4 th Sunday of Advent

The Timothy Keller Sermon Archive Fullness of His Grace (Advent)

FULLNESS OF HIS GRACE (ADVENT)

December 17, 1989

John 1:14–18

Our Scripture reading is found in the gospel according to Saint John, the first chapter, and we’re reading from verses 14–18.

14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. 15 John testifies concerning him. He cries out, saying, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’ ” 16 From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another. 17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known.

This is God’s Word

I read you this little quote from the advertising supplement about the original point of Christmas. The shepherds went to Bethlehem because they hoped what was happening there would begin to elevate humankind and make us more truly humane and deserving of one another. Besides the fact that any historian who knew anything about shepherds would be able to immediately laugh about that, we as Christians weep a little bit about it, because we realize the point of Christmas is … Has God come to visit us or not? The shepherds went to Bethlehem because they thought it might be true.

This time of year is the only time you see the word miracle pop up in the media and public print all the time. You have that Christmas movie Miracle on 34th Street. You have people constantly saying things like this … “At Christmas anything is possible.” Even cynics have to get rid of their cynicism for a week or so, or they go into hibernation. “We can’t think small; we have to realize all things are possible.” That’s the kind of language you hear at Christmas.

It’s not wrong. What it is is a memory trace in the collective unconscious of our society. Christmas is about not just miracles in general but the miracle on which all other miracles hang, out of which all other miracles flow, the grand miracle, which is the incarnation. That’s a big word, but it’s easy to realize. It comes from the word carne, carnal, flesh. God in the flesh. That’s the grand miracle.

Here’s the important thing to understand. If Jesus Christ is God come in the flesh, all of Christianity hangs together and all kinds of miracles are possible. If Christmas has no point, if Jesus Christ is not God come in the flesh, and that’s what Christmas is all about, then none of Christianity coheres and there are no miracles possible.

If you consider that the average person likes Jesus … The average person thinks Jesus was a great person. But when you begin to press on them the other articles of the faith, they begin to get nervous. What are some of those articles? For example, Jesus Christ did great deeds and miracles. Not only that, Jesus Christ rose from the dead. Not only that, Jesus Christ died and his death liberates us today, even though we live 2,000 years later and in a completely different world. Jesus Christ was the only way to God. Jesus Christ says, “Worship me.”

When you come to all of those articles of the faith, people’s hands start to get a little bit clammy. What you have to understand is all of those things make perfect sense. All of those issues actually hinge on one issue. That is … Does Christmas have a point? Is Jesus Christ God come in the flesh? If he is, then we’re in this situation. Miracles make perfect sense. They’re logical. Why? Miracles make perfect sense because God, of course, is the one who created nature. The resurrection makes perfect sense because God is the author of life.

Not only that, but even the idea that Jesus’ death can liberate everyone, even now … Because if Jesus was God, then his death is a death that has infinite value, because the infinite God would have infinite value. If Jesus Christ is God (and no other founder of any other major religion even came close to such a claim), if he actually is who he says he is, then of course he’s the supreme way to God.

You see, if Christmas has a point, then all the rest of the articles of Christianity make perfect sense. If Christmas has no point, then nothing else has a point in Christianity. If Christmas is true, then miracles could be flowing into our lives constantly. If Christmas is not true, then there’s no possibility of miracles. They all stand or fall together. They’re all of a piece.

That’s the reason why it’s so critical and important to see what the Bible says about what happened at Christmas. What is this grand miracle? Out of this grand miracle comes all kinds of blessings, it says. You see right here in verses 14–16, verse 16 in particular. It says, “From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another.”

Christmas is like an overflowing cup that you can’t stop. It just keeps coming. Christmas, the grand miracle of the incarnation, of God become flesh, the Word become flesh, is the source of all other blessings. Do you have that? Do you understand that? It’s the center of your life, and then all sorts of things come into your life. “From his fullness we have received grace upon grace, blessing after blessing.”

Let’s just look at this passage, these very important, brief verses, verses 14–18, and just consider, first, what this tremendous first basic miracle is. What is the grand miracle? Then secondly, what kinds of miracles and things flow into our lives from it? What is the miracle and what does the miracle? What the miracle of Christmas is and what the miracle of Christmas does in our lives. That’s what we want to look at. Take a look.

