WHY YOU WANT TO READ THE BIBLE

 

Dr. Dan Montgomery

As a Clinical Psychologist for 40 years, as well as an ordained Christian minister and theologian, I offer up my lifetime assessment of Homo Sapiens historically and today: 

That apart from God’s grace and guidance, 

we human beings are vain, fickle, and recalcitrant. 

I share this view with world famous existential psychologist Rollo May, who coined this phrase and personally shared it with me 40 years ago.
 

I still commend these classic Rollo May books: The Art of Counseling; Psychology and the Human Dilemma; Love and Will; Power and Innocence; Courage to Create); and The Discovery of Being. 

Are Dr. May and I alone in this assessment? Are we overly pessimistic? 

Or are we reflecting the view of humankind revealed in the Bible, the Old and New Testaments, from Genesis through Revelation? 

Read the Bible cover to cover this month, 

without rationalist, humanist, or liberal-progressive agendas, 

and find out for yourself. 

The New International Version (NIV), New Living Testament (NLT), and The Message (MSG) are solid and current translations. BibleGateway offers excellent online resources. 

The Bible portrays the universal human condition as sin-filled and estranged from the holiness and purposes of God: individuals who do what’s right in their own eyes:

 "Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes 

and clever in their own sight"  
(Isaiah 5:21 NIV)

They follow a pathway that seems rational or ethical or religious to them, but lacks a holy relationship to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: A personal relationship, one that replaces rote lip service to a static image of the Trinity for the vibrant Triune God who created this Cosmos, yes, but who longs for each person of every culture or belief or DNA or sex, to know Him personally and trust him in all life choices.

The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Three Persons in One God, invite us to live a Spirit-led daily life in conversation with Him about the most intimate goings on in our lives. 

“Lord, I pray to you for help in my relationship with my daughter. We’re picking at each other too much. Please reveal a path for us that I can understand.” 

The Trinitarian God invites us, beseeches us, to engage Him twenty fours hours a day, 365 days a year, decade after decade—until in death we each meet Him face to face. 

At that point, we are either excluded from His eternal presence as a consequence of impenitent lifelong sin (Hell), or we are included in the glorious company of the redeemed, born again individuals who know, trust, and obey the Lord God Almighty (Heaven).
 
My suggestion to all seven billion or so persons who currently inhabit Planet Earth? 

Seek the Lord while He may be found, 

for today is the day of salvation.

 

SEEKING JESUS

If you haven’t received His blood atonement for your sins, pray for this free gift of new life in the Spirit and grace-filled reconciliation to God. 

This gift comes if you confess in your mind and believe in your heart that Jesus Christ gave his Life and Blood on the Cross as a once-and-for-all atonement for your sins so that you can: 

• have life in Him, and have it more abundantly.
• know the truth that sets you free
• follow the resurrected and spiritually ascended Jesus

 You make Jesus the Lord of your life by doing the Father’s will in loving God with your whole human nature, and loving your neighbor (the Family of Humanity) as you love yourself” (Luke 10:27).

God himself put it this way:

“I’ll live in them, move into them;
    I’ll be their God and they’ll be my people.
So leave the corruption and compromise;
    leave it for good,” says God. 
“Don’t link up with those who will pollute you.
    I want you all for myself.
I’ll be a Father to you;
    you’ll be sons and daughters to me.”
The Word of the Master, God. 

2 Corinthians: 6:16-18 (MSG)

What? A Personality Pattern is a Sin?

On a murky planet in a galaxy far away, Jedi Master Yoda is training Luke Skywalker to become a Jedi knight. In the Star Wars movie, The Empire Strikes Back, Luke is learning how to become a force for good in a world dominated by an evil emperor and his hatchet man, Darth Vader. When Luke whines and complains that the training is too hard, Yoda replies that it is Luke’s impatient attitude and quickness to give up that are holding him back. Yoda tells Luke that the dark side is “easier and more seductive.” The Bible confirms this truth that “the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it” (Matthew 7:13).

Luke is stuck in the Avoidant Worrier personality pattern, blaming Yoda for what he is dodging. It is his pattern of complaining and sulking that prevents him from sticking with the training. He attempts to manipulate Yoda by pouting to let himself off the hook. “It’s too hard,” is one of the standard ploys of someone stuck in the Worrier pattern. Luke is trying to avoid growth. He expects Yoda to reject him. Yoda confirms his expectations by getting fed up and critical of him. 

