What Must I Do? Part 4
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ETERNAL LIFE IS NOT FOR THE SPIRITUALLY AMBITIOUS
It is indeed a great mystery. That is why Matthew, Mark, and Luke unanimously quoted Jesus saying the words, “What is impossible for mortals is possible for God.”
Mortals, who had no hand in the birthing of their very existence, also have no hand in ensuring endurance of life with their Maker. It’s a gift they receive, not something they must prove, legitimize, or make payment on.
This isn’t simply a debate over what Jesus said, it is also a logical exercise wherein we really consider the foolishness of the idea that mortal beings can do something to inherit immortal life. It’s just plain stupid. Like a pot finding a way to make it from under the bathroom sink to the top shelf in the potter’s dining room. The potter is the only one that can do that, and he did!
…consider the foolishness of the idea that mortal beings can do something to inherit immortal life.
It’s the age-old issue the Scriptures begin addressing on the first pages. What must Adam and Eve do to inherit eternal life? Trust that the fruit they can’t kill or grow is all they need to survive and thrive. They, like us, chose the knowledge of good and evil instead.
It’s not an easy way to live, I’ll heartily grant that. I’m about as far ahead of you as a snail can be ahead of a stallion. Faith, the ultimate path of least resistance, is ironically the most difficult way we can bear to go.
UNAMBITIOUS ETERNAL LIFE
Still, I’m going to fight about this until those who self-identify as “church” or “Christian” quit twisting and eclipsing the words of Jesus. You could say that I’m out to help people see God like Jesus sees God, or at least those in my tiny little crevice in the parking lot of planet earth.
I believe that you and me and everybody else are already held by a love that will never let us go.
And the only way to the life we are made to live is to give up on becoming worthy of it. The peace, justice, and reconciliation we are all longing and working for is outside our control and has been completely dealt with in the body of Jesus.
…the only way to the life we are made to live is to give up on becoming worthy of it.
Everything we do attempting to fix what is already fixed ends up adding to the pile of injustices Jesus already absorbed in himself.
It’s not until we die that we live. And death is not an achievement. What is impossible for mortals is possible for God. God has done the impossible. This is the Gospel. The Gospel is that God has done the impossible.
TRINITARIAN FAITH AND ETERNAL LIFE
I’d like to make one final point about how important this conversation and distinction is. If we persist in the way of life that see’s our inheritance of eternal life as our job, on our list of to-do’s, then we must admit the disintegration of the doctrine of the Trinity.
Hear me out.
The ancient, credal, orthodox Christian faith established early on that God is indivisibly one, and they are also three: Father, Son, and Spirit. This reality of a single God who is 3 persons, perfectly, equally, mutually at one and coinhering in their eternal, delighted community, has rightly become the centerpiece of Biblical faith.
In this declaration we are confessing that the God who has become united with us is the one in whom all things were made, are held together, will be made new, and will live on forever.
Jesus is not the only one we are united with. The Spirit is not the only one filling human temples. The indivisibility of the Trinity means that all of who God is has taken up residence in all of who we are.
The indivisibility of the Trinity means that all of who God is has taken up residence in all of who we are.
“The Word became flesh and lived in us” (John 1:14). This enfleshing of God in Christ, and then in Christ’s ascension into heaven where he is humanly face-to-face with the eternal Father as the eternal Son, means our sin and brokenness have been absorbed, cured, banished, and we are reconciled to face-to-face presence with the Father.
THE MYSTERY OF ETERNAL LIFE
Here’s the point.
If God is still waiting on you to do anything to be loveable or acceptable, or if God requires your faith to be validated by certain measurable spiritual results, then sin is not dealt with, isn’t completely conquered in Christ, and there’s some role you have to play in response to Christ in order to be completely saved, redeemed, reconciled, forgiven, and made new.
“But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the age to remove sin by the sacrifice of himself” (Hebrews 9:26b, NRSV).
To say that you are still in sin in any way is to say that the God who has united himself to you is still in the same sin. The oneness the Trinity included you in is indivisible and indefatigable. That God included you in him and that he took up residence in you does not mean that he is now like you in your lack of trust, faith, and holiness. This oneness has forever disrupted the power and influence of sin, freeing you completely from the guilty verdict because God is with and in you.
I agree with Athanasius, who said that when God became flesh, he was not contaminated with our sin and disbelief. Instead, his union with us sanctified our flesh entirely. More pointedly, in the Incarnation, what is true about you became true about Jesus, and he left it buried in his grave forever.
…in the Incarnation, what is true about you became true about Jesus, and he left it buried in his grave forever.
So, there is no benefit to arguing that there is yet something you must do to inherit eternal life. There is no argument to be had because of the reality that the Triune God has joined you in your life in order to include you in theirs, forever. What is true about Jesus is now true about you.
Not to mention, if Jesus did not accomplish the reconciliation of all things on the cross, then it follows that this insufficiency reveals he is not fully and completely at one with God, that he is not eternally begotten of the Father, that his saving work did not completely save. And if that is true, what good is what we bring to the table?
Is our sense of control and contribution to our salvation and holiness really worth the heresy of demoting Jesus? I don’t think so.
Are you prepared to make him out to be a liar? To say that what he has said about us, our sin, our relationship with him and his Father, is not true? I am not. As Jesus said in John 3, “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him” (John 3:17, NRSV).
TAKE UP THE CROSS OF ETERNAL LIFE
Let’s give up on this pursuit. Let’s forsake the life of leveling up, of spiritual ascension, of Christian progress and success. Let’s lean back into death, into the eternal mystery of the Father’s embrace—the love that will never let you go.
Let’s give up so that the streams of living water can finally pour through us bringing to life the fruit of the Spirit in the world around us. This is and will always be the work and the pleasure of God, the setting free of freedom in his children.
…the work and the pleasure of God, the setting free of freedom in his children.
Only as we relent will the reality of who God really is and what he has really done become clear to us. And only as we admit that we’ve been made one with the Holy One will we stop inventing new ways and systems of accomplishing what Christ already accomplished once and for all.
Let the Spirit sever every last discernable connection between God’s delighted presence in you and your merit.
You are, by definition and by nature, the most cherished treasure of the eternal, Triune God. Nothing and no one can change this. God really loves who you really are. Because who you really are is eternally bound up in Christ. “You have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3, NRSV).
Let it be known. Let it be heard. Let it be believed. May it be so.
Check out the LARKCAST episode this blog is paired with to dive deeper into the conversation:
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