Holiness

I have been reading again. This inevitably means there are quotes coming, but rest assured they are worthwhile. I am currently beavering through 'A Faith to Live By' written by Donald McLoed. He has what I find quite an unusual style of writing... and to quote someone with whom I was discussing - "he has a brain like 2 of Einstein's".

Anyway, I haven't necessarily agreed with everything I have read thus far but that hasn't stopped me finding the book enormously encouraging. I was particularly taken with his chapter on Holiness (or more specifically definitive and progressive sanctification).

In writing about 'union with Christ' he says this:

"Today we here much about self-image. In sport and industry and public life, so much depends on personal confidence. Even preaching the gospel is, to some extent, a question of confidence: confidence that we have something worth saying and that by God's grace we can say it, even though at the same time we tremble. If I begin to doubt what I am saying is worth saying, or to doubt that God will help me to say it, then I get tied up in knots and can't do it. That is equally true in the whole area of the Christian life. Many of us are defeated before we start because we have an unbiblically low self-esteem. It is not a matter of natural egotism. It is a matter of taking God at His word. He says we are the light of the world and the salt of the earth (Matthew 5: 13,14). And of course we say 'Who? Me, Lord? You mean US?" Yes! He means us! We are new in Christ Jesus and if He tells us to climb that mountain or carry this load or bear this temptation, then we can do it. 'We are more than conquerors through him who loved us' (Romans 8: 37). There is nothing that God demands of us which the Christ in us cannot do."

There is nothing that God demands of us which the Christ in us cannot do.

I think that is worth reading again.

There is nothing that God demands of us which the Christ in us cannot do.

Later in the same chapter Mr McLoed again made me look inward and consider my Christian service and once again he words it beautifully:

"So much of my Christianity is only a pale reflection of the real thing. The real thing was the Man who was willing to be crucified between two thieves on the garbage heap outside the city walls. The pilgrimage I am called to is not along a road lined with acclaim or power or influence or ease or comfort. It is routed along the Via Dolorosa, where nothing is easy and nothing is comfortable, because we have no right to use our divine sonship to claim favours."

Our deaths as Christians can bring no salvation to others and could in no way mirror Jesus' sacrifice on that tree. But in human terms, could you willingly place yourself in such a position? Humanly speaking was Jesus any more able to tolerate the physical sufferings and the anxiety of what was to come when he gave himself up?

God owes us nothing, we owe Him everything. every bit of ourselves, every fibre of our being. Should we not 'love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'. My question to myself and to you is this:

When, Christian, was the last time you managed this?

Was it for a few minutes? A day? A week (on and off).

It should, of course, be a lifetime... that's quite some benchmark.