Well… ok, one post on Ecclesiastes.

What a marvelous train wreck of a Bible book! I don’t mean that in a derogatory way, but in a worshipful one. It is this way because it takes my life, and the things that I naturally and normally value, and it one by one rips them away from my grasping fingers.

Pleasure? Fleeting. Wisdom? Huh. Like it matters. Achievement? You’ll be forgotten, and soon. Time? Justice? Can’t control either one. Merit? Worth nothing. Riches? Rusting, and you’re a pauper anyway. Death? Certain and without escape, no matter how ‘good’ you’ve been. Fool? Yes, that’s you.

When I act in a certain way in order to get longer life, or reward outside of the deed itself… my self-righteousness is exposed, and my actions worthless.

Despair would rule supreme in this world of absurd meaninglessness… were it not for the reality of an outside meaning, an outside rescuer, a kingdom that was not this world.

“Who will save me from this body of death? Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

Thank you, Lord, for giving us this wise book that shatters our little dreams, to drive us to more in you. Thank you that Jesus is our everything, and that you love us even though we fill our lives with self-righteous striving. Forgive us, Father, and help us to grow up in Jesus Christ.

The heart of the Christian is a new heart, made that way by the Holy Spirit in union with Jesus Christ. Our lives are now about a response to that incredible grace that has spilled over onto our lives. That relationship births joy and freedom.

The reason that it births joy and freedom are not because joy and freedom are a duty, just as the way our relationship with Christ births good works are not because good works are a duty. The Christian life is internal heart change rather than conformity to a code; therefore our activities reflect this intrinsic motivation rather than extrinsic reward.

Another way to say this is that there can be disobedient obedience. Jesus teaches this in Matthew 22. The king gives a wedding feast for his son (Hmm… who might that be?!)… and those invited wouldn’t come (or worse), so he had his servants invite all they could find.

Here’s what happened (Matthew 22:10-14):

10 And those servants went out into the roads and gathered all whom they found, both bad and good. So the wedding hall was filled with guests.
11 “But when the king came in to look at the guests, he saw there a man who had no wedding garment. 12 And he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment?’ And he was speechless. 13 Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot and cast him into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ 14 For many are called, but few are chosen.”

A couple of key observations: first, the bad and the good came. They all obeyed in an external sense. Second, the man singled out for destruction is not identified as ‘the bad;’ rather, he is singled out because he had no wedding garment.

This is not the lack of a tuxedo. You didn’t have to have an expensive garment on to celebrate a wedding. What you had to have was something celebratory… ribbon or flowers or something that reflected you were celebrating.

The king kicked out the one who didn’t have an intrinsic response to the wedding. Obedience without heart, if you will.

This is more important to Christianity than we often think. We are constantly bombarded by calls to “do.” And we are motivated often not by an intrinsic response to our relationship with God, but by an extrinsic reward/punishment concept. This is because we misunderstand righteousness – as if it were an external thing, some external behavior, instead of primarily a heart response that is reflected in action.

This is why justification and sanctification are so linked, why both are a daily walk, and both are upheld by our union with Jesus Christ. When I act in a way motivated by what it gets me… that’s self-interest… and it pulls me away from the Gospel.

When I act in a way that responds to what I’ve been given… that’s self-forgetfulness… and it shines forth the Gospel.

Bearing fruit includes… is perhaps primarily… heart motivation, where our bent towards self-orientation instead bends by the wonder of the Spirit to God- and other-orientation. Miraculous for such twisted creatures as we are.

That’s the wonder of the new creation… and the amazing truth that we are in a new kingdom, with a new heart, united to the only Savior.

Rejoice!