Day 3534 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

2 Corinthians 10:18 NIV

“Do you see a person wise in their own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for them.”

Indeed, Proverbs 26:12 really proves the predicament of our always trying to prove ourselves. For the reality is that there can be nothing of hope when all our hope is held inside ourselves and thus assumed achieved within what we ourselves achieve. For if this all comes down to us being able to find a way to measure up, then yes, a fool has a better chance at being proven wise than we do being proven of having lived a life right.

Because if we’re the ones who define what’s right, well then nothing we do could ever be wrong.

Right?

See, we know well that to commend is to comment as to someone being all but unworthy of being condemned, and so this commendation has become a consideration most constructive in light of our fight against our condemnation as has stood since the first time we became of mind to cross the line drawn by the cross of Christ. And yet what perhaps began as something constructive has become all but constrictive in that it forces us to undertake this incessant proving of ourselves via only the means of which we think such even remotely possible.

As has always been defined for us by the world around us, now all but within us which delights to define us as determined by how impressively we measure against what is only a collective of others who are not at all all that different than we’ve delighted to become.

For all the world lives as if each person can somehow know what’s best, right to the very point of each of us now defining for ourselves what even truth is!

And as we’ve been talking for a bit now, this normative culture in which such considerations as our own commendation has become for us a continuation of that confusion which was at first planted within those first of us who saw fit to realize what we never needed to know in order to remain alive. For we never needed this understanding of our standing. Never needed the idea that we were to be weighed by our wrongs. Never needed to even know what wrong really was.

But since that fruit was stolen from that tree which bore the knowledge of the division between good and evil, we’re now all bound by the brevity of our ability to do what is right. And this inability to do anything but wrong more times than not has become for us an altogether stern realization of the gravity of our condemnation as calculated by our every transgression each demanding a death for the wage won within what’s always been sin.

Yes, we know deep down that upon this ground all we’ve found is a cardboard crown colored in crayon in which we boast about all our bests as broken apart as they’ve always been. For our very best is still nothing less than nothingness before the God who has no such needs as what all we find to please within this place so displeasing that it’s amazing that any of us are still welcome to even throw a feeble prayer into His presence.

For those who’ve been given life are the same from whom much is then required as there remains no greater gift than life itself. And that we’ve been each given life thrice is now but twice the gravity as given in the God who gave us the Son to come and save us from all that we’ve done which so deserves to be condemned that our seeking to commend ourselves is as foolish a folly as we fallen might find.

And yet we find it all the time.

Because that’s the way of life into which we’ve been led by those who lead us to believe us to be the only ones with any ability to prove ourselves when found before the court of everything from public opinion to eternity’s jurisdiction. Indeed, we’ve all lived so long now under the guise of pride always pretending us far more perfect than our pasts could ever prove that we find all we think we have to lose is this charade in which we parade ourselves as if these pinnacles of personal plausibility.

Yes, we seem to live as if we’re the ones who are to prove that all that we do is so worth being done than none could ever deny that we made best use of the time we know we’ve lost to things not worth such a cost as that which we were given to not give to such emptiness as our haughtiness.

But alas, such is something of such substance amongst us that all of us know only to seek and serve such selfishness as such is simply the status quo that we all know far more than the novelty of realizing that we were nobility that somehow, audaciously, saw fit to trade such a holy identity for one of a fleeting mundanity as defined now by our own mortality as demanded of us due to our not simply remaining who God made us to be.

We talk all the time about how we were made in His image as that is the measure by which we’ll be measured. Our eternal judgement will be meted according to the measure of the distance between who He made us to be and who we became instead. For that ‘instead’, that’s been our homestead. We know only to do as we want to, and in that we’ve forgotten to even pretend to worry about doing as He’s always called us to. We don’t care about that as there are here simply matters that we perceive to matter more than the waiting for the returning of what we’ve never seen and haven’t been for years.

For the truth of faith is that it’s found best amongst the least. That’s why He calls us to a childlike faith. It’s because kids are the last ones who know how to hope, how to trust, how to believe in the untarnished as told in the truth. Indeed, children are the last innocence known, and sadly that noble naivety fades ever faster these days. Because we’re too busy trying to prove ourselves to those who pretend themselves grown to hold tight anything we know they won’t like.

So we set it all aside. All the hope. All the happiness. All the joy and meaningfulness that makes life worth living. We just box it up as we become adults who are ushered into this understanding that all we do in life is to be done according to this timeline and limelight of a world so filled with neon that we know nothing anymore. No, we just belly up to the bar of public betrayal hoping that none see in us anything that reminds anyone that none of us are living for all that much anymore.