First … What is the miracle? “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the [only begotten of the Father] … full of grace and truth.” First of all, the miracle is that Jesus is really the Word and he was really flesh. It’s not a miracle to say Jesus was the Word, and it’s not a miracle to say Jesus was a man, was flesh, but it’s a miracle to say the Word became flesh.

First of all, John the apostle, who wrote this, used these words here because he wanted to be absolutely sure we understood what he was talking about. He used the word word, the Greek word logos, and he used it carefully. A lot of the Eastern religions, mystery religions, had a view of God that’s very Eastern. God is a life force; therefore it’s possible for people to come along and say, “I am God,” like Buddha or like Krishna.

What they meant by that and what the religions mean by that is God is a life force and some people have such a high degree of God-consciousness that they are avatars, they’re incarnations, in the sense of manifestations of true God. That’s not what John is talking about. Not only that, the Western religions, like the Greek religions and the Roman religions, believed that gods like Zeus and Apollo occasionally got the 7,000-year itch, I suppose, and would fall in love with people on earth.

They would come to earth, they would pair up with somebody, and they would have children who were half men, half gods … Hercules, Achilles, people like that. Therefore, you could say they were gods, and sometimes they were called gods. John is saying, “I don’t mean that either.” Who is the Word? He defines the Word up further in the chapter, up in the very beginning at verse 1 where he says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

Those three little statements, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” completely hem us in as to who Jesus is. We cannot go to any of the other religions to get an idea. First of all, “In the beginning was the Word …” This Word has no beginning. In the beginning the Word already was. No one created the Word, because in the beginning when things were getting created, there already was the Word.

Not only was the Word beginning-less; the Word is a person. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God …” He was a person, a person without a beginning. Then it says the Word was God. It wasn’t a God who was created by the Father, because there was never a time in which he was not. This isn’t a god. This isn’t a person who is like God; this is God, the second person of the Godhead.

John makes it really pointed again when in verses 14 and 15 and in verse 18 he calls Jesus, the Word, the begotten. The word begotten usually means to be born. Some people have read that and said, “Oh, I see. There was this father, and he was God from all eternity, and then at one point in time there was a place in which Jesus Christ who was not suddenly came into existence.” We see from verse 1 that couldn’t be true, could it? Because “In the beginning was the Word …” He always was.

The word begotten cannot mean there was a time in which Jesus was not. The word begotten must be trying to get another point across. What is that? That the Word is made of the same substance, the same nature, the same stuff with the Father. Jesus Christ believed that. This is one of the great problems for people. If Jesus Christ had been like any other founder who had come and said, “I can point you to God,” then somehow all the religions could sort of sit together in a pie and everyone have a piece of the pie, you might say.

But Jesus Christ came and said, “I and the Father are one.” He said, “Before Abraham was, I am.” He took the divine name, which is what Yahweh, Jehovah, translates. The name I Am. He says, “Before Abraham was, I am.” He doesn’t even say, “Before Abraham was, I was.” He says, “Before Abraham was, I am.” He claims self-existence. “I’m a beginning-less person.”

Jesus Christ forgave people all their sins. Do you realize what that means? If one of you punches the other person in the nose, the person who has been punched with a bloody nose can forgive the puncher. The “punchee” can forgive the puncher, right? But if I would come up to the puncher and say, “I forgive you,” the puncher would look at me and say, “Wait a minute! You can’t forgive me. You can only forgive me if I have sinned against you.” Right?

When Jesus Christ went everywhere forgiving people their sins, do you know what he was saying? “All of these sins are against me. No matter what you’ve done, they’re against me, because I’m your Creator. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and nothing was created except through the Word.” Jesus was claiming to be God. He was the Word. He was made of the same stuff as the Father.

One of my great heroes (some of you know this because I keep referring to him) was Athanasius. He was about half my size, almost literally. He was a Christian clergyman who lived back in the earliest centuries of the church, and he saw something come up out of the church, a teaching that said there was a time when Jesus was not, a teaching that said Jesus Christ was a created high being but he was not God.

