Before a man befriends his neighbor he must first know that he has a neighbor, the realization of which only occurs after he recognizes that his neighbor is not a giraffe, or a russet potato, but a person who possesses the same nature as his own.  Knowing that his neighbor belongs to the race of man informs him of how they might interact.  After all, to truly know someone a person must first understand certain aspects of their nature.  

In the same way, before a person can know how to live his life, he must first understand something about the nature of his God.

When Paul begins the book of Romans he points to the degradation of mankind as a consequence of maintaining an improper view of God.  Romans 1:18-25 explains that the proliferation of dishonorable passions is the result of neglecting, “…his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature…”  

Power, the first of the two attributes, is the ability an individual has to exert his will over something else.  A woman, for example, may be more powerful than her pet cat, or her bonsai tree, but power over those things will vary depending on their size and the way she engages with them.  If her pet cat were a tiger instead of a tabby, the power structure would alter, and if her bonsai tree were poison ivy it would possess the power to control the condition of her skin.  

That type of power may last an evening, or it may last a lifetime, but it ultimately ends with the death of those things.  However grand - or menacing - it may be, the power in those circumstances is temporal in nature.

Eternal power, on the other hand, lasts longer than a lifetime.  God, who possesses that power, will therefore always be more powerful than His creation.  This knowledge should bring forth humility from anyone created by Him; if a person knows he will never be stronger than God there is no reason to keep trying to be stronger.  

Yet, mankind thinks that it has the power to create any world it wants.  Boundaries, it reasons, are malleable with any whim of the culture.  What it sees as an increase in freedom is actually an unrighteous freefall into realms that should have been off-limits.    

The second attribute mentioned by Paul - divine nature - remains wholly different from the nature possessed by mortal man.  Meditating on the nature of God compels a person to look away from man and look upward toward God.  The nature of God is good and cannot be devoted to anyone but Himself.  This nature includes true love, pure justice, and such jealousy that He will bring wrath upon anything that is against His nature.  

People often think of the wrath of God as only external destruction, those images read about in the book of Revelation, or seen in an apocalyptic movie. However, the wrath of God does not always appear in the form of cataclysmic events.  Romans 2 clearly states that wrath is coming, but there is also immediate punishment that occurs in the life of the person who chooses not to recognize and act upon the eternal power and divine nature of God. That wrath does not always look like a lightning bolt from Heaven or a fire from the sky that smites the residence of an unbeliever.  

Instead, the wrath of God may look like those sins described at the end of Romans 1 - a wrath that is realized not by the increasing of laws as in the Old Testament, but by the removal of boundaries from a person’s life.  The result of which is a home that is torn apart from within, where lines of distinction between right and wrong grow less clear over time; a home where a man will fan into flame his inward passions and promptly burn his house to the ground.

Those shameless acts and dishonorable passions to which “...God gave them up…” are the development of a disease that began by failing to remember the nature of the Almighty.  How simple a thing it is for a man to give his thoughts to anything other than the eternal power and divine nature of God.  The current scandal of Christendom is that the church has decided to skip over this passage, choosing rather to focus on a defensive mindset that fears rejection more than it fears the eternal power of God.  This mindset refuses to condemn evil and defend the teachings of the Bible.

The true Christian realizes that unrighteousness has become normalized and that wrath is imminent.  He looks around and sees the world on fire around him, but everyone seems to enjoy being burned alive.  His pastor will not speak against those evils and his neighbors think everything will work out in the end.  So, in a world that increasingly embraces those evils it becomes difficult for the Christian to not despair and drift away from the faith altogether.  

But there is hope.

For God did not merely tell man how to better understand His power and nature.  He sent the One who is “the exact imprint of his nature” and who “upholds the universe by the word of his power” (Hebrews 1:3).  Jesus Christ, the Son of God, entered the world so that man could look upon the face of God.  Therefore, when the Christian finds himself losing focus on the attributes of God he can remember the One who lived a life that knew intimately the nature of the Father.

Holding fast to the power and nature of God will cost the Christian everything, for freedom comes at a cost.  But if the Christian will stand firm on the attributes of God and refuse to drift away he will receive a righteous reward.  Just like the wrath of God can develop in ways that go unnoticed, so too can rewards may increase in ways unseen.

When persecution comes the Christian knows he is being given the earthly gift of understanding the sufferings of God.  Great is the love of One who possesses eternal power and chooses not to use it; deep is the love of One who has the divine nature, but would choose to take on the nature of man.  Holding fast to those truths is what keeps the Christian from falling away.  Those truths will strengthen him to war against anything contrary to the nature of God.  Externally, he will stand on the rooftops and unashamedly declare the righteousness of God.   Internally, he will not hesitate to extinguish with living water any spark of fleshly passion he sees rising up in his heart.  

Knowledge of the nature of God leaves man with a choice between freedom and bondage, suffering and pleasure, and Heaven and earth.  He must daily choose to remember his God, fight the good fight, and live with his eyes fixed on the prize.  Those are difficult tasks required by His God, but he will not despair, for he will remember that the good news does not exist independent of its implications. 

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Fashionable today is the inclination of the Christian to speak in generalities rather than specifics.  He will shout out tautologies and pound his fist on the podium with phrases that vanish like smoke in the wind.  Words and phrases like “justice,” “person of faith”, and “love your neighbor”will be spoken in the hopes that he will not have to actually explain what is true justice, which faith is correct, or how true love is shown to others.  

Put another way, he utters many words without saying anything at all.  To refuse to talk about specifics, however, is to hide within what may be called the comfort of ambiguity.  Now, that comfort will appear to some as deep understanding, or as spiritual caution, all the while appearing to God as misused knowledge.

Yet, when someone reads the Bible in an honest fashion they begin to notice that time after time the issues addressed are specific in nature, not general.  Man is given more than commandments to follow, but also provided with examples of how to carry out the will of God.  There are certain implications that result from heeding the words of Scripture, implications that cause a person to respond in a particular way to the world in which he finds himself living.    
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The purpose of this page - "Implications" - is to make clear the implications of following God.  These insights are not always easy to ascertain, which remains a grace in and of itself.  After all, the wisdom earned through wrestling with the truth provides much more nourishment than that provided by milk alone.  

Topics of all types will be addressed on this page, so please feel free to reach out with questions or topics you want to see covered at:

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Thank you for spending time at The Revealing Truth.

Be blessed.



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