Early in my Christian life, my fundamentalist phase as I call it, introspection was encouraged. Part of this examination was questioning my motives and intentions to make certain they were not sinful but pure. The problem was that I’m pretty sure I’ve never had a perfectly pure motive in my entire life. I know my sinful heart all too well, and it’s not given to purity of motive. I also realized I was given to morbid introspection where I would try to pick apart what I was thinking, and guilt was a constant companion because it was anything but pure. Instead of looking to the cross and trusting God the Holy Spirit to do the inner transformation I needed, I thought I could figure me out. Good luck with that! I may as well dive into the vortex of a black hole. God through the prophet Jeremiah tells us why:
9 The heart is deceitful above all things
and beyond cure.
Who can understand it?
Over time I realized that if I had a hard time understanding my own intentions, how much more impossible it would be to figure out the intentions of other people. Yet I realized how easy it was for me to presume that not only could I figure out what they were, but I was certain about it! Whatever they said or did, I could perfectly infer their intentions, what they meant by what they said or did. If they weren’t certain what their intentions were, I could help them out.
At some point along the way I learned some things, and God had been dealing with me and my own issues, so I decided I wouldn’t do this anymore. If I wanted to know what someone’s motives or intentions were, I would do something shocking to most people—I would ask them. Until then I had no right to assume I knew. As we learned when we were kids, or should have, what happens when you assume something? You make an ass out of u and me. Don’t do that! Yet we do it all the time, especially about other people. So, don’t do that either!
God had obviously been working on me along the way, or more likely working me over, and because of his great mercy, for some reason I even decided I would give other people the benefit of the doubt and not assume the worst about them and what they intended. I know, that’s crazy! Isn’t it a rule of life or something that we must assume the worst about people? In fact it isn’t, but our sinful human tendency is to do just that. Unfortunately, this mentality God has ingrained in me through the pain of sanctification, is not common among sinful human beings. If it were there would be much more peace and harmony. Sinful human beings will always incline to reading intentions and motives into people’s actions or words, and then determine those are in fact their actual intentions and motives without ever asking.
How Do We Escape Intentions?
Well, first of all, that’s impossible. We are intending beings. When we do or say something, we have a purpose or plan in saying it, our intention. The reason we do or say it is our motive, the thing that is compelling us to act. These two dynamics are integral to human psychology, which means my question to start this section is senseless; we can’t escape our intentions. What we can do, however, is better understand them, learn to read them, so we can better figure out why we do or say what we do, and maybe not do or say it. Or do or say it differently.
This process is called sanctification, and it’s not easy, to say the least. It’s like being the anvil, and life is the hammer. Often we think it’s God wielding it, and it hurts! He is, of course, but not quite the way we think. That’s why I used the phrase “pain of sanctification” previously. It’s like a forging process. As metal is not easily molded without extreme heat and force so we are not either, sadly. Diamonds are also created in the earth through extremes of heat and pressure, and because they are so rare they are of great value. The process of sanctification is difficult, but the fruit is sweet, for us and everyone else in our lives.
So, if we can’t escape intentions, ours or anyone else’s, what are we supposed to do? Simple, learn to understand them. Of course that’s easier said than done, but it’s not impossible. As in politics, all it really takes is the will to want to do it. In the Christian life that’s simple: we don’t have a choice. Let me ask a question which has flummoxed friends and relatives for years. Why does God put other people, especially difficult people, in our lives. The answer is really simple, if seemingly impossible at times: to teach us how to love them! Ugh! I told this to a nephew of mine once, and he happened to be lying on the ground. He started wiggling and screaming Noooooo!!!! Then he said the magic words we all naturally feel—I don’t want to! Of course you don’t! That’s why God didn’t give us the choice. And lest you think I learned this in a book or theoretically, I didn’t. I was young, probably around 30, and this co-worker was terribly annoying. One day I was praying, more like complaining, to God and asked him the question: Why did you put this person in my life? And I could swear I heard him tell me out loud, “To teach you how to love her, you moron!” Well, maybe not he moron part, but the message was clear, and I never asked that question again.
So, how are we to go about doing what we just don’t want to do? A miracle, of course. This is in a way to answer the question at the top of this section. It might be better stated; how do we escape the tyranny of intentions? By what Charles Hodge explained as Christianity: the work of God in the soul of man. In other words, it’s a supernatural work of the power of God’s Holy Spirit in us that will get us to do what is impossible for us to do on our own, and which we don’t want to do anyway. It’s not just a matter of the will, of deciding, by golly, I’m going to love that poor slob! I really despise the person, but since I’m so magnanimous, I’ll cut them some slack. Leave it to a sinner to turn loving someone else into something about themselves. We’re hilarious, we sinners.
Love is the Drug I’m Thinking Of
That phrase might sound familiar to you if you’re a boomer or gen X’er. It’s a catchy 1975 tune from the band Roxy Music, and has nothing to do with the love I’m thinking of. That love is only from above, the love that comes from He who is love. This is when it gets kind of tricky, so if you want to escape and not bother with dealing with other people in this way, it’s best to stop reading (or listening) now. Before I get to the nitty gritty, I want to share a story of my having to deal with the beast in me, and how I learned my need for such love.
