Math is terrible.
There, I said it. It has all those numbers and symbols and things that make my brain experience sheer panic or absolute silence.
Writing, however, is wonderful and beautiful and lovely.
I once had a debate with my high school math teacher over which was better, writing or mathematics. His argument will always stick with me:
“TJ,” he started, “what is the rule about whether the letter ‘i’ comes before or after ‘e?’”
I gave him the answer we all know.
“What is the rule of two plus two? One of these disciplines deals in constants. One varies,” he said as he dropped the mic and stared at me.
He had a point. He was still completely wrong, but he had a point.
His desire for consistency is one every human embraces. We want to cling to things that will never change because life is always changing.
You can get fired.
You can get depressed.
You can lose a loved one.
Life changes, and not always for the better.
But this is when we as Christians should know and hold tight to objective, eternal realities God has given us. Most of us don’t do this because we don’t even know what our objective realities are, much less how they impact our lives. But objective realities are those things that exist external to our feelings, attitudes or thoughts. They are found in Scripture and they can be a great source of encouragement to us in our darkest days.
You are justified
What do you think God sees when He looks at you? Do you believe He sees your failures and sins? Do you believe He sees a person He created with great potential but who has squandered all of it? Do you think He sees you and just shakes His head?
Take a second and look at the epistles of Paul. For the most part, he is writing to discipline churches. In his letter to the church of Corinth, he chastises them for celebrating a man who is having sex with his father’s wife. How would you see people who celebrate that?
But Paul addresses the letter to “those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints…(1 Corinthians 1:2).
Paul is a smart man and he does not waste the few words he has on false flattery. He calls them “sanctified” and “called to be saints” because those are objective realities of who they are.
You are justified and sanctified in Christ.
When God sees you, He views you through the lens of the horrendous, treacherous, divinely ordained death of His Son. Jesus paid the debt of your sin once, and it nothing can change that fact.
You are loved
But why would God do this? Why would God deliver His perfect, sinless Son to die on your behalf? What merit did you earn? What deed did you perform that would be worthy of such a sacrifice?
Nothing.
God chose to love you, not because of who you are but because of who He is. Love is an attribute of God. “…God is love” (1 John 4:8).
For countless people, myself included, this is one of the hardest truths of God to accept, much less embrace. How could a holy God love a sinner like me? But we must all preach the gospel to ourselves and realize God does not love us because of our sin or in spite of it. God loves because He is God and you can no more diminish His affection than you can dim the brightness of the sun.
You will be glorified
One of the greatest hopes of this life is that it will end. We should not read that fatalistically, but gratefully. This life is hard, but it will end. And after that, we will live in eternity with Christ who is our great treasure.
We will be free of this fallen and broken body. We will have new, resurrected bodies that will worship the Triune God without the barrier of sin separating us.
We will be able to walk with Jesus.
We will know as we are known.
We will have peace that will never end.
These truths, and the many more objective realities found in Scripture, should be things Christians live on daily. These are not just truths to be reminded of on a bad day. They are realities worthy of meditation even on our best days. Let them fill our minds, our hearts, and our lives to drive us deeper into knowing this God who makes these truths realities.
