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THE LIBERATED CHRISTIAN
THE ABIDING PLACE --- HIS CROSS
If, on the way home from church next Sunday, you were to fall and
break your leg, this would certainly severely disrupt your way of
living for a few weeks. You would be rushed to the hospital. You
wouldn't be able to do your normal work ... your finances would
suffer. But after a while the effects of the broken leg would completely
disappear. After the bone has healed and you have returned to your
normal life even your financial losses would soon be forgotten.
What looked almost like the end of the world when you rode the screaming
ambulance to the hospital turns out to be really nothing at all.
Suppose, on the other hand, that you learn in church next Sunday
that two of your young friends eloped and got married. Outwardly
nothing has changed very much. In a week they are back at their
jobs looking just as they always did. But the decision which they
made will not wear off in a little while like a broken leg ... it
will influ-ence their lives long after your broken leg is forgotten.
It was the starting point of a radically different life.
In other words, there are some events which are like a bump in the
road. We bounce over them, leave them behind, and forget them...
like the broken leg; while other events turn out to be a pivot ...
like the marriage event. They grip us and hold us and we revolve
around them the rest of our lives.
True, there are people who treat marriage like a broken leg. They
find some unpleasantness in it. Or they think they see something
more interesting somewhere else... so they get over it and forget
it. They don't know how to take an event like marriage and let it
deepen and grow and bless them more and more as the years pass.
But notice this: whenever a marriage disintegrates it is because
the partners have drifted away from the covenant which they made
in the beginning ... the promise to be faithful to each other for
better or for worse. Instead of renewing this covenant day-by-day
... by being faith-ful, giving love, serving one another, the man
blessing the woman and the woman blessing the man ... they start
letting days go by when the covenant is forgotten. Days come and
go when the man looks upon him-self not as a husband of that woman,
who has accepted her as she is, to be flesh of his flesh and bone
of his bone, but he looks upon himself as a separate entity, and
thinks of himself as a poor mistreated soul... as the injured one.
Soon he is thinking of himself as a bachelor. He is more and more
withdrawn from the covenant he made with her until it means absolutely
nothing to him …then he is ripe for trouble.
Or it may be the woman who fails to renew the covenant in her heart.
She stops remembering that she is his wife ... she ceases to give
herself as a wife to her husband... she becomes hollow and lifeless
and disin-terested and withdrawn until she forgets that she is a
wife and what it means to be a wife.
There are a thousand variations of this. But basically, a sick marriage
comes about
because the man and the woman have drifted away from
the covenant which they made with each other at the beginning. We
talk about the knot which the preacher is supposed to tie at the
altar. There is no such thing. What happens at the altar will never
automatically hold any marriage together. If the two human beings
who have given themselves to each other do not daily, tie the knot
afresh, the knot won't hold.
Exactly the same principle holds when you become a Christian. Don't
ever think that the commitment you made at the beginning of your
dis-cipleship will automatically hold you faithful to Christ for
all time... it won't. That bright moment of surrender to Jesus Christ
will gradually fade into the past and mean nothing at all unless
it is renewed day-by--day.
Just as the marriage partners have to go back to their covenant,
so the Christian has to go back to Calvary daily and renew the covenant
which God made with him there. If she starts neglecting her pilgrimage
to Golgotha, her discipleship very soon begins to die. Then their
sur-render to Christ, instead of being a pivot around which their
lives revolve, becomes a bump in the road which is passed over and
forgotten.
Through the ministry of Paul, the Galatians had received a vision
of the crucified Christ. They saw their sins washed away ... they
re-ceived the gift of the Holy Spirit to go forth and live like
sons of God. Their church became a fountainhead of the miraculous.
Then Paul left. In a short time the Galatians were far more "religious"
than they were when Paul was around. They were having special feast
days and fast days and days for this and days for that ... they
were taking on more complex forms of worship… they were doing
all kinds of wonder-ful things under the leadership of some marvelous
new preachers who came through from Judea. But the power was gone
... the liberty of the Spirit was gone ... the joy was gone ...
the love of Christ was gone... God was gone.
Why? Because they had forsaken the ground where they had started
out with Paul ... Calvary. When Paul was there these Galatians became
Christians simply by standing on Calvary and looking at Jesus and
be-lieving that his blood had washed away their sins. The blood
from the cross touched their guilty consciences and set them free.
The Holy Spirit descended from heaven and gave them power.
But now they had left Calvary. They had gone back into the bondage
of legalism. They were trying to perfect themselves with their own
efforts.
