Wednesday, June 4, 2014

"Swans" Part 10



(Friends: thanks for bearing with us in this lengthy series.  What you have been reading are actually brief versions of chapters of a book I am working on along the lines of the theme.  I'll finish the series in the next day or so, and we're not sure when the book may become available.  But I'll keep you posted.  Thanks, Glen.)



    A poignant devotional truth exists in the theme we have recently pondered considering the swans we become, as it were, when we trust in the Lord Jesus Christ.


   "He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him" (II Corinthians 5:21).


   When we trusted in the Lord Jesus, God not only forgave our sins and assured us of eternal life with Him, He also changed the very person we most deeply are.  "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature.  Old things are passed away, behold, all things are become new" (II Corinthians 5:21).  In order to birth the new person we are, our Savior had to become who He is not.  Not only did He bear our sins.  He was made "to be sin" (emphasis added).  "The King of righteousness" became everything He is not for the sublimely wondrous purpose of spiritually birthing us as "the righteousness of God in Him" (Hebrews 7:2).


   What could such aberration involve in the pristinely pure spirit and soul of the Son of God?  What dark and cataclysmic horrors transpired when the One who "loved righteousness and hated iniquity" become for us the very essence of sin? (Hebrews 1:9).  How terrible was the wrath of God experienced for us?  We cannot know.  We can only bow in worship, adoration, love, and the solemn awareness that our redemption cost our Redeemer infinitely more than we can ever know or imagine.  As the hymnwriter eulogized concerning such wonder, "But none of the ransomed ever knew how deep were the waters crossed, nor how dark was the night our Lord passed through e're He found His sheep that was lost."


   We cannot fathom the depths of those waters or pierce the darkness of that night.  We can, however, believe in the gift purchased because our Lord made such a journey for our sakes.  We can realize and affirm that to the degree He became who is not on the cross, we become who we are in Him forevermore.  We can also acknowledge that failure to requite such a gift constitutes a somber omission on our part.  So much was sacrificed to birth the "new creature" we became when we trusted the Lord Jesus.  Unlike the swan who merely matured into his identity, the shedding of blood and the rending of a soul made possible our transformation from fleshly to spiritual in our innermost being.  Our birth into newness of life required the aberration of being that led to our Lord's experience of the judgment of God and death.  We cannot know what such horror involved.  But we can believe, and thus increasingly and more consistently walk in the spirit, even as we live in the spirit" (Galatians 5:25).


  Every spiritual truth and reality begins with the love of God, proceeds therein, and never ends because of the everlasting nature of our Lord's blessed nature of devotion to others (I Corinthians 13; Jeremiah 31:6).  The truths we consider together in this series bear monumental impact on the life of faith and faithfulness to which the Bible calls us.  However, their most powerful implication concerns the depths of our Heavenly Father's devotion to us and our subsequent capacity - through Christ - to respond in reciprocal affection, devotion, and commitment.   Realizing the sacrifice that made possible our change from fleshly to spiritual fosters in us a far greater yearning to love even as we are loved.  Moreover, the truth empowers us to do so as excuses melt away in the light of "Christ in you, the hope of glory" (Colossians 1:27).  We are not who we once were.  We can love God with a growing ardor and a corresponding walk of faith and faithfulness.  Love made such change and its holy fruit possible.  It will make it actual as we embrace the blessed and grace-given truth of a "new man, created in righteousness and true holiness" (Ephesians 4:24).


"I will love Thee, o Lord my strength!"

(Psalm 18:1)


Weekly Memory Verse

   Being confident of this very thing, that He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.

(Philippians 1:6)



Tuesday, June 3, 2014

"Swans" Part 9



    Early in my Christian life, a minister told me he had figured out how to discern and do the will of God.


   "I just try to determine what I don't want to do, and do that.  I can be pretty sure that I doing God's will when I'm doing what I don't want to do."


  I recall even as a young believer being dumbfounded by such a notion.  Many years later, with a bit more Scriptural experience and understanding on board, I shudder even more at the thought of such a patently unbiblical notion.  


   "It is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure" (Philippians 2:13).


   What do believers really want?  The aforementioned gentleman would suggest that sin is our true delight.  The Apostle Paul rather testified of "delight in the law of God" as the inclination of his "inward man" (Romans 7:22).  Such yearning for faith and obedience results from Paul's corollary affirmation of the Lord's working in us "to will and to do."  Boil a born again Christian down to his essence and that which remains is the Holy Spirit united to a redeemed human spirit, with the Former motivating desire for the glory and will of God in the latter.


