Day 3389 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

2 Corinthians 5:21 NIV

If we’re to become something we’ve never been, i.e. the righteousness of God, such means the doing of something we’ve never done, i.e. the renouncing of sin.

For that is who we’ve been, what we’ve become, sinners stuck under this sun apart from the Son which came to shine some sense into our midst as if to save us from ourselves as sold to those sins which have come to become us so very definitely and definitively and defiantly that He had to descend into our darkened dwellings designed by these deceitful desires that we’ve devoted the entirety of our time to trying and testing and tasting to see what we think is good, convinced that we know what is good despite our pasts proving we knowing nothing of the matter.

And thus something new had to be done as all we’ve done is ruin everything from reality to responsibility alongside our frantic fleeing from faith for fear of the failure that such opportunity offers.

We know we’re faithless, fools finding fellowship with filth and frivolity as if fun is the foundation of our furthered enjoyment of some selfish enhancement of some existence which we’ve only commandeered from the Creator contending that He won’t mind our leaving Him behind as we become even more blind than we’ve been out here inside this desert wasteland we’ve always claimed we wanted. Yes, we’re a people who play around and pretend we actually want these pitiable prizes we win in the form of popularity or public praise.

Thus we’re so entirely, eternally, internally diluted that we perhaps actually believe that this way of life as lived so far from the Maker of life is truly wherein is to be found this self-perceived best existence that so many seem so persistent in perfecting for themselves. Life lived as if life is so utterly subjective as to allow those given breath to determine how best to use the few we’ve left. As if the clay might truly say to the Potter that we know better.

And as those who assume as such, yes, something new did need done indeed if we’re to become what we’ve never been before.

Just so happens that God’s always known that we’d not be the ones to move toward Him as to do so would demand we move on from, away from the sins with which we’ve made friends since the very moment in which our time began upon this earth which has become believed to be nothing but a playground within which we pretend we’re better, bigger, faster, further than we’ve ever even been capable of being. No, we cannot be what we’ve never been, but for the grace of God with which begins a good work we’d never otherwise agree was good.

For to us, no, all that is allowed to be perceived as good is merely that which placates and pacifies our pettiness. We’re only pleased by praise and applause, assuming a crowd better than a crown. Indeed, we’re literally willing to forfeit faith, relinquish a royal standing, deny a call to share in the divine, reject the regality of Christ for simple sake of the legality involved, vacate the very victory He won for us just so we needn’t suffer the loss of a losing way of life which must precede the finding of all things made new.

We don’t want new. We don’t want better. We don’t desire devotion or dedication or discipline as being disciplined leads, at least in our feeble ways of thinking, not to discipleship but rather merely to the destruction of our design in the distraction from our desires as demanded in a decision to find anything other than what we deserve as determined by God a gift of grace He chose to give so as to save us from the grave we crave within this way in which we love to lose all that we might never again imagine.

How such insanity has sadly become our only understanding is beyond me. It’s truly just the devil doing what the devil does, king of deception. For he has demanded we direct our attention to all that divides, all that destroys, all that distracts from the facts which our faith says are as immutable as eternity is curable. For we cannot fix what we’ve decided to break in this breaking away from belief in order to believe only in disbelief as defined by the doubts in which we find reason to deny His asking us to do the little we need in exchange for the receiving of the part He’s already proven.

Thus I feel the need to ask why it is that we’re so hesitant toward hope. Why is mercy somehow seen as something other than miraculous? How much longer can we contend love is so easy and lazy as to be found waiting within a world we’re leaving? Indeed, how many more days can we devote ourselves to our desires before we agree that we’ve so few days left that we’d not even be able to enjoy our plans should they be perfected today?

For even if our most perfectly plotted plans were to find for us this very instant the outcomes we’ve always insisted they accomplish, would any of them have any bearing on eternity? Would any of our best intentions land us in contention for a place in Heaven? Could we indeed design something, dream of something, create something of all these ideas that’ve become idols we serve incessantly, could any of them accomplish redemption?

Could any of our achievements as told in trophies recounting worldly triumphs tell God that we deserve His peace in exchange for their being our only choices as opposed to His righteousness we’ve never chosen to try for so far?

No. No in fact they couldn’t for nothing we do as done down here can hold any sway within the court of judgement held up there. And despite our doubt seeking only to deny that said outcome, such is exactly what every soul is headed for. Judgement. An eternal weighing of a spirit as to see what’s within it. A dividing apart of skin from bone, joint from marrow, the thoughts and attitudes of a heart from the actions seen and shown within the choices such deceitfulness led us to living.

That is the weight of life, that all that we do, all that we’ve done, all then that we’ve been and become is a result of our letting ourselves make the decisions as if we know what’s best, not in any given moment but rather in every given moment. Indeed, we live as if we’ve the right to get this as wrong as we have. How else might one explain why we still do today what we can’t deny didn’t destroy yesterday?

