compels the Jew to put himself on the plane of the Gentile. The Jew who calls the Gentile a sinner, in seeking to be justified by faith, is forced to admit that he is a sinner also. He has found that the law has failed him as a justifying agency.

Paul repudiates the false assumption of the Judaizers who charged that Christ is the promoter and encourager of sin in that He causes the Jew to abandon the law as a justifying agency, and in doing so, puts himself on the common plane of a Gentile whom he calls a sinner and a dog. The Judaizers argued that in view of the fact that violation of the law is sin, therefore, abandonment of the law in an effort to be justified in Christ is also sin. Thus Christ is the promoter of sin.[iii]

It is the law that increases sin. Does grace cause sin? Absolutely not! Paul writes, “The law was added so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more” (Rom. 5:20).


I don’t want to overcomplicate this. But I had to lay some groundwork for a very simple idea. Grace does not amplify the drive to sin – religion does that. And more specifically, grace does not incite the one specific sin it is most often blamed for – the sin of apathy.


Grace does not cause apathy – religion does.


Retiring from Self Effort


Let me put this in simple terms now. Someone will say: If you preach grace, people are going to get lazy.


True grace does not produce laziness, but it does breed divine complacency!


The common mindset is that everyone will clock out if we aren’t motivating them with fear, guilt and religion. This is the sick perversion that has masqueraded as Christianity far too long. It is bondage – the spirit of antichrist at work in the pulpit and is diametrically opposed to the gospel.


True grace does not promote apathy or “self-complacency.” It is not freedom to be apathetic – grace is freedom from apathy. Paul had a fiery ambition that drove him preaching all over the Mediterranean from Jerusalem to northern Greece – until there was no place left for him to preach (Rom. 15:23). He was an Energizer bunny! But Paul was not motivated by anything less than the enjoyment of God and the fire of love that burned in his bones. He said, “woe to me if I don’t preach the gospel!” (1 Cor. 9:16) He felt a glorious compulsion – an inward fulfillment and delight from spreading this good news. He couldn’t stop himself – he was possessed by the love of God which “compelled” him. The grace apostle achieved far more than the rest.


Paul’s compulsion to serve did not originate from a slavish need to “help God out.” He co-labored only in a sense that he was a "container" of God. The branch passively drinks the sap of the vine and effortlessly bears fruit as a result of it's union. This is more than simple semantics. Instead of Christ with Paul – it was Christ as Paul.


For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure (Phil. 2:13).

God does not need your efforts to help prop Him up. Though you serve and do things for the kingdom in this life, yet it is no longer you, but Christ laboring through you “according to the working of his mighty power” (Eph. 1:19). You are living in a state of active retirement. The you is retired, and now the Christ has replaced you. You are simply a vessel, a temple – a container that holds this mighty God.


I consider myself as having died and now I’m enjoying a new existence which is simply Jesus using my body (Gal. 2:20, Distilled Bible).

Even Christ’s continued work through your life is to announce the gospel – that is, the good news that His work has been finished since the foundation of the world. Your entire life proclaims an already completed victory!


Jesus actually meant it when He said, “It is finished.” He didn’t just mean it’s finished for that day. “Wow ... been really tough at the office boys – I’m gonna knock off early and call it a day. Be back again at 9 a.m. to start this all over again!”


The finished work of the cross is such an offense, because it invalidates every other human attempt at spirituality. Though we labor to proclaim the cross, we do not labor to repeat it as religion does. We do not labor to strive toward our own holiness, sanctification or redemption. Just believe it’s yours. Nor do we strive to enter into more of His fullness. For by our union with Christ we are already full of the Godhead (Col. 2:10).


A Better Kind of Complacency


There’s a massive difference between the pleasant satisfaction of divine complacency and the numbing paralysis of lukewarm nominalism. We’ve all seen churches that are dead cold – no excitement, no zealous fervor for the Lord. Their joy and expectancy are sucked dry. They slumber.


The problem of apathy is real, and many John the Baptist types try to address it. It is no wonder that so many – who catch the fire of the Spirit – want to shake and rock the church back to attention. To rouse her from her narcoticized sleep.


