Giving Yourself Fully to Christ

To give yourself fully to Christ.  This is the task for the Christian.  We hear it from teachers, we read it in the Scripture, and we say it to each other, but what does this mean? And while we throw this phrase around with a sort of recklessness, it is but an indistinct clang of a cymbal if we do not stop to answer the basic questions: what does this mean and how do I do it?

What does this mean?
To give yourself fully to Christ is a daily moment-by-moment submission of will, talent, ambition, goal, resource, relationship, and everything else imaginable to God.  A complete surrender.  The funny thing is that there is really no such thing as a half-way surrender.  If you don't give it all, you haven't really given any of it.  But the thing about it is, there are stages to this submission.  I mean to say that what you have offered as a sacrifice of submission today is predicated upon what you have been blessed to submit yesterday; it may not happen all at once.  Fortunately, God works like that!

How do I do it?
This one is simple: practice, practice, practice.  But what do I practice, you might ask.  For fear of writing too much I will say this.  We are called to practice godliness.  Quite literally, this means that we will imitate Christ.  From a practical standpoint, this means that we will love God with every pore of our beings, that we will make prayer and Bible study a vital part fo our daily lives, and we will love people fiercely.  But again, God has given us a Helper in the Holy Spirit, who guides us and strengthens us for this task of daily devotion.

Hopefully, now when you hear/read someone say that we ought to give ourselves fully to Christ, you would be better equipped to raise your hand in exuberance and cry out: "Amen!"

Rom. 6:23: The Free Gift of God

Romans 6:23: "For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Death is certain for all humans.  It is a 1-to-1 ratio: 100% of all humans die.  It is the inescapable reality of life, that it ends in death.  All creation follows this same, seemingly intrinsic property and process of reality.  However, we should not begin to think that death is the way that life should be.  Sin and its effects should never be diminished in the equation.

It is sin that reckons all creation for death.  It is because of sin that we will die.  But in this death we find true love in Christ Jesus.  Because of Jesus' life, His death, and His resurrection has done for humanity what no man could do for himself: He saved us from sin.  Needless to say, there is far more to this than the scope of this blog but suffice to say that because Jesus has died, we have been blessed with life eternal through faith in Him.

Now the death we do die is but a shadow of death while the life we live is but a precursor for eternity.  But consider the contrary for those who do not come to Christ in faith: the life lived is but a shadow of life while the physical death is but a precursor for the death that will be eternal.  In the end, there is no greater gift to creation that Christ Jesus, for salvation from the reality of sin is found and made secure in no one else.

In Him we Live and Move and Have our Being

Paul, on his second missionary journey, came to the city of Athens.  A city heralded for its sophistry and its intellect, Athens was also an influential city in the mediterranean world.  In many ways, outside of Rome itself, Athens may have been the port of ideas that spread philosophy and education across the known world.  It proved to be a good place for Paul to preach a message to the Aeropogus on Mars Hill.

And while Paul's gospel message was met with varied apathy and sneering flippancy, there was a minority of listeners that were touched by God.  This message is recorded for us in Acts 17.  The message in its entirety is certainly worth reading and thinking through, however, it is the final words of the message that strike me to the heart today: "In Him we live and move and have our being." (Acts 17:28).

Perhaps no statement in Scripture outside of Deut 7:7-11 or John 3:16 rings more clearly about the nature of God and His relationship to man.  He made us, knitting us together with every strand of DNA and fiber of marrow or joint in the womb (Psa 139:13).  This fact alone is the fundamental truth of reality, the truth of humanity, and the primary description of the human life.

He made us.  He owns us.  Every breath we breathe is a gift from His sovereign hand of grace.  There is nothing, not one thing about humanity that cannot be boiled down to this: we are His.  He has it in His full rights to terminate our lives at any moment.  And we deserve that termination because of our disobedience and lovelessness (please read that sentence again).

But yet He shows us mercy.  He does give us breath, He does give us reason and intellect, He does give us relationships, and He does give us the ability to not choose to recognize those gifts of grace at all.  In fact, He loves humanity so much that He allows to spurn Him for our very beings!  And He still loves us!

Today, do not let this day pass without considering the graciousness of God.  I implore you to think about Him.  Dwell on His mercy, linger on His forgiveness as it relates to our faithlessness.  And when you feel that you have tired of that, think, at last, of what God Himself has done by sending His Son to be crushed and murdered for all our sin so that we would not have to meet that fate.  Think about that.  Pray about that.  Above all else: praise God!  For "In Him we live and move and have our being."

2 Peter 1:3-4; The Tools to Live Life

Living life as the Word demands can seem a difficult endeavor due to the pervasiveness of sin and how the natural man and the law of sin prevents us from adhering to God's commands.  Fortunately, God has given us His Spirit to comfort, encourage, empower, and help us to live life in the manner that He calls us to and that His Word demands.

Although many passages of Scripture deal with this very thing, 2 Peter 1:3-4 covers it directly.  Peter's exhortation deserves some pondering as we strive to live lives firmly attached to the vine of God.  We need only remember that God has given the believer every tool needed for the job.  One needs only to recognize that truth and wield the tools accordingly.

2 Peter 1:3-4: "His divine power has granted us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us to His own glory and excellence, bu which He has granted to us His precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desires."