Day 3753 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

John 14:6 NIV

The Exception

For when the exception to the rule is the same as He who won the rule over both death and thus too life, then the truth is that we’re either living right within His eyes, and thus have welcomed Him into our lives, and are thus living in light of the love that laid down His for us to do so, or we’re not. Because the simple fact is that if Christ truly is the Way, the Truth, the Life, then well, the only obvious way to live life is in truth. And thus the humility met within our honesty is the only right direction to go.

At least if we want to live, that is.

And we should, because, well, life is good. Living is nice. Being alive a gift that we've both been given and thus one we never should have given away to what has become the many reasons for the death we owe as chosen in what has long been our taking exception to the very suggestion as to the rule of another. Rather we’ve long sought to see only ourselves upon the throne that is our heart. And we’ve now done this so long in fact that we’ve largely forgotten that our hearts are thrones meant to be homes of He who died to reside inside.

Or do you still not know that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit who is only in us because He died to give us of the Ghost who is the soul, the Spirit, the very essence of the Son incarnate, God in flesh, God among us, God inside us?

Well, judging (and again, yes, we’re most definitely supposed to do so) from the outside looking in as seen from substance of everything from the every word we say to the every action we take and whether or not there’s ever even any agreement between them, no, it seems mostly that we don’t know that our bodies are temples of the Spirit. And I say that because, well, so often we live for the flesh in what is then an emptying out of our every greater purpose for our very existence.

After all, since when did God ever put more emphasis on the building than He did what was inside?

You know, I just started through Exodus a night or two ago, and last evening I was reading about the specifics for how He wanted Moses to build the Tabernacle, which was but a largely more mobile version of the Temple that would be erected within the Promised Land toward which they were being led in what was an exodus, an escape, an exiting from the life they’d been living as lived lost in a foreign land living as slaves to foreign kings.

The mobile aspect being made necessity in that, well, they just had a part in the utter decimation of that foreign nation, including the wiping out of an entire army at the hands of a sea that somehow proved capable of parting, and too, they were now entering toward that Promise through what were only more nations and peoples who wouldn’t be even as welcoming as the Egyptians had started out as being.

So they were going to be doing a lot of moving, and even though it took 40 years, the point was always the moving.

Which remains the point for us even still today.

Anyway.

The Tabernacle, as precursor to the Temple which was itself but a reflection of the intention of God for His creation as created at literally the same time that He created us. Yes, He made us to be His and thus for us to live with Him, and thus He too with us. Alas, we couldn’t keep things so simple, opened the door to become sinful, and well, we’ve been racing to find ways to get worse in that regard for just about as long as the Israelites griped and grumbled along the way out of slavery.

It’s amazing the exceptions we can take to things that don’t look like the easy we’d so vastly prefer.

And make no mistake, there is nothing easy about faith. I mean, He’s even impressively detailed in regard to how He wants this “Tent of Meeting” to be constructed. There are all these rules for who can enter it, on what days, what sacrifices they need to bring, how much to sacrifice, what kind of bread goes with what part of the goat, the oils and incense and, well, it’s just intense.

In fact, reading through it all, it kind of takes on, and rather quickly, this overall feeling that there was never really any way for us to ever get every single aspect, detail or expectation exactly right.

No, seems instead that we were only ever destined to fail, fall short, mess something up, get something wrong, forget the measurement, leave out the frankincense.

It’s almost as if He set us up!

And well, so what if He did? So what if He made this walk so hard from the start that there was never any way that we could do it well? What if our doing things well, in regard to our measuring of such things, what if that was never the point nor purpose of this path toward His promise? Did the people then only enter in to the Promised Land if they had a sheet of gold stars given for good effort or better results? Is Heaven only the Promised Land now for those who’ve achieved some sort of self-divinity as designed inside their doing of everything just right?

Or rather is Heaven’s hope only the home of those humble enough to realize that, no matter the measure we use, the truth remains that we could never possibly measure up?

After all, how can we equal His sacrifice?

What He did was a whole lot more than just goats without defect and some fraction of whatever an ephah or omer were!

But friends, that is the point, and indeed one so very powerful that He is now the Way, the Truth, the Life. In fact, that’s why the Way came speaking the Truth. It was all to both show us the way of life we should have always lived, and yet that only by helping us see that the way of life we had been living was one so lost that we just resorted to slaughtering basically anything that moved trying to assuage His wrath and erase our guilt.

And sure, that worked(?) for a while. But it clearly didn’t get the message across. Instead, they, and thus now we too, we all just became so used to the sight of blood being spilled from the things that didn’t do the wrongs we’d done but were chosen to pay the price for our sinful way of life that it lost its impact, its significance. And we became so very accustomed to it that we, in our greatest act of sinful arrogance, we insisted upon the very death of He who came to save our souls!

How’s that supposed to work in our favor?

No, rather such elation at the extermination of the Son of salvation has become the proverbial nail in our every coffin. For the mere fact that says that we’ve done anything wrong, a fact we’ve talked about a lot of late as met within those well-known feelings of such things as shame and sorrow, it proves that we know that there is a way better than that which we’ve taken. That there is a better life than that which we’ve been known for living.

That there must then be a truth we’ve clearly lived opposed to.

Thus the necessity of the Exception to our understanding that we were the ones meant to rule as if royalty despite having only ever screwed basically everything up.

Royally.

