Happy Easter! We have a future hope–and a present vibrant life in Christ!”
Enter vibrant life (exit: colorless, dull, pale lifelessness). Synonyms for vibrant: alive, colorful, active, animated, dynamic, electrifying, energetic, lively, peppy, responsive, sensitive, sound, sparkling, spirited, vigorous, virile, vital, vivacious, vivid, zesty, zippy. I hate dressing up–but I’ll take all the vibrant life available!
“The body is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body. And so it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being.” The last Adam became a life-giving spirit.
However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural, and afterward the spiritual. The first man was of the earth, made of dust; the second Man is the Lord from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are made of dust; and as is the heavenly Man, so also are those who are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly Man.
Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does corruption inherit incorruption. Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed— in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.”
“O Death, where is your sting?
O Hades, where is your victory?”
The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
(I Corinthians 15)
Tag Archives: sin
Christ, the Second Adam, Conquers Death and Sin!
The Confession of a Lonesome Dove
A friend is fond of telling me how much we need people because they are representations of the love of Christ–in flesh.
I wonder how much of a reality this is for us? Are we like the character on Lonesome Dove? forever wanting to be with the love of our life? This time not Clara but Christ. Then, again, there are times when we’re just as happy not have to look into the very eyes of Jesus Christ–which is how I interpret this poem by James McAuley of Australia:
Confession by James McAuley
To know and feel are hard.
At times you are so much present
It seems I could touch your hand
And stand in your regard.
Mere fancies, but true enough;
And easy enough to lose,
As I abuse the moments,
And you accept the rebuff.
Small things do the hurt–
The lie vanity tells,
Malice or lust that die
Unacted in their dirt.
Bored in my self-prison,
I doubt uneasily;
But the times I get out,
I know you have risen.
From the book Surprises of the sun
Like this:
One Big Mistake
One Big Mistake
Al (or Albert as his mother named him so very long ago)
was going out as I was coming back.
We paused, as country folk do,
in a overgrown field
in a small dip at grey dusk–
He was in shadow, I in part-light.
“My life has been one big mistake.”
Smoke poured out of his nose,
then he flicked the butt.
He spat,
and gummed where once were teeth,
thinking of all he’d done.
Then,
“Where’d ya go?”
“Church.” I said.
He spat,
and gummed some more.
“I’m not good enough to go.”
“No.” I agreed.
“Nope. And them that go are liars—
Big fat phonies.”
“I’ll give you that.” I nodded.
The slanting sun’s rays
caught his beetle brows, all furrow-creased.
Lines criss-crossed his cheeks, picnic-cloth style.
A nearby thrush piped his evening song.
Al’s old hound lay down and heaved a sigh.
Al spat.
“So, why’d ya go?”
I shifted–
the light moved from my face
and I could see his brown-yellow eyes:
“’Cuz I’m not good enough.
I’m a liar and a phony.
Because of that,
I can’t not go.”
Charity Johnson © 2011
Can Hate And Love Co-exist?
Hate and love never co-exist in equanimity, but they do co-exist. They co-exist in the sense that no one is perfected (and, in Christian doctrine, everyone is a sinner by nature), and so though we love ourselves enough to want the best, we also dislike, and try to improve the worst. This is the essence of Christian self-care (as distinct from selfishness and self-interest.)
Does this mean we are supposed to accept what is wrong just as if it were not? No, we need not accept what is disjointed in this world. CS Lewis clarifies what we too often muddle when he states it difference in a personal vein:
“I remember Christian teachers telling me long ago that I must hate a bad man’s actions but not hate the bad man: or, as they would say, hate the sin but not the sinner.
I used to think this a silly, straw-splitting distinction: how could you hate what a man did and not hate the man?
But years later it occurred to me that there was one man to whom I had been doing this all my life — namely myself.
However much I might dislike my own cowardice or conceit or greed, I went on loving myself. There had never been the slightest difficulty about it. In fact the very reason why I hated the things was that I loved the man. Just because I loved myself, I was sorry to find that I was the sort of man who did those things.”
- C.S. Lewis
No bunnies, no money-a much bigger payment
Easter Celebration-the day we remember Jesus Christ, after being death for 3 days and 3 nights, arose from the dead and still lives in heaven–is about the triumph of Christ over sin and death.
This is why the Apostle Paul celebrates Christ as the “2nd Adam” who rectifies, sets aright, the problems initiated in the universe by the “1st Adam”–the woes of the created universe, of our flesh (sickness and death) and of our sin (think of emotional problems and hurts if you do not understand sin). No perfection can be attained by ourselves, no, we must have it done for us by a much bigger power–and one who cares for us–humans cannot hoist themselves up by their own bootstraps.
Some scriptural thoughts about this:
“Because God’s children are human beings—made of flesh and blood—the Son also became flesh and blood.
For only as a human being could he die, and only by dying could he break the power of the devil, who had the power of death.
Only in this way could he set free all who have lived their lives as slaves to the fear of dying. ” The Bible: Hebrews 2:14-15 (NLT)
“Is anyone thirsty?
Come and drink—
even if you have no money!
Come, take your choice of wine or milk—
it’s all free!
Why spend your money on food that does not give you strength?
Why pay for food that does you no good?
Listen to me, and you will eat what is good.
You will enjoy the finest food.
“Come to me with your ears wide open.
Listen, and you will find life.
I will make an everlasting covenant with you.
I will give you all the unfailing love I promised to David.”
The Bible: Isaiah 55:1-3 (NLT)
HAPPY EASTER!
The Preposterous Christ?
Then comes the real shock. Among the Jews there suddenly turns up a man who goes about talking as if He was God. He claims to forgive sins. He says He has always existed. He says He is coming to judge the world at the end of time. Now let us get this clear. Among Pantheists, like the Indians, anyone might say that he was a part of God, or one with God: there would be nothing very odd about it.
But this man, since He was a Jew, could not mean that kind of God. [Because] God, in their language, meant the Being outside the world Who had made it and was infinitely different from anything else.
And when you have grasped that, you will see that what this man said was, quite simply, the most shocking thing that has ever been uttered by human lips.
One part of the claim tends to slip past us unnoticed because we have heard it so
often that we no longer see what it amounts to:
… the claim to forgive sins: any sins. Now unless the speaker is God, this is really so preposterous as to be comic.
Yet this is what Jesus did.
He told people that their sins were forgiven, and never waited to consult all the other people whom their sins had undoubtedly injured.
He unhesitatingly behaved as if He was the party chiefly concerned, the person chiefly offended in all offences.
This makes sense only if He really was the God whose laws are broken and whose love is wounded in every sin.
God does care. He cares so much that he came among us in human flesh.
- C S Lewis
