‘A God who blesses’ by Claire Lynch, 15 September 2024

Are we born broken or blessed? Claire Lynch looks at how teaching about “original sin” developed, and how the Bible tells a different story about God, the nature of life and the original goodness and blessing God gave to his creation, overflowing from his own goodness. Could we have misunderstood this because we’ve been brought up to seek rewards for things we have done well, and ended up believing we need to work our way towards perfection? What difference could it make for us to believe that God already loves, blesses and sticks with us, no matter what?

Transcript

Good morning

So today, I’m going to be continuing the series on ‘’What is God like? I’ve been doing this series for quite a while now, and that’s because this subject is vast and understanding what God is like, is crucial for life. How we understand God, what we believe his character and nature to be underpins absolutely everything - the way we relate to God, how we see ourselves, and how we relate to each other and our world.

Sometimes our understanding of who God is brings us closer to Him, helps us to connect to Him and to others but sometimes, our misunderstandings can cause us to disconnect from God, others and even ourselves. God is passionate about us understanding who he is, otherwise he wouldn’t have gone to the extent that he did, in being born as a human, living life on earth and eventually being crucified for it. It’s incredible. And the more I discover, the more I get blown away, and it’s why I’ll never tire of this subject!

But sometimes to grasp who God is and what he is like, it requires us to take a fresh look, sometimes we need to unpick a few of our tightly sewn up ideas, sometimes we need rethink through what other people have told us. This can sometimes feel a little scary but ultimately, when we do this, the Bible says that when we seek God with all our heart, we find him. I think God loves our questioning and our searching, and our desire to know him more - and as we do, he reveals himself to us and draws us closer.

So we’ve looked at a number of different topics in this series like why does God let bad things happen, is God angry with me, why did Jesus die, what about hell…. But today, I want us to explore God, as the God who blesses!

Now, on the surface, for some of us, this might not seem a tricky concept to get our heads around.

But I remember being at a Vineyard leaders conference a number of years ago, where Danielle Strickland was speaking. She's a well known and respected author and speaker and she was speaking at one of the main sessions with probably about a 1000 pastors and leaders in the room. And she began by asking, who here is wanting more of God? And of course, everyone being good Christians replied with the obvious response of a resounding “yes! We want more of God” and then she retorted with “you greedy bastards!”.

It was shocking! A little bit like it is now, that I’ve just said that, although she said it with a bit more gusto. Now she wasn’t trying to be offensive, she was trying to make a point - and one she made well I think, because I’ll never forget it!

She said, “don’t you realise, you are already blessed. God has blessed you with every spiritual blessing in Christ!” It says it in Ephesians 1.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. (Ephesians 1:3-4)

“You think you want more, but you don’t realise, you already have all you could possibly need and more!”

How often do we say - “God please be with me today.” And God says, “I said I would never leave you, you don’t need to ask me that.” Or we say, “God please speak to me”, and he says, “I’m already speaking, maybe you need help listening.” Or we say, “God please guide me”, and he says, “I’ve already put my Spirit within you, he is your inbuilt guide.”

Now, when we talk about every spiritual blessing, I’m not advocating here a prosperity gospel where we name it and claim it! We live in the now and the not yet of the kingdom - sometimes we experience the fullness of God’s Kingdom and sometimes we don’t yet - it’s a mystery. But overarching all of that, amongst the ups and downs of normal human life - scripture says that we are blessed. God gives us everything we need, even if that is patience in the waiting, or comfort in the pain. We are blessed.

But I don’t think we always get it. We live as if we are lacking. We live as if we need more from God, when scripture shows us that God has not held himself back from us!

And that is what I want us to explore today - A God who blesses! Because when we really get this, it changes everything about the way we live our life.

So to begin with, let’s take a look at why it’s not always easy to believe we are blessed. Why we don’t rest in that blessing.

And I want to suggest 2 reasons for this.

Firstly, I think it’s because we mistake blessing for reward. We think this is about us and we forget this is about God. God blesses, because that’s who he is!

We live in a world where from a very early age, we are encouraged to accomplish, to do well, to achieve.