I mean, we couldn’t even be content in a Garden filled past full with the content of His creation! No, we just had to have more. And sure, we can blame the devil. We can blame other people. We can point the finger at the friends we’ve had and how they’ve had us feeling as if we had to keep doing whatever they’d decided to do. We can come up with however many excuses we want, however many we might hope will make us feel less self-incriminated.

But friends, we took the bite. We tasted the drink. We told the joke. We watch the show. We sung the song. We wore the shirt. We did the sin! We are sinners, and as much as that may hurt, sometimes it should. Because, well, that’s actually one thing we seem to have managed to understand quite well. That the truth hurts. But why? Why does the truth hurt?

Because we hurt the Truth.

And well, there must exist an equal and opposite to every action and outcome. It’s fairness. We chose a way of life that hurt the Christ, and God well before even His suffering and sacrifice. We chose to let Him down. We chose to ignore Him. We chose to deny Him. We chose to hate Him. We chose to kill Him!

He chose to save us.

Equal. Opposite.

The Exception.

Yes, Christ came to meet our death with His life in what He intended to be the laying down of the latter for the matter of our taking stock in our share of the former so as to take up our own crosses and follow. And that is why He’s called the Life. Because, having each of us lived a life, only now that He’s done what He did is it one in which we can live following the Son who walked toward death knowing that there was an unending life waiting just beyond it.

And so yes, following Jesus is too our walking toward, walking in death. But friends, that death is only both in and to the flesh. For in Him the soul lives on, or at least has the opportunity to. But again, that opportunity is only to ever be known should we be found walking that way that the Way walked this life speaking the truth that is both who He is and too what He gives. Truth and life, both thus the same as from the same they came and to the same they go.

Only question then is that asked within whether or not we're going with them, with He who is them.

Are we walking along that Way toward that Life which is found only in that Truth? Or are we still lost somewhere within whatever is our measure of the middle?

Sadly, it seems that we’ve all known the middle for so long that it’s all we know to aim for. Just more of that way of life unchallenged, unchanged by the truth. But friends, how is that possible? How can we fail to be changed by the Truth that was given so as to set captives free? How can we agree to remain unchallenged when we know that without difficulty there can be no victory? How can we appreciate life if we don’t embrace the death that gave it to us? How can we welcome the victory of death if we don’t understand the Way the Truth went?

For Jesus chose the grave as the place to save us a place. And thus, yes, to die is gain, so long as we live to Christ, live for Christ, live in Christ. Why? Christ is the Life. He is the Way. He is the Truth which came to lose this life of flesh so that we might find in Him, by faith, the courage to finally do the same. Yes, He came to show us that we have to die to the flesh if we’re ever going to live for the Spirit that has so long been quenched in us that we likely have no idea what we have in us.

In fact, as we talked about just yesterday, I’m afraid we may not have much left in us at all anymore. Because the truth is that living to please the flesh only reaps from the flesh such treasures as temporary pleasure and the allure of passing success. And well, yes, those things are just death because, well, they’re only found within a life that’s dying as lived in a place doing the same.

This world is passing away, and like it or not, so too then are we.

But friends, that’s the beauty of the sheer brutality that was written for us to continue learning to fight to stop living to repeat. And make no mistake, the past does repeat if we fail to learn from it. Thankfully His Word is still supremely useful for correcting, for rebuking, for teaching and training and trying to help us see that righteousness remains the call, and that too, when we inevitably fail to uphold it or fall short of even trying, that still, Christ’s dying opened the way for us to see that it isn’t on you and me to get everything just right.

No, He’s the only One who’s ever accomplished such a thing.

He is the lamb with defect, the offering without blemish, the pure and spotless Son of Heaven!

And we get to call Him Savior, and in that, pray every day that one day He will welcome us home as if truly His son, His daughter.

Friends, since Christ is the only One who’s ever lived a perfect life, so too then is He the only One we need to look to or lean on in regard to the living of our try at the same. He is the only Way, and so no, none of us will go unto the Father except through Him. And thus we see that He is the Way to Heaven, and thus toward the promise of eternal life lived therein.

But friends, if He who is the Way to the Life is also the Truth, then the way to everlasting life is through the truth. We’re either living in step with the truthful Word of God, following thus the faithful Son of the same, or we’re simply not. And while we have all experienced more than plenty of that “simply not”, our ever feeling of guilt or shame proves we’ve simply not any logical reason to continue doing the things that make us feel that way.

No, there’s a better way. And that better way is the Way. And while the truth He spoke, the truth He is, while that Truth may hurt, that truth is also the only thing that can bring us life. Because nobody goes to the Father except through He who is the Truth.

Yeah, we can keep living this way of life lived lost in the comfort of lies telling us that we’re either doing just fine or can manage to do so. We can keep pretending that there’s a way to everything we could and should hope to find that doesn’t involve our flesh, our sins having to die. We can continue ahead completely convinced that life is only ever supposed to be what we make it, make of it, make with it or in it. We can do this however we choose, for that is the beauty of freewill.

But friends, freedom is also a burden, and we see this no place better than the cross. He came to bear our shame. And that we have plenty of it is most definitely the truth.

Thankfully He made the Way to rid ourselves of it. And that the way to do so it by our leaving it in the grave, well, what does it matter? For if eternal life is the promise, well then I think it’s safe to say that we can die to whatever the Life asks us to and still be just fine.

That is the Way He went after all. He came to die, and die He did! But then, friends, He rose again. And now we have a chance to share in that risen Life. And when seen from that most hopeful of angle, no, doesn’t seem the Truth hurts quite so much after all.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold