Cigarettes, marijuana, alcohol, watching movies, etc.? What about thing that are not blatantly immoral? It is okay to eat an entire bag of chips?
Christ says, "Deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me". Any indulgence of the flesh is wrong in that sense. Since disciples are called to keep their focus on Christ, glorify God in that they do, present themselves at living sacrifices to do His Will.... you should ask, "Is it the precise will of God to do this... and is it do His glory?" We seek to glorify God by life or by death, in every thing we do and in the way we live.
It is a SIN to the be selfish and self-indulgent. it is the attitude that counts, and some things are just not done to profit or bless others, but simply to indulge self. Those activities can be discarded.
Friday, April 13, 2012
Engaging Both World and Word in Mortal Combat
We are not to confine God in the confines of religiosity. We set aside one sacred day and one sacred
place where we may meet with Him and bring adoration to Him. Then we go home,
and our lives remained unchanged.
God is to come right into our lives. Let Him intrude. Let
Him come home. Let Him assume authority over every area of our dealings with
fellow man. Let God is brought into every square corner of our lives. Let us
let God enter in every square corner of the world.
Before the world was, His glory was with Christ. And Christ
manifested the Name of God to the men God gave Him out of the world. Now that
Christ is no longer in the world, but ascended to be with the Father, He has
left us, His disciples who have received Him Word, in the world. It is through
us that God acts and speaks. He has left us with His very essence – the Word,
and it is through the Word that He moves in us and in the world. The disciples
have the Word, and they have Christ within them. Repeatedly Christ petitions
the Father to keep the disciples,
that they may be united with God. The world at large will hate the Word of God
and hate those who bear and those who proclaim it. That is to be expected. But
those whom God calls out of the world by His Word and gives them Him Word,
-these are called out of God, the Ecclesia.
The disciples become a visible community on the earth. Though
called out of the world, they remain squarely in the world. Christ prays that
God may protect them, not from the world, but from the evil one. Christ has no
desire that the disciples be removed from the world. If so, the world no longer
will have the Word of God, which it loathes and despises but which it very much
needs.
The truth of God continues to sanctify the disciples through
the Word. And through their Word, which they preach throughout the world much
to the disgust of the world, more will come to believe in Christ. And these too
will be united to God.
The goal and mission of Christ is that the world may believe
in Him, that He is sent of God – that
they may believe the Word.
The reason why the disciples are in the world, though they
have been called out of it, is to proclaim the Word and bring many to believe
in Christ. They exist as Christ exists. Christ longs that the disciples may
join Him, where He is in glory, and behold the glory which the Father has given
the Son, the love with which the Father loves the Son, the Son the Father, and
the Son the disciples.
The disciples are those who have known Christ, and now
Christ is in them.
Christ came through Him God might bestow eternal life – the knowledge
of God and the Christ sent of God. Christ finished His Work. He called
disciples out from the world, taught them and gave them the Word. Then He
ascended. And the task of the disciples now is to preach the Word, to call
others out from the world into the Word. And the only way this is done is for
the disciples to go into every square corner of the world and saturate it with
the Word. In the very darkest recesses of the world the disciples are
scattered.
One would think they should remain together, that they may
have a corner of the world that is purely grounded in the Word, away from sin.
But the nature of the sanctity of the Word is that it is holy in the very midst
of the unclean world. One reality is that the disciples are very much grounded
in present circumstance and reality – the world. Yet the greater reality is
that they transcend present circumstances and realities, and they have an
eternal perspective and eternal life because of the Word.
The disciple is not defiled by the world nor entrapped by it
because the same Word that called them out of the world, sent them back into it
to proclaim Himself, now keeps them and sanctifies them in the very midst of
the world.
Two things will happen then. Firstly, the world will resist
the Word, for the Word is antithetical to the world and spells out its
destruction. Secondly, and at the same time, many caught in the world will see
the beacon of light and grasp out for it, receiving the transforming Word.
The Word goes out
into the world through the called-out disciples that it may call out disciples
unto itself.
And thus the world will grow increasingly antagonistic against
the gospel and at the same time be increasingly saturated with it. The world is
fighting a losing battle, a battle that already has been lost, against the
Word. The Word has triumphed and ascended. As disciples, we may seem alone and
scattered throughout a cold and unfriendly world. But the Word that has
triumphed is within us, we need only trust God. Furthermore the more the world
fights against the Word, the greater is the victory of the Word, for the evil
one knows his time is short.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)