Kindness and Severity

Behold then the kindness and severity of God. (Romans 11:22)
	A zeal for God not in accordance with knowledge. (10:2)
Christ is the focus point of the law for everyone who believes. (10:4)	Not knowing about God's righteousness and seeking to establish their own. (10:3)
Submits and trusts in God's righteousness, His goodness and work of redemption.	Did not subject themselves to God's righteousness. (10:3)
Righteousness based on faith – not far away in heaven or in death but “the word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart”, the word of faith. (10:6-8)	The man who practices righteousness based on law shall live by (get his life from) that righteousness. (10:5)
If you confess with your mouth – Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart – God filled His death with life, you will be saved. (10:9)	His mouth betrays that he has another master who compels him to try harder. His heart is full of pain and death while trusting conformity to the law.
With the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness and with the mouth he confesses (agrees with God), resulting in salvation. (10:10)	This man attempts to establish (produce) his own righteousness based on law. He believes in himself and confesses his own achievements.
Whoever believes in Him will not be disappointed. (10:11)	He who believes in trying harder and impressing God enough to be saved will be disappointed.
No distinction or discrimination. All who call on Him will be saved and enjoy the abounding riches of their Lord. (10:12, 13)	Believes in segregation and discrimination. God only favors those who keep the law. One must believe and work harder to obey. Faith and self-generated works with help from God.
They hear good news from one who is sent, believe in Jesus and call on Him. (10:14, 15)	They did not heed the good news about God. (10:16)
Faith comes by hearing by the word of Christ. (10:17)	They have heard and know about the good news but did not believe it. (10:18, 19)
A people without special identity as God' chosen ones, who were not openly seeking God found God manifesting Himself to them even though they had not asked for Him. (10:19, 20)	They became jealous of those who were not religious like them, were not even openly looking for God but believed anyway. (10:19, 20)
Accepted God's gracious invitation by responding in faith and trust in His provision for them.	Ignoring God's stretched out hands in their disobedience and obstinance. (10:21)
God has a remnant, a small number of people who individually respond to His call (choice). (11:5)	God has not rejected His chosen people – it is they who have rejected Him. (11:1, 2)
The chosen are so by grace. (11:6)	The chosen are believed to be so on the basis of their works. Works precludes grace. (11:6)
Those who responded to God's choosing through faith in His grace obtained salvation and had their hearts softened. (11:7)	God's chosen people (historically) is seeking salvation but has not obtained it but instead were hardened in their hearts. (11:7)
	God gave them a spirit of stupor, blind eyes and deaf ears. Their table (their group identity) became their prison and trap. Their identity as God's chosen ones became the very problem that caused them to stumble and their liability. (11:8-10)
The failure of the Jews to fulfill their role as God's representatives on earth to attract the world to God, He used that failure to create a new opportunity for the world to come to Him in a different way.	God did not trip them to make them fall. But He utilized their fall to create the opportunity for the rest of the world to become rich in His salvation. (11:11, 12)
They become jealous and realize that God is better and more gracious than they realized. They respond by individually joining others in accepting His grace and believing in salvation. Option one. (11:11-14)	They become jealous and harden their heart even more against God's grace – option two.
The transgression of the Jews against God's Son sent to them becomes riches for the world. Their failure to fulfill their invitation to be God's chosen representatives to the world result in riches for the rest of the people of the world (Gentiles). (11:11, 12)	The transgression and failure of the Jews as a nation caused them to lose the opportunity to represent God as a nation.
As individuals, Jews still have the same options as anyone has to see the truth about God and respond in faith, believing in His provision for salvation. When this happens, it results in even greater riches for everyone else. Their depth of understanding of God's ways empowers them to perceive spiritual things more easily than anyone else when linked with faith in God's salvation. (11:12, 15)	If Jews continue to cling to their identity based on law-keeping and depend on their lineage to the forefathers whom God brought into covenant relationship with Himself, looking to that as their source of salvation, they will be lost.
They found God in His manifestation of Himself to their heart. They obeyed by believing in His provision for them in the life and death of Jesus. They were grafted into the supporting “tree” of God's chosen body and became a partaker of rich root of the olive tree. (10:20 and 11:16, 17)	They stumbled, they transgressed, they failed and they rejected God's plan for them and were broken off as branches from the root of God. (11:12-16)
Holiness comes from connection with the original. The root supports the branch. (11:16-18)	Holiness is believed to come from keeping the law and being descendants of God's chosen people.
Stand by faith. Be afraid of conceit and unbelief. (11:20)	Becoming arrogant toward those who used to be God's chosen but failed to remain as such. Falling into the same conceit and unbelief that because they are now the chosen that they can do God's work. (11:18-21)
God's kindness will continue to you if you continue in His kindness. (11:22)	God's severity to those who rejected Him and fell in unbelief (in His kindness). If you too fail to believe in His kindness you too will be cut off. (11:22)
If Jews do not continue in their unbelief, they will be grafted back into the Olive tree of God. It is very easy and even more natural for them to do that. (11:23, 24)	Becoming wise in your own estimation (conceited and unbelieving in the kindness of God). (11:25)
Individually, Jews can be God's chosen ones just like anyone else can if they allow God's kindness to soften their hearts.	A partial hardening has happened to Israel. (11:25)
A Mystery – All Israel will be saved. (11:25-29, see 9:6-8)	All Jews will be saved because they are biological descendants of Abraham. (Remember, all the descendants of Ishmael and all the other later children of Abraham are his descendants also.)
From the standpoint of God's covenant relationship with the founder's of the Israelites, He still views them as beloved. He never changes His mind about His gifts and calling. (He never rejected them anyway, they rejected Him and His plan for them as a nation.) (11:28, 29)	From the standpoint of the gospel, the Jews are the enemies of everyone else who is being saved. (11:28)
You who were once disobedient to God have been shown mercy because of their disobedience (changing the makeup of what now constitutes Israel). Because of the mercy shown to you (creating a new way to become a chosen person by God) they also may now be shown mercy.(11:30, 31)	If Jews or non-Jews are disobedient to God by not believing in His kindness and allowing Him to soften their hearts, they cannot be included as God's chosen ones.
God has created a new definition for being an Israelite – it is all those who believe in His kindness and accept His mercy. They respond by confessing Him as Lord of their lives, believe with their heart in the life-giving power of God to heal and restore them, and live in a life-receiving relationship with Jesus. (11:32-36)	God is somehow in the end going to force all Jews to be saved, whether they willingly believe in His kindness and mercy or not, thus overriding their freedom of will. He will do this because He is trapped in His covenant promises to their forefathers. This is the view of much of the evangelical Christian world today.

