In the wisdom of the plan of God there was a need for a forerunner of the Christ. John was a ground-breaker. Modern entertainment programming often employs a secondary talent to prelude a first-class performance. A prerecorded event will have a master of ceremonies to “warm-up” an audience so that they may become accustomed to quick and immediate audible response to whomever is on stage. The MC will set the cultural norms for the coming performance so that the hearers are receptive, responsive, and engaged.
Shakespeare once quipped “All the world’s a stage.” Any social culture has norms for daily conversation, and often these standards form a noncritical politeness that disallows interaction on a personal level. This is well and good for getting daily business transactions accomplished in an efficient manner, but it does not satisfy our inner soul’s desire for companionship or interpersonal relationship development on a deeper level.
Once when checking out my purchases at the grocery store, I noticed the cashier had on a fairly heavy application of makeup. This included a lot of skin concealer and eye paints. She was certainly under 25 years of age, and I wondered if she was trying to hide her true self. I felt like saying, “Precious lady, I’ll bet there is a lovely natural face under all that makeup that is truly beautiful.” We all feel the pressure to conform to some vague but real societal standard. It is so difficult to suddenly break the social norms other than to say, Thank you and have a great day!
John the Baptist had no such finesse. Sometimes doctors are just as blunt: “You have six months to live.” Sometimes politeness gets in the way of what needs to be said. Perhaps that is one reason why John had to grow up out in the wilderness away from the norms (Mark 1:4). The “normies” feel stark naked when the concealers are removed even a little. The word “hypocrite” is derived from the Greek word for the character masks an ancient actor held to their face when acting a role. We all use the “politeness code” to avoid confrontation. We want to fit in by blending in. On the one hand we don’t want to be critical of others just for being different. On the other hand, we don’t want our true self to be uncovered because we all fall short of our own standards of goodness.
John broke all the norms by exposing human faults as sins before God. On a human level we tend to judge as wrong what is different from ourselves. In doing so we are building a defensive wall against any criticism of ourselves from others. But God is the great lover of differences but will judge our sins.
Just looking out my window in summer I see a dozen plants with different shaped leaves and a variety of flowers. Plant varieties number in the millions, and bugs are in the millions, while the fish in the sea vary from the tiny seahorses to gigantic whales.
John was not preaching against differences, but he was preaching a morality of behaviors. The standard of morality he preached came from the same God who created an abundance of dissimilarities. So, we must look for a morality based upon ethical behaviors and not differences only.
Today many people are trying to excuse their sinful behavior by simply defining it as a difference. This is a smoke screen. John presented an ethic-based behavior based upon the character of God Himself, and this is the same standard as Jesus and his apostles.
The Apostle John defined God as “love” in First John 4:7, 8. This is interesting because God has defined Himself by an interpersonal relationship of love (John 17:20). Alternatively, but with the same meaning, we can say: God, who is the unsourced Source of love, defines Himself by the behavioral standard of interpersonal love with His creation.
This is a somewhat non-intuitive theological idea when we are searching for an understanding of the spiritually Divine One. God is complete in Himself alone but has chosen to define Himself by the love He expresses toward His creation. This is the true sovereignty of God. Our God is not the monster of Oz who forbids us to gaze behind the curtain, but a Divinity who has incorporated Himself within His creation by the incarnation of Jesus Christ, thus revealing His Divinity in the flesh of Christ Jesus (John 14:9).
I believe interpersonal love is rooted in the three-fold nature of God in Whom love is continually and fully expressed without limitation between Father, Son, and Spirit (John 17:5). Yet God has not selfishly limited love within Himself. The same love reaches out to cleanse and purify His repentant mankind at the expense of the death of Jesus Christ. We understand this truth from two scriptures, John 17:20 – 25 and John 5:24 – 26.
John did not only condemn sin. He offered reconciliation to God through repentance. To be forgiven is also to receive eternal life. The new birth means we are reconciled personally to God (2 Corinthians 5:20). Jesus instructed his disciples to receive the baptism with the Holy Spirit as the earnest or guarantee of the full work of eternal life that God has planned for us. God wants our intimacy. Combined, these are the life of God that He shares with us through the Son (John 5:26).
In conclusion, our current world needs some out of the box preaching that breaks the norms of civility. It becomes confrontational when it demands repentance from persons who propose an ethical system based primarily upon the fulfillment of personal desires (i.e. lusts).
Preaching God’s love-based ethical standard exposes the selfishness of an ethical system based upon personal fulfillment. Love is a higher standard than personal expression. Persons who demand others use a non-conventional pronoun to reference themselves set themselves up for a daily battle in life. They will live in constant defensiveness rather than in peace. To form a more perfect civil union the American Founders allowed a wide-ranging freedom of speech.
John exposed the hidden motives of the heart when he by-passed social norms that had forbidden a discussion of sin. John denounced the sexual misconduct of Herod the Great who masked his atrocities with his lavish support for rebuilding the second Temple in Jerusalem. Jesus told the religious leaders they were like whitewashed tombs, beautiful to behold but masking the corruption within. Cleansing will require some temporary hurts. The discipline of holiness is not without a few tears.
Love-based ethics demands a behavior where love is maximized for all individuals in a relationship. Prostitution is eliminated because it converts a natural sexual attraction to a money transaction. Sexual exploitation of children is eliminated because of the child’s inability to make a mature and independent choice not to be used as an object of lust.
Any exploitation of a powerless person fails the test of love because the lusts of the powerful ought not to justify the abuse of the weak. As the apostle Paul wrote, “love does not insist on its own way” (I Corinthians 13:5, RSV). But the love of self condemns any personal restrictions and demands its own way. If there is to be an end time revival, it must be preceded with preaching that prompts open and public discussion of a human ethic that holds to God’s standards. That won’t be easy because darkness hates the light (John 3:20), but it will be a necessary forerunner to preaching the grace of God’s forgiveness through Jesus Christ.
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