And so what do these zealous trumpets do? Unfortunately, they try to get mother church off the couch and right onto the treadmill. They bark at her. They shout at her. They come at her with the whip of the law. To their credit, these voices do have zeal, but it is a zeal “without knowledge” of grace as Paul says in Romans 10 – zeal for self-effort. Pharisees are very zealous. The answer to apathy is not zeal for the law. Instead, we need a zealous appreciation that Christ has finished the job. John the Baptist was great, but there has been a change in covenant.


Grace does not beat the church awake. Grace woos her with the extravagant love of Christ poured out on the cross. Entices her with the fragrant myrrh of His sufferings for her on the cross. It allures her with the promise of divine pleasures that supersede the lesser comforts of this world. Invites her to drink and to be drunk on love (Song. 5:1).


Hunger Versus Satisfaction


In the face of overwhelming apathetic disinterest in the church, many charismatic zealots feel justified in whipping people up into a striving frenzy:


“We’ve gotta get hungry! We’ve gotta get desperate! We’ve gotta cry out for more! We’ve gotta press in for revival!”


There is an inward striving, an internal hernia-popping to push themselves into something they already have.  Religion always gets you to work for something that’s already yours.


In fear of growing lukewarm – they say we must constantly stay hungry for God. Intimacy with God becomes a striving work. Such a person tries to remain in a state of dissatisfaction at their current “level” of spirituality. As if by forcing themselves to be unhappy, they will be pleasing to God. Meanwhile, that old virtue of divine contentment in Christ’s fullness gets thrown out the window. It is actually rooted in a lack of faith.


I’m not pressing in anymore. I’ve been pressed into.


I’m not contending anymore. I’ve been contended for.


I’m not a God chaser anymore. I’ve been chased down, roped and hogtied. Bagged and tagged!


So many fast; they pray; they push; they pull. They attempt to get what they’ve already got. But their own efforts have alienated them from grace.


I’m not hungry anymore. I am fully satisfied.


Hunger is the state of the prodigal in the pig slop. Sonship is satisfied on Christ – the Father’s the Fatted Calf.


You may ask – but doesn’t God want us to hunger for more and more of Him? Doesn’t He want us to hunger and thirst after righteousness?


First of all, you are already righteous in Him. But notice the rest of that verse ... He says that those who hunger will be fully satisfied.


Blessed and fortunate and happy and spiritually prosperous (in that state in which the born-again child of God enjoys His favor and salvation) are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness (uprightness and right standing with God), for they shall be completely satisfied! (Matt. 5:6, AMP)

Our satisfaction speaks of trusting and drinking from all that He has done. The flavor of faith is not thirst ... the flavor of faith is complete satisfaction. Knowing that we sit at the King’s table. This is what Abraham, the father of faith, was commended for. He was, “Fully satisfied and assured that God was able and mighty to keep His word and to do what He had promised” (Rom. 4:21, AMP).


Religious people know that money, material things and the work of their hands don't bring contentment. But they do think that their striving to please God and follow the rules will bring satisfaction. They’re looking to add something onto the cross for extra brownie points. They don’t see that they are still basing their hope of satisfaction on self.


Are you fully satisfied in what He has done? Or are you still praying “More Lord?”


A Language of Unbelief


There is a prevailing language of unbelief in the charismatic church today. A barrage of terminology and ideas that lock people into a never-ending search for God. The point of conversion was not your initiation rite into a lifelong chase after an elusive, fleeting deity. We are not called to be God-chasers, always begging for a little bit more like Oliver Twist. I am no longer even “seeking after God.” He has found me. He and I are in unio mystica.


The New Covenant is a finding covenant. An arrival. An enjoyment of the Promise Land that we have already entered. Isnʼt your claim to Christianity the very boast that you are no longer looking for answers, but that you have found Him? Christianity is the only religion that can scandalously boast that we are no longer seeking, but have confidently laid hold of God. It seems such an arrogant boast! I have all of God! I have arrived! This is the stumbling block of the ages.


Seeking is a pre-Christ action.


One would say, “But doesnʼt He reward those who earnestly seek Him?” That is Hebrews 11:6. Read the beginning of the verse, “And without faith it is impossible to please God.” God is impressed with faith. Believe that you are in union with Him by the finished work of the cross.


