July 18 -- Follow the Process -- Szczecin

It is a cloudy day here in Szczecin, a great day to stay in and bake cookies.  The youngest of my four daughters has been a professional baker.  The sweets and breads that she makes are a delight to any man's taste. Yum, my mouth waters just thinking about her biscuits.  I have watched her perform magic in the kitchen many times.  I have noticed something in that watching.  She always follows a recipe.  She might add to it or make variations after she is familiar with it.  But, she always follows a recipe.  Sometimes she is making something she has made so many times the recipe is in her mind.  But, she always follows the recipe.  She is such an experienced baker that some techniques are virtually automatic now.  She knows just how to properly combine the butter and the flour and other ingredients so that they work properly with each other to make the softest most delicate biscuits.  Some of her techniques she learned as a child, standing next to her mother in the kitchen.  Some she did not perfect until later in life.  But, she follows the recipe; she applies the techniques she has learned; and her baked goods are absolutely wonderful.

I often wonder why so many people believe that relationships (marriage; being a follower of Jesus; being a disciple; leading other people; or any other relationship)  should be successful when we just do whatever we feel like doing.  If something as simple as baking only works when we follow a recipe, why should we believe that there are no processes to follow for the more complex things in life?  

The very wise apostle Paul in his second letter to the Corinthian believers set forth a very basic recipe for becoming Ambassadors of God bringing reconciliation to people.  In case you have not read it recently I will paste it at the end of this blog entry.  The process is set forth clearly in a step by step process.  Each step of the process is the result of the one before and the cause of the one that follows.  Thus, if we skip step one then we cannot arrive at the end of the process.  Or if we grasp step one but try to skip step 3, still we cannot arrive at the goal.

So, let us take a few moments and look at the steps:

Step 1:  Paul starts with the most fundamental concept of the Kingdom of God -- The Relationship.  In the Kingdom everything, yes absolutely everything, is based in relationship.  Many have been deceived into thinking about sin and/or good behavior as the starting point.  But Paul understands God's concern is about our relationships.  The sin problem was dealt with at the cross and it is still dealt with at the cross.  But all life in the Kingdom depends on our relationships.  So Paul's recipe begins with our receiving the Love of Christ so deeply in our souls and spirits that the Love of Christ controls us.  We, of course, continue to have self-control.  However, when we allow ourselves to drink deeply of the Love of Christ our spirits and souls long to respond to that LOVE and we choose to be swept along by its flow.  We choose for the Love of Christ to control us.

How do we get ourselves to grasp and understand this LOVE?  We choose to believe a simple truth:  One died for ALL.  If one died for all, then the necessary corollary is: Therefore in His death each and everyone of us have been deemed to have died.  But why did He do that ?  What is the purpose of this step in the process ?  He did not die as our substitute so that we would merely be dead and lifeless.  Rather He died for us so that we may choose to live for a higher purpose than was previously possible.  He died so that we may live for Him.  His death and resurrection were not an end for Him.  They were a beginning for us to live resurrected lives because we have not only been deemed to die but also to have been resurrected with Him to a new life.  He went through a death He did not deserve and rose again so that we, without fear of death  may live a life we do not deserve.  

Thus, the absolute essential in order to get step one of the process is our belief that He died as our substitute so that we might live as His substitute.  It is then that we begin to LOVE and His Love sweeps us along.

Step 2:  This leads us to the next part of the process.  If we understand that in Him all have died, then we no longer have a basis for recognizing these dead people on the basis of that which has been deemed dead.  Indeed, this is the way we saw everyone before, everyone including ourselves, our families, our friends, and even Jesus Himself.  But now, if we are honest in our belief that all have died, then we must no longer look at people the same way.  We must not see Jesus the same way.  We must not see friends or family in the same way we did before.  We must not even see ourselves in the same way we were accustomed to seeing ourselves.  This is a very critical step in the process.  But, if I must not see myself or you as I did be for then how should I view us.  The view is the view that God has of us.  If we are in Christ then:  We are new creations.  The old things are GONE.  A new life has come.

But, what does this mean ?  I think the best way to understand it is this:  Imagine us all covered by a sea of the blood of Jesus.  If we are looking at ourselves from the human fleshy point of view, we see all of us like filth and clots and debris drifting along under the service in the darkness of the sea of blood.  However, if we look at the top of the sea from God's perspective, we see this beautiful "red sea" with islands of new character and life growing up in the midst of it.  As these islands grow and mature they begin to send out bridges of relationship and become joined together.  As the network of relationships grow we become the Body of Christ, the Bride of Christ, the true Church.

When we are seeing each other as new creations, we lose the desire to judge each other.  We stop seeing each other by color or wealth or nationality or cultural background and we begin to see each other as genuine new creations.

Step 3.  

When we allow this process to rise in us, we begin to grasp a very powerful dynamic.  We begin to see our absolute equality with every other person who is in Christ.  We begin to see our unity in the Body.  We begin to see and understand the extreme mercy God has extended to us.  We see that the gift we have received is so wonderful and majestic that we can no longer understand why anyone who sees it for what it is would not want to have it and join us in this eternal love affair.

Thus, we begin to allow others to see the change that has come in our lives.  And as they ask us about these changes we open ourselves to hear what the Holy Spirit would say to them to woo them into also choosing to accept and walk in the beauty of this gift of mercy.  Then we have become gentle loving gracious ambassadors of reconciliation.

His, thus Yours,

  Stuart

II Corinthians 5:14 and following from New American Standard Bible:

For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died; and He died for all, so that they who live might no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf.

Therefore from now on we recognize no one according to the flesh; even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him in this way no longer. 

Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation.

Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.