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


6.17.2007  

Still Finished

I'm still listening endlessly to It is Finished by Red Mountain Church. It seems that so much of what I've been learning lately, as well as the point of so much of my learning here at Boyce College and, more importantly, Immanuel Baptist Church, is becoming more and more appropriately captured in Christ's cry, "It is finished!"

I'm driven back again and again to the responsibility that I have as a child of God, a man of God. Over and over and over again, I want to ask of the Lord, "What would you have me do?" Yet, I find that my heart takes that question and puts on it a subtle twist that God, as John Piper said at New Attitude, sees as an abomination. What twist is this? Simply put, I ask the Lord how I might obey Him with the misconception that I am actually adding to my salvation, or I that have talents that He needs, or that I can draw comfort by doing something to improve my standing before Him. The problem with this line of thinking is that it quickly swerves away from the simple, stunning truth of Christ's scandalous death: it made everything the saints experience to be an endless experience of God's grace.

When Christ cried, "It is finished!", His cry was to proclaim that nothing more was needed. Looking back to the covenantal requirements that God made with Abraham, we realize that they were made good at the cross. Why? Though God had showed Abraham a vision that essentially said, "If I fail to keep the requirements of this covenant, I shall die!", God was also interweaving the death of His Son as that which would fulfill the covenant, making it yes and amen in Christ. When we look upon the Law as given to Israel through Moses, we see that Christ is the fulfillment of the Law, a Law that we could never fulfill. When we see the glorious vision of David's line, we see the culmination of that glory shining brightly with the glory of God in the face of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

Christ has done for us that which we could never do on our own. What is more, Christ graciously frees us to do now that which we would never be able to do otherwise, namely, praise Him, love Him, worship Him, please Him, gaze upon Him, obey Him, thank Him, live for Him forever, without fear of wrath or judgment. That means that every breath I take is an act of grace, an experience of God's endless grace to us in Christ. If I look upon my life as something that I must do, rather than seeing and rejoicing in it as something I can enjoy to God's glory, this journey I walk can quickly become an endless series of pride-filled, idolatrous sins. Yet, even now, in hearing others sing of Christ's proclamation on Calvary, I'm reminded that He has finished all that God requires of me, and therefore, all that I get to experience is His wonderful grace.

posted by Bolo | 9:39 PM
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