2022-12-13 A Meditation on Free Gift

“For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” (Ga 5:1 ESV)

Some things we give away. All cloaked in secrecy are the maneuvers and readiness of the platoon, while that concern called proper doctrine, proper worship, sometimes is simply shared broadly. That is, we share even with our enemy. We have a permeable membrane through which right doctrine and worship is communicated. We give it away.

For the news of Christ Jesus separates us immediately from peers, over the true teaching of the Word. That is, sometimes the believer wonders if others, if anyone out there, believes the same thing as her or him. That we once walked in sin. That we reached repentance. That the life of the saint is vastly preferable to whatever life of sin we had gotten ourselves up to. For, not to quantify and contest, it nonetheless is true that the believer had the Father, had spiritual family and Mother, had the comfort of Sunday worship, had the healing words of Scripture, had the Spirit, and we…. poor as we were, had our sins.

That is, we treasure and account beautiful the memories of friends, and other precious previews of the gospel from that time branded “sinful”, but we prodigals aren’t gloating or indulging quite the way the jealous “older brother” imagines in the story of the Prodigal Son (Lk 15:11ff). This is not self-serving, except to say we love to share the testimony of repentance, if it will calm and confirm a dubious lifelong believer: this convert, I can hang with; I can dig their presence with me in worship; now I know who I can talk to about my own repentance, a story that the church so often balks at.

The news of Christ Jesus we long to get into the hearts of even our man across the battle line, in the opposite trenches, our fellow or gal contrapoised. We believe that there is always a thin line delineating disputed terrain, and even when all seems hateful and warring, that some things can be negotiated. That is, we can pray for the salvation of their souls, without weakening our own fight and power. It truly blesses our own hearts, thus to write the email or make the offer, or do anything that would begin to adopt their point of view, however sinful it is. So with caution; with an impermeable membrane called solemnity, called inner composure, prayer life, daring expedition, we view the world through the eyes of an enemy.

This is no boast, no claim to be of superior stripe and cloth, but rather it is a mental expedition we can undertake via the protection of the Spirit. We lose no composure. We earn big bucks in terms of spiritual peace, spiritual peacemaking that is, for peace is waged, not a given. We have intangible victories. The gulf widens, the hairbrained schemes of a deluded enemy, suddenly reveal themselves as “unto death”: none will ever concede, until we are utterly ruined. That is the wisdom and experience talking: that manifest envy, we can say, or bitter jealousy, or holy distaste, invites us to a slaughter of we ourselves. So we start properly to entrench and to pray, knowing an enemy who Hates, who did not vibe with us over a common middle ground, who saw no inspiration nor beauty in our eagerness to share the Gospel Good News.

Casual dismissals, easy judgments, these things bandy about in an uncommitted mind; all is cute and precious, until it gets people killed; if not that, then the window for sharing Good News is shut. So we do not label each other based on previous gossip, based on judging others, based on unholy laughter at their conversion story. That is, as the chief of sinners, the Apostle Paul fell in love with repentance and Grace. We, too, eagerly return to that set point, that grounded footwork, called harmony of penitence and joy. And we thank all who are thus concerned for the state of our soul, only if by this our troop’s doctrine may be kept pure, our belief grounded in Faith, our Grace taught in a way that regards actual sin, of the sort all fall into. And then, the Church can fulfill its role as Jesus unto the new believer.