Dark as my path may seem to others, I carry a magic light in my heart. Faith, the spiritual strong searchlight, illumines the way, and although sinister doubts lurk in the shadow, I walk unafraid toward the enchanted wood where the foliage is always green, where joy abides, where nightingales nest and sing, and where life and death are one in the presence of the Lord.
~Helen Adams Keller (1880-1968)
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, who walk not according to the flesh (but according to the Spirit). For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
~ from an epicenter of The Gospel in Romans 8
Oh beloved, it is true. We try to get it right. But in trying to make ourselves right, we miss the path to righteousness altogether. And for those of us who grew up a bit more protestant than others, the idea that we are in process, on a journey, heading in a direction – makes us feel a little (or a lot) uncomfortable. We kinda thought we were in control of when we got saved.
Could it be that we are already saved and are now just learning how much?
Now, don’t get this fool of a writer wrong here. There are those who will reject the Truth and will by no means enter the Kingdom of Heaven. G_d, in His great Love will allow someone to abandon the path altogether if they desire. For love under compulsion is but an act of aggression by a superior power.
The idea here is profoundly simple. But it is so simple that we (almost all of us) have somehow missed it in certain ways. Jesus said: “I am the Way. I am the Truth. I am the Life.” Jesus never said: “you must accept me into your heart.” Jesus never said: “you must prove that you have trusted me alone for your salvation.” Jesus never said: “you must do… anything to be saved.”
No, Jesus said He is the Way. Him. Him alone. There are no rules or formulas or spells or incantations to get some god to do something for us. For we are not the focus of the salvation we have received (as wonderful a gift as this salvation is). A Loving Father and His Son and Their Spirit are the focus. It is they who have so mightily saved us from our falling from the path to life they both created and are laying out before us. We need never get it twisted. The Trinity has poured His (Their) Love out on us. Not us on them.
Can we see it? All of this is about what faith is. Faith is looking to this incredibly real, but incredibly invisible (for now) spiritual reality and simply beginning to walk the direction He is calling us. This looking to Him for everything and beginning to learn from Him is really all there is to being “saved.”
We tend to think that being saved is about escaping hell. Surely, this aspect is a good thing, but this being saved from something bad is done and already in our past. What does our salvation mean now? What does it mean in the future? Does it mean we start trying to perform some sort of self-protective activities to keep ourselves from going backwards up the road He has put us on?
Surely not.
No, salvation is Him. He is the Way. He is the Truth. He is the Life. And He does not change. Rather, it seems like process of our salvation is learning to see Him and His great Love for Who and what that Love really is. And as we learn a little bit more each day, we get a little closer to Home – and to His Love. And as we get closer, the blind faith we had to have at first begins to be replaced with actual vision and experience. And the more we experience, the more we are convinced – and the closer we move towards Him. And so it goes.
All of that, was to say this: Faith is not complicated. Faith is just going on the journey He has for us. The Path will never fail. The Way will always be sure. The Truth of this process will never change – and our Life at the end is not in doubt.
Just walk beloved. He’s got the rest of it.