"It's too hard."

Every one of us sins like this, stuck in some form of manipulative personality pattern, whether we’re willing to admit it or not. The apostle John challenges every living person with the words, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8). The sin of manipulation causes you to relate to God and others in a way that seems right to you, but backfires in the long run. Sin’s effects are described in Scripture as the crooked path: “Those whose paths are crooked, and who are devious in their ways” (Proverbs 2:15).

Self-will, the root of sin, says, “I’ve always been this way and don’t intend to change. I don’t need forgiveness because I haven’t done that much wrong. I certainly don’t need a Savior to change me.” There are two problems with this position: 

1. You are blind to your self-centeredness.
2. You think God’s solution for sin and evil is not necessary, because your good intentions and will power are enough.

REDEMPTION AS THE CURE FOR SIN

To what degree are you free to become what God intends, and to what degree are you held responsible for your attitudes and behavior? Luke Skywalker is responsible for the attitudes inherent in his Worrier pattern: passive aggressively blaming Yoda for what he is unwilling to face in himself. Were someone like Luke to acknowledge his blame-shifting and ask for God’s help, he could find himself on the road to more responsible behavior. While sin pervades human nature, the situation is far from hopeless, for “where sin increased, grace abounded all the more” (Romans 5:20).

In an act of infinite love, God solved the sin problem by the offering of Christ’s death in the place of all people. “God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). Christ’s atonement for sin is an objective, transcendent act of God that exists beyond the realm of human manipulation. And Christ’s resurrection is God’s promise made real that you are offered Christ-like wholeness when you surrender to God’s sovereign power.  

Jesus Christ's Resurrection

People can appropriate new life in Christ anytime, anywhere. “If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9). Surrender to Christ allows you to say and mean: “I bear true guilt for wrong attitudes and behaviors—some of which I’m aware and some I’m not. I confess my need for God’s forgiveness and help. I ask to receive the righteousness of Christ.”

Accepting Christ into your heart does not mean you don’t sin any more—rather, it means you can freely discuss your sins with God, inviting his help and wisdom for gradual growth that occurs over your lifetime. Alister McGrath points out, “Forgiveness does not necessarily mean that sin is eliminated—it means that the threat sin poses to man’s relationship to God is eliminated. There is all the difference in the world between being sinless and being forgiven.”

For more, see:

THE SELF COMPASS:

CHARTING YOUR PERSONALITY IN CHRIST 

 

How Does Jesus' Sinlessness Help Us?

"He committed no sin and no deceit was found in his mouth" (1 Peter 2:22).

The New Testament insists that Jesus Christ was completely free from sin (John 8:46; 2 Corinth 5:21; Hebrews 4:15, 7:26; 1 John 3:5). He never disobeyed his Father. He loved God's law and found wholehearted joy in keeping it. 

Psychiatrist Karen Horney once cited wholeheartedness as an elusive goal of mental health because of people's inner conflicts. In fallen human beings, there is always reluctance to obey God, to risk a life of faith, to receive chastisement from the Word of God. And there is even resentment amounting to hatred at the claims God makes on us:  "For the sinful nature is always hostile to God. It never did obey God’s laws, and it never will" (Romans 8:7). 

But Jesus' moral nature kept true to God, as had Adam and Eve's moral nature prior to their sin and fall from grace. This passionate fidelity to knowing and doing God's will is what distinguishes Christ from us. It's not just that he confronted social injustice or gave inspired teaching. It's that in Jesus there was no motivation or inclination away from God for Satan to play upon. But there is in us. 

Jesus loved his Father and his Father's will with all his heart and mind, body and spirit. But we are torn by inner conflicts. Our moral compass is broken. Our human nature wars within us and with other people, even if we are decent and caring part of the time. Far from seeking God's will night and day like Jesus did, we want God to do our will. We avoid intimacy with God, for fear he might require something of us that would be uncomfortable or inconvenient.

I remember a well-known psychologist confiding in me: "Dan, there is an evil that lurks within every person, a resistance to growth and health. Sometimes I think our profession is naive about the categories of evil that destroy so many lives."

But Jesus wasn't naive about the categories of evil. Hebrews 4:15 says that Jesus was "tempted in every way, just as we are," though without sinning. This means that every type of temptation we face — temptations to wrongfully indulge the desires of body and mind, to evade moral and spiritual issues, to become self protective and self pitying — came upon him, but he yielded to none of them. Overwhelming opposition did not overwhelm Jesus. 

