March 26, 2015
Citizenship
I was surprised to learn there
is an investor-visa program (EB-5) that allows foreigners to buy their way into
the US. If a person invests $500,000 to $1 million in projects or businesses
that create jobs for Americans they, along with their spouse and children, can
live in the US and after two years become citizens. On some level it’s frustrating
that American citizenship can be bought with a price; however, the practice is
nothing new. Paul was only moments away from being flogged when he revealed he
was a Roman citizen. His captor, on the other hand, had to pay a big price for
his Roman citizenship. As believers we too need to remember that our citizenship
came at a cost. “For he who was a slave when he was called by the Lord is the
Lord’s freedman; similarly, he who was a free man when he was called is
Christ’s slave. You were bought at a price; do not become slaves
of men” (1 Cor 7:22-23 NIV).
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Gail;
-----The price Christ paid was the sufficient one. But does that mean our citizenship in His kingdom comes at no cost to us? Yesno. That isn’t a word, but you get the drift. Jesus said we must leave mother and father and sister and brother if we desire to enter the kingdom of heaven. He also said we must take up our cross and follow Him. I didn’t go tell my parents I would never talk to them again when I surrendered myself to the Lord. In fact, we all rejoiced, and if anything, I became closer to them because they also know Him. If I had been the son of devout Muslims, not only would I have needed to leave them, I would need to make sure they never found me. If they ever did, then the “take up your cross“ thing would also move from the metaphorical into the literal. To some, what Jesus said becomes literal. To most of us, for now, it is yet metaphor. My core being is shaped by Christ now that I am His, not by my parents, not by my friends, not by fear nor hatred of my enemies.
-----The cost I must pay to be a citizen is simply the price of not being a citizen of anything else. But then, in this life everything costs. Nothing is free. That’s because this is the world of limits and boundaries. Two things can not occupy the same space at the same time. Two opposites can not both be true in the same sense. You can’t be at home and at the movies too. You can’t love the Lord and treat Him like a fool.
-----The Bible is painfully sketchy in describing our eternal life. But that it does say no tears, no pains, no sins will be there infers that the possibilities of tears, pain, and sin will no longer be. We will be completely free of anything which does not work well to the pleasure of everyone at least and of God moreover. It is as if during this time that evil and good co-exist we are given the chance to choose which will make us, the evil of whatever, or the good of Christ. Choosing the good of Christ appears to be choosing the greater limitations - can’t drink, can’t dance, can’t smoke. But sin is the product of limitation. The limitation about not eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil was the limitation such eating would place between us and God, the only knowledge that tree bore. Heaven will be without bounds. Its limitlessness eliminates cost and freedom becomes ultimate.
-----Then the cost of limiting ourselves to citizenship only in His kingdom is really not a cost at all. It may feel that way while there are so many opposing choices to be made, but that one choice of Christ we do make is the choice of not having any choices outside God’s will. Since that choice is by our desire, the loss of all those other choices is neither a limitation nor a cost. Rather, it is a jettison of trash. And there’s no cost in jettisoning trash, only profit.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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