Threading the Needle

For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. -- Philippians 1:21

The words Paul uses are related to money and profit.  It you have sufficient capital you can live on the interest.  The greatest riches imaginable are ours in Christ.  Here is capital to provide a more than sufficient living, an abundant living.  

It also works if we turn it around and recognize that while we live in this world, it is we who belong to Christ as His servants over whom He rules but also for whom He obligates Himself to provide and for whom He cares.

The second part of the Apostle’s thought is perhaps even more compelling.  The carnally minded have invested everything in this world and this life.  Death, to the worldling, may be seen as an implacable enemy to be held off and frustrated as long as possible.  It means the loss of all that is familiar, comfortable, and hopeful. 

As Christians the truth is that we not only lose nothing when our time here ends, we gain because we are no longer receiving merely our stipend or our living but our full inheritance of and in Christ.  You can think about someone who has set up a trust for his heirs.  Their access is limited until they are of a specified age, perhaps 18 or 25, after which they have full access.  They gain by passing that milestone.   

On the one hand the carnal mind considers the trials, pains, losses, and sufferings of life against the darkness of death and recoils.  After all, as the Preacher said, a living dog is better than a dead lion (Ecclesiastes 9:4), and to cling to the known, however desperate and grim, is better than the black leap into oblivion.  On the other hand, life without hope can become an unbearable burden and the prospect of any kind of surcease is embraced.  Thus the natural man must sail carefully between Scylla and Charybdis. 

The contrast is that, instead of a choice between the lesser of two evils, the Christian is “caught” between goods:  the joys of life in Christ on earth with all of its hope and adventure, and the perfection of glory, the fulfillment of all hope when we see the Lord face to face.  Passing through the door of death, at the Lord’s call, we leave all temptation, sorrow, grief and pain behind us.  We have duties and callings and purpose while we are here.  When those are done, like the faithful workman at day’s end, we receive our reward and our rest. 

A Cry for Repentance. Or Antidepressants.

The Lord said to me: “Do not pray for the welfare of this people.  Though they fast, I will not hear their cry, and though they offer burnt offering and grain offering, I will not accept them. But I will consume them by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence.” – Jeremiah 14:11-12

If anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death, he shall ask, and God will give him life—to those who commit sins that do not lead to death. There is sin that leads to death; I do not say that one should pray for that.  All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin that does not lead to death. – 1 John 5:16-17

Can a person or a nation get so completely out of kilter, so utter dysfunctional that they must be destroyed?  It must be possible, though it is not my call as to when that takes place.  Seeming devils can become saints.  God knows. 

Here is another one to contemplate.  There was open sexual immorality going on in the church at Corinth.  One of the church members was engaged in behavior that even the pagans would not condone, according to Paul who offered this remedy to the congregation:

For though absent in body, I am present in spirit; and as if present, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing.  When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present, with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. (1 Corinthians 5:3-5)   

 

I suppose this was a form of excommunication, though it sounds, on the surface, as if the assembled saints were being called on to pronounce a curse on the wayward one.  The devil take you, we might say – which should remind us to be careful of our words.  Paul expected that allowing Satan to have access to the sinner would lead to his ultimate salvation.  Far better to see the flesh destroyed than to allow a brother to fall away into spiritual death. 

We like to think there is always hope.  Even the Bible suggests that a live dog is better than a dead lion (Ecclesiastes 9:4).  There are times when a disease requires extreme measures.  Damage can be so extensive that the only way to save a life is amputation.  The way to spiritual life is always through death; sometimes it may mean physical death.  Sometimes only suffering and destruction can get us back on the right road. 

I don’t see how a person can have much hope in a society that embraces and exalts wickedness, that glorifies stupidity and wallows in unrighteousness.  But, as I said yesterday, it is not anything new.  If it seems strange to us, it is only because we were once, for a brief moment in history, a better people, or thought we were.  No, I don’t think the revisionists are right – I think we did rise above the churning mediocrity of human ignorance and apathy and selfishness.  It may appear only as a spike above the regression line of history, but it happened.  Our fall is the more evident for it.

Freedom.  Do we even know what it means?  

Oh, and that man in Corinth that the congregation cursed, ever wonder how that turned out?

Now if anyone has caused pain, he has caused it not to me, but in some measure—not to put it too severely—to all of you.  For such a one, this punishment by the majority is enough, so you should rather turn to forgive and comfort him, or he may be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow.  So I beg you to reaffirm your love for him.

There is always hope.