Through the agony of Gethsemane and the cross he fought temptation and resisted sin to the point of surrendering his life as an atonement for our sins. Jesus can strengthen us with a kindred resolve to do God's will.

Jesus' sinlessness was necessary for our salvation. Had he not been "a lamb without blemish or defect" his blood would not have been "precious" (1 Peter 1:19). He would have needed a Savior himself, and his death would not have redeemed us. 

Jesus Christ's obedient faithfulness (perfect lifelong conformity to God's law for humankind and the Father's will for the Son, our Messiah) qualified Jesus to become our Savior and everlasting Lord. Jesus' obedient suffering (receiving the penalty of God's broken law as our sinless substitute) secured the pardon and acceptance of those who put their faith in him. 

"But as many as received him, to them gave he the right to become children of God, even to them that believe on his name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God" (John 1:12-13).

Will God Take Care of Me?

Christianity is at heart a mystery. I don't pretend to fathom its depth that reaches down into the fabric of being, encompassing the salvation of those who trust in Christ and the divine purpose of the cosmos.

For the two billion plus individuals who identify ourselves as Christian, the mystery of Christ's atonement for sin speaks to our personal depths, the discovery of grace and love as a foundation for living, and the emerging selves in Christ that we are becoming.

I lay on a sofa pondering this mystery one night, while also worrying that my wife Kate and I had little money to live on, barely paying the rent, food and gas. Yet at the same time, I realized, we were fully surrendering to the task at hand: writing the next book in our Compass Series.

On the one hand, unexpected reversals had financially devastated us. On the other hand, the anointing of the Holy Spirit had placed fire in our bones to write a book called, Trusting in the Trinity.

On this very night, with our faith in God tested to the max, and mood alternating wildly between psychological anxiety and spiritual ecstasy, a sentence composed itself in my mind—a sentence about the atonement of Jesus Christ for human sin and doorway to God's grace. I got up from the sofa, wrote the sentence on my laptop, and pondered its meaning, still not knowing how we would survive next month's bills.

Here is that sentence:

"Knowing that human beings learn from practical object lessons, God called a people to himself after their deliverance from slavery in Egypt, a people now living in tents below Mount Sinai, a newly constructed tabernacle with its Holy of Holies in their midst, with Aaron, the high priest divinely appointed to fulfill God’s instruction through Moses that once every year on the day of atonement, he would select a bull without spot or blemish, which would represent the people, and sword in hand, he would lay hands on the bull’s head, a picture of vicarious identification with the children of Israel, followed by a sharp slash to cut the bull’s throat; a bowl underneath filling with spurts of blood, Aaron would sprinkle this blood on the mercy seat atop the ark of the covenant in the Holy of Holies, specially crafted for the purpose that without blood there is no remission of sin; a blood offering given in obedience to God’s command that by faith in the sin offering the people would find forgiveness, the bull dying in place of the nation, the blood holding a historical place until, in the fullness of time, Jesus Christ offered his own blood, our hands upon his head, his throat figuratively slashed like the bull’s, a vicarious atonement for the sins of the whole human race, and the curtain in the Jerusalem temple separating humanity from the Holy of Holies rent from top to bottom, signifying that through the sacrifice of Christ for the Trinity’s love of humanity, individuals can become sons and daughters of the living God (Heb 10)."

I left a note on the kitchen table, asking Kate to read it the next morning, and see if it made any sense to her. The next day she responded positively, and we both agreed that it helped us see the connection between the Old and New Testaments, and between the Jewish sacrificial system and the new covenant that came through the death and resurrection of Jesus, our personal Passover Lamb.

Not only this, but it seemed to offer us emotional comfort, because it somehow conveyed that delivering human beings from the penalty of sin cost God everything, yet opened the doorway to full and liberating fellowship with God.

Now about the bills. We ate a lot of oatmeal and beans, and received two years of free housing in a very gracious friend's retirement home. We gave away most of our worldly possessions, but were happy in this monastic existence, knowing that we did have food, shelter, and gas, and just as important as these earthly provisions, we had the peace of Christ in our souls. We knew that God was taking care of us—we had what we needed.

 For more help in understanding the atonement of Christ:

Trusting in The Trinity: Compass Psychotheology Applied