Perfect Love

I’ve been writing a paper about my salvation process. It’s been frustrating at times, but I think I came to some good conclusions.

What is sanctification? It’s how the Spirit makes you holy. So it must mean that you stop having the desires to cuss, drink, smoke, and have sex, right? Not exactly. How can we boil down sanctification to such disgustingly legalistic matters? It is so much richer and fuller than that. I see God’s sanctifying grace at work in my life right now gradually helping me to learn to love. I feel as though God has made us for the highest purpose of all: to love and be loved. Love with a Godly love. That does sum up the Ten Commandments, right?

When I am tempted to curse the people around me for treating me so rotten, I think about how Jesus endured flogging, beating, and mocking and still forgave the people who did it to Him. His fellowship with the Father overshadowed everything else so much so that the only thing he could think to do was to plead to the Father on behalf of these people. The same is true of Stephen. While he was having stones thrown at him, he cried that familiar cry, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” Wow. Now that’s sanctification.

This kind of fellowship with God is much more important than how I may be treated in this lifetime. It’s the kind of fellowship with God that makes me desire to love people the way God loves people. This, my friends, is the greatest joy to be found in life. Of course it doesn’t mean letting people take advantage of you either. Love is not always quiet or acquiescent, but sometimes comes in the form of challenging. But that’s a topic for another day.

I’ll leave you with an inspiring thought: Every person in your life is God’s gift to you for the working out of your salvation. Yes, even that person that annoys you the most. It’s easy to love the people who love you back, but not so much the ones that spit in your face.

God, please help me to become perfect in love. I have a long way to go. Come to my assistance.

To Be Alone With You

Listened to a lecture today on forgiveness in relationship to the cross. Listened to a song today about the fullness of God's love on the cross. Maybe you've heard it, maybe not. It's by Sufjan Stevens:

I'd swim across Lake Michigan
I'd sell my shoes
I'd give my body to be back again
In the rest of the room

To be alone with you
To be alone with you
To be alone with you
To be alone with you

You gave your body to the lonely
They took your clothes
You gave up a wife and a family
You gave your ghost

To be alone with me
To be alone with me
To be alone with me
You went up on a tree

To be alone with me you went up on that tree

I've never known a man who loved me

I was completely blown away when Sufjan ended his peppy show back in September with this song as the only encore song. All the glam and glitterry costumes were gone and there stood simply an ordinary man and his guitar, singing about--of all things--the cross. What a powerful ending.

And when I was listening to this song on my MP3 player walking back from Clucker's this afternoon the powerfulness hit me again in light of the message I heard just minutes earlier in chapel. Christ died in our place. How beautiful is it that not only did he go up on the tree, but he also came in the form of a man to bear all of our shame on that tree? And not only did he do it so that he could be with us (although he is Emmanuel, God with us) but that we could be forgiven in that one act of love. Christ was not sent simply as a mediator to forgive us the debt we owe to God, but He came to represent both parties involved. He was in nature fully God (the one wronged) and fully human (fully identified with the transgressors, although innocent). His death was our death. His life is our life. How much fuller and richer the meaning of our forgiveness and our lives in Christ since this is true!