2023-12-20 A Meditation on One in Christ

“23 Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. 24 So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. 25 But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, 26 for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. 27 For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.” (Gal 3:21 ESV)

There are seasons, earned calm, unexpected peace; still, to be One in Christ, Witness to an Event, is constantly to be on the caution and on the march. God does not need man’s help to race to the scene of a crime, to see hearts wincing along, wheezing and misbegotten. Therefore it should be a strange existential normalcy that permeates both antebellum and wartime, both peace and attack. We are in the customary frame if we are binding up the brokenhearted, parenting the orphans, donating to the charity work in cultures so poverty-stricken and manipulated, used for profit or simply forgotten. We are One in Christ when we ready ourselves for His wounds, upon His Body, in His Chosen Timeframe, according to His Managerial Excellence.

For God comes with a swoosh, a vacuum as man’s deeds bleed out in color and in intensity, unto His deeds manifest and heroic, His deed of loving us through our own existential flailing and seeking, our existential puzzle as to why at times we have peace and delight, and at times we have shipwreck and caged existence. As though no longer saved. As though given over unto a caricature of ourselves. As though victim of the curse muttered our way; wow, does that summary judgment fester. We were simply speaking of One in Christ and of His deeds, and… wham! A cutting word. A denial, or scoffing. A rip-roaring laugh.

But this is no matter for the soldier who this day “dies daily”, and elevates the discourse to a Oneness in Christ that calls on each individual to be the sum and substance of Christ. We meet in boardrooms and around the long table, but as disciples. We meet as efficacious soldiers as we realize each of us is called to Elevate, to Transfigure, to Rise Up to the occasion of Christ-like sadly sacrificial service unto the community, unto the Most High and His concerns daily. Christ is not group-think, yet the Church as a group does weep and laugh, does flower and bear wounds, does tickle and delight in the privilege of being in His courts, His embrace, His New Lesson on a mode, a modern, chastity of heart.

The heart chaste is the heart trained and discipled, yet salvation was a notion immediate and preceding any discipline. Salvation meant something we to this day doggedly emphasize, like a mathematician giving a proof: insistent on group-wise reckoning with a few things, a few emphases, a few points of deliberate and careful analysis. We are analysts and prophets unto the King. We emphasize because we Love. We cultivate because we Grow. We step forth New Beings because we Receive. He loves us in such fashion as to make all our deeds moot and given over to His credit, who delights us to save and serve and love us through any poverty of spirit or doubt. His tithe. His habitual love for the downcast, the shut-in, the mocked or belittled, the less popular, and all those who call Him their Peace.

Bearing the wounds of society, Jesus enters into the impossible, consternating, bellicosity with an offer to play two sides in the dispute. He weans both of us, in the dispute, to go straight to the battle cry, in peacetime addressing rampant oppression and unconfessed sin; in wartime hearth and home to that solitary figure the soldier, who is called to be Christ to all comers, in the trenches and on the battlefield. One in Christ, we are giddy and delighted thus to Rise Up, as a New Body, as those perennially Occupied with the Lord’s business. His business is easy, His yoke light, and our time… it is freely given, as it is freely received. Laboring in this lifetime with joy, a joy lost in that sense of damnable sloth or lack of occupation. We love to work. We are given Callings and Hours of Prayer to observe. We are all in this Together, and that raises the funny lighter spirit within our bones and in our bodies.

The Law is our “guardian” because it sets a norm that those privileged to be the Christ-believing “escape artists” do bank on, a backdrop of the less fortunate souls still under the Law. We tap into their ideal form, yet with no ambition any longer to be justified by the Law. We are justified as a free gift, bequeathed from a very sincere and very serious Father in Heaven. This may lead to confusion at times, falling into sin, forgetting that with Grace comes a reactivity to those pundits of Law: we touch what should not be touched; we look at what should not be looked at; we invent excuses, the Apostle Peter himself nervous about Pauls’ free license to live by grace alone (2 Pet 3:16). Yet by grace alone we do live, no slaves to frightful observances, but newly free creatures. Above all things, let it be said that we Testified: to Mercy found any time we lost sight of it; to Peace accorded, any time we dueled with the Lord; to Upward Momentum any time we coveted to be judged according to the Law. That Law we covet to be judged by, is completely blind to the spiritual sins we blithely overlook. Pedantic for a few points, we fail in the larger picture; our brother or sister “in Grace” has us beat. We therefore have a Trust, an Inheritance, a goofy-at-times Love of Life, a Determination, a Thanksgiving, and a New Normal of Judgment.