Un-Punishable

I am reading another remarkable book by Danny Silk, Culture of Honor. I am not done reading it yet, so I am not saying that I recommend it to you, but it does contain some amazing insights and so far mostly rings true with my understanding of Father God and His Word.

One thing I truly love about the book (and Danny's previous book, Loving Our Kids On Purpose) is Danny's reminder that we are to live as people of the NEW Covenant, as people who are truly forgiven and no longer subject to condemnation or punishment. To make this point in his latest book, Danny coins a new term: "Un-punishable." It's amazing, though, how many believers and churches still live in atmosphere of behavior-orientation that is expecting punishment and ready to mete it out on those who get out of line. This completely misses the point of the Gospel, of course, and leads to the "practice of the Christian religion" rather than the passionate living out of the life of the Kingdom of love.

But are we really un-punishable? Has God indeed laid upon Jesus the punishment that brings us peace? (See Isaiah 53:5). Sounds like it to me. See what you think. 1 John 4:18-19 (NIV) says, "There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. We love because he first loved us." It seems to me that John is telling us that the more we grasp Father's love for us, the more we move away from the idea that He is waiting and wanting to punish us.

I suppose we could list many reasons why punishment needs to be taken out of the way in order for us to be in healthy relationship with God and one another, but one that stands out to me is how punishment (and the focus on behavior related to it) speaks of coerced behavior, something designed to make me do something. You see, I am sure, that loving relationships can never be forced or compelled by outward pressure. In this we see the amazing kindness of God, don't we!! He so wanted a loving relationship with us that He paid the ultimate price to remove punishment from the equation so that our lives would honor Him because of our ever growing love for Him. And that ever growing love is a response to our ever increasing knowledge of His love for us (Ephesians 3:14-21 comes to mind here).

It's important to remove fear from the relationship equation. Relationships also require trust and fear is the opposite of trust. Furthermore, fear leads to a desire to control, and once control kicks in we eliminate the possibility for a loving relationship (at least temporarily) because we are back to coercing something that cannot be coerced! Danny has a really good paragraph on this that I want to close my thoughts with this week. It will give you a brief slice of some of the content of this thought-provoking book.

"When we are afraid, we want control, and our responses to the sin of other people are a set of controls that help us feel like we are still in charge. The typical practices of the family, churches and the government are to set a series of behaviors called punishments in front of an offender and require the offender to walk through these in order to prove that the family, churches, and government are still in charge in the environment. In doing so, we help to confirm the belief in the person who has chosen to sin that he or she is powerless to change and take responsibility for his or her behavior. This whole business is just what Jesus died to get rid of. He's introduced a whole other world with a whole other way." (p. 93)

Learning to be less afraid as I learn that I am loved,

Tom, one of Abba's children