Saved by faith, the work is to believe, but faith with out works is dead.
Does Faith allow us the courage and perspective to take the path that will stretch us the most, allowing us to work out the issues we have along the way? In other words, does God know that verbal expression or agreement isn’t enough for us to experience love so He gives a life to work out our demons and wounds.
Is this life just a journey that takes us from independent to dependent, ending at our death in the arms of our savior? With heaven being a life that has learned to accept love through intense struggle, and hell being a life that has rejected it and sought only its own gain?
If Luke 7 is a leveling of the playing field and we all have sinned much and so need much forgiveness, is this journey one of discovering our need, and then learning acceptance and trust (belief) in a God who loves us unconditionally?
We have so many dichotomies in our language and euphemisms that hinder us from this truth. The idea of being a “believer” in Christ shouldn’t have the connotation that one is “perfect” or “better” but one who is in the process of trying to learn what it means to receive love. Yet, it seems to end up being a statement of membership to a group that has something others need. Yet, the truth is we still have nothing of ours that is good. We simply have been given a small truth that has to grow in our hearts, as this truth grows in us humility invades our pride and begins to break us down even further. The only hope we have to offer the world is the brokenness that we so often try to hide. Instead of embracing our brokenness through transparency, we instead attempt to set up walls of security to ensure hope, to have no doubt of the truth. We make the living God we serve static, and hold him hostage in theology and works, pretending that the work of God is to make us perfect, rather than realizing that God made us human, needy, and dependent. He just wants us to learn to want Him.
This journey we find ourselves on is not one of seeking to attain perfection or rise above the pains and struggles of this world. It also isn’t to learn to brace ourselves for the next punch. It is indeed what Christ said, it is to learn to live “life to the full” (John 10:10.) To accept each other for the faulty beings we are. Beings who are “hardwired to struggle” (see: Brene Brown.) The message seems to be consistent in scripture: “all have sinned and fall short of the Glory of God” (Roman 3:23) in fact Paul makes the claim a few times that if we chose to live by the law we will be subject to its rules because our belief becomes work based. But if we choose to live by the Spirit of Christ living in us we are placing our faith and our belief in Jesus and not our own work (Roman’s 8 talks about this) and when this happens the fruit of the Spirit becomes alive in us (Gal 5.) —Notice that if we focus on getting the fruit with out pursuit of Christ and the truths he has to say about us the road becomes much harder.—
Now the language here is specifically that of Paul, and very influenced by “Dualism” and the “tripartite soul” and all that, but it truly reflects Jesus words in the gospels as well. Jesus condemns those who believe they are righteous and invites those who believe they are sinners to live a life redeemed by His power. Simply put Jesus calls the Christians to stop doing things on their own power and tells the sinners the Christians have hurt or condemned to realize God loves them and turn from the lives they have lived and pursue Him. But in both cases the ultimate goal is Jesus calling people unto Himself, He is the main deal.
We don’t get lost in Jesus a lot, or argue about Him, but we do get lost in how the rules work or how our salvation works. Most of the language Jesus uses actually diffuses those questions and instead draws people to Himself if you look closely. And when people miss the point of what Jesus is saying it does get confusing (John 6 is a great example of that, watch how the conversation disintegrates slowly)
Jesus wants us to become dependent on Him, by focusing on those truths the work that we have in front of us gains more value. It’s not just a pick yourself up from your boot straps and make something of yourself type work. It’s different than that, and I don’t know to define that yet. But I am learning a lot about it. It just seems that when Jesus is the main focus of our lives things change, and sometimes the instincts that come along with that will pull us farther from Him, the difficult thing is to learn to continually rely on Him all the time. Bring Jesus into everything we do, not in a creepy way, or one that seems to hinder us… but in a way that allows us to live well.
