Dead Reckoning

So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. -- Romans 6:11

I have noticed this recurring element that is related to all my problems and troubles in life:  me.

Paul seems to offer me a solution to me  -- the problem of me.  All I need to do is consider myself, account myself, reckon myself dead to sin, which is, for my old nature, dead.  I have been crucified with Christ, right?  There’s just one small stumbling block.  How does a dead man reckon himself dead?  On the one hand, it seems ridiculously pointless in a Sixth Sense-ish kind of way.  On the other hand, it seems impossible.  What, are we Schrödinger’s Cat?  Just open the box.  Or, if you really want a dead cat, leave the box closed long enough, and you’ll have it. 

I don’t seem dead.  I know dead people, and more all the time, and, if you put me alongside one of them, I think you could tell the difference.  Or maybe not.  You could certain tell the difference between me and a dead body – although, after I have been working in the sun all day, not necessarily by the smell.  The body is not the person.  Really, the main difference is that the dead are no longer visibly engaging the material world.  They are cut off from it because they have left their bodies behind.  Now I’m not interested in the opinions of those who believe that this life is all there is.  I am confident that those who have departed live still.  They are dead only in relation to this world (though their influence upon it can and does continue, unquestionably in some modes, arguably in others). 

Thus to be dead to this world is to cease to allow it to control me, to abandon its ways and its paths, it standards and methods and means.   I reckon so.

In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead.  And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses … (Colossians 2:11-13)

Paul here says that we were dead but now we have been made alive.  Can the man make up his mind?  I have to admit, though, that this being “dead to God” sounds right.  I can remember that.  I can remember when I could care less if I did wrong so long as I got away with it.  I had my standards, of course, but that’s just it, they were my standards. 

There are two approaches to Christianity, almost, I would say, two kinds of Christianity.  There are people who simply need some hope and help in their lives, a way to straighten up and do good instead of bad.  The Lord does not reject these people, and, looking through the various letters of Paul, James, John, and Peter to the various churches, it is clear that He cares about them.  Then there is a second group who begin to abandon any concern with their own lives and seek to live by and for Christ alone.  These two categories are neither fixed nor mutually exclusive.  We all, from time to time, have to concern ourselves with the affairs of life in this world, if only for the sake of those around us (I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.  But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account).  Most of us also have moments when we sincerely want to do God’s will regardless of the cost.  

“Reckless endangerment” is a crime.  “Reckless abandonment” is, or should be, the mark of a saint.  I have been able to place some aspects of my life entirely in God’s hands.  I don’t worry or fret about those things, between 99 and 100% of the time.  I would like to be able to abandon everything to God in a like manner, for my life to be entirely hidden in Christ.  All we really have to do is have faith, believe, right?

A lot of people are good at believing at a distance.  Close quarters believing is scarier.  Believing the truth is harder than it looks.  I don’t really believe it if I don’t abandon myself to it.