Monday, April 4, 2016
490 - Just Saying
Spirituality Column #490
April 5, 2016
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary
Jesus never said “Go your own way” or “Find your true self.” He also never spoke much about the “religion” that would carry His name.
Christianity grew out of the reality of Christ’s resurrection, God’s eternal love, and mankind having been created by God in God’s own image. Throughout the Old Testament we learn about God, man, the law, and man’s raucous inability to obey God’s Law, much less glorify God by his own effort. The New Testament was a game changer because God reached directly into humanity as Christ resetting man’s relationship with God. The Law was fulfilled in the faith, truth and love of Jesus Christ.
Jesus wasn’t and isn’t an idea, a concept or a philosophy. He’s a real person with a real mission with a real Father in Heaven.
You want to talk about God? No other way to talk to Him except through Jesus.
So when the modern secular world claims pagan “rights” exalting the imagined god-hood of personal preferences and lifestyle choices, and backs it up with the vapid authority that Jesus would never deny someone their “true desires” or “identities” or “choices,” the reasoning falls apart. You cannot invoke Jesus here and deny God’s authority there; it reveals one’s profound misunderstanding of what Jesus taught and a simply vacant mental library of what Jesus actually did.
You can read about it in the Bible, but so many people haven’t. Our crippling weakness as a society today is our willful ignorance of Jesus.
Jesus was one tough customer because He truly didn’t and doesn’t care about anything but God’s glory and expressing it with love – His love, our love, divine love. Christ’s love wasn’t and isn’t a let-it-all-hang-out, do-your-own-thing, hippie child-of-the-’60s absence of accountability, the “Me Decade” revels of the 1970s or a Millennialist “everybody’s-a-winner” faux reality. The sole mission of Christ’s love is to glorify God by reconnecting the “created” – i.e., “us” – freely with the Creator, who is God.
Jesus absolutely was in the “denial” business. The first and most frequent person He denied was Himself. Jesus had no sin, yet died for ours. Yes, He saved the sinful woman, but didn’t say, “Go and have a good time; find yourself.” Jesus said, “Go and sin no more.” Jesus helped the weak, the sick, and the outcasts, made friends with tax collectors and sinners of every stripe, freed evil spirits and even shrewdly dismantled the Jewish law in the parables he told.
But Jesus never said, “Go your own way.” He said, “Follow me.”
So don’t ask, “Who do I want to be?” Ask, “Who does God want me to be?”
Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) is saying: One’s true self is found only in Jesus.
April 5, 2016
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary
Just Saying
By Bob WaltersJesus never said “Go your own way” or “Find your true self.” He also never spoke much about the “religion” that would carry His name.
Christianity grew out of the reality of Christ’s resurrection, God’s eternal love, and mankind having been created by God in God’s own image. Throughout the Old Testament we learn about God, man, the law, and man’s raucous inability to obey God’s Law, much less glorify God by his own effort. The New Testament was a game changer because God reached directly into humanity as Christ resetting man’s relationship with God. The Law was fulfilled in the faith, truth and love of Jesus Christ.
Jesus wasn’t and isn’t an idea, a concept or a philosophy. He’s a real person with a real mission with a real Father in Heaven.
You want to talk about God? No other way to talk to Him except through Jesus.
So when the modern secular world claims pagan “rights” exalting the imagined god-hood of personal preferences and lifestyle choices, and backs it up with the vapid authority that Jesus would never deny someone their “true desires” or “identities” or “choices,” the reasoning falls apart. You cannot invoke Jesus here and deny God’s authority there; it reveals one’s profound misunderstanding of what Jesus taught and a simply vacant mental library of what Jesus actually did.
You can read about it in the Bible, but so many people haven’t. Our crippling weakness as a society today is our willful ignorance of Jesus.
Jesus was one tough customer because He truly didn’t and doesn’t care about anything but God’s glory and expressing it with love – His love, our love, divine love. Christ’s love wasn’t and isn’t a let-it-all-hang-out, do-your-own-thing, hippie child-of-the-’60s absence of accountability, the “Me Decade” revels of the 1970s or a Millennialist “everybody’s-a-winner” faux reality. The sole mission of Christ’s love is to glorify God by reconnecting the “created” – i.e., “us” – freely with the Creator, who is God.
Jesus absolutely was in the “denial” business. The first and most frequent person He denied was Himself. Jesus had no sin, yet died for ours. Yes, He saved the sinful woman, but didn’t say, “Go and have a good time; find yourself.” Jesus said, “Go and sin no more.” Jesus helped the weak, the sick, and the outcasts, made friends with tax collectors and sinners of every stripe, freed evil spirits and even shrewdly dismantled the Jewish law in the parables he told.
But Jesus never said, “Go your own way.” He said, “Follow me.”
So don’t ask, “Who do I want to be?” Ask, “Who does God want me to be?”
Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) is saying: One’s true self is found only in Jesus.
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