The
Christian life is not about religion.
Religion is about following a specific set of behaviors. It is more about what we do. It is about why we do what we do. When Christ is ruling over our wills, our
mind-emotion-actions fall into order.
When
Christ is ruling over our wills, we act from the center of His presence in our
souls. It seems to me that all the work
of the Old Testament was given to reveal that although our minds and emotions
wanted God’s rescue from our sins, we needed something greater than ourselves
to set us free. The New Testament
exposed the mystery that was known to God from the beginning, that we humans
had been depleted of the will-power to follow God without His help. Ezekiel 36:26 explained it this way: “I will give you a new heart
and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone
and give you a heart of flesh.”
That heart of flesh is Jesus.
When we believe that His life, death and resurrection was God’s gift to
us, we receive this heart of flesh. Not
only was Jesus incarnated into human flesh but also after His resurrection our
belief opens the heart of our human flesh to receive Him personally. His presence in our lives is the power to
give Him reign over our wills.
Without
Christ reigning over my will, all my good deeds, kindness to others,
appearances of virtue only make me feel good about myself; they do not connect
me to the love of God. There are a lot
of people who do a lot of bad things in this world. There are a lot of people who do a lot of
good things in this world. It’s not the
doing of the things we do that reveals that Christ reigns over our wills, but
in the reason we do what we do.
There was
a rich man who generously addressed Jesus as a good teacher and asked what he
needed to do to be included in the Kingdom of heaven (Matthew 19:16). Jesus did not seem to appreciate the accolade
by questioning his compliment. However,
He moved forward in the conversation to ask him to reveal what He knew the man
knew—the commandments of the Scripture.
Jesus listed only six of the commands—the ones that pertain to our
relationships with other people. The
rich man responded that he had kept all of those commands and wondered what he
still lacked. Jesus was quick to show
him what he lacked by giving Him a behavior that would reveal it.
Jesus
told the man to go and sell all that he had and give it to the poor. Why?
Doesn’t that sound like works salvation?
You do enough good things and you can participate in the kingdom of
God? If you think carefully you will
notice what the rich man did not notice.
The first four commandments—the ones about having a relationship that
connects you to God - were not mentioned by Jesus. These commands come first because they are
the foundation for any good will that we do.
The Great Love Chapter (1 Corinthians 13) and all of Scripture teaches
us that everything we do means nothing to God if we are not doing it in oneness
with Him.
Uniting
our will with God’s will is what it means for Christ to reign over our
wills. This happens in my life when I
work through my mind to understand which emotions are true and make a decision
in prayer about what God is asking me to do.
One hint here, He usually asks something that we would not naturally
think up on our own. What does God want
me to do today? He’s ready to answer if
we are ready to ask and listen.
Copyright © 2018
Deborah R Newman
teatimeforyoursoul.com All Rights
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