1 Corinthians 6:19-20 "19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, 20 for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body."
Proverbs 21:3 "3 To do righteousness and justice is more acceptable to the LORD than sacrifice."
1 Samuel 15:22 "22 And Samuel said, “Has the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams.""
Hebrews 3:15 "15 As it is said, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.”"
John 14:23 "23 Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.""
Occasionally a bit of our past flairs up and nips at our spirituality, our connection with the Lord, our faith. For each person that attack happens differently, both in severity and frequency, but it is always directed by Satan at our weaknesses, and boy does he know how to hit them. He knows exactly when and where to hit, but we have a strong and lasting possession in Christ, we are His children, foreknew before creation and held in our salvation by His love and the power of the Holy Spirit.
Sometimes these things are never something we grow fully out of but are always there, or at least they exist for prolonged times, as the thorn Paul mentioned is often believed to have been. Desires that wont go away, guilt's that sill haunt us, mistakes that plague our minds with "what ifs" and "woe is me".
For me I used to hurt myself in various ways, often not much, and often much more as a sense of personal humiliation. I remember cutting my hands because they were the only part of my body I liked even slightly, I remember shaving the hair on my legs because it would make me be "less of a man" which was what I deserved, I remember hating my wait and so adding scars to my stretch marks. There was always a deep sense of hating myself in what I did, not so much a sense of despair or wishing for death or attention, simply a deep hatred and disappointment.
That feeling, the bottom of what ever caused that is still present in me, but by the Holy Spirit is constantly being reduced and healed. I am a new creation in Christ, remade, but my heart mind and body are far from complete.
What does this have to do with sin? What does this have to do with sacrifice? Quite a lot really.
We are creatures who are imperfect, already and not yet, our salvation is secured but our sanctification is a progress in a similar sense as a movie we are in the middle of watching is already finished and yet not finished. That being said, we still sin, and as Christians, growing more like Christ, focusing on Christ, reading the scriptures and praying we have our sins revealed more and more to us, as well as the greater and greater understanding of the Holiness of God. How despairing a thing our sins can be if we do not have the blood of Christ to cover them, if we dwell for but a moment on our sins against the Holiness of God, without the intervening presence of Christ. It is a world of despair, of hopelessness, of self hate. I think it would be a greater curse to fully know God without Christ covering us, then it would be to not know God and have no Christ for salvation. The understanding of God brings with it a hatred of sin, a detesting horror to it...and at times I think we all, and I know I personally, can lose focus and take a look down into that pit and feel it...even if I am not down in it.
With this view, this down point, this false and partial understanding of who God is we can fall into self harm, self hate, self depreciation and punishment. We try to make up for the things that we are, we punish and purge, we would and despise. We hurt our own body, our heart our flesh our minds, hoping that perhaps this will change me, perhaps this will pay for the evil I am...perhaps this will be a good enough sacrifice. Surely if God sees how much I hate my sin He will find me good enough. See Lord? I humiliate myself because I deserve it. I hurt myself because I am bad. I bring myself into despair willingly because it is what I deserve. I offer this sacrifice to you Lord, in hopes that I might be cleansed...but there is a problem with that. God is the judge, Gods wrath is owed on us, not our own wrath. In our sacrifices in our punishments of ourselves we not only fail to cover our sins but we further sin by taking away Gods right to enact His place on the Throne of Judgement. In our turning to our selves to fix our selves we turn away from God, and so we grasp onto our sin, fighting it, trying to wrestle it away from us, all the while sinking deeper into the water, willfully holding onto the very thing we are fighting, the very thing we wish to get a hold of. Seeking to conquer our sin we sin further.
Ephesians 2:4 4 "But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us,"
But God! Him. Our Lord, Savior, King, Advisor, Creator, Purpose. He has delivered us, He has called us, He has given us His word to bring us to Him and to walk upon. The Holy Spirit is within us, moving, loving, crying out in our pains, crying out when we wound Him. He has provided the sacrifice, He has provided the punishment that was His right His duty His perfection to do, and He did not do it on us for in so doing we would suffer eternally and yet be destroyed by His perfect wrath, but He did it upon His Son, who has taken all our sins, and who bore it FULLY as only God Himself could. He has purged us, He has cleansed us, He has removed us, we are brought humble (read humiliated) before him, we are disciplined (read put in our place) by him, and it is He who loves us! He has done all that we could possibly do to ourselves to punish ourselves, and He did it to Himself, to show us just how much He loves us!
God, in His love, through His son, has humiliated himself for me so that I need not humiliate myself. He has bore the wounds and marks of disgrace and disgust that were supposed to be on MY flesh to mark MY sin and My wicked heart. My God my perfect sovereign Lord bled, hung in pain, and bore the wrath of God which I can not even comprehend because I couldn't do it for myself.
So please, please I ask you. Love yourself, not because you deserve it, not because you are a human and we all are equal, not because it's productive or healthy, but because as a Christian, as a saint, as someone who possesses the Holy Spirit...
Who you were died on that Cross 2000 years ago, and now who you are is a perfect child of our God. Love yourself because god loves His Son, and He covers, and permeates you. Created by God, Saved by God, Guided by God.
No comments:
Post a Comment