Jesus, Our Obedience

Everything is so strange right now. Which isn't abnormal. Not in the least. If things weren't strange, there'd be cause for concern. Serious cause for concern: perspective would have reached a point of stagnation or of outright delusion, as lack of perceiving strangeness (i.e., incomprehensible circumstances) would generally indicate unconscious belief that circumstances were comprehensible (a definite impossibility for a finite mind contemplating eternal matters).

God lets me see just enough to have an increasing degree of awareness of my abject need for trust in and reliance upon Him, though. Jesus knows what's best, is all--being God and having a comprehensive, eternal perspective affords such certainty.

So momentary afflictions, confusions, rejections, perplexities, and terrors...they're working a weight of glory unto Him which is only often difficult to see or understand.

The desire to be done with anxiety, and with sin in general, is one fraught with all sorts of varied emotion--sometimes outright desperation, other times abject despair, and in darker, weak moments of sickness and delusion, even dejected apathy holds sway. But either way and regardless, still there's sorrow over sin. Shame. Sadness. Grief, even.

And I hear again and again from so many people, when discussing bits of the breadth of the grief of sin in context of the abject, ardent longing for full obedience...I hear strong rebukes against anything which even remotely implies a desire toward sinlessness here and now, while walking the earth.

Strong rebuke against the present desire for sinlessness. Not that I've never acted unreasonably in regard to that sort of thing. I have.

Even as to know it's founded in fear, pride, and lack of faith.

God calls us to be holy, after all. In Christ.

Not in our own strength.

We're called to strive onward, upward unto Him. Led and empowered by His own Spirit.

Jesus Himself calls us to repent of sin and gives us the desire to be like Him. And He, Himself, gives us the ability to ever begin to obey. He directs the steps that constitute obedience. And He is the one that moves our feet and gives us speech, too, otherwise it's not of Him but of the flesh.

But it's a process too, though. Holiness is not something He fully physically, mentally manifests in us and of us instantaneously at the first moment He calls us and regenerates us and begins indwelling and guiding.

We wouldn't have so much a here-and-present and independently realized breadth of appreciation for His goodness and love and mercy and glory if we didn't learn it in context of simultaneously being brought to understand the depths of our own wickedness, inconstancy, and conceit (learning how great is our need for Him for all things). We wouldn't have such a joy in his peace if it weren't given in living contrast to realization of the destructiveness of our idolatry and the desolation of selfishness.

Doesn't mean we'll perfectly see nor appreciate nor realize any of these on this side of eternity, no. But we'll be increasingly empowered with wisdom and understanding to truly rejoice in Him more wholly now, as we do plumb further depths of His goodness, love, and mercy through increased practical knowledge of the truth of His holiness, even as contrasted against all the world and ourselves. All the more to His glory and praise eternally hereafter, that we were ever so blessed to be recipients of glimpses of who He is while we were yet enshrouded in the haze sinful flesh casts over all consciousness.

It is a blessing from Him to be able to praise Him sincerely, having any genuine knowledge of who He is. Having glimpsed His perfections, by any far sight, as to find Him truly precious and worthy and due all honor and praise?--incomparably wonderful, and all the more to His glory that He would give us the gift of knowledge of Him despite our wickedness.

Sin...wickednesss...grieves Him and incites His wrath, still. So, He doesn't enact nor inspire nor tempt us to wickedness. But He permits sin, for the time being. For a brief span, in context of eternity. Yet it's not a light matter, at all--no matter brevity of sorts. Jesus bore sin for us, Himself, suffering wrath due against it, that we could be salvaged and restored to right relationship under God's love, into loving obedience.

To gauge the severity of sin and the truth of God's wrath against it, consider that His wrath was displayed for all the earth in that Christ suffered and died. God's own son willingly endured the wrath rightly due to sin, evidencing the severity of sin, the truth of God's wrath, and the depths of His love. For all to see and know. And the message has gone out through all the earth. It's written in the skies.

Anyone who hasn't suppressed the truth in unrighteousness can know God and Christ. And anyone willing to contemplate the truth of God will come to realize the wretchedness of sin. Anyone willing to consider truth will know that the wrath of God against sin is just. And anyone willing to come to the truth will come to know Christ. He is not hidden. He willingly reveals Himself to those who want to know truth, and even to many who aren't looking.

He gave Himself to pay the debt we couldn't satisfy, so that atonement could be made for those who would come through Him for forgiveness, bowing the knee to Christ as God.

The truth of God's wrath was made evident through the crucifixion. And in so many ways, since (consider also that "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church").

So, sin is no light matter by any means. By no means paltry, whatsoever. And God's wrath against it has been clearly evidenced.

God is longsuffering toward us, though, that many will be saved.

And He's merciful to those who have come through Christ even of sin. He uses such horrid, wretched travesties as we each commit when we sin to yet still work to His glory by developing humility through awakening to repentance, working dependence upon Him through realization of impotence, and working faith through increased awareness that only He can and has overcome sin. And He will lead those who are His in paths of righteousness, for His own name's sake.

He is that merciful, though--to turn something which is wholly evil to something which draws those who are His into a deeper relationship with Him. Rather than leaving us in conditions of increasing depravity, He disciplines and chides, He corrects and aligns.

He sanctifies--ever working greater despair of sin in the hearts of those who love Him. Which, He will make us aware of sinfulness that yet needs surrender to Him in such a way that serves to simultaneously increase despair of self while fostering greater trust in Him.

Rather than leaving us in despair, then, He reworks what such wretched a thing as is sin present in a believer's life into something which breaks the heart unto love for Him and turns the mind further from doubting Him. All as part of working repentance and giving deliverance from sin.

So, while there are still misuses of resources, slips of the tongue, errant thoughts and wrong feelings which grieve Him--as such the like are sin, indeed--in His mercy, He'll continue to work in the heart and give strength to continue striving for greater purity in Him, no less. So that rather than being focused on sin and self, focus instead is on drawing nearer to Him, whereby sin then begins to fall away under the weight of His glorious presence and sovereign keeping power.

Because deliverance is wholly in and through and by Him, regardless.

Which is whereof a part of any defiance against the idea of ever-continuing to be freed from sin arises: confusion abounds regarding (oft) unconscious expectation that somehow we contribute to sactification something other than the need for forgiveness and deliverance. But it's God who works both "to will and to do" His will--He gives us the desire and the ability to obey. And if we have neither, except He gives them and directs us, then how would we expect to contribute to a completed act?

So to think we can overcome, overpower, outmaneuver, or outthink sin somehow, if we just somehow apply ourselves sufficiently to the effort?--yeah, that's works-based salvation and sanctification, and it don't hold water (yo).

If something "we" do effects good in ourselves or in others, it's only because God ordained it to be so and directed us to act as such and manifested the outcome despite intentions and actions having consciously arisen apart from Him in overt ways. And furthermore, He's fully capable of directing our steps without our awareness of it being the case, as it goes. And the same is true of Him giving us speech/words to say without us being conscious of it having come directly from Him.

So if we're ever kept from error, it's only because of grace. If we're ever freed from sin, it's of His grace. Not our works nor by our understanding.

We contribute nothing of good to our salvation or sanctification--even the faith by which these things come has been a gift from God. From glory to glory, and image to image, being transformed. By faith.

The part where things seem a bit convoluted of that is of the continual prodding toward ardent striving unto God, throughout Scripture. But the only seeming contradiction hereof arises out of a lack of understanding of the actual flow of logic: The call to strive ardently is one which will be being fulfilled by those who are drawing near to Christ, by His Spirit.

If we are seeking Him in truth, if we do love Him, then we simply will do certain things out of love for Him and out of an impassioned desire to draw ever nearer Him. Because we will continually be prompted and empowered by His Spirit so to do. 

If we run the race in such a way as to be the one who gets the gold medal, it's because we're being empowered and directed to do so by His Spirit. 

His Spirit leads, empowers, and directs us to do these things. Not the other way around--we don't do them so as to gain Him. We gain Him because He prompts us to do them.

We don't "get the prize" because we run well. We will "run well" because we are getting the prize.

It's prognosis, not prescription. Which doesn't mean there won't still be moments of weakness, is the thing. Just...He uses those, too. But what does our life as a whole look like?

Because if we are being saved, sanctified, and made holy, those things which may often seem in Scripture to be "directives" will not be a plan of action but constitute descriptions of what our general courses of action have come to be. We won't be driven to fulfill things of the Law in Scripture per perceived need to do them, but we'll have begun doing them because we will find ourselves compelled in spirit and truth by His Spirit to so do. Because it's as He is and as He was. Out of love and not perceived obligation or expectation of reward.

Not of the flesh. Not of human understanding. Not because it's "the right thing to do," but because it would please our Heavenly Father (even as our every desire is to bring Him joy).

Big difference.

Jesus is the only one who can work that out, though, within us. He's the only one who can bridge that gap between attempted understanding and actual obedience (the latter being in spirit and truth).

Jesus made a way for that uncrossable divide to be traversed.

And in true fact, He is the Way in which it is traversed. He, Himself.

He did it, Himself--He lived loving obedience to the Father, so He alone can do it in and through us as we abide in Him.

Ask Him about it. He's the only one who can truly explain it.
Because He's the only one who can actually do it.