Monday, November 15, 2021
Dear
friends, if we deliberately continue sinning after we have received knowledge
of the truth, there is no longer any sacrifice that will cover these sins. There
is only the terrible expectation of God’s judgment and the raging fire that
will consume his enemies. For anyone who refused to obey
the law of Moses was put to death without mercy on the testimony of two or
three witnesses. Just think how much worse the punishment
will be for those who have trampled on the Son of God, and have treated the
blood of the covenant, which made us holy, as if it were common and unholy, and
have insulted and disdained the Holy Spirit who brings God’s mercy to us. For
we know the one who said, “I will take revenge.
I will pay them back.” He also
said, “The Lord will judge his own people.” It is a terrible thing to fall into the
hands of the living God. Hebrews
10:26-31
Ambivalence, that love-hate relationship of indecision and constant
companion of procrastinators like me, is alive and annoying in the mind of Paul,
as he holds up the most unsettling of truths for the followers of Christ – we have
free will!
There is something deep within each of us crying-out to be free, yet recognizes
the consequence of that freedom requires us to walk a dangerous line between the
selfishness of doing what pleases us, as opposed to living obediently to
another’s choices…namely our Creator’s will.
The most dangerous place on the planet has nothing to do with war,
global warming, or crossing a counter-punching ex-president; the most dangerous
place on planet earth is between your own ears.
That’s so because in the recesses of our free will we make choices that have
earthly consequence in the here and now, but also eternal consequence in the
heavenly realms. Free will is a dangerous
freedom!
The consequence of sinning, deliberately choosing our own way in place
of what God requires (doing what is right, loving mercy, walking humbly with
God[1])
is judgment by our Creator. That
consequence is seen abundantly enough in Scripture to drive us to God’s
mercy. Yet we are prone, like the
prophet Jonah, to hop a ride to the opposite direction. We are running, but, as King David discovered
– there is no place to hide. In Noah’s
day the freedom to choose devolved from any semblance of godliness until the
only “salvageable” family left on the face of the earth was Noah’s. God closed the door on the ark and drowned
everything else with a flood of judgment.
It is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the
living God is Paul’s final
comment in today’s text; it makes my heart skip a beat, because I know it is
true, and I stand as a fragile sinner before God just like anyone else. Unlike the thinking of a favorite uncle of
mine who used to tease me about getting a special sin discount because I preach
on Sundays, I know my will is God’s biggest gift to me, and my own worst enemy. My choices – my ways – are entirely selfish
and my heart is as the poet Robert Robinson wrote it:
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it —
Prone to leave the God I love;[2]
And so this dangerous freedom, cradled in the unstable will of this human
man, is the one thing that drives me to the forgiveness of God – this prone
to wander heart understands grace is the only thing that pulls me
back.
For You Today
So…are you prone to wander into your free will’s
selfishness like me? Let God’s forgiving
grace pull you back. It’s what called you
to Him in the first place.
You chew on that as
you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!
[1] Title and Other Images: Pixabay.com Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©
For another post on this theme
see I Believe in Me - Nov 23, 2018
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