Right from “well done you’ve done a wee on the potty, here have a chocolate button!” - all the way through to school with exams and competitions, sports achievements, music grades, driving tests, and careers and promotions and so on. And of course this is all brilliant, we should flourish and blossom and reach our full potential.

But the problem is, that we can adopt a narrative of performance based acceptance. That we believe our acceptance and love from others is based on what we do.

And of course, we think the same of God too. That our behaviour, what we do or don’t do, determines how God feels about us. God loves and blesses us when we do things that please him and God becomes distant or withholds his blessing when we don’t.

But blessing is different from reward, this is not about us, blessing is not determined by what we do. God blesses, because of who he is, it’s in his nature to do so.

And the second reason, I want to suggest we might struggle to live as if we are blessed - is because we misunderstand our core identity, we think we are something we are not.

One thing that has been unhelpful in this, is something called the doctrine of original sin you may have heard of this or some aspect of this if you have been around Christian circles for a while. So let’s take a look at this.

Original sin

The doctrine of original sin is based on the story in Genesis, the first book in the Bible, of Adam and Eve and the forbidden fruit.

So if you’re not familiar with this story, after God has completed creation, he places Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and said they were free to eat from any tree in the garden, but they must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and if they do, they would certainly die.

But then Eve was tricked by the serpent into eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. She gave some of the fruit to Adam and he ate it too.

As a consequence Adam and Eve realised they were naked and hid from God in their shame.

God then came looking for them and because they had disobeyed God, God banishes them from the Garden of Eden for ever, without access to the tree of life where they are therefore destined to die. This event is commonly known as The Fall - that’s the chapter heading that’s been added into the passage, by Bible translators.

The apostle Paul in the New Testament refers to this story when he writes in Romans 5:12 “Sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned”.

Now, sometime later, around 400AD, St Augustine (who was the Bishop of Hippo, in Northern Africa), amongst others, interpreted what Paul was saying as all subsequent human beings, since Adam and Eve, now share in Adam’s guilt, and this was thought to transmit through the male from generation to generation. (At the time they didn’t know of the female role, of the egg, in reproduction).

So this doctrine, called Original Sin, was formed. Simply put this means that everyone is born sinful, with a built in urge to do bad things and to disobey God.

This is not just a confession that people are not perfect, that we all sin, I don’t think any of us would disagree with that! It’s more than that. The doctrine of original sin argues that when Adam and Eve ate of that fruit, something negatively and permanently shifted in their nature, and that this has been passed to every human being since.

This sin nature is described in a number of different ways across denominations, but the themes are consistent. Probably the most extreme would be the Calvinist’s doctrine which refers to the state of humans as ‘total depravity’ - “that as far as God is concerned we are not able to do anything that pleases Him.” Yikes!

And this doctrine is not just that we have a ‘sin nature’ at our core, it’s also about the condemnation that goes with that fault.

There’s another verse in the Bible which appears to contribute to the doctrine of original sin and that’s Psalm 51:5, “ Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.” This underlies the belief that even before a baby has breathed its first breath, let alone done anything, it is inherently sinful and deserving of condemnation as a sinner.

This doctrine is problematic for a number of reasons:

First of all, according to this way of thinking, from the moment we are born, we are doomed to God’s wrath and judgement.

This doesn’t fit with a belief in a just and fair God. To condemn all humanity simply for “what Adam did” is not just and fair.

And to say we have a sin nature, implies it is unnatural to follow God. That to follow God would require us to go against our basic inclinations to do what God asks of us. And if that is the case, are we really guilty??

This way of thinking flies in the face of personal accountability for our actions and decisions. And for human freewill to be real and our relationship with God authentic, surely we need the actual freedom to chose right or wrong?

And of course, there’s the incredibly damaging impact this doctrine can have on parents and families who have experienced the unimaginable grief of losing a young child.

Original sin implies our very nature is set against God. It places us in a position of distance and opposition to God and it’s no wonder we might struggle to rest in God’s blessing.

It may come as a surprise and even a relief to know that the early Christian Church flourished for 4 hundred years without any concept of original sin at all. If we look at the Apostles Creed and the Nicene creed which, agreed by the early Church, is a summary of the beliefs that Christians held - nothing in them points to a belief in an inborn fallen state of humanity.

Christianity has never held this doctrine universally - the Eastern branches of the the Christian church - the Eastern Orthodox and Greek Orthodox have never accepted it. And this has never been a Jewish belief either. Jesus was not raised with our notion of original sin and his disciples wouldn’t have been either, and neither the apostle Paul!

To quote Danielle Shroyer, who wrote the book Original Blessing, which I’ve used as a source for this talk and would recommend to you, Danielle says:

“Original sin is the red sock in our theological laundry - it has the potential to discolour everything” - and it so often does!

The story of Adam and Eve and the forbidden fruit occurs in Chapter 3 of Genesis and is not the point from which God’s relationship with humans begins. Too often, an explanation of the gospel starts the story with original sin, when actually the story begins earlier, with something called original goodness.

Original Goodness

So let’s take a fresh look at the beginning of Genesis.

Genesis Chapters 1 and 2 are two separate accounts of the creation story. And it’s worth reminding ourselves that Genesis is not a scientific text book, written for us in the 21st century as a factual statement of how the world came to be. It’s not even journalistic live reporting. It’s a piece of ancient literature about a story that was passed down by word of mouth through story telling from one generation to the next until at last humans had the means to write it down to preserve the story for future generations.

It’s one creation story among many creation stories at that time in the ancient near East. The point of the story is not how the world was made, which is a question we might naturally be asking in modern society, but why and by whom the world was made.

In all the other Near Eastern tales, the act of creation is a chaotic one, marked by violence and rivalry between the gods. (with the clear inference being that humans are at the whims of the gods.)

In stark contrast, the Genesis creation story is the only creation story that is markedly non violent. Creation is not an act of chaos but harmony. God chooses to make the world with intention. The God in Genesis creates the world in peace, not in conflict. And creation is not the result of destruction but of God’s goodness overflowing.

We see from the very outset in Genesis 1,where on each day of creation God spoke something into being and said it was good. Then on the 6th day, when he’s completed his initial creative work, God looked at the whole package together and declared it to be very good. This is not a declaration of war victory, but a declaration over and over of creations goodness.

God’s blessing

When God spun the world into existence, all of creation was anointed with goodness. God gave his blessing of goodness, before creation had done anything at all.

Now that’s hard for us to understand, because, as I said before, we are so used to goodness being connected to our actions. We say things like, he is a good football player, she is good at her job, that was a good idea, they are good looking.

But goodness is how we began. God doesn’t give life in any other way, everything he creates, is good. God has blessed us with goodness. We are good, only because God made us that way. Our goodness is evidence of God’s blessing. This is how we know we are blessed. Danielle Shroyer refers to this as Original Blessing.

It’s worth just mentioning here, that by goodness, I’m not suggesting we are without sin. Romans 3: 23-24 clearly says:

“for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”

We all have the capacity to sin, and we all do often. We have choice, free will - it’s part of being human. And we all need God’s forgiveness, healing and wholeness from the damaging effects of our sin. But it’s just that sin is not our nature, it’s not our identity, it’s not how we are made. Goodness is.

And when we say goodness, neither do we mean perfect. Genesis never said that creation was perfect. It’s a Greek philosophical ideas influencing Western thought that has led to the Hebrew concept of original goodness being replaced by the concept of original perfection. But perfection is a static state. If something is already perfect, then any change must, by definition, be a bad thing - it will be diminishing that existing perfection. But to rule out change is to rule out learning, growing, developing and maturing.

And the creation account in Genesis does not tell us that learning, growing, developing and maturing (including learning whats right and wrong) is something that God never intended should happen. The question was only ever going to be the pace at which it happened and who was going to teach them.

A more appropriate view of creation would not be perfection but potential. Potential reminds us that goodness is both an origin and a goal. Goodness is given as a gift, but it is also given to us as a calling.

Hebrew verb to bless - Barak

So let’s take a closer look at what God’s blessing actually means.

The verb to bless in Hebrew is Barak and is most frequently used when God blesses humanity or creation. At it’s heart, blessing is an invitation into relationship with God, to abide in Gods’ goodness.

Possibly the most startling contrast between the god’s of the other creation stories and the God in Genesis is that God lives in close relationship to all he has made. This might seem obvious to us, but it would have been a radical reorientation for the first hearers of Genesis. All of creation finds its meaning within it’s relation to God.

The second most common use of the word Barak is with people blessing other people. When we live in relationship with others, we find our hearts turned toward one another in love. We bless each other. We don’t do this outside of the blessing God has given us, but because of it.

The third way the verb Barak is used is in praising God, or calling upon others to praise God. When our hearts overflow with gratefulness, we find ourselves thanking and praising God. We bless God, because of the blessing God has given us first.

So Barak is used in 3 primary ways: God blessing people, people blessing people and people blessing God. Its a beautiful circle of blessing. We see how the relationship God begins with us is meant to send us out in love towards others and also return us back to the heart of God.

The Hebrew Scriptures describe blessing as part of the natural order of things. Blessing isn’t magical or even supernatural. It simply affirms a pre-existing, primary relationship with God.

Perhaps the most well known scriptural blessing comes from Numbers 6:24-26,

“The Lord bless you
    and keep you;

the Lord make his face shine on you
    and be gracious to you;

the Lord turn his face toward you
    and give you peace.”’

This is a blessing, not a request. We don’t have to convince God because God has already decided to be a God of blessing, of grace and of peace.

Instead this blessing causes us to remember the gifts of blessing God has for us and to respond to them. When we are resting in God's blessing, we are recognising that we are kept by God, seen by God and given peace by God.

God sticking with it

In the Genesis creation story, we not only learn that we are created by God and we are good. But also and more fundamentally we are in a relationship with God who never stops blessing, his commitment to us is unwavering.

Whatever we humans do, however much we mess up, we see through the pages of the Bible a God that sticks with us.

Straight after Adam and Eve had eaten the fruit, God came looking for them. God provided them with animal skins to cover their nakedness and shame, that was God sticking with them. The exodus, where God freed the Israelites from slavery, was God sticking with them. The covenant promise was God sticking with them. When the Israelites did their own thing, God sent prophets and judges, that was God sticking with them. Jesus is God sticking with us, Pentecost was God sticking with us. The story begins with God with us and ends with God with us. And everything that happens in between is God with us.

We are in a relationship that God started, and God is sticking with us. That’s the blessing of God.

The distinction between a story that starts with original goodness rather than original sin is important. `Because despite what happened or happens, God continues to see his creation, from the perspective of original goodness. Rather than giving up and starting again, God’s creation is worth sticking with.

God sticks with us, and sometimes we do with him too. Other times we don’t. Sometimes we simply refuse. Sometimes we want to stick with him, and even try, but for whatever reason, we can’t.

We can think of our relationship with a God a bit like a glass of water, either half full, or half empty, maybe over flowing or bone dry. The times when it’s half empty or bone dry, are the times we feel God is distant and we’re outside of his blessing.

But another way to look at it, is to imagine our relationship with God, not as the contents of the glass, but as the glass itself. At least from God’s perspective! God’s relationship to us is never in question. The glass is there regardless and the contents are our response to God. The contents can be cloudy, crystal clear, refreshing or poisonous. Regardless, the glass is still there. It hasn’t shattered, or cracked or begun to leak.

How ever you feel, however you respond to God, God still holds you, still surrounds you.

The thing about God’s blessing is that we are not in control of it. God’s given us freedom to respond to blessing in our own time and own way. We can choose to distance ourselves, dissociate from it, cover it up, bury it, reject it or diminish it. But we can’t stop it.

When Paul said nothing can separate us from the the love of God, not life or death, not height or depth, not things present or things to come, he was speaking of the love that underpins this blessing.

God’s blessing to us is postmarked “Cannot Return to Sender”. We can respond in whatever we want, but we cannot send it back!

Conclusion

I just want us to take a moment to ponder and reflect on what I’ve been saying.

We’re going to put the blessing from Numbers 6:24-26 on the screen now and some background music on. And just take this time, to make space for God and respond to him in whatever way feels natural.

Numbers 6:24-26,

“The Lord bless you
    and keep you;

the Lord make his face shine on you
    and be gracious to you;

the Lord turn his face toward you
    and give you peace.”’

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