The Method To My Madness

Have you ever had someone give you a gift that you just didn’t feel you should accept?  I know that there are some businesses out there that have a strict policy of not allowing their employees to accept gifts from firms or people associated with their business operations.  This makes a lot of sense as the “gift” can easily become a bribe or a point of emotional leverage.  Sometimes gifts come not in the form of an item but in the form of a service.  Being in the construction business I hear of things like this from time to time.  Once I heard of a contractor who had a landscape firm who “gifted” him with taking care of his personal lawn maintenance.  Was it really a gift?  Is this something that the contractor should have accepted?  Do you think the landscape firm expected anything in return?  I would say that they probably did.  So, this wasn’t a true gift and the contractor “shouldn’t” have accepted the offer.  The reality is that at some point in time the contractor probably sensed the pressure of the landscape firm to “honor” the “unsaid” agreement.  I would bet that this pressure led to some stress, and a general sense of unrest in the contractor’s life.  I personally have a hard time accepting help from other people.  I tend to get a great satisfaction in doing things for others but tend to deny them the blessing of doing things for me.  Sometimes people offer to help me with this or that and ask that I give them a call when it is time to do the work.  I take their number, nicely say I will call if I need the help, and then do what I need to do myself.  The reality is there are lots of reasons that I don’t accept their help.  I don’t want to be a burden to others, I don’t want to owe others, I don’t feel like I deserve the help, I am to prideful to accept that I need the help, and the list goes on and on.  Whatever the reason I am left with a sense of the spiritual blahs; I stay stuck in thoughts that are all about me while not allowing myself or others the blessing of their extension of love toward me.

There are a few points that we can take from this:

• Some gifts really are not gifts at all.  They are yokes that lead to spiritual darkness, 
• Some gifts are meant for the spiritual gain of both giver and receiver.  Denying the gift leaves both   giver and receiver in some sense of spiritual darkness, and 
• Typically a gift is looked at as a noun.  However, gifts can be verbs if put into the context of a service or action.

 Here is where I am going.  Biblically speaking “salvation” is a free gift offered by God when we enter into the covenant of becoming His servants.  There are many aspects of this covenant.  I am going to approach this from the most simplified form.  We agree to be His servants, He gives us salvation through the atonement offered by Christ on the cross, and He puts the Holy Spirit into us to help us hear and see how we are to be “His” servants.  This indwelling of the Spirit also gives us additional strength to follow through with what the Spirit reveals.  I hope I didn’t ruffle any feathers with that.  Biblically speaking the “gift” is a noun and is our salvation.  The work of the Holy Spirit in our lives is the verb and is “sanctification”.

In my previous writings I have implied that “sanctification” is God working out our salvation for us.  This has created some challenges for people.  Here is the “method to my madness”.  By breaking up “salvation” into a noun and a verb it implies that they are two distinct and separate things; Salvation being a one-time gift and sanctification being the perfection of us.  This implies that we are free to receive the gift while having the ability to decide if we want to be sanctified.  This is a fleshly response that I do not believe is biblical.  Here is why:

Let’s go back to my previous examples for a minute and relate God’s “gift” of salvation through the covenant relationship.  What we will find is that by looking at this “gift” as a noun and a verb that are separate and distinct from each other our human condition opens the door for Satan to stroll into our hearts and twist what God is attempting to accomplish.

Let’s start with the noun.  God is giving us a gift, but it does come at the price of entering into a covenant relationship with Him.  We have been around the block a few times with “gifts” that come with strings attached.  So our human reaction is to want to evaluate the strings, minimize their impact on our lives, and most of all see them as a yoke.  Our response is to do what we have committed to do “because” of the gift, “for” the gift giver, because of the “sense of responsibility” associated with accepting the gift.  How common is it for people to tell us what we “should” do because “God did so much for us”.  How often do people tell us what we “shouldn’t” do because “God wouldn’t like it”.  In my opinion these responses are the result of looking at “salvation” as a noun.

With sanctification being a verb separate from the gift of salvation we tend to not see it as a gift.  Instead it is more of an offer that we can accept or reject.  We can weigh out if this is something honestly being offered in love and if we really need the help.  We can decide if we agree or disagree with the course of life offered through the Holy Spirit and whether or not we want to lean on God’s strength to follow what He is telling us.

What I believe God, Christ, and all the authors of the bible have attempted to convey is that the reality of salvation is both a noun and a verb.  The noun aspect is the “one-time free gift”, the verb aspect is the work of the Holy Spirit delivering us from spiritual darkness through the sanctification process.  It is the manifestation of the very essence of “salvation”.  By taking this approach we see “salvation” as God saving us from spiritual darkness and delivering us into spiritual light.  It is something totally about and for us (a gift).  At the same time it is necessary in His ability to use us in leading others to Him, His Spirit, and ultimately their own personal transformation.  Read that last line again.  Notice…the final result is personal transformation—in other words, liberty from bondage—“salvation”.

I believe the best scripture that not only supports this thought process but gives us a clear check list to determine if we are being honest and true with ourselves comes from Galatians 5.

For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh….

But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh.  For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please.  But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law.  Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.  But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,  gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.  Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

Pulling a couple key verses from this:

·         Salvation is offered for the purpose of freedom

·         Be careful not to pervert this offer of freedom as an excuse to listen to the flesh

·         Let the Spirit lead you away from the flesh

·         The flesh will try to convince you to see the voice of the Spirit as a yoke (Law) but it is not

·         Check list time---is your life changing?  Are you moving away from flesh led and toward Spirit led

·         Be honest with the last question….your inheritance is riding on your willingness to look into the mirror and respond to what you see.

What I believe Paul is getting at here is this.  If we see that Christ went to the cross for the purpose of setting us free from spiritual darkness (a flesh led life) we can’t accept the offer and reject the process.  The work of the Holy Spirit is the very process of our being set free.  As God moves us from flesh led to Spirit led our freedom from spiritual darkness is perfected.  This is the “gift”.

Making this really simple; Salvation is God’s process of delivering us from darkness into Light.  This process requires our consuming the Fruit of the Spirit and rejecting the fruit of the flesh.  We cannot be delivered into the light while eating the fruit of darkness.  As a side note, the vast majority of what we consume is in thought.  The fruit we eat is the thoughts we think.  If our thoughts are filled with anger, resentment, indifference, self-centeredness, judgment, hatred, lust, manipulation, calls for attention, materialism, fleshly desires, our traditions, our expectations, or any other fleshly perspective we are only hurting ourselves.  God loves us too much to let us remain in that bondage.  This is why He put His only begotten son on the Cross to die for us.  He did it to set us free.  The reality is, God loves us so much that He is willing to do anything NECESSARY to move us from flesh centered to Spirit led.

It is our free choice to accept our everything as God’s anything and embrace it as Love.  This is what it is to “Love” God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength.  This is what it takes to follow the voice of the Spirit, this is what it takes to love our neighbor.

Each of us approaches the “gift” of God’s anything in our lives from a different perspective.  We were all created differently.  We each have had different life experiences.  As such, we each have a different “flesh” response to God’s refinement process.  It is the “flesh” response that makes it so difficult to see and understand exactly what God has offered and how He is bringing it about.

I pray that this discussion has opened up your eyes to an aspect of your relationship with God where you have not allowed His gift to become fully manifest in your life, I pray that you ask Him to guide you through the process of change, and that you feel His hand as He leads you into the spiritual freedom He has offered, extended, and so desires that you embrace.