Day 3955 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

1 Corinthians 1:28 NIV

To nullify

It’s something that brings to mind the idea of an annulment, a cancellation, an invalidating, a repealing, revoking, removing, reversing, rescinding, an erasing even. In basic terms it’s a voidance of what’s elsewise proven an avoidance of what should have been an acknowledgement, an appreciation, an honoring if you will of something that has rather been set up in such a way that has been since deemed to be in need of being instead erased.

And, in this case, that which God has determined to so revoke or nullify is indeed the very foundations of our world’s understandings as to how basically all of life is best to be lived.

All because all the ways in which we’ve chosen to live are only those vastly lost in pride, arrogance, ego, anger, hatred, suffering, strife, the very veritable loss of every single life as is now demanded of all those manners in which life as He created it has been instead upended as is lived by all of us who do so love to so pretend that we know so well what we’re doing that anyone doing anything any different is nothing but a foolish weirdo who hasn’t the foggiest idea as to what life means nor then how to live one well.

And indeed, we see this very thing inside this currently commonplace cancer that is cancel culture, which is something in its own right that exists seeking the very nullification of that which it disagrees with. For in truth, that is the basic principle behind what it is to nullify. It’s the determination of something that is that is rather something which should not be, as is determined by they who have the power or authority to so do, as can always be done only through a degree of disagreement.

This is something we see paved in the very pavement of the now proven only perfect path Christ planned to walk and simply asks that we follow. I mean, the Man literally came to die to what is the general way of life that all of us have lived, a choice thus chosen in what can only be determined a degree of disagreement so deep, so dire, so defiant that He came to defy we who’d defied Him for so long that we determined to kill Him simply for loving us more than we could love ourselves.

A Gospel which remains foolish to those who are perishing simply because we’ve all become so filled with hatred and doubt that we doubt we’re so capable of hating ourselves that we’d actually be choosing our deaths so many times in every given day in which we’re also given the opportunity to choose those narrow things which lead to life.

Things we ourselves have sought to nullify so that we’d not have to die to what is the life that we’ve come to love in which we live as if life is only lived for what invites our death.

It’s a truly interesting confusion, this delusion we’ve designed in which we’re so diluted inside that still we find what are daily ways in which to deny the better we could have done, the better we might still be, all so that we need not change anything as, well, change is hard and that which is hard thus brings risk and we find no reason to risk what’s been determined to be in every way good enough to measure up to always us having and being all we have and all we are.

Things we ourselves have sought to become so content with that we no longer even judge the content of.

Because judging is rude, unkind, unloving, unfair and thus unwelcome.

Which makes it easy to see why Jesus wasn’t as overwhelmed with fanfare as eternity says He should have been, and should now be, you know, considering we now exist on this side of Calvary and thus have exponentially fewer reasons to still assume that we know what we’re doing seeing as how He’s already died to our every manner of pride, of boasting, of bragging about how impressive we are and how amazing we’re doing, and thereby proven once for all the debt all such sin owes and how you and I thus owe death due to literally any mistake we’ve ever made in life.

But alas, no. No rather we’re still of the tether which ties blind eyes to this common belief that we’ve done no wrong and thus owe no debt and that Jesus then didn’t die as He’d have had no reason to do what was so clearly unneeded.

Clear to blind eyes, that is.

And indeed, that is what God came to nullify. It’s this blind-eye approach to life that’s left each of us living so far from right that we hate still the Light that came to shine the way to eternal peace, a daily choice chosen simply because His path remains frozen in that very same direction that everything everyone here has ever done has always sought to entirely overcome.

All because we again believe that we’ve done no such wrongs worthy of the ultimate price paid in, by, with a life.

That being death.

Yes, we still live as if death’s undue simply because we still see that we’ve not done anything worth such a worry as leaving this life in which we live in only a hurry to remain who we are, where we are, and why we are so unwilling to be, see, do anything other.

As if what, where, who we are is truly the very best that any if not all of the above can be.

And yet, such is what we seem to say every single time that we refuse, reject, revoke or elsewise nullify the chances we have in life to choose different directions in life as are meant to be travelled seeing as how He created us with legs that walk, minds that imagine, hearts that hope and thus lives meant to live not as islands, not as trees, not as the weeds among which we’ve been planted.

No, rather He created us to move, and He Himself testifies to this in His calling us to just so do within that Word which reads that we’re to “come out from among them.”

Who’s them?

The weeds. The wicked. The wrong and veritably so. Those so immoral and indifferent to it that they do daily nothing different. Those who are so deep in desire, depravity and a denial of just how dirty it all is thanks to their having consumed this idea that such is the spice of life as there is indeed a seemingly endless amount of variety in regard to all things sinful.

