BRENT LOKKER / UNION REVELATION
In this conversation, Brent Lokker and Jason share personal experiences and insights into the understanding of union with Christ, emphasizing the importance of seeing God’s love and grace in every aspect of life. They discuss the revelation of God’s goodness and the transformation it brings.
Shame, freedom, awakening to the perfection of God’s love, the power of revelation, belonging, authenticity, and the power of seeing others as filled with God’s glory; in this conversation, Brent and Jason share stories that illustrate the heart of the Father and His desire to draw us into a relationship with Him.
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Podcast intro and outro music by Wilde Assembly
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Recalculating
Back before GPS, in the days when, as a lost traveler, I had to stop and ask directions from some old-timer—always an old-timer—upon hearing my desired destination, he’d shake his head as though I was willfully lost and say, “Son, you can’t get there from here.”
Sure, you can, fella, I’d think. If I’m here and I need to get there, then there’s no other way to get there, than from here. So, unless we’re having an existential conversation in the parking lot of a Piggly Wiggly, I’m certain I can get there from here if you’d be so kind as to give me directions.
For decades, I only employed that phrase to cleverly expound on its contradiction. Then, one late night several years ago, I navigated for my brother, Joel, as we traveled from Charlotte to Lexington for a conference. By navigated, I mean, I listened to Siri communicate directions and then repeated after her.
Siri: “Turn left,”
“Turn left,” I said, looking up from my phone and pointing.
“Joel! Left! There!”
“I can’t turn left, bro. Look!” Joel responded as we passed our hotel, and I immediately recognized the problem. A freshly cemented three-foot-high concrete wall had been installed in the median between the left turn and our destination. We couldn’t turn left.
As we drove past and Siri jabbered, “Recalculating,” I heard myself saying that rascal phrase, “You can’t get there from here.”
Then, with epiphanous enthusiasm, “Oh? Oh! It’s about the road you’re traveling!”
* * *
For most of my life, the story of The Rich Young Ruler has been preached by well-intentioned What am I still lacking preachers. It’s the message of separation where humanity is outside of God, and the preacher spends most of his message trying to measure the distance between us.
The What am I still lacking message is a self-righteous religious attempt to earn something Jesus already gave.
And like the Rich Young Ruler, we often walk away grieving as we continue to strive down that frustrating road of lack where God is distant and eternal life is just out of reach; always, well, later…
“Truly, I say to you, it will be hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven…it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” 1
That’s what Jesus told His disciples about the transactional road the Rich Young Ruler traveled.
When they heard it, they “…were very astonished and said, ‘Then who can be saved?’”
Exactly!
Who can be saved is a good question and similar to What am I still lacking?
Both questions recognize the futile nature of a transactional approach to God. Both recognize a concrete median cutting us off from experiencing eternal life here and now.
Jesus responded, “With people, this is impossible…you might as well be a camel and your destination the eye of a needle…but with God, all things are possible.”
In other words, Greater Love was saying, “Go sell everything you have and follow me.”
Those were Jesus’ words to the eternal life-seeking Rich Young Ruler.
Everything? The young fella thought, overwhelmed—and for good reason.
Everything included the ideological and theological certainties upon which he’d built his entire existence. Jesus had just deconstructed his understanding to its very foundation and exposed the young man’s certainties as a three-foot concrete median cutting him off from experiencing eternal life.
It’s impossible to reach my destination on the road I’m traveling, the young fella realized, and he left grieving. But he did not leave empty-handed nor alone. Jesus sent him on his way with a GPS.
Every day after his encounter with Jesus, the young fella could hear Siri jabbering like a Holy Spirit within him.
“Recalculating! Son, you can’t get there from here! You’re gonna have to leave your transactional approach to a relationship with God and reject that ego that thinks righteousness can be achieved.”
“Recalculating! Brother, you can’t get there from here. I invite you to redefine and rediscover all your ologies in the reconciling truth of a Love that never leaves or forsakes us.”
“Recalculating! Buddy, you can’t get there from here. Leave your systematic earning systems, lay down your religious obsession with hierarchy, put away your right to punish, give up every dualistic certainty, sell all you have, pick up your cross—my Greater Love heart for the least of these—and awaken to our friendship.
Son, follow me.” 2
It was an instruction. But also an invitation to experience aiṓnios, “the unique quality of God’s life at work in us; an experience of union with God that is…simultaneously outside of time, inside of time, and beyond time.” 3
It was an invitation to eternal life in the ever-present now.
And Jesus’ invitation wasn’t given with a time limit. And that’s worth noting. The young man wasn’t Cinderella, and Jesus was no fairy Godmother.
There is no when the clock strikes twelve addenda on eternal life. Just that rascal Holy Spirit GPS, an eternal invitation to a friendship that recalculates everything. Just that old-timer in a Piggly Wiggly parking lot saying, “Son, or daughter, you can’t get there from here,” so that one day, we might experience an epiphanous moment in which we can repent and discover…
“Oh? Oh! It’s about the road we’re traveling!”
1 Matthew 19:16-29
2 Luke 29:23
3 Aiónios – https://biblehub.com/greek/166.htm
This article is excerpted from my book, Leaving and Finding Jesus
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Can You Be Saved After You Die?
Times Two, Daddy
Can you be saved after you die?
Many years ago…
It was bedtime, and I was snuggling five-year-old Eva. I told a story about a bunny princess named Gertrude who only wore plaid and a squirrel prince named Hank who only wore cotton pajamas.
I paused for the expected interruption and then listened, smiling to tears, as Eva made her revisions. Gertrude became Lizzy in a beautiful pink dress. Hank became Lizzy’s best friend, Molly. She, too, had a beautiful dress—hers was purple. They also had ponies.
As Eva imagined out loud, I thanked my Father for the wonder of my girl. At that moment, I knew Love like I never had before—eternal life in the ever-present now.
We transitioned from story time into our goodnight communion. “Eva, you’re my favorite. I love you best,” I said. It’s a family phrase, a motto. I say this to all my kids, and it’s true every time.
“I love you best, too, Daddy,” she responded, and the game had begun.
“I love you to the tops of the trees and back.” I smiled.
“I love you to the tops of the trees, the moon, the stars, to Jupiter, and back.” She knew how to play the game.
I went big. “I love you to the top of the trees, the moon, the stars, Jupiter, the universe, and to infinity and beyond.”
We continued for a few more minutes; each taking turns surpassing the last statement—a million, billion, gazillion to infinity and beyond. I had just exhausted my imagination with a litany of love when she looked at me mischievously. I could see the wheels spinning in her little mind.
Then she stated, all clever like, “Times two, Daddy.”
“Times two, Daddy” flips everything on its head. A five-year-old applies the smallest multiplier she comprehends, and it blows up the foundations of all measurement-based thinking, including all the measuring that goes on within the Christian faith.
We have all played this game in some form or another. We love this game, because it reveals something profoundly beautiful and true.
You see, this is a game of measurements played with a measureless revelation; a game where we apply finite equations to a Love that transcends dimensions of time and space.
Measureless & Timeless
Can you be saved after you die?
Is my perspective on the nature of love finite?
In Ephesians 3, Paul wrote, “And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” (Ephesians 3:16-19)
Using the language of earth, Paul played the game I played with my five-year-old, describing God’s love as wider than forever, longer than eternity, higher than a million, billion, gazillion, and deeper than infinity and beyond. Then, he encouraged us to try and take Love’s measure—to be “filled” to “the fullness.”
After Paul exhausted his imagination with a litany of love, he smiled cleverly—at least, that’s how I imagine it. Then, with all the guilelessness wonder of a five-year-old, he said, “Times two, Daddy.”
Or, “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever! Amen.” Eph 3:20-21
The nature of God is love (See 1 John 4: 7-8).
Love is an infinite revelation (See Eph 3:16-21).
Love was before time existed (See John 17:5 & 24)
“Before time existed”? That statement stretches the imagination of most linear time travelers like us. What does it even mean?
I think it means that the nature of love is beyond our capacity to comprehend. The moment we think we have its measure, a five-year-old blows up our understanding with “Times two, Daddy.”
Love Is,
Jesus on a cross,
one with Father and Holy Spirit,
self-giving,
other-centered,
reconciling,
transcending time and space,
beyond our capability to count or measure;
beyond our ability to comprehend,
and beyond our capacity to describe.
But wonderfully, we try, and along the way, we awaken to discover and rediscover Love’s measureless ways.