0 foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not
obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was openly set forth
as cru-cified.
They were no longer looking at Jesus on the cross ... they were
no longer trusting solely in his blood. And their faith was dried
up and shriveled.
The place where you become a Christian is Calvary ... and the place
where you stay a Christian is Calvary. You don't just look at Jesus
hanging from the cross in the beginning and say, "Thank you,
Lord," and then travel on to other things. You stay at Calvary
and renew your vision of it day-after-day. You look at Jesus hanging
there and re-member that it is his grace that saves you and nothing
else. You remember that it is his blood alone which makes you worthy
to approach God. You remember that it is his death which makes it
possible for you to live now as a man or woman of God.
When Christians become blind and proud and stubborn and touchy and
chronically depressed, it is usually a sign that they have strayed
away from the cross ... they are drawing on their own physical and
soulish powers instead of the power of the crucified Christ.
If you want to keep your marriage alive and fresh, keep renewing
your covenant with each other daily. But even more important ...
if you want to keep your Christianity alive, continue daily to renew
your vision of the event that made you God's child.... stay near
the cross.
Stay near the cross when you pray. Sometimes we think it's our tears
that will cause God to listen to us. But our tears will not move
God. Sometimes we think it’s our fervent manner …God
is not impressed. Sometimes when we pray we even put our faith in
our faith... "Surely when God sees my faith he will answer."
None of these things will make God hear you. You don't have to do
somersaults or work up a sweat. The sweating has already been done
more worthily by him who hung on that cross. He has paid for your
prayer ... he has made you worthy. Just lift up your heart to the
Heavenly Father and know that God will indeed hear and answer your
prayer, not because of your tears or sweat or anything else, but
for Jesus' sake.
Stay near the cross when you minister to others. The power that
enables us to minister anything good to other people never comes
out of us. What have you got in yourself that can heal the brokenhearted?
What power do you have to lift up the fallen? Even when it comes
to feeding the hungry and clothing the naked and visiting the sick,
if you try to go out and serve your fellow man by your own strength
you will end up crushed under the sheer weight of other men's burdens.
Many a social worker or minister or goodhearted Christian volunteer
has ended up enmeshed in the very evil from which he was trying
to deliver others because he lost touch with the fountainhead of
God’s grace… the cross. The heavier the burdens, the
more pressing the problems, the more intense and disciplined must
be your communion with the cross of Jesus Christ ... the place where
God made you his child.
Stay near the cross when you suffer. There are people who tell us
that suffering automatically brings blessing. They tell us that
suffering is bound to bring us closer to God ... don't believe it.
Suffering is much more likely to make you turn your back on God.
What is the first thing you always ask whenever you suffer? "Why
does God let this happen to me?" You're starting to get peeved
with God. And this is the first step away from him. When you suffer,
remember that Jesus not only promised that you would suffer, he
pioneered the path of suffering… he took the worst of it ...
he's in there with you ... he knows all about it. Keep your eye
and your heart fixed upon the cross when you suffer and the Spirit
of glory and of God will rest upon you.
Stay near the cross when you prosper. We know that if a man who
has been poor suddenly becomes rich, his marriage is often put under
a terrific strain. Suddenly he's a big shot ... he has lots of power...
all kinds of stimulating people now become his friends. His wife
who struggled along with him during the hard years looks dull and
worn...he begins to neglect her. When a Christian begins to prosper
a similar temptation comes to him. He feels self-sufficient. He
is tempted to forget God's grace. What does he need God for? ...
he's got everything.
How necessary it is when you prosper to keep your
vision of Calvary alive. Look always to Jesus....
“Who has redeemed me, a lost and condemned creature, from
sin, death and the power of the devil, not with silver and gold,
but with his holy and precious blood, and with his innocent sufferings
and death." (Luther)
The abiding place ... the place where you must stand if you are
to remain God's faithful child ... is that hill outside Jerusalem
where you stood when you first became a Christian. Never must a
day go by when this event is forgotten. Never let a day go by without
thanking God for the sacrifice of his own Son.
Why did Jesus link his crucifixion to bread and wine?...to help
us remember. Jesus took the two basic foods of the human race and
bound them forever to the cross. He gave them bread..."This
is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me"....remember.
He gave them wine... "This is the blood of the New Covenant,
shed for your sins. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance
of me"... so you don't forget.
God help us to remember Jesus on the cross even when our minds grow
dim and we forget everything else. For as long as we do, we shall
have his presence, his power, his compassion and his holy place.
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