Above all the grace and the gifts that Christ gives to His beloved is that of overcoming self.
~St. Francis of Assisi
I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus, that in every way you were enriched in Him in all speech and all knowledge, even as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you – so that you are not lacking in any gift, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
~ 1 Corinthians 1:4-9
Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of His glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.
~ Jude 24-25
There is, beloved, a wonderful truth in the Gospel.
We are blameless now before Him.
But, wait a minute… i do not feel blameless!
Get over it. It is already done.
But… i just did this horrible thing just a few seconds ago….
Done. Over. Paid for. Forgotten. Buried.
The Lord works righteousness
and justice for all who are oppressed.
He made known His ways to Moses,
His acts to the people of Israel.
The Lord is merciful and gracious,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
He will not always chide,
nor will He keep His anger forever.
He does not deal with us according to our sins,
nor repay us according to our iniquities.
For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is His steadfast love toward those who fear Him;
as far as the east is from the west,
so far does He remove our transgressions from us.
As a father shows compassion to his children,
so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear Him.
For He knows our frame;
He remembers that we are dust.
~ From Psalm 103
And there is even a path away from the sin in our life. He knows we are dust. He knows the desperately dirty old men that we are, apart from Him. And here enters His Grace, wherein we no longer have to stay in the dust bin of our old lives until we get to heaven someday.
No, He actually gives us the strength now to begin to look like the bride we will most certainly be on that day! He invades our lives, and indwells our inner man. And then from within, the rivers of living water He creates begin to clear the foul waste that was our prior existence.
And that dreadful “I” in us begins to become us united with Him. And in Him, we begin to look very much like someone very beautiful – and not dusty at all!
Can we see it? Where our hearts are, there will our treasure lie. If we stay focused on the dust, we will continue to produce the same decay. But, if we look away from the dirty wounds He is cleansing and look to the One doing the cleansing, we will become more and more clean… and very soon, we will look more and more like the Great Physician at work in our lives.
Trust Him beloved. You are blameless. There is no condemnation. Now, by His Grace, go live like this is true!
We were made not primarily that we may love God (though we were made for that too) but that God may love us, that we may become the objects in which the Divine love may rest ‘well pleased’. (And) To ask that God’s love should be content with us as we are is to ask that God should cease to be God: because He is what He is, His love must, in the nature of things, be impeded and repelled, by the certain stains in our present character, and because He already loves us He must labour to make us lovable.
~C.S. Lewis
