July 13, 2009
Filed
My Mom has been a nursing home resident for a couple of years. Even though at the beginning of her ‘incarceration’ I consolidated her belongings, I still find myself going through boxes to locate pertinent papers. I was on such a search last week when I came across a file folder containing a health and vitamin magazine. The lead article on the front cover boldly stated, “How Not to Have to Go into a Nursing Home”. I’d really like to share my discovery with Mom…but I’m not sure she’d see the humor in it. One of the things that often attract people to the Bible is the, ‘How to Stay out of Hell’ sections. Too bad the rest of the Book gets filed on a shelf.
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Gail;
-----In a simplified manner of speaking, the Bible is a message proclaiming that this world and the state of its natural life system is trash and will be discarded by God. The “how to stay out of Hell” sections of the Bible are very relevant and very important. They present an absolutely real objective to those who do not want to be trashed: don’t be trash. But this is a passive objective. The rest of the Bible presents the active objective: entering the kingdom of the Lord. The confusion between actively trying not to be trash and actively trying to enter into the kingdom arises from the fact that neither has the world presently been thrown into the trash, nor can the kingdom be completely entered right now.
-----They are both ongoing processes with their ends in the future, just as we are. Since we must continue in this deteriorated realm until we are taken home, the most we can presently have, and must have, is a passport for passage and a ticket for the ferry. A passport is as much about identity as it is about permission. Every passport has an identifying picture, number, and basic information about the person holding it. These upon our passports are the picture of Jesus Christ and the nature of the Holy Spirit, since our own identities are totally insufficient. We can only be the passport number. And we must be a valid number, for just holding the passport is not enough. Acquiring the ticket validates the number.
-----A passport is issued, but a ticket is acquired. Buying the ticket is what the rest of the Bible is about. Of course, the ticket can not be purchased with either our money or our righteousness. God is not interested in money, and we have not enough righteousness to buy even the idea of boarding the ferry. So the ticket is acquired with the only attitude we can have: repentance.
-----Repentance is a turning from one thing to another. Biblically, it is a turning from our own principles, which will be discarded with the other trash, to God’s principles, which are the objective and the identity described in the passport. The turning away part is certainly important, but the turning to part acquires the ticket. And the rest of the Bible describes what we must turn to. Yet, even in this we have not enough funds to completely purchase it; when the ferry arrives no one will have turned all the way to God‘s principles. So payment can only be in the process, and all it can buy is the validation of our number upon the passport. It is God’s grace towards us that the ferry ride is free for any whose passports are validly numbered.
-----Since our own characters, no matter how long and hard we try, are insufficient identities for any passport into His eternal kingdom, our only hope is to identify with the one character available. How to avoid Hell warns us to have the passport, but how to be our valid number upon it is the rest of the Bible’s critical information.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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