One of the most devious, and most damaging, of our enemy's strategies is the concept that we have innate rights. By that I mean we have been led to believe we are owed something by virtue of our very existence.
It is true that we can have humanly-bestowed rights. For example, under the laws of our nation we receive certain protections and certain privileges in exchange for our loyal and compliant citizenship. But these are not innate, and they can be removed from us.
What we have instead, as beings created by God, is a vast array of gifts, beginning with the gift of life. We have also been given such gifts as creativity, the ability to feel joy, assignments that give us a sense of worth, and the wonderful opportunity to experience relationships with other created beings. God has privileged us to live on this beautiful planet, with all the resources it offers for our productivity and pleasure.
The subtle shift in thought--from seeing these things as gifts to seeing them as somehow due to us--can become the source of immense discontent. Because another person has received more of something, there arises a feeling of inequity that robs me of the ability to be grateful for that which I do have.
But even more, I believe it has caused the Christian community to build certain aspects of its battle plan on a wrong foundation. We have joined the secular world in seeking to defend and preserve "human rights," including the "right to life." While this sounds good, and carries weight in many arenas, it misses the far more solid foundation that God Himself established.
The message of Isaiah's wonderful announcement in chapter 61 is that God has stepped into the misery of human existence with the promise of a Savior who will liberate the captives and heal the brokenhearted. He will bring comfort and consolation to those who mourn. He will bring good tidings to the poor.
Then, in verse three, we find an amazing exchange that God offers His people. He is willing to take our ashes in trade for His beauty. He will take our mourning and give us His joy. He will take our "spirit of heaviness," and will reclothe us in His garment of praise.
This, I think, paints a more accurate picture of God's design for human redemption. We are born into the world with a deep desire for God, but because of our sin we inevitably reach toward other impotent sources to supply our needs and longings. These substitute gods cannot satisfy us, and eventually our lives are reduced to heaviness, mourning, and ashes.
Then at some point we hear the proclamation of grace, and by that grace we become able to admit our desperation and to accept His salvation. The divine exchange takes place, and we begin to walk in the life He has purchased for us at the cost of His own blood. This greatest of all gifts requires from us the deepest of all gratitudes. We deserve nothing, but out of the bounty of His goodness He gives us His beauty and His joy.
It is when this process becomes real in our minds and hearts that we begin to realize the true value of life in others. Each unborn child, each beggar on the streets, each broken old person--every being who bears the imprint of the divine image--all are potential recipients of God’s amazing grace. His sacrifice purchased sufficient life for the entirety of creation. The issue is not their right to life. The issue is His right to His creation.
For you see, when the exchange is made and we enter into His redemption, Isaiah tells us that we become "trees of righteousness" which the Lord Himself has planted. We are not "rocks of righteousness," permanently shaped from the start. Rather, we are living, growing beings who grow to display His nature, and eventually to bear His fruit, for the explicit purpose of bringing Him glory.
And a significant part of that glory is our own joyful worship. We tend to see worship as something we give to God, but in fact it is entirely the outflow of His overwhelming generosity toward us. He causes it. He deserves it. He is glorified by it.
I will greatly rejoice in the Lord,
My soul shall be joyful in my God;
For He has clothed me with the garments of salvation,
He has covered me with the robe of righteousness,
As a bridegroom decks himself with ornaments,
And as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.
For as the earth brings forth its bud,
As the garden causes the things that are sown in it to spring forth,
So the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all the nations.
Isaiah 61:10,11
