November 28, 2014
Ready to Go
Recently my husband’s elderly
aunt was hospitalized with a deadly strain of pneumonia. When she understood
her condition was not survivable, she told the doctors she was ready to die
and they stopped all treatment. We often see such a thought process in the
elderly who have lived a long life, or in those who are weary of physical
suffering. It strikes me that at baptism we symbolically say something similar.
We are ready to die — die to ourselves, and be raised to a new life. The
emphasis is usually placed on the new life we have in Christ, but I wonder if
we’re lightly dismissing the death of the sinful nature. When we enter the
waters of baptism we are saying, “I’m ready to die.”
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----A cat, dog, tree, or blade of grass have combined a physical mass of chemicals given animation by some undefined spark causing in it organic processes. When that spark separates from the physical mass, the living thing dies. Man does not escape this same exclamation point at the end of his organic process which brings him unto judgment (Heb 9:27.) Although we can make choices either to hasten or sometimes forestall this separation, we have no choices for avoiding it. Although it is effectively the death God told Adam and Eve they would do in the day they ate of the tree of knowledge, the separation He was talking about in the death of which He spoke was the separation of their entire being from fellowship with Him.
-----In addition, man has a spirit. It is more real than the body in that it will never separate from what process animates it. But the Bible suggests that its animating process is one of two opposites, either the process of building upon self unto chaos, or the process of building upon the Truth unto mutuality, harmony, interrelationships, and whatever other unfortunately liberal sounding expressions actually define the wonder of the Love of Christ Jesus’ heavenly Father. I don’t know about animals and grass and trees and whether any of them have spirits. But we know that man’s spirit proceeds straight to judgment when he dies, sometimes.
-----That seems to contradict Heb 9:27. Although every man must face judgment, like every man has the choice to accelerate his own physical death, every man has the choice to accelerate his own judgment. For when we first come to Christ we throw up our guilty plea. We judge ourselves as failed, lost, and guilty; we confess. And of course, such judgment is very congruent with the truth about us. So we are thus judged. And probably more than we want to know! But our reason for so doing is not to receive early punishment. Our reason is in the second acknowledgment we make after that of our guilt; Christ has been punished. Then our sentence is life, not for life, but for eternity, having been made upon our call for mercy in desire to reunite with God.
-----I can’t help but think our spirits are then perfected, since the Holy Spirit comes to intermingle with them. The process of chaos is replaced in them by the process of love intimately refined to its relationship with the Father. In whatever way the spirit interacts with the normal course and processes of our physical and mental lives, it isn’t enough to perfect them. For we continue struggling against our own sins and mistakes because our bodies and minds proceed from what they are made of. Their remaking is by the same slow, decision upon decision process which made them in the first place. Except now, with the spirit separated from the chaos of spiritual death, the choice by choice process of our minds takes on that desire for righteousness as a guide in place of desire for the self. So, day by day, thought by thought, we die to sin, since we’ve risen to life before our bodies die having at our request already been judged guilty, and then forgiven by His deeds.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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