For our God is a consuming fire. (Hebrews 12:29)For several years now, I have read a lot in the papers and on the internet about how people want you to leave your religion at home when you vote, or go to school, or work, or anything else.
They say that there is no place for strong religious convictions in the public sphere. All they do, they say, is muddle up things.
And besides, it is said, when you bring in your religious convictions, you run the risk of running counter to someone else’s convictions. Yours and theirs may not be the same and no one has the right to force what they believe on another. We do not have the right to tell someone else that they are wrong simply because we have read it in some book or think it ourselves. Everybody has the right to live their lives as they feel like and no one can tell them they are wrong.
It is said.
The problem is that verses like Hebrews 12:29 come up. Our God is a consuming fire.
Throw something into the fire and what happens? It is burned up.
When we are thrown into God, so to speak, we are burned up. As the apostle Paul said in Galatians 2:20 said, I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
When we are in Jesus and through him in God, we are no longer who we were. We have been burned up in his presence, we have been crucified with Jesus and we have spiritually died. We are new creatures.
We can no more leave our Christianity at home that we can leave our sexuality or anything else that defines us physically.
Wherever I go, I am a man. I am male. Everything I look at is seen through that prism. I cannot see things any differently because that is who I am. I am also an American. Even though I lived in a foreign country for a year and a half, I still think as an American. I am a white guy. I think as one. Having never been black or Asian or anything else, I cannot imagine it. I am a tall and big man. I think as one. I cannot think as a short person because I am not and have not been for 50 years.
And I am a Christian, a child of God, a follower of Jesus Christ, immersed in his grace and participating in his love. I can no more leave that behind than I could my sex, nationality, race or height. They are all part of me.
And besides, the only one that will last is the Christianity. One day I will be changed to whatever I will be in heaven, and all of the physical differentiations will be gone. But, as 1 Corinthians 13 says, my love for him and his love for me will still be there.
When I vote, or go to school, or work, or anywhere – I am a Christ-follower. I have been crucified with him, I have been burned up in him. I am no longer just me, but me in him.
I still retain my abilities and my identity as a white American tall and big man. But I am one who is in Jesus and saved by his grace. Not only that but, as Paul also said, we are Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us (2 Corinthians 5:20).
How in the world can Jesus make any appeal through us if we leave him at home?
Not me. I love God too much. I will sing of his fire and let it consume me.
No comments:
Post a Comment
To comment, post your comment and click the anonymous button. It would be nice if you signed it so I could know who you are.
You are welcome to say anything you want as long as it is nice. If I don't like it, or it is ugly, I will take it off, place it into the garbage disposal, grind it up, and allow it to be flushed into the Gulf of Mexico where it will be eaten by a fish and then excreted where it will lie on the bottom of the ocean until it is covered up by other comments.