April 28, 2011 A response to the Gospel…
Jesus paid the cost, by ultimate sacrifice, out of radical love. We are now free to reciprocate that love and sacrifice, although not the cost. The cost was paid once and for all– unless one can pay the payment and live to tell about it like Christ did, we are left powerless to cover the costs. [Not that we don't attempt to do so with our moralist tendencies].
But we are called to reciprocate that love and sacrifice. Paul tells us to offer up our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God in light of what Christ did… not to gain access to God. Paul understood Jesus’ final words to his followers when He said that He would never leave them when Paul penned that nothing could separate him from the love of God– this includes our very sin… We please God as we would please anyone who professes unconditional, radical, sacrificial love towards us.
When we think of it in that light, it’s barely a sacrifice at all. But in light of our propensity to sin, love sometimes does become a sacrifice and when it does, we are called to do so. But why? Or, better yet, how do we willingly sacrifice?
God has every right to say “do it because I said so”. He is God. He is sovereign. And yet, even though He has the right to exert His sovereignty in this way, this God says (and does) something drastically different.
“Follow me”.
Give it all up. Sacrifice willingly. Love extravagantly. Forgive dangerously… Watch me do it.
Our God does not merely say, “do it because I said so, because I’m God and you must find a way to please me” (as, frankly, the god of Islam seems to say). He models the way in service, surrender, and sacrifice.
We are now not only free to reciprocate this love but expected to. Jesus words in Luke 14 were and are hard to take in but they are fair. Our love for Him is to be so radical as to make our love for family look like hate. So over-the-top that we are to be willing and able to let everything go, even our very lives. That’s some fierce loyalty. But that is our only reasonable response to some fierce, unconditional love.
So what about our shortcomings, then? We can’t possibly love this way successfully for very long…
I think Jesus knew this. Which is why, I think, He promised never to leave us. He won’t abandon us. He will not disown us.
What about those times we are disobedient to Him- essentially forsaking Him and his call to love him with obedience? Our disobedience cannot separate us from the love of God. By the merits of Christ and Him alone, we can come before the throne of grace. Our disobedience does affect our following, however. It does not separate His love from us, in spite of our attempts to separate our love from Him with our sin.
Jesus was clear, one can’t follow 2 masters at once. Christ’s call to follow Him is a call to follow in His footsteps, to bring glory (fame) to the Father, to experience unreal, sacrificial love that knows no bounds… and it is also a call to freedom from having to settle for sin.
Scripture exposes sin as our slave driver– forcing us to obey its desires that lead to insatiableness, emptiness, and ultimately emotional, physical and spiritual death. So our sacrifice is usually this battle with our previous slave owner. But a battle means we’re living since the dead can’t fight. And, if we’re following Christ’s footsteps– his sacrifice led to life, real life, eternal life. Free from sin and free to enjoy the very Being who created us and loved us intensely enough to model the way.
Tags: Gospel
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