The Lord Our Righteousness

I had to punish Pingo. He growled and snapped at me, and so he needed to learn that I am the master. So I kept him outside last night until 9:30 p.m., instead of letting him inside as soon as he scratches the back door to come in, like we usually do. He whimpered and scratched, whimpered and scratched, but I couldn’t give in. Then I finally let him inside and he was all up tight. I took him straight in to get a bath, even though he hates baths. He didn’t want to sleep right next to me. He didn’t like me anymore, at least that was the look on his face. I beckoned and called for him to take his place next to me, but he refused and stayed on the bed at my feet. But I woke up this morning, and there he was again, curled up at my back. So I guess I didn’t overdo the punishment. We went out for a run and my thoughts led me to remembering a book called, The Man Who Listens to Horses.

It’s a fascinating story about how Monty Roberts learned to train horses by using the horses’ own tactics of discipline. He had watched his father train horses by breaking their spirit. That included all kinds of abuse. Monty didn’t want to do it that way, partly because his father was abusive to him and to his mother also. So Monty would bring an unbroken horse into a 50 foot diameter corral, and get the horse running. He would only scare it enough to make it try to run away, which it couldn’t do because of the corral. He would keep the horse nervous just by looking it in the eye, a message in horses’ minds that they are under threat. After forcing the horse in opposite directions of travel around the ring several times, and once he saw that the horse begin to slow down a little, he would bring his stare back to the horse’s shoulder, then to its back, then its tail, then to the ground. By then the horse would stop running. Then Monty would turn away and wait. The horse would see this as a sign of trust and superiority, and the horse would come up from behind and put it’s chin on his shoulder. This method had 100% success. There was not a horse too wild or strong-willed to break this kind of training. And instead of days of fury, hatred, torture and enslavement, Monty could break a horse in 45 minutes to an hour and the horses would love him afterwards.

In our training for adoption into God’s kingdom to come, the earnest of which we have now in this life, does Jesus use the methods Monty’s father used; tying the horse to a post for days, beating the animal, yelling and cursing it, starving it into submission? Is that the God of heaven or the god of hell? For of Lucifer, as beautiful as his name sounds, he is accused that he “smote the people in wrath with a continual stroke, he that ruled the nations in anger,” (Is. 14:6) and takes his captives against their will (2Tim. 2:26), and is the “accuser of our brethren.” (Rev. 12:10).

Jesus, on the other hand, is trying to teach us, “I have loved thee with an everlasting love; therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee.” Jer. 31:3. “I drew them with the cords of a man, with the bands of love: and I was to them as they that take off the yoke on their jaws, and I laid meat unto them.” Hos. 11:4. David sang that it was God’s gentleness that made him great. (Ps. 18:35) And submission to His strength and gentleness taught Jacob to say, “I will lead on softly, according as the cattle that goeth before me and the children be able to endure.” Gen. 33:14.

In Jesus’ discipline, will He torture us, chain us to His desires, force us to confess Him as Lord and Master? Does He punish unremittingly until His revenge is satiated? And when this experiment of sin is all over, will He doom the lost to an eternity of flaming lava? Or, today just in order to approach Him for acceptance, does He require a self-generated repentance before we can even come to Him? Are these the characteristics of a God of love? No, they are not. Do we need to be broken? Yes, sin needs to be removed from us. But God will do it in a way that leaves us loving Him for it. For He was able to do for us what we couldn’t do for ourselves. He delivered us from ourselves.

But what about all the strong language of the Bible? “Your carcasses shall fall in this wilderness... all that were numbered of you,… which have murmured against Me.” “‘I the Lord have said, I will surely do unto this evil generation, that are gathered against Me: in this wilderness they shall be consumed, and there they shall die.’ ...And the men… which did bring up the evil report upon the land, died by the plague before the Lord.” Num. 14:29, 35-37. Jesus told His listeners on the very Mount of Blessing, “If ye then being evil...!” Matt. 7:11. Was He being careless with them? What kept them from getting offended? When the people murmured at Christ because He wouldn’t be their Israeli king, He asked, “Doth this offend you?” And then He used even stronger language that purposely tested their loyalty to Him and was the very cause that led them to reject Him. As they ratcheted up their reasons to gripe and complain, He ratcheted up stronger and stronger language. (John 6) Did He hate them? God forbid.

But, why must He test them so strongly, if He is the God of love? And if He put them to such a difficult test which they faile, why advertise it, why write it down in perpetual historical documents, all through His Book? Isn’t He afraid we may never learn to trust Him? Doesn’t He know how our thinkers and our tickers work? Does He even know what love is? (Like Paul would say, I am speaking like a foolish man.)

Love isn’t love unless it simultaneously stands for two things─mercy and justice. And trust isn’t trust unless it accepts all that God has to offer. If mercy is all we allowed Him to show, we would quickly trample all over it and Him. If justice is only what He is allowed, no one would ever trust in Him. The devil loves to separate these two pillars that God has joined together. Satan loves to lead people to view God as only judgmental, especially when tragedy or disaster strike. Then when they ask themselves what they did wrong the devils lead them to fantasize of a God who will only be nice and easy on us. In these wild swings from one erroneous extreme to the other, we eventually get so worn down that we either throw the whole business of faith and religion out the window, or a bipolar religion grinds on us until the end of our three score years and ten, when we finally collapse into the grave, never having known peace and rest and true joy.