Because honestly, is anything we’re chasing after really worth anything that could in any way matter when this life is literally over?

For that day is coming, and considering the overall trajectory of our depravity, it may likely be approaching in what’s an unseen urgent rapidity. Because while we’ve learned well to take His patience for granted, to assume it unlimited is likely a choice too foolish to fathom.

Do we really think that if there’s a God that He’s in any way to be in any way pleased or impressed by all He has to see us doing while in a world that does only as it sees fit?

No. And this problem is to be proven perfectly personal in that we’ve all lived, if even for a day, looking to the world to tell us what to do in order to be who they want us to be so that all of us are nothing but the same. It’s a comfort in numbers, insisting that God wouldn’t destroy everyone. After all, we hear all about how kind He is. And so surely this kindness and compassion and mercy and restraint would have no complaint about all we became.

And all that’s fine right up until the cross.

For that image of the Christ hanging in our horror is one that we cannot, any of us, disprove or repay. Makes you wonder why we try. We do we think that salvation is achieved by works? And if we say we don’t, well then why do we wait? Why do we hide? Why do we debate or deny the darkness in which we decide to try and live as if we have to be able to show Him something better than what we know we have to show? Does He look at the things this world looks for? Does He judge as the world loves to?

Does He destroy as the world tries to?

Because the truth is that that’s all that can come when we come to this place in our minds, in our lives in which we live as if we can do this. All we can do is destroy ourselves when we allow for any worldly interpretation of what matters, of what’s best, of what’s right and what’s not. We cannot allow this world to have any suggestion as to the substance of salvation. Because the world lives as if every outcome is only accomplished by the person seeking it.

And Calvary simply says otherwise.

Salvation is by grace through faith. It is not a matter of personal accomplishment, other than that of the person Christ Jesus who accomplished what we couldn’t. And we couldn’t do what He chose to because we couldn’t see the reason to so deny ourselves. Even before the ability to overcome death, which we also just do not have, we simply couldn’t agree to see the gravity of our ego.

Because down here ego is what makes the world go round.

Ego keeps us all going. Ego gets us up in the morning. Our arrogance speaks this consist of a life lived as if a competition, so as to think we can achieve something other than condemnation. Because we know we deserve such a demise, it’s just that we can’t survive one either. And so we resort back to this assumption that perhaps some of what we’re doing or able to do or be or soon become might become for us something that will please God. Yes, we can please people, impress people, and so maybe we can do the same with Him.

And if we can somehow figure out how to find some way to please Him, to appease Him, to impress Him, well then perhaps once found before Him He will rise from the throne to afford us the applause we’ve here always fought to find.

Yet we read over in Hebrews 11:6 that, “without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.”

And so we’ve come upon the problem perfected in what we talked about yesterday in how pride is our greatest weakness as it demands we do nothing that would allow us to even approach the meekness needed to believe that He exists. Because pride denies weakness, and as such it prevents us from realizing just how much trouble we’re in. And when a person realizes they’re in trouble, they do all they can to avoid the One who’s justified in the punishing of such trouble as our transgressions.

So how can we ever be those who “earnestly seek Him”? Because earnestly is the adjective form of earnest which is an urgency shown in action as what is defined as one “resulting from or showing sincere and intense conviction.” Sincerity. Intensity. Conviction. Commendation. Condemnation.

Indeed, there is a severity to our salvation that demands a sincerity to our conviction as considered unwilling to wait for this mythical day upon which we’ve made all our wrongs right, all our problems are fixed, all that we’ve lost has been bought back by this belief that we can afford it all all over again. And yet that’s what we continue to wait for, isn’t it? We know we have no reason to enter the presence of the God we’ve so denied every single time that we’ve put us first and forced Him thus last.

We know we’ll not be welcome. For unlike even the little drummer who knew only to play his best, we know we’ve nothing left of anything that could even accidentally be considered our best.

All we have with which to come before Christ is a life lived in utter contempt against everything He said, everything He did, everything He is. And so now calculating the cost of our lives as now defined by all we’ve lost to only still end up not living them anywhere near how we should, we know that should we even approach the outermost vicinity of His divinity, we should only expect the fullest of the enormity of His jealousy.

For He told us plainly that He is a jealous God, not wanting to share what is His alone with anyone who isn’t Him. Give to Caesar. And sadly we understand that there’s just no escaping all the Caesars we’ve made in our lives to whom we’ve devoted our time and thus destroyed ourselves.

