I know it is a crazy question, but are you in your big toe? Did your big toe have to invite you into it in order for it to be alive? Did your big toe have to recognize that it was always getting stumped and confess that and then pledge to stop hitting the couch in the middle of the night in order for you to enter into your big toe and give it life? Has your big toe confessed, committed, been dunked or sprinkled and then started to read, give and share with other toes the necessity of inviting life into it?
Of course not! Your life is already in your toe and it lives and moves and has its existence in your body. It doesn't have to do anything to get your life - it already has it.
Likewise, the earth is the Lord's and everything in it. Where can we go where He is not?
Salvation is not committing to the Lord. It is not making Jesus Lord. It is not inviting Jesus into your heart (as if He weren't already there). Salvation is surrendering to the reality that the Lord of All has always been here and the life you live is not your own!
Go wiggle your toes!
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2 comments:
I would lovingly submit that my big toe has no intelligence, will, or the ability to communicate anything with me other than pain or the lack there of. Neither can it decide to reject being my big toe no matter how bad the pain of gout I choose to inflict upon it. It is indeed a part of my body, a needed and important part, as decribed in the analogy used by Paul. It cannot choose to be my toe, neither can it decide not to. It cannot decide to take care of itself. It cannot cut itself off. I think I am getting repetitive, so enough said!
Dear Mom, I think you missed the point of the analogy. Unfortunately, you still operate under a system of belief of separation and autonomy. Although we all have free will, we do not have life in ourselves nor do we maintain our life. Life is not separate from Jesus, never has and never will, nor is Jesus One who has to be invited somewhere for Him to be there. Paul states in Galatians 1:15-16 -"15 when God was well pleased -- having separated me from the womb of my mother, and having called [me] through His grace -- 16 to reveal His Son in me, that I might proclaim him good news among the nations, immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood," Notice Who was revealed IN Paul to him - the Son of God, the Eternal Word of the Father, the One in Whom we live and move and have our being, the One in Whom is life and that life is the light of men. (It is apparent that the Light still shines in the darkness and the darkness still can't comprehend it.)
Of course we must choose to believe in Jesus if we are to ever experience the abundant, salvation life that God has always intended for us. But our will, faith or intelligence will never forge a union with Christ that was not existent before the exercising of our faith, will or intelligence. We are called to believe the staggering news that Jesus is indeed the Lord of the Universe (the one IN WHOM all things - you and me and ALL things - are held together) and that being the Lord, He became Man and the two (God and Man) became one and when He died we all died (2Cor. 5:14) and when He was raised from the dead we were born again (1 Peter 1:3, 2 Cor. 5:17) and because of that FACT (which we accept by faith), as Paul states in 2 Cor. 5:15 - "and for all he died, that those living, no more to themselves may live, but to him who died for them, and was raised again."
It seems that you believe that our being crucified, buried and raised in Christ is legal fiction only pretended to be so for those who believe that it will be so if they believe. The pretzel logic escapes me when it is far simpler to believe - Jesus is Lord, we were crucified with Him, raised up to new life in His resurrection and called to walk in the light of this most beautiful truth. You HAVE BEEN reconciled to God in Jesus - I implore you (with Paul) BE reconciled! Or wiggle your toes. Son ;-)
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