David Stubblefield comments on Being Christ Like: The Burden of Man:This is one of the best things you have ever written. If i am reading this right, you are saying that once we come to Christ the sin is annulled or forgiven from the perspective of eternity, but it remains present in the flesh and blood human being in time. Building the relationship with God is means for overcoming sin and we are responsible for this. Anyway, you did wonderful handling a very difficult subject which is often the cause of confusion and frustration. More could be said but i dont want to get too far from what you have written. Thank you.
In Response:
You’ve left me a little hungry, David. I’m interested in hearing the more you could say. Please never feel I’m not open to the spread of anything I write here or anywhere else. It’s what the words open us up to in thought and discussion that matters. When we’re protective of our viewpoints to the degree where there can be no movement, we’re in tyranny.
This is a prayer of mine, actually…to be able invoke thought or goad knowledge that’s always been there, but may be hiding. It’s one of the aspects I appreciate most about our writing relationship and personal friendship. What you showed me that time through Nietzsche’s concern about the “capacity to respond” still rings in my heart. Anyway, you have awakened many of these ‘hiders’ for me, so please, if you get the time and notion, share more…
But yes. This is exactly what I’m saying… that upon conversion our sin is forgiven and covered by God. We are granted immediate & instantaneous access to the throne of His Holiness and to existence in eternal life with Him. The thing is though, that’s where God’s gift to mankind stops. He’s done what He Promised He’d do. He’s corrected the issue of separation from Him that sin and the Fall in the Garden of Eden introduced. There is no longer any separation. We have access again, but what we do with that access is clearly and totally up to us. It’s essence of the doctrine of free will.
Our sins are washed in the eternal sense but to have them washed in the natural, we need to submit ourselves. In spirit and in truth, put ourselves on the altar of God’s throne making sacrificial confession, repenting, asking Him for cleansing, for guidance and instruction. In essence, acknowledging Him as Lord and so serving Him as such.
King David was called a man after God’s own heart because he continually went to the Father asking for It (God’s heart) to be made manifest in him. King David was always admitting his shortcomings, his sin. In the Psalms he laid naked and vulnerable before God like no other. He said over and over in many different ways the same thing: ‘I am in need of Your Holiness, Father God: wash me, cleanse me, make me whole; lead me, guide me, protect me because I am weak in comparison to You and to my enemies, O Lord; tell me what to do because I trust that You know, for You laid the foundations of the earth, dug the trenches we call seas and poured their waters from the palms of Your hands… (I’m taking poetic license here but I hope you get my point:-)
King David, in all his accomplishment and splendor, NEVER forgot his Source for it all. King David submitted to his King: the One and Only True King, for God Reigns Sovereign.
So yes, David (Stubblefield…Lol) that’s exactly what I’m saying. And thank you much for the word of praise that this is the best I’ve written. As you share it with me, I share it with God because it’s truly Him that’s opened my eyes to this spiritual understanding.
I pray we’ll begin to be taught this at conversion. It’s a necessary component for the correction of two major Christian issues:
#1) We need it if we intend to live the victorious abundant life Christ died and was resurrected for us to have. How many card carrying, heir apparent Christians are living defeated & diseased because we aren’t taught about the effects of our sin infested lives? Until that is made a focus, we’ll never understand the dire need of God’s Word through Paul, ‘be ye transformed by the renewing of our minds so we can PROVE the good, acceptable, and perfect will of God.’
We’ll never be the powerful witnesses for God we were created to be if we don’t stop protecting ourselves from the wisdom in the WORD because we’re so committed to protecting ourselves from the ‘look’ of past sin and pain.
#2) Without this kind of teaching Believers are left in the dangerous place of self righteousness. Sure we quote the Scripture that “…all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” but deep inside we believe the time of OUR falling short ceased sometime after we accepted Christ. With that kind of mentality, we give ourselves ample room to judge the homosexual, the prostitute, the thief, the murderer, the liar, the adulterer/ess, etc. and are left with space enough to ignore our own sin of hate, pride, unforgiveness, judgment, self deception, and respecter of persons. We’re blinded without this teaching because we actually believe we’re better.
I say this all the time: that we, the whole of mankind, are in this together. God doesn’t categorize sin into segments where ‘this’ is a just little bad, and ‘that’ is greatly evil. Sin is sin in His eyes and 1 John 1:8 reads,
“If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” That’s extremely frightening to me because John 14:6 quotes Christ saying, “He is the way, the truth, and the Light. That no man can come to the Father except through Him.”
And so where we lack truth, we lack Christ. And where there’s no Christ in the Christian, there’s a hell bound woman or man who doesn’t even know it. God help us.
Slow Running Honey 