Orange Moon Wednesday, October 12, 2022 "Privileged Responsibility"

The Special of the Day… From the Orange Moon Cafe…

    

               "Privileged Responsibility"

    Life in Christ involves privileged responsibility, a sequence never to be reversed in our hearts and minds.

    "And God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work" (II Corinthians 9:8).

    First, we must "have grace," that is, God's freely given favor in the Lord Jesus Christ and all that comes with it, including the power to walk in faith and faithfulness (Hebrews 12:28).  Then, we seek to fulfill "every good work" as the fruit of God's leading and enabling received.  As His trusting children in Christ, God privileges believers with His presence and promised working, resulting in our fulfillment of responsibility.  

    Only abounding grace leads to abounding good works.  The faithful believer does not pull himself by the bootstraps, determining he will do his best for the Lord.  Certainly, he desires to do well in life and service to God and others, a proper motivation.  However, he does so by trusting and submitting to the God who does His best in him.  The standard is far too high for tightened bootstraps and steely determination to result in genuine godliness.  The Apostle John ended any such notion in his mandate to "Walk, even as He (Christ) walked" (I John 2:6).  Even a cursory reading of the Gospels reveals we possess no inherent ability in and of ourselves to fulfill our responsibilities as did the Lord Jesus.  To walk as He did?  Good luck to all who try it by their own determination and discipline.  And be sure that no matter how good your luck is, it will not be enough.  

   "I will dwell in them and walk in them" (II Corinthians 6:16).

   We live for God by living from God.  The privilege of His presence, known and affirmed by faith, results in the fulfillment of our responsibilities, as empowered by our Lord's faithfulness.  He walks in us so that we may walk as He walked.  We tighten the faithstraps of our hearts, as it were, setting forth day by day to do the will of God by the power of God.  Privilege first, then responsibility.  Or rather, abundant grace, and then every good work.  Only thereby will we walk in the proper sequence that began our Christian life - grace received by faith - and that leads us to live the Christian life according to privileged responsibility.

"Without Me, ye can do nothing… I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me."

 (John 15:5; Philippians 4:19)

"But by the grace of God I am what I am: and His grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but I labored more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me."

(I Corinthians 15:10)

Weekly Memory Verse    

   For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that ye through His poverty might be rich."

(II Corinthians 8:9)

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