April 30, 2012
Cover Up
I changed our sheets on the bed and put them into the washer and then
the dryer. However when I took them out of the dryer the fitted sheet was
missing. Being bigger than a sock I knew it couldn’t walk away by itself. I
finally discovered that rather than taking the old sheet off the bed I absent
mindedly put the clean fitted sheet over the dirty one. As new believers many
of us tried to do something similar. Rather than getting rid of the old sinful
nature we thought we could simply cover it over with the new self. “You were taught, with regard to your former
way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its
deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness
and holiness.” (Eph 4:22-24 NIV)
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----I’ve always found Romans 15:2 quite revealing, “We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak.” In that Paul was writing this to the brotherhood rather than the non-Christians indicates there are weak folks in the Lord who fail in things. In the same way, James 1:5-7 indicates there are brothers who lack wisdom and some who are even double minded and unstable. Much of the New Testament epistles are written about the imperfections and failures of the brotherhood. And it isn’t though we really need a forensic examination of the Word to know that Christians are not Christ-like through and through. Underneath a more than excessive sugar coating, they are nearly the same wrecks that everyone else is, with maybe a few more dents knocked out here, a little more Bond-O smeared there, and several patches of undercoat sprayed in between.
-----So this “new self” thing was for a long time very problematic to me, seeing that the most of what is “new” about it is the way the reborn person looks at himself. If we are really honest about who and what we are, all our old fitted sheets lie underneath our fresh clean ones, or at least it seems.
-----Since my very early twenties I have viewed the existence we live in as a zone where two very different kingdoms temporarily intertwine. One is dark basically because it wants to make itself the light. The other is the light. The only way I’ve been able to mentally deal with this “new life” thing of a “new self” “replacing” an old self is to recognize that the same conditions of good and bad commingle in us. We are not homogenous such that we just turn from being imperfect to being perfect before the Lord does that for us in His Great Day. Our selves are a commingling of “getting it right” and “getting it wrong.” If it were not so then there would not be a myriad different denominations and brotherhoods, each thinking they are right and the rest are wrong. There would not be Christians with social problems. Lawyers wouldn’t earn a dime from the Christian world. And none of us would ever be confused about what to do in any possible situation. But we have more denominations than Will Rogers had jokes. Christians are continuously entangled in social problems. Many lawyers enjoy much Christian money. But this doesn’t mean there’s no new self. It just means we are still a bit confused.
-----But the wreck’s frame is perfect. The spirit has been made alive and is joined with the Holy Spirit. It has now become completely of the kingdom of light, and as such, has the ability to go everywhere it goes and do everything it does perfectly, sheltered by the Holy Spirit, rather than being seen as completely dead, totally imperfect, encased within self interest.
-----However much the spirit can operate perfectly in the spiritual existence, we yet operate as a whole in the physical existence. The engines of our motivations and transmissions and differentials of our mentality and wheels and tires of our hands and feet still propel us in tainted ways to other collisions, hopefully less disastrous than those before. Our exteriors yet collect dents which we quickly patch and paint for at least an acceptable appearance. But as much as all these must still function in a world of failure, their functioning as a new self are their functioning with attachment to a spirit made alive by His rather than to one dead in its own wreckage.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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