The one who led that teaching was Arius. Athanasius opposed Arius, and Arius usually was winning for a long time. Athanasius was exiled and beaten and put in prison. He spent all of his life running around fighting Arius over one letter. Do you know what that letter was? Arius said, “Jesus, the Son, is homoiousios with the Father,” which means like substance. Athanasius says, “No, he’s homoousios, the same substance. Get that ‘I’ out of there.”

Athanasius dedicated his life to get the “I” out of the creed, to get the “I” out of the confession. He battled his entire life, and when he died … He spent his entire life, he poured himself out to make sure people knew Jesus Christ was the Word become flesh, that he was God incarnate. The reason he gave his life to that, so that on his gravestone it says, “Athanasius contra mundum,” Athanasius against the world, is he knew this is the grand miracle out of which all other miracles flow.

If this isn’t true, if Jesus isn’t really God, nothing else in the Bible and nothing else in the Christian faith makes sense. It all falls apart. If on the other hand he is, if he’s homoousios, he’s made of the same stuff, he’s the only begotten of the Father, then there is nothing we cannot expect that’s too great. Do you see that? Anything is possible if he’s in our lives, if he is our Leader, if he is our Master, if he is our Friend, if he lives in our hearts.

But that’s not the only part of the grand miracle. It’s not only true that Jesus was God, but it’s also true that he was God made flesh. The apostle John is talking very personally and historically. He says, “We have seen his glory, the glory of the [only begotten of the Father] … full of grace and truth.” He’s talking of something he’d seen. “We have seen him full of grace and truth.”

Did you ever wonder how incredible it was that Jesus got anybody to believe he was God? It’s one thing to go to the Greeks and say, “I’m God,” because the Greeks had a concept of gods … Zeus, Apollo, and people like that … who would come down and have children like Hercules. They might have been able to handle it if a person was particularly good-looking and athletic and could quote the right philosophers. And maybe if Jesus was living in an Eastern country where people had this idea of God being in everyone and he said, “I’m God,” maybe they could have understood that.

But Jesus was a Jew, and he was talking to Jews. Jews had this concept of God: they believed in the God of the Bible. They believed in a God outside the world, a being outside the world, a being of infinite greatness, beginning-less, uncreated, a being of infinite power and glory, to whom the stars are like dust. For a Jew to come along and say, “I am God,” and then to get any Jews to believe him … Worse than that, he didn’t just get Jews to believe him who were distant but people who lived with him day in and day out, his family and hundreds of people.

The fact that he got them to believe this is absolutely incredible and unaccountable unless what? When they looked at him, what did they see? What did John see? They saw perfection. When they looked at him they saw he was full of grace and truth. He hurt their eyes. They saw in him virtues that had never been combined. You have here tenderness without any weakness, strength without any heavy-handedness, humility without any timidity, firm, unbending, unyielding convictions and yet utter approachability, passion without prejudice, power without insensitivity. Never a jarring note when you look at him. Never a false step. Never.

What do you see here? You see the surprises of perfection. He’s always better than you expected. How do you account for that? How did they account for that? They began to scratch their heads, and people kept saying, “Who is this that the winds and the seas obey him? Never man spoke as this man spoke. Who is this?” In the end, they had to come to this incredible conclusion. As incredible as it might seem, any other answer is even more incredible, because it did not account for the facts. “This must be God.”

When you look at the sun without a filter, all you can see (I can hardly look at that light) is sort of a pain and a blur, but if you look at the sun through the filter, you can see all of the flames and all of the details of its beauty and power. What you look at when you look at Jesus Christ is God through the filter of a human nature, and you see things you couldn’t believe. That is what the apostles saw, and that is what John said. He said, “We beheld his glory, full of grace and truth.”

The only way to account for it is, “This is the Word; this is God become flesh.” The only way to account for the fact that all of these Jewish people were convinced is that he was who he was. How did he convince them? He was who he was. As Charles Wesley puts it … Athanasius had a creed, but Charles Wesley, a hymn writer, did a better job of it. He was a poet and a musician. He says …

Our God contracted to a span,

Incomprehensibly made man.

That’s it. Now, that’s very exciting. That’s the miracle. There it is. Now you say, “What difference does it make to me?” John’s answer is, “All the difference in the world.” This is the source of every blessing, every grace upon grace upon grace. Take a look. He says, “From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another.” How many blessings can I pull out of this for us to consider today? I’m just going to give you two.

First, if Jesus Christ is God become flesh, if Christmas has a point, if Christmas is true (and by the way, it’s a little bit hypocritical to celebrate it otherwise, unless you believe the point), then we have the end of the problem of meaning. When John chose the word logos to talk about Jesus, he was making a very important point.

For centuries, the Greek philosophers had argued over the logos. The word logos isn’t too hard for us to get a handle on because it’s the word we get our English word logic from. When the philosophers were trying to find the logos of something, it meant, “What is its rationale? What is its purpose? What is its reason for being?”

For example, just imagine you lived in a culture that knew nothing about the modern household conveniences, and you got a coffeemaker. What would you do? Well, you would say, “I don’t know. What do I do with it? First of all, which end is up?” You’re not sure. You find out when you put it upside down and everything sort of comes apart. So you intuitively realize, “This is the way.”

“Is it a paperweight? Is it a doorstop? Do I mix up lemonade in it? What is it?” What you’re doing when you ask those questions is you’re trying to find the logos. You’re trying to find its rationale, its reason for existence, its purpose. Until you find that, you say, “This is useless to me. It’s a useless, meaningless object.” What the Greek philosophers were trying to do is they were saying, “If we could find the logos of life, then we could be happy and fulfilled. If we knew what things meant. What is the meaning of things?”

So they spent centuries going around trying to figure it out. Around the time Jesus Christ came onto the scene, the Greek philosophers had given up. They had finally decided, “There is no meaning to things. There is no way around.” What they did was they came to that conclusion, and then they broke into a lot of little different, you might call, sub-philosophies. You can see them when you read the book of Acts.

Two of the philosophy parties at the time were the Stoics and the Epicureans. The Stoics said, “There’s no meaning in life, nothing really means anything, so the only thing to do is to really be noble and to be strong and to be controlled and be good people in the face of the nothingness.” The Epicureans said, “Well, that’s true, we agree. There’s no meaning to things. Nothing really means anything. There is no absolute truth. So the best thing to do is to go out and have a good time, have as much fun as you possibly can.”

John comes along and says, “Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. You’ve been looking in the wrong place in your books, in your minds. There is a logos, but the logos is not an abstract principle to be discovered; it’s a Person to be known. Do you see how cataclysmic this claim was, how revolutionary? “The logos is not a principle; it’s a Person to be known and loved and worshiped and enjoyed, and if you have him you have everything.”

Do you think the Stoics and the Epicureans were just for that time? Where do you think we are today? Where do you think we are in New York? The same place, absolutely. In fact, the existentialists … Albert Camus is a Stoic. He says, “Things mean nothing. There’s no absolute truth. There’s no right and wrong. The best thing to do is just to be noble and good in the face of it and go down to a never-ending defeat.”

The movie producers like Ingmar Bergman and Woody Allen are saying the very same things. They’re saying, “There ought to be a God, but the trouble is the world is so unjust and there’s no real meaning in life, so the best thing you can do is suck it in and be good.” In fact, there’s this awful place in Crimes and Misdemeanors where this older Jewish father is saying, “There is a God, and he will punish people. He will punish injustice.” The other people around the table are saying, “Where was God during the Holocaust? There’s too much injustice.”

Finally somebody asks the man, “If you had to choose between God and truth, what would you choose?” The poor man says, “I’ll choose God.” That’s what Woody Allen is trying to say your problem is. Woody Allen is trying to say there is a wall between the real and the ideal. There should be a God, but the problem is the facts are this world is an ugly and evil place. Nothing really means anything. God is silent if he’s there, and there’s this tremendous wall between the ideal and the real.

In fact, that’s what that whole movie is about. “This isn’t a movie,” he keeps saying. “This isn’t a place where happy endings happen. Absolutely not. If you have to choose between God and truth,” Woody Allen says, “I’ll go with the truth.” That’s what it says in Man of La Mancha. Do you remember that musical? There’s a place where the madman who goes around acting like a knight and killing dragons and rescuing damsels and being a chivalrous person …

Somebody sits down with the knight and says, “Listen, sir. You have to get back in touch with reality. There are no knights. There is no chivalry. There is no good and bad like that. This is life. This is facts.” He looks at him and says, “Facts are the enemy of truth. I have seen life as it is. When life itself seems lunatic, who’s to say where madness lies? And maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it ought to be.”

What the Man of La Mancha is saying is there’s this solid, concrete wall between the real and the ideal. The only thing to do if you want to live as if there’s truth, as if there’s beauty, as if there’s a way to triumph, is you have to be a madman. Woody Allen says, “Yeah, there’s that wall right there, and you just have to realize it’s either God or truth.” He says, “I have to live in the real world. I have to be a realist.”

John, the apostle, comes and says, “Listen. There is an ideal world, but at Christmas the ideal became real. Listen to the revolution. God punched a hole between the ideal and the real, punched a hole right through that wall, and the ideal became real. God became flesh. The Word, the Logos, became flesh, a Person we can know and see and touch. Because of that, anyone who believes in him, the power of the ideal, the Spirit of the kingdom of God comes into your life and anything is possible.”

That’s what John is saying. He’s saying that to the Stoics. He’s saying it to the Epicureans. He’s saying it to Woody Allen. He’s saying it to Ingmar Bergman. He’s saying it to Camus. He’s saying it to Don Quixote. He’s saying it to all of them. This is cataclysmic, and it’s the end of the problem of meaning. Because if the ideal has become real, if we can know him personally, then we know what we’re for. We’re for him.

There’s another problem this is the end of. That’s the first blessing: the end of the problem of meaninglessness. Oh, wait a minute. This is getting too abstract, isn’t it? This stuff about logos? Let’s be real honest. Is he your reason for getting up in the morning? Is he the One around whom everything in your life revolves? Are his desires and his will and his love for you the things that help you make your decisions? Does he have the highest priority in your life?

That is what it means to say Jesus is your logos, and that is what John says he ought to be for you. He’s God. You can’t keep him on the periphery of your life. That means if you really understand this and you put him in the center, then the blessings come. That’s the question. Is he your logos? Is that getting down enough for you? Is that getting concrete enough for you?

Do you come to him, for example, when you’re in trouble only? Maybe you’re here, or you’ve been going to church lately, because there are troubles in your life. Do you see what you’re doing? You’re using him. You’re coming because, “Well, I have certain goals, and I have to make sure God helps me because I’m afraid my goals are in jeopardy.” Your goals are in the center, and he’s on the periphery. He’s not your logos. Your goals are the purpose in life.

Or maybe you’re coming to him because you’re starting to get nervous. You’re realizing as you get older you’re getting closer to that time in which you’re going to have to leave this world, and you’re looking for fire insurance. That’s not making him the logos either. Let’s be real, real honest. If you want him to be your meaning in life, he can be. He can be known. He’s not an abstraction. You don’t have to be a philosopher. The simplest person in the world and the most brilliant philosophers in history have come to the gospel, have come to Christmas and said, “This satisfies. This is what I was built for.” You can too, and you can get rid of that emptiness in your life.

The other blessing is it’s not only the end of the problem of meaning; it’s the end of the problem of guilt. The fact is that Jesus Christ is God and man, and that’s the only way to deal with your guilt. The idea is because we don’t center our lives on him, we don’t give him the mastery we owe him, that’s a crime. That’s rebellion. We should be punished for it. The Bible says Jesus Christ came to take our punishment for us so God can completely accept us. He has to be God and man to do that.

On the one hand he has to be man, because who else could suffer and die but a man, a human being? On the other hand he has to be God, because his death, then, is of infinite value. Some of you are like Lady Macbeth, I know. There are some things in your life you just can’t get free from. Remember? She was always trying to wipe off the blood on her hands. Nobody else could see it, but she could see it. “Out, damned spot!” all the time.

Some of you have guilt in you and on your soul that you haven’t been able to deal with. Some of it is false guilt because of things friends or people or parents have said in the past about you, and you’ve never been able to get rid of it. Some of it’s true guilt. You’ve cheated in certain places. You’ve violated trust. You’ve betrayed things. You’ve violated standards.

One of your big problems is you go back and forth. You talk to one person about what you’ve done, and they say, “Ah, that’s false guilt. There’s no reason to be guilty about this,” and other people say, “Yes, it’s true guilt.” You don’t even know which way to go, and you can’t get rid of it, and it doesn’t seem to help. You’re always saying, “Out, damned spot! How can I be free?” Look at Christmas. You have to look at Jesus Christ twice.

First, look at him as God. This is the infinite God who died for you. It says in Acts 20, “… the church of God, which he bought with his own blood.” The blood of God. What is that worth? Suppose there was one apple left in the whole world and I had it. How much would that be worth? Just imagine. Some of you investment bankers just think about that. It would be worth an infinite amount. That’s nothing compared to the blood of God. I don’t know what you’ve done. I don’t care what you’ve done. Your debt can’t be a match for that value. If there were 20 billion of you with your life and record on each of 20 billion planets, this is more than that. This value is greater than that.

Get real. You can be free. Look at him. He’s God who died for you, but he’s also a man. He understands. He knows what it’s like. He has been tempted in every way as you are. Do you want freedom from that guilt, from that damned spot? There it is. “From this fullness we have all received blessing upon blessing.” If you believe this miracle of Christmas, if you base your life on it, there is no end to the miracles that can come into your life.

Let me conclude. How can you make sure you get this miracle into your life? How do you make sure you really build your life on Christmas so all this stuff comes? Here’s what I’ll tell you. Look at verse 17. “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” Do you know what that means? One thing we know from the nativity stories is that only humble people got invited to his birth. The only people who got birth announcements were people like shepherds and stuff like that. God held the birth in a stable, and some people just don’t go to stables.

If you want to receive Jesus Christ as your Savior, you have to be a shepherd at heart. Do you know what that means? It means to say, “I cannot possibly make myself worthy through the law, through efforts, through striving.” I’ll put it this way. If you believe God owes you anything, you are not a shepherd at heart. If you believe he owes you something because of your record, because of your striving, because of your family, because you’ve been working so hard to be moral, you’re not a shepherd at heart.

Even if you believe he owes you something because you have suffered, because you’ve had such a rough, unfair life, you’re still not a shepherd at heart. To believe he owes you something is to say, “You owe me.” No. The Law came through Moses. That’s how you ingratiate yourself to God. But grace and truth comes through Jesus Christ. You must come to him, and you must say, “The only goodness I have is what Jesus has done for me. The only Master I want is him. Accept me for his sake.” That’s how it comes in.

I guess I probably should conclude with this. Some of you say, “Hey, I’ve received Christ as Savior, but I’ll tell you something. I don’t see all of these blessings you’re talking about in my life.” I’ll tell you why. Jesus is God, but do you treat him as God? Do you act toward him as if he’s God? God is an infinite Person, right? He’s limitless. Your problem in many cases is you limit what he can do in your life. For example, some of you don’t believe he can change things in your life that are there. Yes, he can. He’s God. He can change anything.

Some of you don’t believe he can bring joy. Let me explain that for just 15 minutes. You know what? One of the reasons why you are not willing to give him every part of your life is because you say, “You know, if I really come to Christ, I might have to give up this relationship, or this practice, or this part of my life. I know it’s probably not right. I don’t want to give it up. I’m afraid if I give myself to him all the way, I’m afraid if I obey him flat out, I’ll miss out.”

Will you stand back and look at this? This is comic. Who built your joy sensors? He built them for himself. It says in Psalm 16, “In your face is fullness of joy; in your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” Are you kidding? Do you really believe the lie that this is somebody less than God? Do you really think that if he comes into your life and you give yourself to him and he gives himself to you that somehow you’re going to miss out? Are you treating him as God? You have to give him everything if he’s really God.

A lot of people come to Jesus Christ and say, “Oh, I want to be a little bit more religious.” Do you realize that’s a non sequitur? When someone comes to you and says, “I’m God, I created you, give me your whole life,” and you say, “Well, I’d like to come to church a little bit more often; I’d like to be a little bit more religious,” that’s a non sequitur. You’re acting crazy. That’s not what he said.

The only way to respond to a person who says he’s God is to hate him or fear him or fall down at his feet and give him everything. Those are the only logical ways to deal with him. He can’t make you a little nicer, but if you give yourself to him he can transform you utterly and completely. What will you do with him? “How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation …” Let’s pray.