A variety we’ve created thanks to hearts who desire only that which is wicked alongside minds that find that they need a new kind of high to keep themselves from seeing just how low they’ve come to live in what would then be a life so clearly defined as worthy of death that there may legitimately be no logical argument left against it being as due as He came to say it was and sadly still is.

And why is it still so due, this death that we’ve all tried but resoundingly failed to ourselves nullify?

Because still we know the wrongs we do thanks to our all having been born into an awareness of the right we could have done, should have done instead.

A way of life needing then to be nullified as it is in fact no way of life but is rather promised, a promise now proven, to be worthy of death in such a degree that it is in fact endless.

Death for all eternity.

Such is what God in Christ came to nullify in His nullifying of the way of life we all have lived in which such is just what we all deserve. And why do we deserve it? Because God is righteous. God is justice. God is jealous. God is vengeance. God is deserving of every drip of whatever honor and glory we might be able to offer. But instead of honoring Him through the reverent fear that would have allowed us to avoid all others, we rather know of many fears in what is then a proving that we know nothing of the fear of our Father.

Simply because within this way of life we all have lived, we’ve never once seen Him as our Father and thus have never had any ability, interest, willingness to treat Him as such.

Meaning then that we’re breaking a handful of commandments already as we’re expressly called to have no others gods before as He is the only thereof, to honor our fathers and mothers who have given us life, to take good care of these vessels which are the temples of the Holy Spirit given inside them, a Spirit we’ve too denied then seeing as how if we’ve become of the ability to be so unwilling to honor God that we in fact just live as if He’s not there, well then nor could said Spirit be as they are one in the same.

And then the third is Jesus, and well, we all know what we’ve all thought of Him.

And so this leaves us tripling down on our denial of God in what has become a way of life in which we live to honor ourselves instead thanks to this idea inside which tells us that we’re the masters of our own lives and thus deserving of enduring every desire in which we might delight, and thus never knowing anything of the death which promises only to end them all.

Which oddly enough rounds us right back to yet again rejecting God as we thus clearly refuse His Word which reads that they who know the right thing to do but do anything other than that right thing, this is sin for them. And, that all sin earns the wage of death.

Proving then that even a single course word spoken is grounds enough to land all of us in the everlasting fire alongside all the others who deserve an eternity not of peace and rest but rather of weeping and gnashing of teeth.

But instead of accepting that, admitting that, both thus opening us unto learning from that and then turning from that, no. No, instead we’ve chosen to just keep resorting to a life spent continuously sorting through all the reasons and excuses we can possibly find or come up with that we actually think might actually make God change His mind about what is basically the entirety of who He is.

For you see, the Bible reads that all that is was at first made through Him and that, as such, all things owe unto Him a generally understandable degree of gratitude, appreciation, acknowledgement, honor, glory, and all of that done only in the very humility that, oops, we’ve not ever really shown.

Because how could we have in what has instead become a way of life filled with so much pride, so much arrogance, so much ego and thus a general disinterest in anything other than whatever we want, and thus too anyone who exists calling us beyond all that we’ve become?

Indeed, how are supposed to prove to God that we’ve had no other gods before Him when we’ve all lived as if we’re all gods before Him?

How are we supposed to convince Him that we’ve honored Him as our Father when the Son He sent, who we murdered, is still roundly denied inside of every single life in which we all still fail and fall then short of the glory He deserves?

How are we supposed to make the case that we’ve never fallen short of said glory via our having never done anything wrong when we all know the weight of such things as regret?

Do you see it yet?

We have all become what are basically walking arguments testifying against ourselves.

And yet we’re supposed to be proud of that?

That we do things, say things that leave us so often scrambling to find some excuse for having said or done it, or making it seem like the other person’s to blame simply because we didn’t really mean it the way they saw it or took it? That we manage to make so much time for so much in life but never have a few minutes to toss up a prayer saying thanks for our lives being filled with so many things?

That we can, on average, spend 5 hours and 16 minutes on our phones every single day but just can’t find time to read the Word?

That we can take to social media, often on our phones, to talk all about everything some politician or celebrity is doing, eating, wearing but haven’t the courage to show others we care about the Christ who achieved our hope of everlasting life (thus proving we’re more apt and ready to honor someone who has no stinking idea we’re even here than we are the One who died to save our lives)?

And we think none of this need be nullified, voided, erased?

Friends, I’m daily amazed that He’s not yet erased this whole dang place!

Because what are we showing Him that’s in any way any different than what we did, who we were before we heard of His Name? What change is there in the words we say, the things we do, the thoughts we think, the hopes we have? I mean, He’s the One who self-proclaimed that He came to make all things new. So then, what is there that’s new in me and you?

Or is that not what we’re all so terrified of finally realizing that we do all this other stuff still trying to ignore Him, deny His Word, refuse His Son?

Can we honestly say that life as we know it, the world as we see it, those around us who are all but visibly falling apart and giving up, that none of that deserves to be changed?