The Lord once spoke to an anonymous mystic, asking her this, “If I am the air you breathe, if you are in Me and I am in you, why are you looking for Me?” She said, “At once I felt so close to God that I could never describe it. …”[iv]


Never again fall for the catch phrase of today prompting you to “get hungry” for God. How can I do that, when I’ve been feasting on the Lamb? The admission of hunger is an admission of lack. A hungry child is a sign of bad parenting. It is an assertion that Christ’s sacrifice was not a good enough meal for you. Do you need something more than His cross? Let the cross be the only thing that mesmerizes you. Stop begging for things He’s already given. Stop asking from an Old Covenant perspective. He has already poured out all that Heaven has to offer.


There’s no more need to beg Him to “open the Heavens.” He already did that. He checked that one right off the prayer list when the veil of His flesh was torn and all of Heaven opened with it. If you stop asking for that – and actually believe it exists for you – you will experience that open Heaven every day of your life. A fully supernatural lifestyle.


Are you tired of a performance-based, emotional rollercoaster spirituality? Thinking God is happy with you one day and upset with you the next? Trust in His finished work, not your own efforts. Rest in the knowledge that you are permanently plugged into Heaven, whether you know it or not, feel it or not. He is continually smiling at you. You are basking in permaglory thanks to His work. Don’t doubt just because you’re not experiencing it. It is by first believing that we experience. Manifestations follow faith.


As for me, I will continue beholding Your face in righteousness (rightness, justice, and right standing with You); I shall be fully satisfied, when I awake [to find myself] beholding Your form [and having sweet communion with You] (Ps. 17:15, AMP).

There is an infinitely sweet satisfaction in beholding His face. And how does the believer do this? Because the veil of sinfulness has been removed. We can see Him clearly in the person of Christ. He told of this day long ago through the prophet, “I will no longer hide my face from them, for I will pour out my Spirit ... ” (Ezek. 39:29).


My whole being shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness; and my mouth shall praise You with joyful lips (Ps. 63:5).

And so we come to the real root of the issue. Renowned 17th century theologian Jeremy Taylor once quipped, “God threatens terrible things if we will not be happy.” God demands joy. God demands that we be satisfied. God demands that we be fat and complacent on the very thing that He is fat and complacent upon. Again, Sproul says:
God’s love of complacency is the special delight and pleasure He takes first of all in His only-begotten Son. It is Christ who is the beloved of the Father, supremely; He is the Son in whom the Father is “well pleased.”
By adoption in Christ, every believer shares in this divine love of complacency. It is the love enjoyed by Jacob, but not by Esau. This love is reserved for the redeemed in whom God delights — not because there is anything inherently lovely or delightful in us — but we are so united to Christ, the Father’s Beloved, that the love the Father has for the Son spills over onto us. God’s love for us is pleasing and sweet to Himself — and to us. ...








[i] George Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life (Yale University, 2003), 112.


[ii] R.C. Sproul, Abundant Love (Article from Tabletalk Magazine).


[iii] Kenneth Wuest, Wuest Word Studies in the Greek New Testament (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1980).


[iv] Fr. Juan Arintero, The Song of Songs: A Mystical Exposition (Rockford, IL: Tan Books and Publishers, Inc., 1974, 1992), 403.










John Crowder is an internationally recognized author, speaker and advocate of supernatural Christianity. He is on the forefront of a fresh renewal movement marked by ecstatic joy, miracles and recovering the foundational preaching of the cross of grace. John’s books include Mystical Union, The Ecstasy of Loving God, Seven Spirits Burning and The New Mystics. Visit his ministry online at www.thenewmystics.com.

