Monday, July 11, 2011

The love that lifts

I preached about this yesterday, but it hangs on, and will continue to hang on. Trying the translation that I use here most of the time makes it even more interesting. It is, I believe, the most important series of writings in the Bible. It is the close of the 7th chapter of Romans and the entirety of the 8th.

Paul writes of his struggle, after becoming Christian, with sin. We read, "24I've tried everything and nothing helps. I'm at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn't that the real question?
25The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different. 1-2With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is resolved. Those who enter into Christ's being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death."

I sin, not because I want to, but because it is how I was born. But the element that lifts me out of that quagmire of hopelessness is the birth of Jesus, the Messiah, who solved my problem.

Now, some choose to stay in the quagmire. Some keep falling back into the quagmire. But many millions have lived the life of the Spirit.

Does not mean that don't sin. They do. All fall short, Paul tells us, but there is a way to get constantly better, to improve on the current model as it were.

It is Jesus. He saves. That's a done work. But he also changes. We live to not only pursue his eternal life, but to serve and to mold and to love until we come as close as humans can get to the love that is his.

I can't get enough of this. I really can't. Hope it interests you all as well.

I'll try to write this week on vacation, but that depends on the wifi capability of Dauphin Island's RV Park. Till then, praise God and love you all.

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