When I was in college I was involved in a Christian campus ministry called the Navigators. One Saturday we went to a swap meet to try to sell stuff and share the gospel. When I was ready to go back to school at the end of the day, the head of the ministry, an older guy probably in his thirties at the time, said he wanted to go back with me. I didn’t realize he had an ulterior motive—my sanctification. Mike was a guy who could be blunt and had piercing eyes. He could be intimidating. Pulling no punches he comes right out and says, “You’re not a very nice person to be around. You always want people to think like you, and you make them feel bad if they don’t.” And words so related. I was devastated. I can be intense, but am I really that horrible? I didn’t ask. That night back in the dorm I experienced what is called a dark night of the soul. I told God not only can I not love people; I also don’t want to! At that moment this Christianity thing felt impossible, and I didn’t think I could do it. Thankfully, that was a Saturday, and the next morning I went to church. Whether it was in the sermon or a verse I read, God said something along the lines of, of course you can’t do it, but I can do it through you! I remember an instant change from despair to hope.
If you ask me if God can still do miracles, I say of course he can. I know he still heals people of various maladies, but what’s far more profound to me is enabling two self-absorbed sinners to truly love one another. Now that’s a miracle! Such a miracle can only be found in one place, the cross. One of the reasons Christianity is historically verifiable is because of the many crazy things Jesus said, and this is one of them:
And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.
As modern people who’ve never actually seen a crucifixion, or a bunch of them at once, something common in the Roman Empire, we’ll have no idea what a horror it was. For Jesus to try to build a following on a metaphor of the cross is beyond absurd. Nobody makes that up. It had to come from the real Jesus of Nazareth, the real Son of God and Savior of the world. That’s the deal, though. In order to love others you have to die to yourself, and as the metaphor implies, it’s likely not going to be pleasant. Get used to it. But as Jesus also says (John 12:4)
24 Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.
That’s the deal, there can’t be spiritual life without death to self, but in death is fruit and abundance, life and flourishing. Everyone knows selfish kids are insufferable, but so are selfish adults. When it’s all about me it’s about nobody else but me.
Sin is ultimately relational, first with God, then ourselves, then others. In Romans 12:1 Paul tells us because of God’s mercy, we are to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice, which is holy and pleasing to God. Those two words don’t normally go together, living and sacrifice, but dying to self is the path to true life. Then Paul adds something amazing. Doing this, he says, is our reasonable, rational, logical service or worship of God. In other words, it makes total sense logically in light of everything He has done for us in Christ. We are then compelled to love others. And in verse 2 he tells us how we are to do it, even if much of the time we’re not quite sure. Paul tells us, though, that we can “test and approve” what that is, what is God’s “good, pleasing and perfect will.” And there is nothing more God wills than that we should love others.
Loving Others is Not a Choice
That’s the thing about Christianity, it’s a take it or leave it proposition, as can be seen from Jesus using the cross as a recruiting tool. I’ve already said it, but it’s necessary to repeat: we have to love others whether we want to or not, whether it’s easy or not. Most of the time it isn’t. But what makes me compelled to do what can be so distasteful to me, is that I am commanded to do it by the very words of Jesus. From the Sermon on the Mount he commands us:
43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that?
When Jesus told us to love our enemies he was practicing what he preaches. Paul tells us in Romans 5:
10 For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!
We were God’s enemies, and Christ died for us! Paul also tells us in Colossians:
21 Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. 22 But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation.
The Greek word for enemies implies a hateful, odious, hostility. That is how we thought of God in our rebellion, and he still literally loved us to death, his own, in the person of His Son. That’s why we don’t have a choice. In fact, the more sanctified we become and the better we get at it, we’ll ask ourselves, how am I to love this person. Better yet, we’ll pray for God to help us figure out how to love this person, and give us the willingness to do it. You’ll know you’re on the right track as you pray about it when you start giving thanks for this person, and actually mean it. Paul tells is in I Thessalonians 5:
18 give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.
All, not some. That includes people. And the thanksgiving is specifically in Christ Jesus. Paul uses the phrase “in Christ” or this variation over 70 times in his letters, so to him Christ’s life, death, resurrection, and ascension have implications for every aspect and every moment of our lives. Everything we do is “in Christ,” thus we can’t see our relationships with others apart from Christ. The reason we can love others is because, as John says, God first love us, and that in Christ. That is I John 4:19, and John follows it up with the message of Jesus:
20 If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For the person who does not love his brother he has seen cannot love the God he has not seen. 21 And we have this command from Him: The one who loves God must also love his brother.
Lastly, since we’re talking about intentions and motives, we need to be careful that we’re not hoping this person will change just so they don’t annoy us so much. As shocking as it often is for us to hear, it’s not all about us. We’re supposed to love others for their good, which is why Jesus says the greatest commandment is to love our neighbors then adds, as we love ourselves. Only when we love others will we really be loving ourselves. When we do that, it will always be for our good in the end. And even if we’re not successful for whatever reason, God is glorified in our obedience. And what is the chief end of man, in the first question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism? Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever. In that case, love is the drug I’m thinking of.
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