i used to think that passion separated us from the beasts. Now I think that passion separates us from the spiritually dead or dying.
~ John Stack
Or do you not know, brothers—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives? For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage. Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress… Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to Him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God. For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.
~ paul, The Least of The Apostles, in Romans 7
Oh beloved, it is true.
Life, or at least the existence we call life, pushes in on us. It screams for our attention in ways that are very hard to ignore. Politics, physical problems, financial issues, and our flesh cry out. Everything is vying to get back into our field of view and/or to get a hearing.
There is, however, a deep truth in the Gospel. This is that we are people who are completely other than the voices that are crying out. In fact, we are dead to them. Oh yes, there are rules and laws that try to frame our responses to the problems. And yes, rules and laws are attempted approximations of what Life should really be like.
However, the problem is deep. And it even has to do with The Law, and laws, and rules themselves. The Law points us towards the perfection we can never attain. The Law shows us how dreadfully short, actually, we fall below any standards we put in place.
Oh, we try.
But mostly, we just virtue signal. We, at least the old we, try to show others in a light that is somehow just worse than me. This is difficult. And this is, perhaps, one of the main reasons we feel life coming apart around us in the postmodern and even post-structural world we inhabit. We know that each of us is to be something better – yet we know we are not. But, the only way we can handle this is to scream out at the alleged failures of others.
Can we see it?
There is another way. The way of The Spirit. And this way is very real. In fact, living in this space is more real than the farce we try to piece together in our failures to comply with the Perfection we see in Him.
Jesus is the One Who has become The Way. He shows us what Living in The Spirit really is.
His death was so much more than just some fulfillment of The Law. Though it most surely was this. Absolutely. However, the payment of the penalties for our failures and sins is only the very beginning of the process. His death was so potent; so incredibly all-encompassing, that it killed even my need to have anything to do with a fleshly attempt at conforming to a certain standard of behavior.
Rather, in killing my attachment to The Law, it allowed me to go deeper into the actual Substance of what The Law was pointing me to in the first place. Instead of focusing on the icons of His Perfection, i am now plunged into the torrential reality of His Goodness. i am, to put it more clearly, married to goodness – even intimate with it.
This changes everything. Now I am not trying to get somewhere. Now, i am travelling in a space where i am have already arrived. i am in The Spirit. And here, is where real Life really is. It is, in fact, more real, much more real than the illusion i was existing in before.
So, are you feeling the world pulling at you, or trying to pummel you with its distractions? This will always be the case while we are on this plane. However, there is no need to relate to it. We are dead to it, and now married to Another, Who has already enabled us to Live as we have ever desired to Live.
Tonight is your night, beloved. Time to be Living in The Spirit.
“Our ability to put on the mind of Christ Jesus comes by virtue of our sacred union with him. This is the gift of the Holy Spirit: “God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us” (Romans 5:5). The power to love God wholeheartedly is the birthright of those reborn in the Spirit of Jesus Christ. It is what allows us to move out into the world as crystalline bearers of God’s image.”
~ Brennan Manning, The Importance of Being Foolish: How To Think Like Jesus
