2023-03-07 A Meditation on Toeing the Line

“But that is not the way you learned Christ!— assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.” (Eph 4:20–24 ESV)

The soldier has an inner consciousness and dynamo that keeps her or him, saved, being honest. They find themselves fools for faith, or humbled by strange experiences: the sins post-conversion being of a whole new catalog and criteria than those pre-conversion. For the converted Man or Woman is holding personally and quietly something loud and important: the reliance on Christ alone to justify. Jesus justifies us, not our own fasts or loud penitences. Jesus heals the self-destruction concomitant to any honest self-appraisal: in Lent, in any season, look at how I have gone down the wrong roads, and all the more after conversion, though a few previous sins do go before me.

The soldier sallies forth high-minded and magnanimous, but is lovingly corrected when forgetful: if a sinner before conversion, all the more so now that sin is hidden and secret, post-conversion. So we keep in mind a mannequin, a dummy, an alternate to our flesh-and-blood self: this is the mannequin of sin (2 Th 2:3; Col 3:9; Eph 4:22). Today, we sally forth confident and built-up, but for public consumption we are remembering some basic traits or qualities or deeds that would mark us as “sinner”, “rejectamenta”, “cognisant” of man’s worser side. So that is a reminder for which we give thanks. It is a winnowed and satanic visage, but one we see at a distance by way of first giving thanks for our own fast and walk of faith, but also for reminder that in this life we will face trials.

“See no evil, hear no evil,” meets its match in a season of penitence, when we stay lofty and healthy-minded, cheerful and gracious, even as we posit an alternate self needful of reminders: this would be prideful, that would be denying friends, that other would be tantamount to something wicked; for our aloof qualities of mind and heart, do face temptations the moment we forget that we are still sinful and still walking forth in faith in Christ Jesus. The moment we forget this, God humbles us with weird or strange actions. That is, actions perhaps kosher by the world’s standards, but denying our lofty and idealistic passion-walk of faith.

So we cease worrying to find a good “amount” of Christian deeds. We cease trying to measure out a respectable amount, and cease to fear to draw nigh unto our own Cross. Yes, all have a means this very day to take up their Cross, but we bank on His forgiveness when we cease the faith-filled deeds. Now, let us walk the cusp of mercy. Now let us toe the line of New Creation. Now let us hug the wall of tears met with a former foe’s tears. For we enlarged our sinful estate, rather than diminished it, when first we began to seek a merciful King and Christ Jesus. Him we found, by faith, and by testimony, only then faced new trials of a spiritual, internal, heart-complexified and soul-mesmerized track.