   
Robert Farrar Capon
"The Pharisee and the Tax Collector" 
Program #3705
First broadcast October 31, 1993"The Pharisee and the Tax Collector"
Let me lay out for you the story, Jesus' parable, of the Pharisee and the tax collector. Jesus says, "Two men went up to the temple to pray. One of them was a Pharisee. The other was a tax collector."
You must remember that a tax collector was a crook. He was a person who was a Jew but he worked for the Roman government. He had a franchise, an area in which he was entitled to collect taxes. He was told by the Romans what he owed them. Anything else he made over and above that was his to pocket. The tax collectors were despised as turncoats and so on. So Jesus has set you up. He has sent in the Pharisee who was one of the most respectable people in Judaism of his time and He has sent into the temple with him this tax collector who is a mafia-style enforcer, who is a bad apple.
The Pharisee stands by himself and he prays and he says, "God, I thank you that I am not like other people. I am not a thief. I am not a rogue. I am not an adulterer. I am certainly not like this tax collector over here. I fast twice a week. I give away a tenth of my income."
That is his speech. He goes on interminably like that. Then the tax collector says (he won't look up to the heaven; he looks at his shoe tips), "God be merciful to me a sinner."
Then Jesus says, "I tell you this man (the tax collector) went to his house justified rather than the other for all who exalt themselves will be humbled and all who humble themselves will be exalted."
That is the story. Like all of Jesus' parables, it should carry a warning which is "this will be hazardous to all your previous opinions about how religion works and how God works." Jesus' parables are designed to outrage the hearers and to shock and to show how God has stood almost all of our values on their heads.
What this parable is about is not, as it seems to say at the end, the virtue of humility. The Pharisee's problem is not that he is showing off. It is that he really believes that his stack of good deeds is enough to save the world. And he believes it is enough if only everyone else would do what he does -- that is enough to save the whole world.
What God really says in Christ is that human goodness isn't good enough to do this trick. Human goodness cannot reconcile the world. Basically if the world could have been reconciled by good advice from God, to which human goodness would respond, the world's problems would have been solved ten minutes after Moses got down to the bottom of the mountain with the commandments. Everyone would have read the commandments and said, "Oh, yes, of course," and the problem would have been over. The trouble with the commandments is the commandments are fine, but no one has ever paid much attention to them.
The law, the commandments, are efforts at morality, humility, spirituality and, above all, are efforts at religion, are efforts at trying to do something that will get us right with God. All don't work. Therefore God, as Jesus speaks of Him, doesn't risk trying to save the world by human good behavior. The Pharisee's mistake, therefore, is not that he is saying something that it is just proud or a little bit arrogant, but that what he is saying is dead wrong. His goodness is irrelevant to the problem that he is talking about. Therefore, God says that the tax collector who simply looks at his shoe tips and says, "I'm no good," is justified. Now, why?
The point is that this parable is about death and resurrection. It is not about morality, spirituality or anything else. It is about the fact that both the Pharisee and the Publican (the tax collector), are dead ducks. The Pharisee is a very high class kind of dead duck, but they are both dead as far as being able to reconcile with God is concerned. The point about all of this is that the reconciliation God has in mind for them is totally dependent on their death.
Jesus came to raise the dead. He did not come to teach the teachable; He did not come to improve the improvable; He did not come to reform the reformable. None of those things works. Jesus taught His disciples for three years. They never caught on to very much at all. God has been teaching the world for a millennia. The world hasn't done anything much about it. The tragedies go on. The lies go on. The nonsense goes on. The twaddle goes on. All the things that are wrong with the world go on. They are not amenable to talk. They are only amenable to action and, therefore, Jesus came to raise the dead -- meaning by deadness, you in your deadness, the Pharisee in his deadness and the tax collector in his deadness.

Again, I ask you the question. Do you like that? Once again the answer is no you don't like that because here is this terrible tax collector who is really a monstrous character and probably rubs salt in everybody's wounds. He drives around in a stretch limo with a case of Chivas Regal in the back of the trunk and several very expensive call girls with him at all times. He has just been skimming the cream off his neighbor's milk money. The point is that the Pharisee is no less dead than that dreadful character.
So I want you to turn the parable around a little bit. Just imagine what it is like to see how the Pharisee is so wrong. Imagine God sitting in the temple at a golden card table in a golden chair and in come these two characters. The Pharisee comes across the temple and God is very busy. He is creating the universe out of nothing. He is holding the stars in their courses. He is reconciling all the generals in the Pentagon and the street walkers in Times Square and the drug addicts asleep in doorways. He is making the hair on my head grow, slowly at this point. He is doing all these things and He is very busy.
Up comes this character, this Pharisee, and he whips out a pack of cards and he does a couple of one-handed cuts and an accordion shuffle and bridges them and fans them out for God and says, "Pick a card. I want to play cards with you."
God folds the deck back up and He says, "Don't play me."
So the Pharisee says, "No, no. I've been very lucky lately. Let's play Black Jack."
He deals God a king and an ace and God pushes the card away and says, "Look, I don't want to take your money. You can't play with me. The odds are always on the house here and besides, no matter how full you think your deck is, you haven't got a full deck and you can never win playing this game of cards with me. So why don't you just be like that fellow over there who is looking at his shoes and the two of you go over and have a free drink and enjoy yourselves because you can be home free here if you will only stop this nonsense of trying to sell me, trying to win over me, trying to get an arm up on me, to do something to me to prove that you are okay. I don't care that you are not okay. I will raise you from the death of your lack of okayness. I will raise you up. Just trust me. That fellow over there, all he said was he was no good. He threw himself in trust on me. He's home free because all the dead are home free in my working of the universe, in my reconciliation of the world. All you have to do is recognize that death is the key to your salvation."
Now you ask yourself the question, do you like that version of the parable? Again, you still don't like it. I'll prove you don't like it. Suppose the tax collector goes home justified. All right. You want me to bring him back a week later. So, I'll bring him back. The first trip back, the first week after this original experience, will bring him back with no changes in his life. Same stretch limo, same girls in the back, same expensive scotch and he comes in and he goes through the same routine. He looks at his feet and says, "God, be merciful to me. I am no good."
What will God say to him? Well, in the way Jesus told the parable, God will say the same thing this week He said the week before. He will say, "This man goes home justified because he admits he is dead."
He didn't tell him the first week, "You are justified but don't do it again." He said, "I have raised you from your death. You trust that. All right. Go in peace."
The second week with no changes, the same thing. Do you like that version of the story? No. You don't like that. The rat is getting away with murder. So I will do something else. I'll give you a second version. Bring him back yet the third week for another trip to the temple, but this week bring him back with some change in his life. That is what you are itching for me to say, I think, that you want me to say something that he really needs or change his way, mend his ways at least a little. All right.
So we bring him back the third week. We'll bring him back. He is not driving a stretch limo. He is driving a Hyundai. He only has one girl in the car with him and he is drinking cheaper scotch and giving the difference to the Heart Fund.
Why would God listen to that list of two-bit improvements when He wouldn't listen to the Pharisee's list of really respectable virtues, a really solid citizen? The thing you have to ask yourself is, "Why are you itching to send the Publican, the tax collector, back with the Pharisee's speech in his pocket?"
The answer is we fear salvation that is so cheap that it saves everyone in his or her death. Death. Death of sin, death of disaster, dead of grief. That is where God works. God works in the losers of the world. He works in all of us. What it means, the reason we fear it so much, is that it means in the long run that death is catholic. Death is universal. Death gets us all, and if death is the only ticket anyone needs into the reconciliation in Jesus and if everybody has that ticket, then God has no taste. God is vulgar. God is indiscriminate. God is immoral. He lets in Hitler because He forgives Hitler's sins. He does, in Jesus. He lets in my brother-in-law. He lets in me. He lets in you. All we have to do is believe it, not earn it.
We have a God, in Jesus' proclamation, a God who couldn't get a union card in the God union, who couldn't make it because we have set up the rules for God. A God has to be a punisher; a God has to be a judge; a God has to be a respectable God. He has to do all the things that enforce morality, and God doesn't. On the cross, in Jesus, He drops dead to the whole subject of sin and shuts up about the whole subject of condemnation. It is over. As St. Paul says in the beginning of the 8th Chapter of Romans: "There is, therefore, now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus."
Therefore, this parable is about death and it is about the resurrection from the dead. The point is that death is all of the resurrection that we can know now. The most important thing is that we believe in Jesus. The dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and they will live.
I don't believe in resurrection. I don't believe in eternal life. I don't believe in life after death. I don't believe in the hereafter. Those are all opinions. I simply trust Jesus that He will deliver to me as He rose from the dead, He will raise me. Whatever that means, however it works, I trust Him because in His death is my reconciliation and in my reconciliation is my joy in Him.