Another step to understanding the real me, is understanding my depravity. Understanding the fact that I truly am nothing without the grace of God. Because when I can effectually grasp the concept of my depravity then the grace of God becomes so much more powerful in my life. This new piece of knowledge will also open the doors for learning.
Learning starts with me not feeling satisfied with where I am. It starts with frustration, and anger. However, to often does our society worry about my self-esteem, and my feeling good about my self, that when reality sets in it is almost unbearable. Hence the reason the education system is failing. Teachers and administrators are so worried about making the student feel good about him/her that they destroy the kid’s ability to learn. All of a sudden truth has been subjectified and is nothing more than something that feels good.
Truth is quite the opposite. It is freeing, but in a very painful way. People who ask for the plain truth are ignorantly arrogant. If the objectivity of truth and all that it encompasses was completely understood, our out look on life would be totally different. Our selfish desires and ambitions would come to a screeching halt, while our spiritual selfless lives would come alive.
Christ's life was not an easy one. Yet He knew the truth and was set free in the sense that His perspective of this life was much bigger. He didn't become bogged down in the dogmatic narrow views of His friends and family.
Most people don't consider being chained up in a prison as free, yet for Paul it was only a confirmation of his liberty in Christ. Mentally and spiritually.
It is so incredibly hard to hold on to the real me once I find it. Because as soon as I recognize and accept the truth of my depravity, the "god" inside me - that I have been so indoctrinated with by society - is trying to tell me "perk up your not so bad!". How deceived we are and how readily we accept it!! God have mercy on me!!
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Like music to my ears is the sound of the true Gospel. The other night I was meditating on the same concept myself; how I cannot remember who I am without Christ. Why do I continually turn to complacency and how is it that with such obvious sins in my life, I manage to forget my shame? How much more grievous the offense is when I inexcusably forget it so. How inestimable the Gospel becomes when realized in its magnitude as being not only grace that covers our depravity and sin, but also grace that covers our inability to see that depravity and sin in the unbearable reality of its true weight.
Indeed, it would be funny if it wasn’t so tragic, that when humanity is overrun with selfishness and self importance, we attempt to compensate by convincing ourselves that things would be different if we could but think more highly of ourselves. But sadly enough, those of us who should know better are more than anxious to adopt this idea. I can condemn it all day long in my philosophy, but in all honesty when it comes right down to it, I really like myself. I place myself above all others and I place my wants before what I know to be right. I preach virtue and I live lawlessness, I preach forgiveness, but I hold others to a law that I myself cannot keep. I am a hypocrite, but don’t worry, I won’t tell myself that.
Indeed, if I but knew my shame, how could I speak in the presence of my God? I utter words of prayer so thoughtlessly, as if God were merely a therapist that was paid to listen to my self-induced misfortunes and woe. The greater tragedy is that when the truth of my sin slaps me in the face, I rebuke it in the name of Jesus.
When I see but a glimpse of what Holiness actually is or the Majesty and Presence of God, I cannot help but cry “Woe to me! I am undone”. Indeed, shame on me for I am an arrogant fool; not only the worst of sinners, but the least aware of it. Thanks be to God Whose grace is sufficient. I cannot contain the magnitude of the Gospel within my mind when the grace of God is such that subjects itself to such ingratitude, never altering its unconditional bestowment.
I have never heard a more accurate or disturbing description of my condition OUTSIDE of Christ than Jonathan Edwards’ “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”.
“Your wickedness makes you as heavy as lead; it drives you down, with great weight and pressure, toward hell. And if God were to let you go, you would immediately sink and swiftly descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf. At that moment, you will see that your health, your own care and prudence, your best contrivance, and all your righteousness, have no more influence to uphold you and keep you out of hell, then a spider’s web has to stop a falling rock.”
“The God who holds you over the pit of hell, as one might hold a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you and is dreadfully provoked. His wrath toward you burns like fire; He looks upon you as worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire. His eyes are so pure that He cannot bear to have you in His sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in His eyes than the most hateful, venomous serpent is in ours.
You have offended Him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince; and yet, it is nothing but His hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment.”
“O sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in! It is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath, over which you are held by the hand of God. And this is the God whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you as against many of the damned in hell. You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it and ready every moment to singe it and burn it asunder; yet you have no interest in any Mediator, and nothing to lay hold of to save yourself, nothing to keep off the flames of wrath, nothing of your own, nothing that you ever have done, nothing that you can do, to induce God to spare you for even a moment.”
I cannot bear the weight of this Law’s demands, and I need explicit and offensive words such as these to remind me of that. The shocking image that strikes me even harder is this: that as Christ has suffered and made satisfaction on my behalf, it is no longer I, but it was Christ that was held over that fire of hell. It was Christ Himself being without sin and yet a sin offering that when crying out to His Father “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” was actually sent to hell carrying the entire weight of God’s Holy wrath. The weight of the Father’s very perfection and righteousness which was bearable as God’s perfect Son in Whom He was well pleased, was the agonizing fire that He suffered as He became sin for us; putting it to death on our behalf.
How sobering, to see that God’s grace is such that reaches literally to the depths of hell. There is no other purity that can appease such a requirement, and there is no other Love that would bear the cost to do so. Thanks be to God for our salvation that is in Christ. Again I say, Thanks be to God!
That was excellent!!! I think you should have just made that a seperate blog!! Surely it is worth the title of a "blog" rather than a mere comment!
Either way...thanks!
Yes that was a compliment... so relish the moment! :~P
I was rather impressed with your blog myself, and don't worry, I'm writing your compliment in my diary as we speak. :op
Btw, nice profile!
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