Nov/Dec 2004
Department
The Laughter of God
And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord.”
Luke 2:8-11
Something is missing in the family of Christ: The laughter which comes from the freedom Christ gives us— laughter for those whom the good news has not been very good news for a long time. When Jesus came, something new happened. In fact, it was so incredibly new people almost missed it; they didn’t expect it.
The Contagious Laughter of God
God laughed— not with the laughter of cynicism, judgment, derision or sarcasm— but with the free, infectious, joyful laughter of the sovereign Ruler of the universe.
We didn’t expect God to laugh that way. We expected him to be angry, because we knew he had every reason to be angry. We expected him to bring justice down on the injustice of his world, because we knew him to be a just God. We expected him to wipe out the whole mess and start all over. No one would have blamed him. We expected lightning, wrath, intimidation and a fearful display of power. We could have understood that.
But laughter? Nobody expected laughter— free, gentle, accepting and loving. That’s what the incarnation of Christ is all about, and when we fail to see it that way, or when we proclaim it in any other way, we miss the whole point.
For thousands of years men and women had looked into the heavens and asked, Is there a God? If so, what is he like? Does he care about us? Does he love us? Is he a monster? What does he require? Will he never reveal himself? Does he take delight in our pain? Where is he? Why won’t he tell us his requirements?
And then the laughter of God… “In the beginning was the Word, and the
Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.
Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has
been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light
shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it…. The
Word
became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory
of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John
1:1-5; 14).
Now we can begin to see some of what God was doing in the incarnation. He was saying, “You people have it all wrong!”
Why was Jesus so angry at the Pharisees and the scribes? Because he had gone to a lot of trouble to give them some very good news about forgiveness, acceptance and freedom. And they kept getting it wrong. Toscanini, who apologized to the symphony orchestra he was directing for having blown up, said, “The trouble is that God keeps telling me how the music is to be played, and you— you keep getting in the way.”
Jesus said the same thing to the religious leaders of his day: “The Father keeps telling me how the music is to be played, and you— you keep getting in the way.”
Genuine Christians ought to laugh a lot. In fact, Christians are the only people in the world who have anything to laugh about because God laughed first. And his laughter is contagious. One of the sure signs of God’s presence in the midst of his people is the laughter of his people. Let me show you why.
The Forgiven Laugh
First, laughter and forgiveness go together.
Jesus died for our sin on a cross. He was the substitute for us, the sacrificial Lamb of God, bearing the penalty for our sin. “But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God. Since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool, because by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy” (Hebrews 10:12-14).
What does that mean? It means you are covered and nobody is keeping score.
Go to the Father and tell him your sin. You will hear what he has said to so many others: “Child, didn’t you know that I already forgave you?” Remember too that the laughter you hear comes from God’s people who have been forgiven.
The Motivated Laugh
Not only do laughter and forgiveness go together, but laughter and motivation go together, too.
You may not believe this, but with all my heart I want to be a good and faithful servant of Christ. I’ll bet you do, too. After many years as a Bible teacher I have found that the problem in the church is not that people don’t want to be good, but that they want to be good and can’t.
When I talk about freedom and grace and how God has destroyed the curse of the law, people tell me I’m treading on dangerous ground. “Steve,” they admonish, “if you keep talking like that, Christians are going to go out and do what they want.” Good. I still maintain that most Christians, if they did what they wanted, would be faithful. I have never heard a single Christian say, “Now that I’m forgiven I can be as bad as I want.”
When St. Augustine said, “Love God, and do as you please,” he was getting close to God’s secret of living the Christian life. At the risk of correcting Augustine (which is highly presumptuous) let me say he got it wrong. He should have said, “Let God love you deeply and completely, and then do as you please.”
The problem is not “what we please.” Because he has loved us so deeply and completely, Christians really do want to please God. The problem is that we so often fail in our efforts to please him. Is that bad?
No. That’s good! Jesus said, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled” (Matthew 5:6).
Let me give you a principle: Anticipating a promised reality is grounds for rejoicing in that reality. Jesus has promised that if you have a hunger and thirst for goodness, you will at some point be good. Because he promised, and because all his promises are fulfilled, you can rejoice as if you had already become good. If you know you’re going to get something, you can rejoice almost as much as if you had it.
Evangelical Christians debate about how we can be assured of salvation. Some say the only way we can be assured of our salvation is to persevere in obedience, and as we obey, we will know we belong to Christ. (Detractors of this particular view call it works salvation.) Others say we can rest on the promise Jesus gave when we were saved; that is, “I accepted the gift of salvation when it was freely offered, and God doesn’t lie. Therefore, I am saved.” (Detractors of this view call it easy-believism.)
Still others say we can’t know we have salvation—all we can do is hope and keep on trucking. When the game is over, God will tell us whether or not we are saved. (Detractors of this view, call it daisy salvation: He loves me, he loves me not; he loves me, he loves me not.)
Now, with as much humility as I can possibly muster, I’m going to settle the arguments: The way we are assured of salvation is to check and see if we desire to obey God. Please note: I did not say that you had to obey God 100 percent of the time—only that you have to want to. If you want obedience, you’ve got salvation. Scripture says, “Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure” (1 John 3:2-3).
Do you see what John is saying? He is saying that the confirmation of our salvation is not in your being like Jesus now but in the hope you have of being like Jesus in heaven. When John gives us a future promise of being like Jesus (i.e., obedient) our desire for the fulfillment of that promise is not only the assurance of our salvation, it is the motivation (i.e., purifies himself) toward the fulfillment of the reality.
The laughter we hear is the laughter of those who have been motivated to goodness. You see, just as hunger presupposes food, and thirst presupposes water, a desire for goodness presupposes its reality.
The Successful Laugh
Not only does laughter go with forgiveness and motivation, but laughter and success go together, too. In your Christian life, have you ever felt like you tried— you really tried— but in the end you failed? You really wanted to do better, but you only did worse and you didn’t know how to fix it. Maybe you considered giving up completely. You said to yourself, “I’ll never get it right. I’m probably not a Christian at all.”
Rules and regulations are Satan’s way of reminding Christians that they have failed. But even worse, rules and regulations are the reason we do fail.
Let me give you a wonderful secret: When success isn’t the issue, success becomes the reality. In other words, success is always a side benefit of something else. You can apply that principle to lots of life’s desires, but let me show you how it works with freedom.
Holiness and righteousness is the desire of every Christian. Many Christians say, “I’m going to be holy and righteous even if it kills me.” And it usually does. But, and here is the exciting thing: Holiness and righteousness have already been achieved for you by Christ. When you stand before the Father, he sees you as holy and righteous because of the blood of his Son. You are, in fact, justified before God because of the cross.
That is a cold hard fact; you don’t have to try so much anymore to be holy and righteous. You are now free to fail and, more importantly, free to allow him to love you and to love him back. You enter a relationship, not between a criminal and a policeman, but between a loving Father and his child. When you enjoy that relationship, something wonderful happens: You find holiness and righteousness come tagging along behind. You find that you, almost without knowing it, are in a pro- cess that makes you increasingly more holy and righteous.
This is the message. Obedience doesn’t lead to freedom. Freedom leads to obedience. If that is backwards, you lose both your freedom and eventually your obedience.
It’s all about freedom. It’s not about a system— it’s about the person of Jesus, who said, “So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36).
A while back, the Anatomy of an Illness told how a man cured himself of cancer by laughing his way to health. He watched funny movies, read funny books and listened to funny comedians. And then he got well.
That’s how God’s people get well, too. If you listen, you can hear them laugh the laughter of freedom, the laugher of the redeemed.
Taken from When Being Good Isn’t Good Enough
—Steve Brown