Such is the reality of regret. It’s an evidence of our agreeance that we’ve done things which shouldn’t have been decided upon, descended upon. And that is indeed what many of, most of our decisions have been all this time, just a violent descending from the responsibility of righteousness to the revelry of selfish rebellion. We are rebels, and not the cool kind who fight for something worth dying for. No, we’re just rejects who’ve found it reasonable to reject redemption in exchange for a chance to assume we’ll never need to change.

Folks, not all will sleep but all will in fact be changed.

When? “In a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.” 1 Corinthians 15:52, a truly eye-opening a soul-jarring passage I utterly implore everyone to peruse at your nearest moment of opportunity. For in that passage is also promised that it will be proven what was promised beforehand, that, “death has been swallowed up in victory.”

Just not our victory as we cannot overcome death, for we cannot overcome what we’ve been thus far overcome by.

See, as verse 57 of that passage in 1 Corinthians reminds, “the sting of death is sin.” The wages of sin are death. Sin is death, and thus as sinners, we are dead. Dead in our transgressions. Unalive in our rebellions. Spiritually, morally, ethically and thus eternally bankrupt in regard to the righteousness that God both desires and demands, but even beyond that, the righteousness that He simply deserves. For He shouldn’t see a people perfectly at peace in their waging war against Him.

What has He done to deserve all we’ve done against Him?

He’s given us life, given us health, given us daily these blessings of ensuring our every need is provided in a sort of endless and selfless provision given unto a people who cannot possibly give Him anything in return as He has no needs. No, He has no needs but there are things He deserves. Praise. Honor. Appreciation. Gratitude. Why? Because not only has He given us life and breath and health and hope, but He even came to bring us salvation in light of our taking those gifts so for granted as to give up trying to become more than we’ve become.

Yes, He’s given us each life twice, three times in fact. Once at birth in which we were born into these sins we’ve chosen to stay at home within. Next the gift of our being reborn into a renewal of reason as found for us in His seeing some reason to offer us all such a second chance despite our not caring that we didn’t even deserve the first as He knew what we’d do with it, to it, in it. The third? Well the third life He’s given us is that of Christ who came to die for our sins so that we might die to them too.

For that is the new that He knew someone needed to do, but that we’d not be the ones who’d ever choose to lose such a life as this life we’ve lost to the wrong side of everything right as He at first defined that line over which we’ve fallen and ran and raced at times as if we couldn’t care less about who He is and what He’s done, much less what He deserves. He defined right from wrong just as He did night from day and man from woman.

We’ve just literally chosen to get all of it as backwards as humanly possible.

Yes, we’ve done all the wrong we could imagine to do as if we had the right to let Him down so defiantly as to deny that life might truly be worth more than our living for only all we’ve always wanted. As if all we’ve always wanted was what made life beautiful. As if there could be no beauty beyond our disbelief and the countless blasphemes we’ve become in response to such irreverence.

And that’s what’s so impossibly amazing about the Gospel. It’s that despite our irreverence, irrationality, irresponsibility, He somehow found some reason to not only offer us salvation, to not merely bring such a gift to our very doorstep, but to indeed lay down His life so that our pasts might be washed away, that we might be washed clean so that we might be welcomed into the presence of the One we’ve long pretended wasn’t worth acknowledging.

I cannot think of a greater kindness than what Christ did for us. Because He simply had no, has no reason to do it, to give it, to intercede for it other than His love for us. He is the truest embodiment of love, of mercy, of kindness and compassion. And we’ve missed it! All this time, all these years spent doing what we thought was better than Him, better than His plans, better than His promises, we missed it all.

And thus He knew we’d not be the ones who’d ever find the faith which could be counted as the righteousness God demands. So He took our old misunderstandings and the mistakes they inspired us to make upon Himself so that we could take Himself upon us and leave behind our wasted lives lived lost inside a world that was never forever. And in doing so He gives us the gift of a better forever despite our doing and being nothing that could ever deserve such a hope.

Friends, we’ve each been invited to partake of the greatest trade ever known. Sin for salvation. Hell for hope. Haughtiness for happiness. Jealousy for joy. Harm for healing. Pain and punishment for the promise of permanent peace in a place this place can’t begin to pretend to be. What are we waiting for? What are we holding onto that keeps us from grasping for that gift of His grace? What here is worth not racing for, fighting for, dying for what isn’t?

For hope and healing and joy and meaning are not possible in this world. They are found only in Christ as only in Christ have we any chance of not missing Heaven’s peace. All because He alone chose to take our place that we might now embrace the chance to make the change that welcomes us into the place where He is. For He is the righteousness of God, the very demand we’ve never been nor could ever be. Indeed, there is no other Name under Heaven which might achieve for us the hope of Heaven as Christ alone laid down His life to save us from sin.

Truth is we’d never have even done the same for ourselves. And thus we shouldn’t be the ones making our choices or leading the way anymore. No, let us rather leave that leading to the One who knows how to turn a death into a life, for we just know, and quite well mind you, how to turn a life into a death.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold