For
to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain. (Philippians 1:21,
NKJV).
Logic
is a beautiful thing that can lead a person to unexpected
destinations, or can prevent he or she from walking off a cliff.
We
get the word logic from the Greek, logos, meaning both word
and reason.
It
is no accident that one of the names of Christ is the Word (Logos)
of God, for He is both the source of all knowledge and wisdom,
and the perfect expression of it. In a very real sense He is, among
so very many other things, the God of Thought, Information, Reason
and Logic.
That
said, it is clear that there is a vast gulf between human and divine
logic. It is not so much that one contradicts the other, for that
would be the epitome of illogic. It is more that divine logic
represents the superset of its human counterpart, so much so that
when the two collide a paradox is born.
Now,
the dictionary defines paradox as a statement or proposition that,
despite sound (or apparently sound) reasoning from acceptable
premises, leads to a conclusion that seems senseless, logically
unacceptable, or self-contradictory.
Physics
abounds with such things, to the point where General Relativity and
Quantum Mechanics appear to have declared war upon each other, and
light itself seems to have at least two split personalities: wave and
particle.
But
apparent contradiction is often reconciled by what can colloquially
be referred to as expanding the search parameters. A mathematical
brick wall, for instance, can be surmounted by legitimately throwing
in another dimension or two, so that what is without solution in
three dimensions falls neatly into place when you consider all ten
theoretical dimensions and curl a few of them to some negative
exponent (and that is the entire extent of what I could possibly
write in regard to String Theory).
What
is evident in human logic is even more apparent when we consider the
apparent contradictions in divine logic as revealed in Scripture.
Make
no mistake, from a merely human perspective, the rules of Christian
living are absurd. Consider just a few: love your enemy; preemptively
do to others what you would have them do to you; when attacked, turn
the other cheek; give cheerfully; loan freely; forgive endlessly; be
long-suffering; think no evil; do not rejoice in iniquity; do not
complain or dispute; love, believe, hope, and endure all things.
Impossible,
without divine empowerment, but,
I
can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. (Philippians
4:13, NKJV).
And
therein lies the key to resolving all the glaring impossibilities and
seeming contradictions – Christ in us, the hope of glory (Col
1:27).
He
is the spiritual equivalent of adding infinite dimensions into the
solving of the equation. With Christ, we see clearly what is obscured
or invisible without Him.
By
examining the apparent contradictions of Christianity we open the
door to a realm of profound, life-changing truth and understanding.
There
are four major paradoxes of the Christian faith.
The
first is that through humility, Christians are exalted.
“For
whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself
will be exalted.” (Luke 14:11, NKJV).
Now
humility is distinct from humiliation in the modern sense, whereby we
often think of humiliation as mere embarrassment. In truth, being
humble is that state of being which honestly acknowledges one's
essential character. It is neither exaggerating our weaknesses nor
overlooking our gifts, but truthfully evaluating both in the light of
objective reality.
In
relation to God, humility is the only antidote against the
fundamental sin of human pride, the precursor to all other sin.
Unless we Christians put away all remnant of our delusional sense of
self-worth, we will never seek a Savior, and unless we seek the
Savior we are doomed to an unthinkable destiny.
Christ
Himself is our example in this,
...who,
being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal
with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a
bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in
appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the
point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God also has
highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven,
and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every
tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God
the Father. (Philippians 2:5-11, NKJV).
Therefore
humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you
in due time, (1 Peter 5:6, NKJV).
The
second is that by surrendering our long war against God, we become
more than conquerors. On the face of it, victory is never arrived at
by surrender, but only by vanquishing the enemy through either
superior force or strategy. But that fails to take into account that,
in this context, the perceived enemy is, in fact, not an enemy at
all, but a Rescuer, a Savior. By prolonging the fight against God we
are doing ourselves immeasurable hurt.
This
truth is illustrated as early as the Book of Genesis, when the
Patriarch Jacob was successfully wrestling with the Angel of the
Lord. As long as he was ascendant in the struggle, he was, in
reality, losing more than he could know. It was only when he
surrendered that he acquired the name Israel, a lame hip, and was
inaugurated eternally into the annals of redemptive history.
So
by surrendering we win.
Thirdly,
the way a Christian preserves his or her life is to die, for
“He
who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this
world will keep it for eternal life. (John 12:25, NKJV).
Our
life in the flesh, our natural life as a son or daughter of Adam, is
as a zombie. We are the walking dead, shambling about on the surface
of this fallen world under a sentence of certain death and eternal
punishment. To love that life, to seek to keep it at any or all cost,
is to ensure that the inevitable sentence is carried out.
It
is only by putting that natural life to death that we can obtain true
life in Christ. We must die with Him, so that we may live with Him.
This is so counterintuitive, so alien to our natural way of thinking
that unless the Spirit of God opens our hearts and minds to receiving
this truth, we will dismiss it as patently nonsensical.
But
when we understand the whole picture, when our viewpoint is shifted
to the perspective and dimensions of divine logic, all the seemingly
contradictory pieces fall into place and we perceive, not absurdity,
but the brilliant equation of redemption and eternal life.
Of
course we must die with Christ! Of course we must put to death the
sins of the body and the lusts of the flesh, and must be cleansed
with the blood of His Cross! There is no other way to escape the
bondage of sin and death and the condemnation under which we are all
born.
For
if we have been united together in the likeness of His death,
certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection,
knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body
of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of
sin. For he who has died has been freed from sin. (Romans 6:5-7,
NKJV).
Thirdly,
we must love those who hate us. Of all the unnatural commands of the
Kingdom of God, this may be the hardest to comprehend, and certainly
one of the hardest to live by.
And
this love is not mere tolerance nor abstractly refraining from taking
revenge. Nor is it a passive kind of intellectual regard. It is,
instead, actively doing good to those who desire to persecute or
spitefully use us, and forgiving the unforgivable.
Why?
So
“that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His
sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and
on the unjust.” (Matthew 5:45, NKJV).
We
must become like God so that we can survive in His Presence. We must
be transformed into the image of His Son so that where He is, there
we may be also. Think of it as putting on a space suit in order to
survive the extraterrestrial environment. In like manner, we must put
on Christ, become as He is, to survive in the holy environment of
Heaven.
Finally,
as Christians, we profit from loss.
Almost
the entire Book of James expounds on this paradoxical truth. That is
why we are to “count it all joy when you fall into various trials,”
(James 1:2, NKJV).
It
is through what Scripture terms trials and tribulations that we are
conformed into the image of Christ.
And
not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that
tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and
character, hope. (Romans 5:3, 4, NKJV).
Those
who are not Christ's may be brought to Him through suffering. Those
who are already His can know with certainty that there is purpose and
meaning in whatever befalls in this life, and that purpose always
entails bringing us closer to God, to advancing our journey from
darkness into light, and from death into life.
"God
whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts
in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world...[Pain]
removes the veil; it plants the flag of truth within the fortress of
a rebel soul." - C.S. Lewis
So
what appears paradoxical or contradictory in the walk of Christian
faith is, in reality, a stairway to Heaven. It is through the
understanding of the truth of things from the divine perspective that
we can see the wisdom and mind of God.
“For
as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than
your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts. (Isaiah 55:9, NKJV).
And
that is a very good thing indeed.
