Smeagol is Free!
A hermitudinal view of...stuff...


4.05.2004  

Riiiiiiighteeeoooouuuussss!

Spring Reading Days are over, my white friends are mocking my perceived whiteness, and I was *this close* to conversing with Billy Boyd (the actor who played Pippin in The Lord of the Rings films) a couple nights ago when my brother ran into him at the W in Waikiki the other night. Heck, even The Nose has a tan that's darker than mine. Dang.



Now that I'm done expressing the shallow side of my personality, on to deeper matters. I just got off the phone with Ganigan, the only respectable UK fan this side of Lexington. He's back at home, and he just had breakfast with Gary. My first words to Ganigan in...oh...two years...maybe three? "76, 75...76, 75." For the uneducated, the score of UAB's win over UK a couple weeks ago. Muahahahaha!



Hmmm...The Nose just walked past me again...I'll console myself with my superior melanocyte activity.



Now I'm really on to serious matters. Promise. Or, for you Mr. Mikami, Pinky Swear.



Jeff (no, not that Jeff) provided some interesting work-time conversation the other night. (Don't worry, the building was completely safe.) One thing I thought about that's still somewhat fresh: Grace, Righteousness, and the Cross. At one point, he said something that made me pause and think, because I actually disagreed with what he said, which was that God's grace is the major theme of the cross. Now, before proceeding any further, I won't claim to have either a full understanding of the cross, or to have studied it sufficiently (not that such a thing is possible), so know that these thoughts are just...well...very raw thoughts. Anyway, my thoughts on the matter.



I told Jeff that God, after The Fall of Man, had every right to utterly destroy man instead of being gracious toward us as He is. However, that introduced a problem...a BIG problem. Namely, God's righteousness. If God, being a righteous God, allows us to act unrighteously, and does not punish us in accordance with our unrighteousness, then He Himself is acting against His character...in essence, unrighteously. The cross, therefore, solved that problem because God fulfilled His righteous requirements by putting the punishment for our sins upon Christ (that's the "short answer"...if I go in depth, I'll send my mind all screwy, not to mention yours as well).



Now, that's just half of it...here's the other half. I told Jeff that grace is, to my mind at the current time, a sort of "vehicle" by which God delivers His righteousness to us. How so? Think of it this way. God has every right not to be gracious toward us. He did not have to send Christ to the cross to die for us. He has every right as Creator to simply allow us to die and pour out His eternal wrath upon our wretched souls. He'd still be righteous if He did that. But, He decided to deliver His righteousness to us in another manner; namely, He gives us Christ's righteousness, and blots out our sin (justification). Now, I said earlier in the paragraph that grace serves as God's "vehicle" by which He delivers to us righteousness. On one hand, God shows sinners condemned to Hell His righteousness by pouring out His eternal wrath; on the other, God shows those whom He saves His righteousness by freely imputing it to us...the professors on campus call this justification. In a sense, God also justifies His actions toward Man at the cross...but that's another thought.



Now, I'm not saying that God's righteousness was the only reason for the cross...please don't think that. I'm just saying that it was, in essence, a problem that found its solution in the cross, and that grace was a means by which God delivered that righteousness. A clarification of roles, if you will :)



Does that make sense? I hope so.



Now...on to a completely different bit of thinking.



Have you ever noticed how Scripture doesn't really tell you what to do "when you sin"? I thought about that this weekend...I had to deal with my sin, you see, and was needing comfort. This morning, as I pondered that very thing, I came back to the one truth about Scripture that always helps me understand it: God wrote it. I know, I know. That's a wee bit obvious, isn't it? Seriously, though, think about it. If God wrote it, He wrote it that way for a reason. In other words, if God doesn't include a part where He says, "John, when you screw up and lie or look at women in a way you shouldn't or think thoughts you shouldn't, pray five times an hour until you feel your guilt go away." Nope. Nuthin' doin'.



What does God say in His word? Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus...For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, having all died; and He died for all, so that they who live might no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf...Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come...Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless...Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. That's what His word says. I could go on, but I think you get the idea. It's interesting to me that as I read through scripture, particularly the New Testament, I'm told to look toward Christ. He is the answer for my sin...the only answer. I'm silly and prone to sin, but I still try to comfort myself by looking for ways to appease God. Isn't the Old Testament full of evidence that anything I do to earn God's favor won't be enough? Silly human that I am, why do I not learn? My sinful flesh hasn't yet given up. It thinks it still has a chance in the big scheme of things. But you know what? I have died to sin :)



Dangit. I think my library books are overdue. *Sigh*...

posted by Bolo | 4:22 PM
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