I continued to think about my mom’s rule requiring her three boys to wear a shirt at the dinner table.
I feel that I have left something out or given only part of the rule’s impact.
As a result of the Fall, humans tend to think God works in our lives by “stimulus and response.” I am almost entirely convinced that God is not moved to action by anything I do. It is my understanding that God is love, and He established the parameters of his love in action in His nature before anything was created. His rules have firmly established compliance benefits and curses. They are therefore equally firmly established. Love Him and get the benefits. Love yourself and get the benefits.
All the natural laws are like this. For example, two bodies of mass cannot occupy the same space simultaneously, no matter how many lightyears you may be from our sun.
From the previous post, I fear someone might conclude that God is watching us to reward us according to our behavior. The truth is that God watches us in the same way parents watch infants; they just love to watch their offspring. Doesn’t matter what the child is doing; from nursing to pooping, the parents are compelled by their love.
It is vitally important that you know two things. First, God is not about forcing us to “follow the rules.” But, He is about what is right and rightness issues from His primary quality of being Love. That is the essence of His being; God is love; therefore, God is righteousness, right all the time.
Second, this is where grace earns the adjective “amazing.” Where I accept His kind offer to return me to His loving creative caress, He justifies me, making me acceptable to sit at His table.
So, what about my willful preference for self-love over Divine-love? Which is, in essence, trying to reform God’s attributes to accommodate my pleasure preferences.
When I went to Mom’s table with a button-up shirt unbuttoned, it was like not having on a shirt at all. Nor could I just get a tee shirt and throw it over my shoulder. I had to be wearing it, head through the head hole and arms through the armholes. It may not have been necessary for it to be on frontwards or even outside out. But it was required for the shirt to be on my body as it was designed.
Pastoral observation and my own experience have taught me that people know the rule about possessing a shirt to dine at God’s table, be accepted by Him, and be nourished by his provision of sustenance and encouragement of fellowship. But unfortunately, many people casually throw their religious beliefs across their shoulders or leave their doctrinal convictions unbuttoned.
Humans have a tendency to mistake our cultural conviction about God as proven Biblical doctrine from God. As a result, our inherited beliefs often remain more potent in our opinions than Biblical truth. And that is because we do not test what we say we believe.
They, we, have an earthy tendency to combine what God wants with what we want. We try to mix the “otherness” of God with our own confidence that we are not like others. We may not say it, but we live like God has shared His Holiness with us. He has not! Only God is Holy. Humans are all the same, and we are not like Him. Humanity was created in God’s image, but we have fashioned our own idols in our image.
The apostle Paul refers to these idols as the “old man.” That is the person I was before God began His work in me to make me like Jesus.
You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. Ephesians 4:22-14 CSV
Photo – Looks like a bad tooth extraction. Taken in India and is not an unusual sight there. It reminds me of how life feels sometimes.
Baldwin Heirlooms 