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Heart-healing Jealousy

Inasmuch then as I am an apostle of Gentiles, I magnify my ministry, if somehow I might move to jealousy my fellow countrymen and save some of them. (Romans 11:13-14)

Just exactly how could one go about making a Jew jealous? What beliefs would be lodged in the heart of a Jew that would trigger feelings of jealousy? And what benefit does Paul think would be reaped by attempting to make them jealous? Why would he want to make them jealous anyway?

The Greek word which is translated “jealousy” is defined this way: to stimulate alongside, i.e. excite to rivalry: – provoke to emulation (jealousy). For me that is a little confusing compared to what I usually assume is involved in jealousy. The excite to rivalry part is plain enough but the emulation is a little confusing. Maybe I am not familiar with this word because it is used so seldom. So I looked it up online in the dictionary and found that it has to do not only with trying to be like someone else but with strong tendencies toward a spirit of rivalry, competition and wanting to be even better than the one being competed with.

So now I can see how jealousy would fit in here, at least to some extent. But it still remains to explore why the Jews would be jealous in the first place. If the Jews really believed that they were the only chosen people of God and the only ones who could be saved, then why would it bother them at all if someone else should come along and claim that Gentiles were being saved? It might run counter to what the Jews claimed, but so what? If it was really true that only Jews could be saved it seems like it should make no difference what anyone else might say.

But it did make a great deal of difference, and that betrays that there was something much deeper than factual truth going on in their minds. For the only reason that would cause them to become so stirred up when other people claimed to be enjoying salvation and the favor of God that the Jews claimed was their exclusive domain, is if they secretly believed it might be true even if they denied it vehemently. Another reason would be if they put great importance on external identity and what others thought about their profession of being God's only chosen people. In that case, they were more interested in what others believed about their claims than they were in resting in the reality of truth. For if it was really true that no one else could be saved but good, upright Jews, then why bother about anyone else claiming otherwise? No amount of claiming would change what is already an established fact of reality.

But it is very clear that indeed the Jews did become very jealous and as a result created a great deal of persecution for those who disagreed with their view of theology. But what is interesting here is that Paul says that he wanted to provoke them to jealousy in order that at least some of them might be saved along with the Gentiles who were being saved. That means that jealousy was not everything needed to motivate a Jew to accept the truth about salvation, but it might possibly be one motivation that would impel some of them in that direction. That also means that there had to be other factors involved as well that would determine whether a jealous Jew might decide to take a more serious look at this new view of God or would turn into a raging persecutor attempting to justify and defend tradition much like Paul himself had once done quite effectively.

That brings up another very interesting thought. I believe that Paul here may be harking back to what may have been going on in his own heart in the months and years before his own conversion. What were his real feelings at the heart level when he observed the joy and confidence and peace that Christians had in the face of intimidation, threats and personal violence that he himself had perpetrated on them? Some of these Christians were even praying for his conversion and showing him selfless love in the face of all his violence against them. Outwardly it turned him into an even greater fury of rage that seemed to motivate him to even more violence and wrath in defense of the Jewish system of belief. But it is a fact that increasing violence and anger are usually a cover-up for a deepening conviction and an intense heart-based pain that is being suppressed on the inside.

I believe that Paul was painfully aware of the motivating ability of jealousy to prod a person toward finally submitting to the love of God by his own personal experience. His conscience had been increasingly goading him and torturing him during the years he had been fiercely opposing Christianity. That is made very clear in the words of Jesus when he was confronted on the road to Damascus. Jesus said, “Why are you kicking against the goads?” Jesus was simply tapping into what was already going on in Paul's heart and exposing the pain and lies that were driving his insane obsession to violently stop the spread of Christianity. There was a gnawing suspicion growing inside his own heart that maybe his approach was not working, but he was trying to suppress this feeling by increasingly turning up the focus on the externals to mask the secret jealousy that he was feeling toward Christians.

In Saul's own heart (Paul's name before his conversion) he felt the intense craving and emptiness from his own need for the very peace and joy that he was observing in those he was attacking. He could not achieve those results from perfect performance of religion although he was better than everyone else in that arena. He had desperately tried every trick, formula and requirement that anyone could propose that would bring about peace with God and produce righteousness. He had jumped through all the hoops and had earned all the admiration that human knowledge and performance could produce outwardly in the realm of religion. He had kept all the rules and obeyed God to the best of human ability according to the religious system around him and yet his heart felt more empty than ever. Why didn't God reward his compliance and conformity with approbation and approval? Why didn't God keep His end of this bargain? Why did Saul seem so perfect on the outside and so excruciatingly empty on the inside? His jealousy of these despicable Christians was secretly unavoidable but embarrassing. He could never admit to anyone the secret cravings that his treasonist heart was producing inside of him. We was appalled that these feelings were even inside of him, much worse the growing intensity that they had. But he could not escape them even though he tried with all his might by focusing on his external activities of piety and resistance.

When Jesus came to see him on the road to Damascus, He was not introducing new things to Saul so much as He was simply affirming the culmination of the intense battle that had been raging between Saul's heart and his head. He had tried possibly harder than anyone had ever tried to achieve salvation through left-brain effort but could not shake off the contradictory emotions in his heart. His conscience and suppressed emotions and secret desires had been inflamed and repeatedly stirred up by the humility, peace and love that he saw in the lives of those he was daily crushing and violently abusing. Every day his heart tormented him more with his own guilt and all the religious performance in the world was having no effect at diminishing that pain. When Jesus showed up it was simply a matter of confirming to Saul what he already was painfully aware of but could not bring himself to admit. He needed peace and forgiveness and a heart-connection with a loving God far more than he needed the approval of men. But his left brain was so entrenched in logic and systematic theology that he was trapped in the prison of religion. He needed someone to unlock his heart and break the bars of left brain logic and conclusions so his heart could be released to begin to really live.

Jesus provided that opportunity by revealing Himself to Saul at the heart level and confirming the desperate feelings emanating from Saul's own heart. He simply affirmed that it was the suppressed messages swirling around in Saul's heart that clamored to be acknowledged that were more reliable for guiding him to connect with God than all the religious formulas, doctrines and intellectual truth that filled his left brain. This is why Saul knew instantly what Jesus was talking about when Jesus began speaking to him. It was resonating with what he had been hearing for years from his own heart but had desperately been trying to ignore and suppress and deny. Heart had been exposed by heart, and Saul stepped into the road of freedom, the freedom that comes by living from the heart instead of the head.

Because Paul was so intensely aware of the role of jealousy in his own conversion experience, he is here explaining that he tried to use it in hopes that others, like him, might also come to recognize the futility of their religious activities and belief systems to satisfy the emptiness of their hearts. If they could see more and more the peace and joy experienced by others, especially Gentiles who supposedly were impossible to save, then maybe they too, like Paul himself had done, might cross over from head-living to heart-living and through the motivation of jealousy enter into a vibrant, vital connection with the heart of the Father.

Does this have any application today? If anyone is aware at all of the desires of their own heart beneath all the denial and suppression, I believe they will recognize the pattern here. God is calling everyone into a heart-based spirituality that goes far deeper than any external-oriented, performance-based religion can ever touch. Words cannot describe effectively how this comes about, but the Spirit of God is waiting and eager to introduce each person to their own heart as well as the healing presence of the heart of God. I am trying to shift more and more into this mode of living and thinking to learn how to live from the heart Jesus gave me. I am not very proficient at it yet but I am in training. What would you like to do?

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The Two Great W's

As I was reading about the Second Coming of Jesus this morning, something grabbed my attention and I realized that one of the stark contrasts between the saved and the lost not only revolves around their perception of Jesus and the character of God, but that those opposing perceptions both start with W. This is spelled out clearly in the book of Revelation as well as all throughout the Bible.

The main result of sanctification, the transformational work in the heart that takes place in the people who accept the gift of salvation (restoration to their original function and design) is that they come to realize with all their heart, soul, spirit and mind the immense, immeasurable WORTH of the character and beauty of God as revealed through His Son Jesus our Savior. Repeatedly throughout Revelation we find song after song of praise by the people of God and the inhabitants of heaven praising the worth of the Lamb of God.

In complete contrast to this overwhelming sense of worth and adoration that has taken full possession of the minds and hearts of those who are saved is the reaction of those who have clung to the lies about God perpetrated by His enemies. It is seen most clearly in its absurdity, but with all the terrifying resultant effects on their psyche when they see the very same Lamb of God that is adored by angels and those who love Him appearing in person to embrace all who are willing to accept Him as their Lord and Savior. And they said to the mountains and to the rocks, "Fall on us and hide us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne, and from the WRATH of the Lamb; for the great day of their wrath has come, and who is able to stand?" (Revelation 6:16-17)

This, I believe, is the single most important indicator that can be used to discover which side we will be found on in that day. Albeit all of us are coming from a position of fear with so many lies embedded in our hearts about how God feels about us, but each one of us has a choice as to whether we will continue to harbor these lies or whether we will allow God to replace them with the glorious, genuine truth about Him, the reality that God is not someone to be afraid of but someone who wants very much to be our most intimate friend, companion and protector. He desires everyone to enter into a covenant relationship with Him so that He can transform them by the renewing of their mind as they choose to cooperate with Him.

So how do we know if we have the genuine truth? Do we check our church manual and see if all our doctrines can be proved from the Bible? Do we look to see if our church service is exciting and makes us feel close to God with all kinds of wonderful warm feelings? Do we rely on religious authorities or experts to figure out for us and relay to us what to believe about God? Are we willing to bank on these resources to be our surety and guarantee that we will live with God and the angels for all eternity?

I do believe that God has revealed His truth to humanity by means of His Word, the Holy Bible. And even though it has a lot of cloudiness and potential for confusion, it is a reliable resource for us to discover the real truth about God and how He really feels about us if we are willing to maintain an open mind and heart and are careful to ask God directly to guide our minds as we expose ourself to its pages. Much error is supported by stringing many texts together, but God is faithful to guide us into all truth if we will employ the gift He has promised all of us of the Holy Spirit who is fully committed to drawing us not just into all intellectual truth but more importantly into a heart relationship of experiential truth. It is what we believe at the heart level that ultimately determines our relationship with God much more than our intellectual knowledge, as important as that may be.

And I think the single, most easily identifiable indicator of authentic truth that we have experientially is our feelings about God's passion toward us. When we are confronted with the intensity and purity of God's face and character and His overwhelming passion to love us unconditionally, do we feel fear or do we feel a welling up of appreciation and gratitude? When confronted with the real truth about God's wrath not having the characteristics of our wrath but as a strange and somewhat unfamiliar intense love that is full of fire in its intensity, do we feel a resistance to be swallowed up in its heat? Do we feel a desire to argue with those who believe in God's nature of pure love without any recrimination or intent to destroy? Do we promote a mixture of fear (as in afraid) of God along with a “balancing” amount of love? Do we insist that someday God is going to run out of patience and will lash out against His enemies in anger and personally vent violence upon them in a fit of anger until His wrath is appeased?

If we insist on clinging to these false concepts of God in our hearts and minds, not only will we perceive that kind of God when we see wrath in that face of the real Lamb of God but our lives now will reflect the diabolical results of mixing truth and lies about God. We will exhibit the instability inherent in double-mindedness (James 1:8). The way we treat those who disagree with us, who are different than we are or who refuse to accept our views of God are reflective of how we believe God treats those who resist His will. This has been demonstrated all too often throughout history as can be clearly evidenced by the way religious authorities tortured and burned alive those who disagreed with them for hundreds of years during the Dark Ages.

To the very degree that we believe in the Wrath of God as perceived from a human understanding of wrath, we will fall short of being able to appreciate the Worth of God as demonstrated in the offering of His Son on Calvary. If we believe in a wrathful God, then when we look at Calvary we will be confused and believe that Jesus' death was a prime example of the violence and irrationality of God's wrath, though we will struggle to rationalize it into some form of intellectual sense. We will think that Jesus was somehow killed to appease the anger of an offended Deity and some will further believe that Jesus is still pleading our cases before the Father to placate Him enough to allow us to be saved while we work diligently to eliminate sin from our lives. All of this thinking fills our minds and hearts with the very concepts of God that cause those described in Revelation 6 to see the Lamb as full of wrath. It also precludes our hearts from seeing the real worth of the Lamb, for the real worth of the Lamb is not that of appeasement placating an angry God but is found in the intense passion reverberating from the very heart of God revealed through Jesus to love and redeem every sinner who is willing to believe in His mercy and the truth about His love.

As I look into my own heart I see a mixture of perceptions about God sort of like oil and water swirling around in my heart, a confusing mix of wrath and worth. As every human, I start out with a great deal of fear about God and misconceptions about His wrath that causes those misconceptions to be reflected in the attitudes of my own heart. Growing up with a great deal of anger that is not yet completely resolved, I cannot help but have a gnawing uneasiness about meeting the Son of God face to face in His glory. Fortunately Jesus has delayed His coming so that I can have time to be transformed from a slave of wrath to a son who has learned with my heart to value the real worth of His passion for me. It is a long, slow and frustrating process of transformation, but I am relying on His faithfulness to finish what He has started in me.

I want the power of the Holy Spirit to replace all of the wrath that still resides in me with a sense of the worth that Jesus feels when He looks at me and thinks about me. The more I sense my own worth in the eyes and heart of Jesus the less wrath I feel inside of me. And the more truth about God that I learn, especially the truth about His passion that has been misnamed “wrath”, the more I feel an upwelling of appreciation for His worth. The cesspool water of lies in my heart is slowly being displaced by the healing oil of the Holy Spirit, the oil of joy. The more worth that I see in the beauty of God the more eager I am to embrace the day of His appearing and welcome the Lamb of glory.

So I believe that the real choice that each of us has to make about God is to settle in our hearts and minds whether God is a God of wrath or is he a God of worth. I don't think there is a mixture of the two, despite all the protests of many religionists. There is growing evidence that makes it very clear to me that we have seriously maligned God's reputation for centuries by insisting that His passion is reflective of human wrath with all the implications of vengeance, arbitrary in nature and intimidating by design. God is not interested in service for Him motivated from fear but only from love. God never employs force in His kingdom but only operates in love. When we come to fully understand and appreciate these foundational truths, then we will swell with appreciation and give glory to God for the real worth and the superiority of love over force, of mercy over legalism, of everlasting lovingkindness over evil. As I am filled with appreciation of the real worth of the Lamb, my own life begins to reflect the same characteristics, for by beholding I become changed.

Father, I give you unlimited permission to continue the work you started in me to its full completion. Transform me from a hurting boy full of anger and wrath and fear to a loving son full of value and with a heart brimming over with appreciation of your real worth. Give me the eyes and heart of Jesus to see my own family members and the real worth that you see in them. Fill me with your grace and love and spirit of selfless service. Remove the lies about you that still poison my heart and cause me to be afraid of you and cause others to be afraid of me. Do a thorough heart-transplant in me and fill me with your Spirit so that I will resonate with the feelings of your heart. Open my eyes to see your real worth so that I can sing with full enthusiasm the songs Moses and the Lamb – "Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing."

Heart Gospel

"Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved." But how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him? And how are they to proclaim him unless they are sent? As it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!" (Romans 10:13-15 NRSV)

With the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation. (Romans 10:10)

I see here another strong indicator of the need for anyone trying to share the gospel with others to be actively living with their own heart open before God, not just focused on giving out information. First of all, I think it is extremely important that they comprehend the true heart-nature of the gospel message and are actively engaged in the work of transformation in their own heart. This is not something that can be substituted in any way with more head knowledge or even being able to say all the right words and believe the right facts about the importance of the heart. It has to be a work that makes their own heart open, honest and the motivator of their own life in submission to the Holy Spirit. They need to be aware of the kind of spirit that is in them at all times and need to know how to do heart work with other people.

Jesus is the perfect example of a heart worker. He was always very careful to pay much more attention to the signals of people's hearts than He was listening to their words. He always worked with the utmost gentleness and unselfish love and was not focused on spreading doctrinal truth as much as enticing hearts into a trusting, loving relationship by revealing a new picture of God. Most evangelism today is focused on presenting facts and trying to push people into changing their intellectual beliefs about certain doctrines. Others focus on having an emotional high in a church environment and then draw people into coming back to repeatably receive an emotional fix several times a week. But none of these constitute the real gospel that Jesus came to announce.

Paul is making it more clear here that the gospel is an issue that is primarily dealing with heart problems and must be always focused on the heart more than the intellect alone. But for people with hurting, broken hearts that do not know the truth about how God really feels about them, there needs to come a revelation at the heart level of the real God that can be trusted to respect, care for and heal their heart. When they realize that such a God really exists and is not the angry God that has been foisted on them in the past; that God is not like their dysfunctional parents or religious leaders or anyone else who has used and abused them, then they will be more in a position to respond with real faith.

Paul says here that there is a sequence that has to take place. For a person's heart to respond to a loving Father and give Him permission to launch His remedial work in their life by calling on Him, they have to first grasp a sense of the trustworthiness of that God before they can invite Him into their heart and believe that He has their best interest in mind. For them to be able to come to that place of heart-understanding and belief they must hear about this trustworthy God, especially at the heart level which is where their belief must originate to be effective. For them to hear the real truth about this loving, empowering, healing God there must be a person who not only knows this truth but must convey it in such a way as to reach the hearts of people more than just conveying information to their minds. And for such a presenter to be able to live from his heart and be able to be effective without losing perspective or becoming burned out, that person must be connected very intimately at the heart level with a group of “senders” who not only hold that person accountable to stay open at the heart level but are there for the “preacher” of good heart news to support, encourage and inspire as well as share the heartaches and pain that will inevitably be a part of that person's ministry. They will be there as a reliable support team to minister to his heart and keep his heart open and on track in his own healing journey.

But not all have obeyed the good news; for Isaiah says, "Lord, who has believed our message?" So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ. (Romans 10:16-17 NRSV)

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Safe to Save

"Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved." (Romans 10:13 NRSV)

I would like to address a little more the false idea that if someone just says some words, even with strong emotion, that they confess Jesus as Lord of their life and call upon His name that somehow God has now been obligated to “save” them no matter what choices they make after that point. That is completely contradictory to God's respect for their freedom of choice.

A person has the right to choose to be lost after they have called upon the name of the Lord and have been saved. Because being saved is not so much about going to heaven as it is entering the process of healing and restoration that God wants to effect in our lives. If a person decides that that process is too painful and they are unwilling to learn endurance through the testing of their faith (James 1:2-4), they are free to withdraw from that process and go a different direction with their life. God will do everything possible to attract them back to Himself but He will not employ force to coerce them into compliance with His will. He will also not endanger the purity of heaven by taking them into paradise where their unwillingness to cooperate will reinfect the universe with the poison of sin.

Some people believe that at the moment we are taken to heaven that God does something miraculous in our brain that will cause us to suddenly not desire to sin anymore. Some believe that sin in our heart would go away if there were no more outside stimulus to cause our sinful reactions so if we can just somehow get into heaven then we will no longer have a sin problem.

But this kind of thinking misses a great deal of understanding of what sin really is and how our own minds and hearts operate. The first belief embraces a view of God who is willing to violate our free choice in favor of ending the problem of sin. But violating anyone's freedom to choose is to rob them of the ability to truly love. And God simply is not going to settle for imitation love. If He was willing to do that He could have ended this whole experiment long ago. He will only receive into His dwelling those who have freely chosen to give themselves totally into His heart of love and be molded into His image by any means necessary short of violating their will.

The second belief falls into the trap of thinking that most, if not all of our problems are simply a result of others or outside circumstances and we are not responsible for our own reactions. That is denial, failing to take ownership of our own stuff. And placing us into a perfect environment will not cure the deceitfulness and sin of our own heart. The sin problem is a lot deeper that others causing us to react negatively. But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death. (James 1:14-15) Sin at its root is really selfishness.

When a person “calls upon the name of the Lord” in a public or even private setting without a corresponding, deep heart change inspired by a new perception of God at the heart level, then we cannot expect God to force us into the process of salvation. For it is with our heart that we must believe, much more than with out intellect. Our intellect must cooperate with this process, but it cannot preempt it or replace the transformation that must take place in the heart.

God desires only service motivated by love. And for love to be genuine it must be totally free and uncoerced. Freedom means that I am always free to not love, or else love is not really love. Only those who are willing to be transformed by the renewing of their mind into the image of God will be safe to save in God's kingdom. Our love for God must always be based on the natural response to perceiving His intense love for us. And this must be perceived with the heart, for it is the heart that knows how to really love with passion and satisfaction. By beholding we become changed.

And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. (2 Corinthians 3:18 NIV)

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