That God doesn’t have the right to ask us to do something else, to be something else, to seek something else?

Folks, all He sees when He looks at us is our endless refusal to honor Him, to glorify Him, to even acknowledge Him as we instead continue along within this way of life in which we make gods out of everything from tv shows to the actors which literally only play pretend within them. What do we have, what have we become that is anything we should be this proud of?

So proud that we contend that He doesn’t even exist, and that simply because we know that if He did, well, that would seriously put the damper on our little party we just insist on throwing down here.

For that’s what life’s long been. We see it as a party. A game. Some time we’ve been given in which we’re supposed to gain all we can selfishly want, thus an existence in which all that matters is just us. That is truly the way of life all of us have known. Maybe that’s because we’re stuck with ourselves for however long we’re here and figure we may as well find and feel as much fun and enjoyment as humanly possible. Maybe it’s that the world around us widely agrees with that approach.

But in the end it won’t matter the reason as, well, truth is we have none. We have no reason to keep doing as Jesus has now proven leads only to death.

Granted, we can continue denying that. We can continue living as if we don’t deserve that. We can even join hands and sing along with those many shouting that God doesn’t exist and we’ve thus nothing to worry about.

But have you ever stopped to think about what that might really mean?

Look, I get it. That God exists and does so as He who has now proven entirely intent upon all but upending the way of life we’ve always known, and largely loved, leaves us with all sorts of entirely reasonable and utterly justifiable fear. After all, if He really is there and really does see all we’ve done and has heard all we’ve said, known all we’ve thought, then we’ve absolutely no way to disprove to Him what He already knows.

And yeah, that’s terrifying as mistakes made now, on this side of the empty grave, they only seem to say that we somehow still haven’t gotten the message.

And, well, how could we have not gotten it considering how we all know of Christmas, of Easter, of the Bible, of church, of Jesus?

No, we have no chance of convincing Him that we didn’t know of Him.

Which means too then that we’ve no ability to convince Him that we were right in doing any of the wrong we ourselves know we’ve done!

So why then do we continue to deny it? Why do we continue to fight it? Why does the world around us still dive so deeply into sin that the majority aren’t even hiding it anymore?

If not because we’re so vastly lost that God has no recourse but to take everything and flip it on its head so that the right we’ve put for wrong is right once more, and the good we’ve put for bad is in fact good again, and the truth which we’ve treated with contempt is again able to be proven just as true as we’ve never wanted to admit it was out of our arrogant fear of what it has to say of about this way of life that we’ve just not ever wanted to lay down?

Friends, don’t we understand the message of Christ and the kind of life He came to live?

Everything He did, everything He is, it’s all to basically erase everything we thought we knew so that we could be brought so low from the crumbling of our prideful towers that we, broken and humbled, find ourselves at the foot of the cross so well aware of a wasted life that we daren’t raise our heads but rather feebly lift our hands in the desperate hope that He’s willing to just erase the sinful flesh and not the rest of us.

God will nullify everything that sets itself up against Him. He will make it nothing. He will erase it from existence. Thankfully, for now, He willing to do so gently so as to leave us something with which we can become what He always intended for us to be, thanks to the loving, healing, forgiving mercy of He who said He came to heal we the sick.

That won’t always be the case.

For there comes a day in which He will nullify everything sat up against Him so fully, so completely, so eternally, so violently that none of it survives.

Everything we are, of all that we’ve become, it will be turned to nothing. Nullified. Revoked. Invalidated.

He’s being still patient with us so that we’ve the chance to be found for once in agreement that it really does all need to be erased while we have the chance to show Him that we have changed, are made new, do want something other than whatever we’ve become.

Problem is that all the above are only seen in our sharing in the One who emptied Himself, who literally made Himself nothing, all so that sin might be done away with within the flesh.

He promises to nullify that which is evil and wicked and wrong. For today He gives us the chance to join Him via showing Him that we too want nothing to do with it anymore. But we have to stop looking to the world that still lives as if our strength, our ability, our success or pleasure or power or preference is of any matter, meaning or merit. Because that’s the nonsense that got us to this point in which God is upending everything that is so that none of us can boast.

Let that be the test then!

Is there anything in your life that’s causing you to boast, to brag, to be still filled with the very same pride in which He’s promised many in this place will die?

Or are you rather on the other side of a sinful life nullified, a way of life you’ve thus rejected yourself, a fact proven in your doing of something new, something different, something better?

Bottom line is that His Word says that by their fruit they will be known, seemingly proving that He Himself will know us by our fruit too.

What fruit are you bearing then?

That of boasting, of pride, of arrogance, the same as He said here is null and void?

Or is it that which shows the world a reflection of His light, of His love, of His life?

He knows those who are His.

He’s just waiting for us to realize it before He inevitably just erases all those who simply never will.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold