When are we living in Christ? When we live according to His Gospel and His Church. For He Himself, and not only His Gospel, is in the Church with all of His perfections and virtues. The Church is the eternally living Body of the God-man Christ. In her we find the medium of the holy mysteries. In her we find the means of holy good deeds. Our Lord Jesus Christ abides inseparable from the Church in this world. He abides with each member of the Church throughout all ages. He has His entire self for us in the Church, and continually gives Himself to us entirely, so that we might be enabled to live in this world as He lived.
~St. Justin Popovich
And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to Him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; being strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy; giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in Whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. … He is the image of the invisible God, the Firstborn of all creation. For by Him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. And He is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything He might be preeminent. For in Him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through Him to reconcile to Himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of His cross. … And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, He has now reconciled in His body of flesh by His death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before Him, if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister.
~ paul, The Least of The Apostles, in Colossians 1
Oh beloved, it is true.
The mysteries of the gospel go very deep. Some of the concepts are not even concepts. They defy even the meaning of the word (‘con’=with, ‘cept’=head). Said more simply: There is much that we can’t even begin to wrap our heads around. But, this does not allow us to dismiss them. Only the fool dismisses something he cannot yet comprehend.
Our religious minds can understand the concept that our sinfulness can doom us. We understand that we deserve death for our rebellion. We can imagine a god who is angry with us because we have misbehaved. And, because he wants to stay on top, he is willing to destroy those who go against him. This is, by the way, the god against which atheists argue. Atheists want nothing to do with him. And, to their relief, should they be willing to keep searching, they will find that this god indeed does not exist. So actually, an atheist is not an a-Theist. He merely dislikes something that is not there.
Thank G_d! That god does not exist.
However, G_d is here. He is the very basis for existence. He is not in competition with His creation. He is constantly holding it together, and continually bringing life and wonder to every aspect of it. And, one of the most amazingly amazing things about the Amazing G_d, is that He understands the gravity of sin, and that our sinful state will indeed bring about our death because of it.
Can we see it?
Jesus first, and then Paul, spoke extensively about one of the great mysterion of the Kingdom of Heaven. This new Life which forms first within the inner man of a man, is only planted through the death of our old man. This part of us that is fully beholden to our flesh and to our impatient lusts for power, pleasure, honors, and money, absolutely has to go.
However, instead of using death as some sort of eternal capital punishment for the sinner, He shows us a completely different way (which is very like Him!).
Yes indeed, the just wages that sin pays is death. However, this same G_d has turned the tables even on this greatest of enemies. Death has now become a weapon in the Hand of Life Himself. In Jesus, death has been perfected into a weapon against the very thing it used to be: a form of payment.
For, in the past, the only thing that death could do was to keep score at the end of our physical existence. Now, death has been used by our Savior to give us Life to the fullest, and a cancellation of every debt. He is the Prototype. He is the Firstborn among all of creation, and also the New Creation. And, what scripture clearly tells us is that He took each of us down with Him. It is the deepest of mysteries, but we – each of us – were crucified in Him these some 2,000 years ago.
However, it truly took G_d to do all of this. He saw the terrible weight of our selfish lives, and the actions our selfishness bore. He saw that this was indeed going to kill us, but in the most terrible way. This death would separate us from Life, forever. So, G_d preempted death’s prerogative, and slew us first. Why? Because He knew that down through this death with Him was the only path to a Life that never ends. We were crucified in Him, but this same Jesus – this First Born and First Fruit – of the new covenant also overcame death itself. He swallowed it whole, and turned it to Life as He got back up out of the grave and walked away from it in the truest of victories the world has ever seen. And, don’t miss this!, He brought us up into the same Life with Himself.
This is why The Apostle, Paul, says so clearly in Romans and other places: Reckon yourself dead to sin, and alive to Christ. Is this a mystery? Sure. But it is just like G_d to use the very thing that was going to destroy us – to heal us and set us free. For, just as this same Paul said a little later in the same chapter (Romans 6): he who has died has been set free from sin.
So, do you sense that your sin is killing you? Oh yes, sin is a terrible thing. But perhaps tonight is your night to believe fully in The Gospel – mysteries and all. Go down through that death He died, that you might truly Live. Let His death, and yours, set you free!
“Death is only painful to him who resists it. The imagination exaggerates its terrors. The spirit argues endlessly to show the propriety of the life of self. Self-love fights against death, like a sick man in the last struggle. But we must die inwardly as well as outwardly… Our great care should be that the spirit of self dies first. For then our bodily death will be but a falling asleep.”
~Francois Fenelon de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon
No Responses