The beautiful veil at the entrance to the earthly tabernacle and also that separated the Holy Place from the Most Holy where God’s visible presence dwelt, were made of fine twined purple linen. (Ex.36:35, 37). The vertical threads were of blue, and the horizontal threads were of scarlet, or vice versa. Blue is the color for royalty, justice, and law. Scarlet is the color for mercy, tenderness, kindness. The two colors were blended perfectly into one homogeneous purple fabric. No better example gives us the character of God’s love, not just to this sin-filled world, but to all His unfallen creation. We, however, are the only ones that have a problem with the justice and mercy blend. We can’t trust Him to administer the justice properly. So we invent a god who doesn’t have high expectations of us or will go easy on us, Mr. Nice Guy or Mrs. Nice Guy. He or she will overlook and pardon everything we do, however self-sufficient and proud, however without contrition we are.

But the only true God describes Himself, “The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty.” “For I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate Me: and shewing mercy unto thousands of [generations of] them that love Me, and keep My commandments.” “If you love Me, keep My commandments.” Ex.34:6, 7; 20:5, 6; Jn. 14:15. He blends mercy and justice together so infinitely without flaw, that we can truly trust in Him, in fact, accepting Him with His justice is the only way we can really trust in Him.

When we know the extent of His unchangeable mercy, we will trust Him in His justice. His justice is never executed without kindness woven through and through. And His mercy will never be dispensed without righteousness woven through and through it too. True love is not a sentiment or emotion, it’s a principle, a statute. It’s not effected by whim or mood or the depth of our sin; it is constant, and has the immutability and perpetuity of law! Nothing else can so bring soundness to the mind, and settle the rebellious heart into His truth. Thus, when He gave us the Ten Commandments, the “perfect Law of liberty,” “the Law of Love” ( Ja. 1:25; Rom. 13:10), He taught us that love is such an unchangeable principle in His character that He put it in stone.

So when we’ve been bad, we never have to wait for Jesus to “cool off.” Don’t we know? He’s the same yesterday, today, and forever! “I am the Lord, I change not.” Mal. 3:6. His mercy endureth forever. And so do His formidable and precious spankings! (Heb. 12:5-9) His acceptance will be ready and waiting, and so will consequences of our faults and failures! But we can trust Him never to give us more than we can take. Those consequences will be filtered through Jesus’ protection of us. If we were to receive all the justice that we deserve, we would cease to exist. Instead, God lays on His Son the real punishment. To us Jesus says, “The reproaches of them that reproached thee fell on Me.” Rom. 15:3. Jesus bears the real horror, pain, and offense that His Father has gone through since sin began. We have an Intercessor, God has found in His Son a ransom.

But when we are as hard-core as the Israelite slaves in the wilderness or the self-proclaimed people of God in Christ’s day, He doesn’t give up on us, but He will be hard-core too; all in the effort to save us. If we will be stubbornly self-willed, He will make sure we know that His stubborn determination will always outdo ours. Christ must maintain His Father’s kingdom. He must communicate His Father’s tortured soul. It’s only right. We’re not the only ones suffering from the results of sin. It’s only fair that we suffer too in order to know about what the Father has gone through. Christ’s determination to uphold His Father’s honor in a world Satan claims as his own, is demonstrated by His declaration, “As truly as I live, all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord.” Num. 14:21. The zeal for His Father’s kingdom hath eaten Him up. (Jn. 2:17) He will bring this world out of sin, even if Satan leads insulent and ignorant people to tempt Him to overthrow them. Jesus said it right, we don’t know what we are doing. (Lk. 23:34) So He safeguards His mercy for us, but executes justice as long as we ask for it. He concludes us all in ignorant unbelief, that He might have mercy on all. (Rom. 11:32) But, no sooner do we back off, that He does the same. When bent over with guilt and sorrow, He bends over us and tenderly lifts us up. Christ’s law, His government, our suffering from consequences of sin, is our schoolmaster, to gather us to Himself to be reconciled again to Him and sanctified.

When kicking against the pricks has brought us enough pain, when we’ve wrestled long enough with God and we have come to appreciate Him for dispensing the spanking from heaven, then we will, with Jacob, fall on His breast and beg for His blessing. And that’s when we will be heard, and the transformation will begin.

So if we want to be an overcomer, if we want a new name that no one knows but the person who was willing to wrestle the Son, then Jesus will give us more than we think to ask for. He will give us plenteous mercy that has no end, but also give counsel and correction and needed warning after warning, the combination all of which are the real source of the peace and rest that  mankind has searched for in all their illusive fountains of youth. The fullness of the invitation of Christ’s “everlasting gospel” comes to us today, “Whosoever shall fall on This Stone shall be broken; but on whomsoever It shall fall, It will grind him to powder.”