   Within our fleshly faculties and members, however, a "law of sin" exists that elicits desires contrary to the will of God and the aforementioned delight for it in our innermost being (Romans 7:23).  Moreover, this part of us easily presents itself in our senses and consciousness:


   "I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members… the flesh lusteth against the spirit" (Romans 7:23; Galatians 5:17).


    Note Paul's admission about the law of sin: "I see."  That is, we are very aware of the contrary impulses and thoughts of our flesh.  Often, however, we do not so easily perceive "the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus" that indwells our spirits.  Such perception involves the trust that believes what may not readily present itself to our field of awareness - "We walk by faith, not by sight" (II Corinthians 5:7).  The aforementioned minister lived by the obvious movings of his flesh, believing them to be his truest desires.  He did not know, or chose to reject the truth he couldn't "see" regarding the "delight" for obedience to God that dwelled in his inward and spiritual person.  He lived according to His senses, as opposed to the Spirit of God and the Word of God.  Is God working in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure?  His Word declares that He is, and we must believe such Truth to be true regardless of anything that may seem to counter the Bible's declaration.


   Let us join Paul in his affirmation of God's redemptive grace concerning our deepest inclinations: "I delight in the law of God after the inward man… so then with the mind, I myself serve the law of God" (Romans 7:22; 25).  Thereby we will more and more live in accordance with the truth and reality of the "new creature" God birthed when we trusted in the Lord Jesus (II Corinthians 5:17).  We shall live as the swans we are, as opposed to the ugly ducklings we were, discovering the power to overcome the lusts of the flesh because we realize our Lord's joy to be our own…


"I delight to do Thy will, o God."

(Psalm 40:8)


Weekly Memory Verse

   Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.

(Philippians 1:6)


Monday, June 2, 2014

“Swans” Part 8



       We might suppose it would be spiritually advantageous if we could achieve the spiritual and mental state expressed by a popular chorus from many years ago, "Let's forget about ourselves, magnify the Lord, and worship Him."


   The Bible does not confirm this well-meaning, but misguided sentiment.  Rather than forget ourselves, Scripture rather calls born again believers to think rightly about ourselves in relationship to God.  Self-awareness, properly received and assimilated, comprises a blessed gift to us that reflects the fact of our original creation in the Lord's image.  He knows and understands Himself, perfectly, and He purposes in Christ to form within us a knowledge and understanding of ourselves that leads not to self-centered egoism, but rather to the love that "seeketh not her own" (I Corinthians 13:5).


   "Reckon ye also yourselves to be… alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Romans 6:11).


   The recognition and affirmation that we "live through Him" provides the basis for the self-awareness that results in devotion to God and others (I John 4:9).  Human beings exist to serve as "the habitation of God through the Spirit" (Ephesians 2:22).  We are only truly alive when the Lord dwells in us, and we only truly live when we know and respond to this "hope of glory" (Colossians 1:27).  Thus, to view ourselves rightly involves relationship with God through the Lord Jesus, and the subsequent "newness of life" that constitutes our spirits as the very home of God (Romans 6:4).  Do we perceive ourselves as just ourselves?  Or do we realize and affirm the presence of the Holy Spirit in us whereby we affirm ourselves to be in Christ, and Christ in us?  How we answer this question greatly affects our experience of life, and of God's presence and working in our trusting hearts.  "Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were  baptized into His death?   Therefore we are buried with Him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life" (Romans 6:3-4).


   We may view ourselves as swans only because the presence of Christ in us changes the very heart of who and what we are.  The Apostle Paul declares the new person we are in Christ to be "created in righteousness and true holiness" rather than "as" these qualities that only innately exist in God (Ephesians 4:24).  We are the vessel; He is the content.  Again, God made us to "live through Him," that is, our human self exists as a branch of the Divine Vine (John 15:1).  This we are in Christ, and this we must perceive ourselves to be if the blessed reality of who He is and who we are in Him is to be known and vibrantly expressed.  If we have trusted the Lord Jesus, we are no longer the lonely and ugly duckling of our old existence.  We are rather the swans God made us to be, as inhabited, actualized, and energized by His living presence.  This we must know about Him and about ourselves, and thus, the New Testament calls us not to forget about ourselves, but rather to think rightly about ourselves, that is, to think in the terms of grace whereby "to live is Christ" (Philippians 1:21).


"Hereby know we that we dwell in Him, and He in us, because He hath given us of His Spirit."

(I John 4:13)


Weekly Memory Verse

   Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.

(Philippians 1:6)