How do we make up for that? How could we ever even start when, again, all we’ve ever known is the way of life lived within this world in which pride is the pinnacle of all expectation? For nothing at all has changed in that pride goes before the fall. And so we’ve fallen so far away thanks to our ego and vanity that we’re virtually without hope as we’ve foolishly placed it only inside ourselves.

And we’ve put it where we have thinking that we could prove ourselves to those around us by our having or wanting or becoming whatever they themselves seek to be or become. All because, again, we live life as if a competition, one in which if we can win well then we won’t lose in the end.

We will if we don’t have Him.

Because friends, there is no other Name. We talk about that all the time too. Why? Because we’ve nothing left to lose, because we’ve lost everything else to this idea that having more meant we were more. Life here is all about quantity and vanity and vitriol and other such inhumility. We live to commend ourselves to those who live to do the same. And thus we’re all one big train wreck from which none of us will walk out alive.

So why do we try? Is it that we don’t understand God and thus try to make Him like us? Bring Him down to our level? Imagine Him in our image? Flipped it all upside down didn’t we?

Yes, we live to impress and thus we think we can impress God. We give our lives to looking like a world that we want to like us, assuming the same can somehow be done with Him. If we just learn the right words, wear the right clothes, do all the right things, then surely we’ll be able to commend ourselves before the One who must be so impressed with our ability to figure it all out.

What have we figured out that He hasn’t made known? What have we managed to accomplish that He didn’t allow us to achieve? Who are we that we think that we can do as we please and somehow please the One who called us to lay down our lives? We’re all so confused and turned around inside ourselves that we couldn’t even begin to dream of what God desires. All we know is all we own, so much so that we seem to think that if we can just achieve our every assumption of what we think best then surely He too will be impressed.

Why will He be impressed with us? How could He be impressed with us? What have we done or managed to become that’s able to prove we don’t need the Son?

Friends, this has never been about us proving ourselves to the One we’ve already so utterly disappointed that it’s amazing He’s even willing to welcome us back. We have to stop doing this as if we can do it, because we simply can’t. If we’ve made even one mistake, then it was made against the God who calls us to be righteous as He is righteous and holy just as He is holy. If we cannot prove that we’ve been wholly righteous in everything we’ve done and every word we’ve spun, then there’s nothing we can do to earn what He’s chosen to.

And that’s just it. Salvation was His choice. He chose to offer us forgiveness. He chose to take our sins from us, as far as the East is. He is the One who chose to close the distance we’ve decided upon within every decision we’ve made without Him being of any welcome. We are in this way all prodigals out here lost upon paths paved through preference and pride as if we could somehow find a life worth living within them. But friends, life is only found in Him, and since our pride has led us only away, our pride only wants us to die.

Why agree to that when He gave His life as a ransom for all our pride has held hostage?

Sure, we can keep trying to prove ourselves to people, and perhaps in that win some sort of worldly awards or recognition that most seem to think matters. We can beat ourselves black and blue trying to prove that we can get this right by beating the wrongs out of us. We can become so sullen and filled with sorrow that we think He sees only our shame as if that’s what He wants to see. Yeah, maybe we can eventually be the ones who come up with some idea, some design, some outcome that proves we didn’t need Jesus to die for us, all so that we don’t have to feel bad that He did.

But He did.

And I just don’t see how you and me living to try and absolve ourselves of His gift can in any way ever please or impress the God who did all of that knowing that there was no other way. There is no other way. And so nothing we do can ever amount to anything worth doing if the doing of it is only done to try and commend ourselves as the ones who made it home without having to ask for directions.

But friends, there is no Heaven without His help leading there. We’ve simply gotten too much way too wrong to ever be welcomed into that promise that’s long been our last concern.

We can spend our time trying to lift ourselves up, or we can spend that time lifting Him up. But we cannot do both as He is nothing of selfish, and so if we’re to be found by Him and thus in Him, well then we can’t live for anything selfish either.

Least of all our trying to prove ourselves to the One who calls us to lose ourselves as that’s the only way to leave behind all we’ve made of ourselves, for ourselves in exchange for the One who cares only about saving the soul, not placating the pride pursuing this proving that it doesn’t need such a mercy.

We do need such a mercy, and literally as much of Him as we can fit inside our every intention and attention. And thus we just can’t afford to give anything else any of our time or conviction. No, for we simply cannot commend ourselves out of what all we’ve done to condemn ourselves.

For like it or not, our name simply is not the only One under Heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved. His is.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold