Nobly Serious

…Whatever is noble… Within the will of God I find a strange dichotomy which plagues the way we think about Him. Here is a Being who accepts the sinner but not the sin; who condemns evil but works in ever increasingly bizarre ways to save those who rebelled and who basically crave just to live forever doing whatever they want when they want. He loves every person who has ever lived with a passion we can’t even fathom. Yet He will destroy those who remain harmful to creation when the time for this age is over. For a long time, I struggled to grasp why a loving God would destroy anything. It seemed out of character until I realized that love desires safety, happiness, wholeness…the list of good things goes on and on. Good is the antithesis to evil. This truth plays out in all our myths, legends and modern stories as well as life itself. God desires the good and hates the evil, therefore if someone continues to practice evil even after He offers them good, what choice does a love have but to eliminate the threat to good? Look at sin as a disease which destroys its host then destroys itself. When an outbreak of some disease strikes a nation or community, those in charge of the cure will give a medicine designed to destroy the disease itself without killing the person or host. The problem is some people are so consumed by the disease that they can’t be cured and die as a result. In the case of small pox or the plague, once these people died, everything that touched them during their illness had to be burned so the disease wouldn’t spread. God knows sin as a disease. We don’t see it that way because to us it just seems normal. Unfortunately, most of us have identified with the disease for so long we don’t see the discoloration of our spirits as abnormal anymore. The only way to recognize the contrast is to be able to see Jesus. Once we look into His perfect light, our dark and smelly reality becomes all too apparent and is abhorrent to us. Unless, of course, we reject what the light reveals. However, the whole of our condition is not revealed in just one look, for if we saw the whole problem sin causes within us all at once, we would be overwhelmed by despair. So Christ gives us a glimpse of the reality first in order to set us on the road to treatment and recovery. A person who refuses to acknowledge the disease and thereby rejects the treatment eventually becomes the disease itself—or a proponent of it at least. Once this stage is reached all hope for redemption or cure is gone and God is left with no other choice but eliminate the threat. In other words, in order to destroy the disease, the host who refuses to relinquish it is destroyed with it. Sin brings with it harsh realities. First, it separates us from the Life (Jesus); next it deceives those fooled by its tantalizing glitter into believing they are the masters of their own fate. Lastly it brings death in numerous ways and death produces futility. Humans have fought this pointlessness by having their name carried on from generation to generation in order not to be forgotten in death. The problem is the reality of their identity is forgotten until all that’s left is myth and legend. God offers eternal life where the legend is the person rather than myths that raise up around their exploits and character. A living legend is better than a myth about the dead. So God has no choice but to eliminate sin if He desires a clean universe without death as an option again. Those who refuse the Way, Truth and Life find by default they have refused to live—probably not by desire but by rejection of the Son who gives life freely to all who ask. And, of course, they hate this truth and resent God for “forcing” such a choice on them as if it’s His fault…which it is. He designed the game and its rules, meaning the outcome also comes from this design as well. So what does this have to do with being noble? I looked up the word translated “noble” in the NIV and “honest” in the KJV. Vine’s p. 309 says the best translation of the word would probably be nobly serious. To call someone “noble” is more often than not a term for character. Of course the word is also used for those born to the ruling class where monarchies still exist, but usually we mean someone who possesses outstanding qualities in character and what they do. Basically the word noble covers all of the traits Paul speaks of in Philippians 4:8. The rest of the list merely expands and explains his first point. Yet, the KJV’s interpretation does place a twist on our understanding when it uses the word honest. In our modern world, honest means something different than noble. The original word came from the Middle English in a mixture of Anglo-French, which in the original Latin form was honestus and first used in the 14th century, meant honor or honorable. Paul is using a Greek word seminos to encourage us to be nobly serious or honorable in our pursuits. The contrast couldn’t be more clear: Those who follow Christ develop a taste for noble pursuits. In other words, they seek things which are honestly honorable. We who follow after Jesus pursue those things which not only honor Him, but reflect His character and by default infect us with His light. We grow to enjoy His company, which infuses us with Himself. If rejection of God is a disease we must choose, then the cure is His presence. No more noble pursuit could be sought after than Jesus in us. We develop a serious desire for all things noble, honest, honorable because of His presence in our hearts.