The New Kingdom.2

"The kingdom of heaven can be likened to a farmer’s wheat field, planted with good seed. One night, while the farmer slept, his enemy came and sowed darnel weeds among the wheat. When the first blades of wheat finally pushed up through the earth, weeds appeared alongside. 

Seeing this, the servants rushed to the farmer, and with distressed voices wept: “Sir, did not we sow good seed in your field? Why then are there so many darnel weeds?”

The farmer answered: “An enemy has done this.”

“Shall we try to remove them?” the servants asked.

“No,” the farmer replied. “If you pull up the weeds, you will uproot the wheat as well. Let them both grow together until the harvest time; and at the time of the harvest I will instruct the reapers: ‘Gather first the weeds, and bind them into bundles for burning. Then gather the wheat into my storehouse.’”

Here is the lesson: he that sowed the good seed is the Son of Man. The field is the world. The good seed represents the children of the kingdom, while the seeds represent those deceived by the wicked one. The enemy that planted the weeds is the evil one. The harvest is the end of the world, and the reapers are the angels. Just as the darnel weeds were gathered and burned in the fire, so will it be at the end of this age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather everything that has caused humankind to stumble, and those who live lawlessly outside of the kingdom, and will exile them to a place of weeping and regret. Then the righteous will shine as bright as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. If you have ears to hear, then hear these words."

--Jesus

I've written in times past about our attempts at gardening. One thing I've learned is that

the definition of a "weed" is any plant that is growing where you don't want it to!

To help with our ongoing efforts to create and enjoy the beauty of growing things, I downloaded a new app this year during the growing season called "Picture This". Take a picture of a plant you're curious about and, Wallah!, instant information about origins, ease of care, susceptibility to disease, and even whether or not it is considered an "invasive species", i.e., any plant that could quickly proliferate and overwhelm your well ordered, beautiful garden!  

According to Wikipedia, Darnel, Lolium temulentum, usually grows in the same production zones as wheat and was a serious weed of cultivation until modern sorting machinery enabled darnel seeds to be separated efficiently from seed wheat.The similarity between these two byplants is so great that in some regions, darnel is referred to as "false wheat".It bears a close resemblance to wheat until the ear appears.

Jesus considered those represented by the "darnel weeds" as "invasive species"; people He obviously did NOT WANT POPULATING HIS KINGDOM!

The operative prerogative for Kingdom living is:

  Righteousness.

Perhaps there is nothing that causes people to stumble more than the counterfeits to righteousness.

Counterfeits to righteousness are the coin of the realm in the world's moral morass. Even though the basic assumption of righteousness, namely, fair play to your neighbor, is the same goal for the masses of humanity, the way to achieve those ends is often diametrically opposed to God's ways. Here are some examples of counterfeit righteousness:

Imposed Righteousness

Today's mantra (born out of the CCP pandemic): "wear a mask, save a life" resonates with the masses, for who doesn't want to save lives? But it illustrates the fickleness of trying to impose right behavior on people. For if you in anyway oppose the efficacy of mask wearing because 

• 1. the mask wearing rules keep changing, 
• 2. you don't believe people who aren't sick should be treated as if they were; 
• 3. it seems absurd to guard against spreading a disease through "droplets" when you are handling merchandise and money handled by dozens of people around you; 
• 4. you don't believe the lethality of the disease warrants the extreme measures taken to "protect" you,
• 5. You do believe in Nature's God, natural law and self-evident truth, the foundation of freedom and don't want to be part of a giant social science experiment that violates the principles of liberty

then you are branded an insubordinate rebel and reminded you are not an "expert" so your opinion is of little consequence. 

And in case you missed the message: A close friend, refusing to wear a mask in a local grocery store, was escorted out of the store by police! My workplace is threatening write ups and suspensions for improper mask wearing! The consequence of not complying with imposed righteousness is often severe and/or deadly.

Inflated Righteousness

We live in a world where Harvard Law graduate and proven pathological liar, congressman Adam Schiff, rather than being scorned and ridiculed off the national stage, is esteemed and afforded preferential media treatment over his counterpart, Devin Nunes, farmer, congressman and common sense truth teller, when it comes to describing events that expose the deep corruption at the highest levels of government.  The "credentialed", those who deem themselves morally, intellectually, financially and spiritually superior to the common man, due to their wealth, titles and status, not only are given preferential media treatment but live impervious to the law itself, rarely ever being held accountable for the outright brazen hypocrisy of their behavior.

Imputed Righteousness

I encountered one such counterfeit in a facebook exchange with friends.

Friend 1: "I would seriously question if someone is truly saved if they are ok with killing a baby."

Me: "What we believe about Jesus, or even "doctrines", isn't what makes us a Christian. It's our obedience to Him that makes us his followers. A man's faith is demonstrated in what he does not in what he thinks he believes. Obedience isn't perfection in believing correctly about theology, it's about trying to do what He tells you. If we can't trust him to help us get things right, what kind of faith is that?"

Friend 2: "Just be careful that you don't base your, or someone else's, salvation on works and performance and outward "obedience", because being a Christian truly IS about what we believe, not what we do. It's "calling on the name of the Lord and you will be saved". The thief on the cross had no time to obey nor do good works nor to get all of his doctrine right. He only had time to recognize his own sin, to recognize that Jesus was the perfect Son of God who could save him, to repent and to call upon Jesus to remember him when Jesus comes into His kingdom. And Jesus said "today you will be with me in paradise" because he saw the man's faith and trust in Him as his Savior and heard the confession of faith from his mouth. But of course the RESULT of our repentance and faith in Jesus as our Savior should produce obedience and love and all kinds of good works. We just can't take it to the level of judging others and examining their works and obedience and deciding whether they are Christian or not."

Me: "thank you, friend. Paul and James wrestled with both sides of this coin. I think it comes to this: Obedience IS faith. "The one great heresy of the church is that it is always substituting anything but obedience as faith in Christ." George MacDonald. The example you used bolsters my point: wasn't "calling on the name of the Lord" by the penitent thief an act of the purest obedience? Do you think he didn't struggle inwardly with his thoughts like any human being caught in the Holy Spirit's convicting power ("they'll think I'm silly", "who am I to think he'd care?", etc) until his will submitted to the living will of his Creator God and burst out in his soulful, obedient heartcry: 'Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom!'

So rather than focusing on questions like "what do you believe about (fill in the blank_______ abortion, resurrection, atonement, virgin birth, etc) to try to "judge" whether a person is a "true" "Christian"; shouldn't we rather ask this of us all: "what one thing have I done today because Jesus said "do it", or not done because Jesus said, "don't do it"? That is a far better case for "proving" your allegiance, trust and faith than any doctrinal or theological position!"

We've got it quite wrong if we think God is not interested in us becoming truly righteous like Jesus. A common interpretation of 2 Corinthians 5:21 "For he hath made him [to be] sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him", is that in confessing Jesus as Lord and praying to "receive Him into our heart", we lose our own individuality and God only sees Jesus' "righteousness" plastered on our being. Or as MacDonald points out: "That is, that, by a sort of legal fiction, Jesus was treated as what he was not, in order that we might be treated as what we are not."

That's what Friend 2 considers "believing" in Jesus.

The best antidote to the counterfeits of righteousness is:

Indelible, Intrinsic Righteousness

Let's let friend George MacDonald instruct us on the richness of the righteousness that comes to us by faith in Jesus:

"Be sure that the thing that God gives, the righteousness that is of God, is a real thing, and not a contemptible legalism. Pray God I have no righteousness imputed to me. Let me be regarded as the sinner I am; for nothing will serve my need but to be made a righteous man, one that will no more sin.  

What, then, is the righteousness which is of God by faith? It is simply the thing that God wants every man to be, wrought out in him by constant contact with God himself. It is not an attribute either of God or man, but a fact of character in God and in man. It is God's righteousness wrought out in us, so that as he is righteous we too are righteous. It does not consist in obeying this or that law; not even the keeping of every law, so that no hair's-breath did we run counter to none of them, would be righteousness. 

To be righteous is to be such a heart, soul, mind, and will, as, without regard to law, would recoil with horror from the lightest possible breach of any law. It is to be so in love with what is fair and right as to make it impossible for a man to do anything that is less than absolutely righteous. It is not the love of righteousness in the abstract that makes anyone righteous, but such a love of fair play toward everyone with whom we come into contact, that anything less than the fulfilling, with a clear joy, of our divine relation to him or her, is impossible. 

For the righteousness of God goes far beyond mere deeds, and requires of us love and helping mercy as our highest obligation and justice to our fellow men--those of them too who have done nothing for us, those even who have done us wrong. 

Our relations with others, God first and then our neighbor in order and degree, must one day become, as in true nature they are, the gladness of our being; and nothing then will ever appear good for us, that is not in harmony with those blessed relations."

-George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons III, Righteousness. (emphasis added)

That's what I want to be, where I want to live and among those I live with...for eternity!