Often, I have looked over the hardships in my life, trying to understand why I struggled in certain ways, could not stand up to creating problems, or often walked around with a sense of guilt, sin, and worthlessness.
I believed that Jesus Christ died for my sins, but I did not believe that Jesus Christ died for all of my sins -- past, present, future. I also believed that I was on my own in this world, as if Jesus Christ had died for me, then went off and I was left alone to get by in this world.
The biggest reason why I had such a mixed message -- I grew up in a household where AA was preached morning, noon, and night. I grew up in a home where the answer was in the Twelve Steps, as though the Gospel of Jesus Christ was somehow not enough!
This mindset stuck with me for a long time, but this all too common a problem for believers, many who have not bothered to sit down and take in what the Bible says, without adding from the tradition of the elders or the habits of their former denominations.
Jesus gave us Holy Spirit, His very presence in our lives, who by His peace leads us into all knowledge and understanding. Unlike the crowing of members in AA, believers do not need a little Blue Book to tell them how to live from day to day.
Unfortunately, though, I was raised to believe that I should sit and wait for God to send me a deliberate message, or that I needed to wait for someone outside of me to give me signals on how to live.
The Holy Spirit grants us life! This all too neglected Third Person of the Trinity brings Christ Jesus to live in us, the Hope of Glory (Colossians 1: 27) The same Holy Spirit convicts us of righteousness, a necessary witness as we live in a world hell-bent and hellish on reminding us how often we fail, how often we miss the mark, how much we need more than what we already have in us through Christ Jesus.
This lack, this alienation, this emptiness leads men and women to drink, use drugs, and engage in other perversions. Men and women seek freedom from the death and condemnation within them. They want have peace, freedom from the fear of death. The loneliness, the emptiness, the weariness and boredom which afflicts man is a manifestation of human nature trying to get what can only be received by faith -- Life and that More Abundantly!
So, I had received a mixed message and an incomplete Gospel. Jesus died for my sins, yes indeed. Yet the way that my parents had raised me, that did not matter one bit. I was raised to believe that I was on my own in this world, and growing up I found myself constantly looking for something or someone that I could stand on, since I was taught that the same Jesus who had died for me was not doing anything else for me.
No wonder my mother was so attached to AA. She had gone along with the same religious upbringing which tells people that Jesus died for your sins, but you still have to confess your sins to maintain fellowship with God. The whole blessings of God still depend our obeying Him.
Yet the New Covenant has been outlined so clearly:
"For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after
those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them
in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people:
"And they shall not
teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord:
for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest.
"For I will be
merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I
remember no more." (Hebrews 8: 10-12)
The New Covenant has nothing to do with us.
Even in the Old Testament, Abraham's Covenant had nothing to do with what he did:
"And he believed in
the LORD; and he counted it to him for righteousness.
"And he said unto him,
I am the LORD that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee
this land to inherit it." (Genesis 15: 6)
Later, God cut the covenant with Jesus, not with Abraham, because he was mere mortal and could not keep the standard of righteousness by faith in his effort:
"And it came to
pass, that, when the sun went down, and it was dark, behold a smoking furnace,
and a burning lamp that passed between those pieces." (Genesis 15: 17)
Interestingly enough, "17" speaks of victory, and fittingly this seventeenth verse outlines the "smoking furnace and the burning lamp" -- the same smoking and fire that Isaiah saw just before his sins were purged by coal fire (Isaiah 6).
Despite the Biblical record which outlines that our only "part" is to believe -- just as Abraham believed, just as Jesus tells us to believe on Him (John 6: 29), I was living a life of trying to please and trying to get God's approval and favor in my life.
Even as a child, the program of AA and Jesus did not make much sense to me. If my sins are forgiven because Jesus died on the Cross, then why did I have to confess my sins in order to be forgiven? Holiness is something that I cannot earn, only something that I can receive by faith. A "god of my understanding" makes no sense. At one point in my life, I had the courage to tell my own mother that I did not believe in that "AA stuff."
But since I was not thoroughly skilled in righteousness, I faced trouble and was then convinced that I had to do something about it. When times got tough at one point in my life, my mother trotted out AA as the answer, and so I agreed to go along with it. For a long time, I did not know what else to do when I was filled with fear or upset or any other resentment because I had been taught for so long to "take my inventory." For a long time, I never understood why so many people around me were not as easily offended as I was, why they could make mistakes and not brow-beat themselves about their problems. I was so uptight, yet everyone else was not. It made no sense to me, for a long time.
Now I look back on so many upsets and mishaps in my life, and the one common denominator comes through: I did not believe, simply believe that all of my sins -- all, all, all -- were forgiven at the Cross. The reason why people were able to "mess" with me for so long, whether intentionally or not, is that I did not have peace with God. Instead, I made my peace a factor of who I was with and what they said or did to me or around me. What a terrible way to live, trying to get love, joy and peace, when the Holy Spirit brings and bears forth these fruits as a matter of faith.
The Truth is so simple and so great. Jesus died for all of my sins, all of them, and His blood continues cleansing us! My mother did not believe this, and she even pushed it aside, choosing to trust what she had learned in AA. The nightmare of taking your inventory over and over, the nightmare of trying to catch yourself to make sure that you never have a bad thought or do something wrong, the whole religious nonsense of trying to "keep short accounts" with others is just pure insanity, if not arrogance.
By Christ's death and resurrection, I am made clean and ready to receive His Life. Jesus Christ did not die on the Cross so that we would spend the rest of our lives going through the motions of confessing our sins and trying to maintain through our own efforts what God so freely gives, and only by receiving what He so freely gives by faith do we receive it!
The Truth is older than every tradition of man, since Jesus was in the Beginning with God (John 1: 1-2). The Gospel is as simple as every sin paid for in Christ, forever! We can then rest in His life and love, no longer responding to shame about the past or fears about the future, for in Christ we have a new life, a new self free of oneself trying to do and to get, for in Christ everything is granted to us (1 Corinthians 3: 22)
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