2.3 Motive, Means, and Opportunity
© 2015 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
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It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the glory of kings is to search out a matter (Proverbs 25:2).
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This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church (Ephesians 5:32).
Mysteries
The mystery genre is very popular in today’s world, TV shows as well as books. My favorite mystery series is, without question, David Suchet playing Agatha Christy’s Hercule Poirot. The Cadfael murder mysteries by Ellis Peters, set in a twelfth century monastery in England, is a book series I read, enjoying, especially, the community environment.
I choose a mystery series to enjoy almost entirely on my liking of and engagement with the detective, gravitating towards those detectives who treat other people with respect and kindness, including, even, the guilty. Most mysteries are murder mysteries with the crime committed at the beginning and the plot focused on identifying the killer. There were times, however, when Hercule Poirot sensed a murder in the works and sought to solve the crime before it happened.
I have gained many specifics regarding logic, sound thinking, and the investigation of a mystery from my enjoyment of particular fictional detectives. God has cast His own story in terms of a great mystery, having created us with an intense love for solving mysteries.
God’s Crimes
God’s one venture into visibility in His creation was treated by all of creation as a crime of the highest magnitude. The first accusation against God was that He is a liar. The largest crime of which God stands accused is that of murder and cruelty.
Jesus provoked the animosity of His accusers primarily by “anti-Semitism,” a crime grown much larger in today’s world. But Jesus was arrested, tried, and executed for the crime of blasphemy. – We must define blasphemy. Blasphemy is God daring to enter His creation, to become visible through His image, man, the visible representation of an invisible Being.
No one tolerates God manifest in the flesh.
God’s Mystery
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God willed to make known. . . the riches of the glory of this mystery. . . Christ in you, the hope of glory. Colossians 1:27
You will find that Christ Revealed Bible Institute places a high priority on seeing all things through the Father’s eyes. We want to know God’s point of view. We want to hear His Heart. An honest perusal of the New Testament, on our faces before God desiring to know Him alone, gives us the sense that God is planning to commit the same crime again – for a very similar purpose and with very similar results.
One methodology of thinking used by detectives to solve a mystery is to determine motive, means, and opportunity. Why was the crime committed? How was the crime committed? And did the suspect have the opportunity to commit the crime?
Motive
Motive! Why? What is God’s purpose? I am in no way exaggerating by casting God’s revelation, God’s salvation, the atonement won by the Lord Jesus Christ, as God Himself set it – the response of men and angels to the crime of God appearing in human flesh. In their eyes, Jesus had dirtied “God.”
Hercule Poirot focused primarily on motive. Means, to him, was incidental, and opportunity only the final necessity. Motive is everything – the psychology of the criminal. But for us the “criminal” is the Creator and Sustainer of the universe, the one who tells us to call Him Father.
Possibilities for Motive
Most say that we are created by God to glorify and enjoy Him. Yet this answer for the purpose of God for man ALWAYS falls short of His glory. Let me explain. If I build a row of houses, putting all of my skill and knowledge with unlimited resources into those houses, each showcasing a unique style, then I can take visitors through that row of houses and they can see my skill and artistic vision. Those houses would glorify me.
That is what most teachers of the Bible say that God’s purpose for man is. They are seeing backwards, leaving God Himself out in the cold. There is a very specific reason for that.
Another rendition is that God's motive is to rescue a bunch of unworthy sinners and take them to an undeserved future in heaven in order to re-populate His heavenly city with worshipers. Inside this motive, image, then, has become thus: since God is a self-conscious Person, so we are self-conscious persons, higher than the animals. As Thomas Aquinas said, “Hence it is according to his intelligence and reason that man is said to be according to the image of God.” In other words, we are the image of God because we eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, right and wrong, because we are independent and isolated persons.
Another motive ascribed to God is self-protection, that God, far away because of the sin of His creatures, inspects each one and allows into Himself and into happiness, at a future date, only those who meet some sort of standard. That standard can be works or grace; God's motive is the same. There are many Bible verses, Old Testament and New, that seem to support that motive, but only when the most important verses in the Bible are willfully ignored. But none of these “motives” gives any answer to the dastardly crime committed by God – blasphemy – God showing up on this earth in human flesh – God’s image.
To too many Christians, however, the entire definition of God’s motive is found in the biggest, most important verse NOT in the Bible.
The Most Important Verse NOT in the Bible
Heaven is our home. The goal of the believer, salvation, and eternal life are to go to heaven after you die. The only thing we will ever know on this earth and in this life is an in-part and limited expression of some things we read about in the Bible. Everything wonderful that God says is put off to heaven and will be known by us only after we get there. Everything meaningful for us that God does say, then, is only how, exactly, we get to go to heaven after we die and how we are to take other people with us. Everything else is more or less irrelevant for us here.
The Poirot Principle
Let’s follow the “Poirot” principle of solving any mystery. Hercule Poirot always looked for the oddest, most out-of-place clues as the path to solving the question. He did that while the officials followed only the obvious clues to a dead-end. Once he had found the answer to this silly little thing that everyone else ignored, he found the answer to the mystery – and it was always quite different from what all others had imagined. Poirot always put himself into the mind of the perpetrator in order to comprehend motive. Thus I place God's purpose verse as the most important in the Bible.
What is God's motive? Only the oddest of clues will show us.
Possibilities for Means
The means of God offered by many teachers of the Bible is something back then, someone up there, and something some day. To many, God accomplishes His purposes in the earth by sending His Son down into something abnormal for God, a momentary clothing of human flesh, in which Jesus was punished for sin. That is, God the Father unleashed all of His hatred and anger for sin against His Son. This Jesus is now far away from man, far away from this earth, looking down from afar, yes, but also begging God not to punish us. Someday, far in the future, this same Jesus will come back to earth to punish all sinners, that is, all those who failed to take advantage of the opportunity and reward those who did correctly take advantage of the opportunity.
Yes, God and His Word are filled with contradictions. Many Christians have erased most of those contradictions with a simple understanding that salvation is: “I have a ticket (I asked Jesus into my heart), and when I die, that ticket lets me go to heaven instead of hell. Meanwhile, while I’m here, I try not to sin, but I will never succeed because I will always sin, even though I shouldn’t. I also try to get a few people saved, and I make sure I pay my tithes.”
Means
Means is the manner by which the crime is committed. The crime God committed was to become visible through His image upon this earth. Although how God showed up through Jesus informs us of His means, our concern is God’s intention to do the dastardly deed again, to show up on this earth through His image a second time.
What are the means by which God obtains His purpose? Blood – Cross – Resurrection. What verses give us the essence of these three things fulfilled in fullness in our lives?
Possibilities for Opportunity
To many of our fellow believers, the opportunity has two parts:
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Subscribe to correct doctrine.
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Attend the right church (be under the right authority structure).
These two things often go hand in hand. To the Catholics, correct doctrine is to mouth agreement with the Pope and to partake of the Sacraments. At the same time, being under the “covering” of the priest who administers the Sacraments is essential. Yet Protestant opportunity is only different in appearance, not in substance. For most evangelicals, correct doctrine IS the Nicene Creed. “Be sure to go to church” is also essential.
And it is true, if you differ from the Nicene Creed on any point, you are considered lost by many Christians, no matter how much you think you trust in and love Jesus. In most Christian circles, opportunity takes the form of human works, of human righteousness, of man walking the path of atonement himself. In some deeper truth circles, it is “perfect obedience,” the same old same old. At the same time, the terrible threat of God showing up on this earth in human flesh again must be eliminated. Thus the flesh is turned into the enemy, into something that is only evil and down-pulling. Human flesh becomes the anti-opportunity.
Because the goal of the believer has become “going to” heaven after we die, then to most of our fellow Christians, our greatest enemy has become our only opportunity. Dear ol’ “Uncle Joe” Death. Our physical death has become the only opportunity for God to obtain His purpose. Getting rid of the flesh has become the opportunity. In fact, most believe that human flesh is just too much even for God to win by victory. The meek inheriting the earth and the righteous remaining upon it has vanished from Christian thinking.
Not on this earth! – Not in human flesh!
Opportunity
The opportunity of God is the most incredible and the most precious thing I know and teach. Let me give here only a hint.
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You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain (John 15:16).
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That the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh (2 Corinthians 4:11).
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Beloved, let us love one another (1 John 4:7).
For Father God to have the opportunity to reveal Himself again in human flesh, He must be all, He must be here, He must be now, and He must be Personal inside of us. Is this true?
Solving the Mystery: Motive, Means, and Opportunity
The purpose of this course is to investigate, and hopefully to solve, the mystery of God’s motive, God’s means, and God’s opportunity. We will do so by investigating the ten most important verses in the Bible. Motive, means, and opportunity are found in all ten; however – The first four most important verses deal primarily with God’s motive, His purpose, His Heart. The next three deal primarily with means. And the final three show us God’s incredible opportunity.
Final Proving
This framework of solving a mystery will be the structure of your final response in this course. Here are two of the final objectives.
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Consider the layout of motive, means, and opportunity in terms of God’s mystery through the ten most important verses in the Bible.
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Apply motive, means, and opportunity to the mystery of God through the ten most important verses in the Bible.
Get out your magnifying glass, don your sleuth hat, follow the clues. God has set before you a great mystery to solve. He is speaking of Christ and the Church.