And we know this Love is true. We know beyond understanding that the measureless nature of Love is truer than anything else that’s ever been true; truer than life or death, powers or principalities, fears or worries, the present or future. Even the powers of hell cannot separate us from this Measureless Love. (See Rom 8:38)
Penal Substitutionary Atonement
Can you be saved after you die?
Is God’s reconciling love limited to the constraints of time?
God is love. He was before and will be after. His love is an ever-expanding revelation. Every measurement we attempt to apply to Love’s nature can be undone and exposed as infinitesimal with a five-year-old’s multiplier of two.
As Christians and, more significantly, as humans, we’re aware of the indwelling measureless nature of love, know it to be wonderfully true beyond our capacity to understand, and know it’s our salvation from sin and every lie of separation that sin propagates. But like Adam and Eve, who were deceived by the self-righteous delusion of control, we often demand that God’s love fit into the box of our finite understanding.
This is where a proper academic theologian would write in-depth about atonement theories—specifically, the theory of Penal Substitutionary Atonement, as that theory has ravaged Western Christian thinking for a long time. But I’m not writing as a proper academic theologian. I’m writing as the dad of that five-year-old.
So, I’ll be brief. Penal Substitutionary Atonement is the belief “that God is not willing or able to simply forgive sin without first requiring a payment for it.” Jesus, God’s beloved child, became that cruel and bloody payment.
As I’ve already noted, many of us have probably heard it presented this way: “God can’t look upon sin,” or “The Father looked away.” In other words, “Papa turned away from His boy.”
This theory propagates the idea that God’s reconciling love is only available because Jesus has been punished as a payment for our sins. It’s an atonement theory constructed to support a retributive lens on God. This atonement theory is built on the delusion that sin is powerful enough to separate us from God’s love, and it makes a religion out of measuring the distances between us.
It suggests that Measureless Love took measure and determined humanity to be outside the parameters of His measureless love—as if Love could stop being wider than forever, longer than eternity, higher than a million, billion, gazillion, and deeper than infinity and beyond; as if an infinite Love must submit to our finite equations regarding salvation and reconciliation; as if God counts our sins against us.
My five-year-old exposed this foolishness with a multiplier of two. And 2 Corinthians 5:19 tells us that at the cross, “God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting anyone’s sins against them.”
The notion that God counts sin is an arrogant finite approach to His love, because it preaches separation and retribution with vague promises of some future reward that cannot be experienced today. It’s the “What am I still lacking?” superhighway that promises eternal life but never delivers. This notion so belittles the nature of Greater Love as to be laughed at. Yet sadly, so many Christians have had to navigate their faith through this measurement-based certainty.
We cling to experiences with Measureless Love as a sailor clings to the wreckage of a ship lost at sea. We know, in our hearts, that only a love that is measurelessly good, measurelessly reconciling, freely given and received, can save us. But, despite this Good News, many sincere people keep drowning in the ocean of the church’s religious infatuation with making people pay. And punishment is the payment.
Many Christians believe most people must pay by being condemned to some form of conscious, eternal torment.
Meanwhile, the clock is ticking.
The Clock Is Ticking…
Can you be saved after you die? Is God’s wrath eternal but His reconciling love, mercy, and forgiveness limited to the constraints of time?
The ticking clock is one of the most used tropes in Hollywood. There’s a bomb and a clock attached to it, and it’s counting down. There’s a red wire and a blue wire. And if the hero cuts the wrong wire, it’s smithereens for him, or her. And if it’s a good movie, the stakes are even higher, and it’s smithereens for the whole world.
It’s called “the race against time.”
Without time, we have nothing with which to measure the severity of the potential destruction. If the clock isn’t ticking, the bomb can’t go off, and, well, there’s no money to be made off that movie—or that religion.
For those who practice retributive thinking, God is not ultimately LOVE; God is ultimately TIME, and when time runs out, God’s measureless reconciling love must submit to it.
In measurement-based systems, God’s forgiveness, grace, kindness, and reconciling love are ultimately limited aspects of His nature, while we redefine wrath and condemnation as God’s eternal and defining punishing attribute.
Every measurement-based system essentially preaches that Adam’s actions leading to the fall have had eternal ramifications, whereas Jesus’ reconciling work at the cross is limited and constrained to the finite ticking of a clock. It’s as though God’s forgiveness, mercy, grace, healing, freedom, redemption, reconciliation, and restoration must submit to some finite measure of time.
Measurement-based systems focus on the measure of sin instead of the measureless nature of reconciling love.
And Jesus dismantled that ticking time bomb.
He stepped inside the delusion of separation and retribution. He set us free to play the game I played with my five-year-old—a game in which “Times two, Daddy” unveils an ever-expanding, never-ending, beyond all we can ask or imagine, measureless revelation of the perfection that is the nature of God and His heart toward us.
I believe the idea that Christ died as a payment made to span the distance between us is a fallen, finite way of thinking—a transactional delusion. Jesus stepped inside that lie at the cross and blew it up from the inside—get it?
Even better, the bomb has been dismantled. “It is finished,” Jesus declared. Reconciling Love transcends dimensions of time and space!
So, “Can you be saved after you die?”
I don’t know.
Yes, I sure hope so.
And I know beyond understanding “…that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love; neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow. Even the powers of hell cannot separate us from God’s love.
No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation—will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord…” (Rom 8:38-39)
Excerpted from my book, Leaving and Finding Jesus
What Am I Still Lacking?
The Rich Young Ruler
A young fella came to Jesus and asked, “Teacher, what good thing shall I do so that I may obtain eternal life?”
Jesus answered in the language of the man’s understanding. “Why are you asking Me about what is good? There is only One who is good; but if you want to enter life, keep the commandments.”
“Which ones?” The young man asked, sincerely.
Jesus gave him some of the greatest hits.
“You shall not commit murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not give false testimony; Honor your father and mother, and, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
The young fella replied, “All these I have kept; what am I still lacking?”
I imagine Jesus nodded excitedly, his love for the young man evident on His face. I imagine He loved that question.
“What am I still lacking?
It’s a good question, a recognition that even though he has kept every law, something is missing; it’s an acknowledgment that something still doesn’t measure up, a confession of incompleteness.
What am I still lacking? is the conclusion of living in the context of law instead of grace.
What am I still lacking? is the beginning and end of every transactional approach to God.
Jesus had to be thrilled as He told the young man how He might experience life without lack. “If you want to be complete, go and sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.”
The young man desired a beautiful destination. He was looking for a way to arrive. And Jesus participated in the young man’s earnest pursuit, He honored the young fellas desired destination. And so, He gave Him an answer on how to get there.
Jesus recognized the problem for the rich young ruler wasn’t the desired destination, it was the road he was traveling down. Jesus essentially said, “the road you’re traveling won’t deliver you to your desired destination.”
Jesus, the narrow road, the open door, essentially said to the young fella, “Your desires are good, your pursuits are righteous, your disciplines are holy, your destination is admirable, but You can’t get there from here.”
Jesus essentially said, “You’re traveling on the wrong road, you’re living in the wrong paradigm, you’re looking through a flawed lens, you’re missing the whole story. I am the whole story” (see Rom 8:2 Galatians 2:19).
It’s astounding how often I have sought the right destination on the wrong road; how often I have applied every principle, followed every commandment only to find myself asking God, “what am I still lacking?”
The young ruler wanted Jesus to give him one more thing to add to his “to-do list” of earning and coming up short, living in a cycle of lack and incompleteness.
And Jesus cut to the quick, He gave the fella something impossible to do, which was the whole point. “Go sell everything you have and follow me…”
Jesus essentially says, “You’re gonna have to leave every one of your self-righteous earning beliefs about God behind. You’re gonna have to completely walk away from that transactional way of thinking. I love your experiences, the scriptures you’ve memorized, the principles and disciplines you’ve practiced, I honor that, but your transactional approach to God, that’s gotta go. Son, everything you know, and all that you are, must be submitted to and then redefined and rediscovered in the paradigm of my others focused reconciling love.
Leave your behavior focused earning systems, your sin conscious approach to righteousness, behind; lay down your right to be offended, to be for or against, put away your ego adoring religious systems, what seems right to a man, stop participating in power through control; THEN pick up your cross, a self-giving reconciling love, and follow me.
Young fella, if you want to be complete, you gotta get off the road you’re on because you can’t get there from here…”
To be continued…
See Matthew 19 for the story of the Rich Young Ruler.
Excerpted from my forthcoming book, Leaving (& Finding) Jesus
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