Save me, O God,
for the waters have come up to my neck.
I sink in the miry depths,
where there is no foothold.
I have come into the deep waters;
the floods engulf me.
I am worn out calling for help;
my throat is parched.
My eyes fail,
looking for my God.
You, God, know my folly;
my guilt is not hidden from you.
Lord, the LORD Almighty,
may those who hope in you
not be disgraced because of me;
God of Israel,
may those who seek you
not be put to shame because of me.

–Psalm 69.1-3, 5-6 (NIV)

What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written:

“For your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers,  neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

–Romans 8.31-39 (NIV)

Anyone who takes his or her faith seriously and whose eyes are wide open to the realities of this mortal life will instinctively relate to the Psalmist above. If you have lived long enough, you have doubtless experienced those times in your life when you feel that you are drowning in the sea of life changes. Likewise, it is possible for those of us who are taking the season of Lent seriously to feel the same way. Ridding ourselves, with the Spirit’s help, of everything in us that keeps us in exile from God is hard and can get quite discouraging. We look at the fruit of our behavior and what we see more often than we wish is the fruit of our selfishness rather than the fruit of the Spirit. All this can tempt us to abandon our faith journey and fall into despair.

But fear not. Fortunately it is not about you. It is about God’s great love for you in Jesus as Paul so poignantly articulates in today’s passage from Romans (my favorite passage in all the NT). Yes, we have (and can count on) the Spirit’s transformative Power and Presence in our very being. Yes, the Spirit is working to transform us into the very image of Christ so that we can be the restored Image-bearers for the Lord. But this is slow and gradual work, and we often experience setbacks and detours along the way, not to mention a myriad of distractions that life throws our way.

It is not that the Spirit is incapable of changing us into the the image of Christ. Rather it is the fact that we are so thoroughly infected with sin. This–combined with the fact that in changing and healing us, the Spirit is careful not to violate our core personality–can make the dynamic of growing to be like Christ seem like a long, arduous, and sometimes agonizing process. It typically takes a lifetime for the Spirit to accomplish his work in us and this can leave us more than a bit nonplussed at times.

That is why we need to heed and take seriously what Paul reminds us in today’s passage. If God is for us, who can be against us? Answer? Not even ourselves! Sure, we can choose to consciously walk away from God and never return, and God loves us enough to let us do that. But as Paul reminds us here, God is faithful to us and good to his promise. He has become human and suffered his holy justice on our behalf on the cross. He has defeated evil and invites us into a renewed relationship with him (see, e.g., Colossians 2.13-15). And he has poured out his Spirit on us to help us along the way. What’s more, there is nothing, I repeat, nothing, in all creation that can separate us from God’s love for us in Jesus Christ. The only thing that can separate us from God’s love for us is our conscious, deliberate, and ongoing rejection of that love.

If this passage from Paul does not give you strength, purpose, and encouragement in your infirmities and struggles, I don’t know what can. Thanks be to God through our Lord Jesus Christ!

Moreover, as we have seen before, our faith in Jesus must result in changed behavior. In other words, our actions will be commensurate with our faith. But here too we can become discouraged like the Psalmist in the passage above. We are called to be Kingdom workers for the Lord. He calls each of us to deny ourselves, take up our cross each day, and follow him. When we do, we will inevitably suffer and I have written about that elsewhere.

What’s more, we have the capacity to get it wrong in our Kingdom work. We don’t always follow our marching orders to the best of our abilities. We are fallible and finite. We sometimes do the wrong things or misunderstand God’s word in Scripture. Just look, for example, at the pastor in Florida whose congregation burned the Koran recently. Hardly an act of Christian charity. Hardly an act of grace toward those whom he considers to be his enemies. But we don’t have to look as far as the daily news for examples of failure. We only have to look as far as our own lives to see that we have not always acted faithfully to our higher call in Christ, and that too can be quite discouraging.

Here again, we must come back to what Paul reminds us. It isn’t about us and our faithfulness. It is about God and his faithfulness. Nothing in all creation can separate us from God’s love for us. Not even when we screw things up badly. When we do, we must lay them at the foot of the cross and ask Jesus to forgive us. We must ask him to once again bear our weakness and infirmity so that we may be healed. In doing so, we remember the words of Isaiah, “Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering… and by his wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53.4-6), and we thank God for his great and wondrous gift to us in Jesus. We give thanks that we have a God who is for us, not against us, at least those of us who do not want to remain in open revolt against him.

And we remember not only the cross of Christ but the fact that he is now at God’s right hand–biblical language that expresses the fact that Jesus is now Lord of the universe who rules over all things–interceding for us. Let your mind wrap itself around this for a good while so that you can begin to appreciate what Paul is telling you. How often do we appreciate the prayers of fellow believers! What a difference those prayers make in our lives! Now consider the fact that you have the Lord Jesus praying for you, interceding to God directly on your behalf!! It is nothing less than a mind-blowing show-stopper if you really believe this promise in Scripture. Again, who cannot get much needed encouragement from this? What kind of God is it that would love us this passionately, even with all of our warts?

Here is real encouragement for you as you go through this season of Lent. Here is real encouragement for you as you seek to go through life as a faithful servant of the Lord.

As we rapidly approach Holy Week, now is a good time to stop and not only count the cost of following Jesus but also count the resources available to help us in our journey. As Bishop Tom Wright reminds us in various places throughout his writings, the most common commandment of Scripture is “don’t be afraid.” The next time you are tempted to be afraid or to fall into despair, pick up your Bible and read (or reread) Paul’s great statement about God and affirmation of faith in today’s passage from Romans. It will remind you why you have no need to be afraid. It will help you be faithful to this particular commandment of God.

And if you are still living your life in exile from God, why would you possibly want to do that in light of the great truth found in today’s passage from Romans? You have a God who loves you and created you to have a relationship with him. Why would you not want to connect (or reconnect) to the only life support system that matters? Now is as good a time as any to discover (or rediscover) the jaw-dropping love of God that is waiting to embrace (or re-embrace) you. Do yourself the biggest favor of all and fall into the waiting arms of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Your life will never be the same again.

From Christianity Today online.

Here, I’m simply suggesting that Christus Victor may not be a theory that Protestants, and evangelicals in particular, should tie their wagons to. While it brings to the fore some crucial and forgotten biblical truths, it’s clearly a secondary atonement theme in the New Testament. And at least for today’s Protestants, it has an uncanny tendency to downplay a sense of personal responsibility, which in the end, sabotages grace. In my view, more than ever in our day, we need Christus Vicarious.

A spot-on analysis and worthy of your serious reflection during this season of Lent. My favorite author and theologian, Bishop Tom Wright, comes precariously close to elevating Christus Victor over everything else and I do not agree with his position, if that is what he is doing (see, e.g., The Challenge of Jesus and Evil and the Justice of God). To be fair, however, +Tom does make the point that Christus Victor provides the broader framework into which the atonement theology of the Bible fits.

At any rate, read it all.

This is what the LORD says: Do what is just and right. Rescue from the hand of the oppressor the one who has been robbed. Do no wrong or violence to the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow, and do not shed innocent blood in this place.

–Jeremiah 22.3 (NIV)

Therefore, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation—but it is not to the flesh, to live according to it. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live. For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba Father.” The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.

–Romans 8.12-17 (NIV)

Very truly I tell you, the one who believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”

–John 6.47-51 (NIV)

As we have seen before, the Christian faith is not an exercise in self-help or self-reliance. Scripture is quite clear about the mess we call the human condition. We are too profoundly broken to fix ourselves so that a real relationship with God is possible. We need radical help if we ever hope to overcome that within us that keeps us hostile toward and separate from God. The good news is that we do have the needed radical help. It comes from the very Spirit of God living in us as Paul tells us in today’s passage.

Ever since the Fall, humans have been confronted with a choice. We can choose to be reconciled to God as evidenced by our willingness to obey his life-giving commands and have life, or we can choose to remain alienated toward God and choose death. Whatever we choose, we do so freely and without coercion because God created us to be free moral agents and love never imposes itself on the beloved.

In today’s passage, we see Paul joining his voice with the rest of Scripture in urging us to choose life. The beauty of God’s grace is that when we choose life, God through his Spirit living in us helps us put our money where our mouth is. The Spirit helps us get rid of all that is within us that keeps us in exile from God. In fact, without the Spirit’s help, we have no hope at all of ever becoming fully the humans that God created us and wants us to be. What a remarkable gift!

It is even more remarkable when we consider what Paul has already written in his letter about God’s love and grace poured out on us. Paul has reminded us of the mind-blowing love of God, of what God has already done for us in and through the cross of Christ (see Romans 5.6-11). God has entered our history and acted decisively on our behalf so that the intractable problem of human sin and God’s justice and love could be resolved. The restoration of our relationship with God is only possible because of what God has done for us. It is God’s gift offered to us freely. Our job is to respond to God’s offer.

In today’s passage, Paul reminds us of what else God does for us to help restore our relationship with him. God gives his very Spirit to those who accept his gracious invitation to be healed and restored in Christ. In effect, we become God’s adopted children. The Greek word for adoption that Paul uses, huiothesia, is a technical legal term which signified that the person adopted would have every right of inheritance that natural born children had. The implication is clear. Those who are in Christ (i.e., who have faith in Christ) will share in everything he has inherited, i.e. the New Creation. Contrary to the popular misapplication of the term, “children of God,” by which it is meant that all humans are children of God, as Paul and other NT writers make clear, only those who have God’s Spirit living in them through faith are God’s children. In other words, only those who are in Christ can be counted as God’s children with full rights of inheritance. It is a sobering notion that should invoke our fervent prayers for those who do not know Jesus but also one that gives us the basis for real hope in our struggles.

For you see, when we have God’s Spirit (i.e., the Holy Spirit or the Spirit of Christ–the NT uses these terms interchangeably) in us, we are set free from our self-centeredness and given power to love and serve God in the same manner that Jesus did when he walked on this earth. Paul uses the term slavery in different ways, depending on the point he was trying to make. In Romans 6, for example, he tells us that we are slaves to righteousness (and therefore to Jesus) because we have said no to sin, a good thing. In the passage above, Paul tacitly acknowledges the perniciousness of slavery by telling us that the Spirit frees us from the fear that almost always accompanies human slavery. We are free from our fear of death. We are free to love and serve the Lord because of what he has done for us and because we are enabled to do so by his very Spirit living in us.

And what will our love and service look like? Whatever our individual calls look like, it will be costly and we will suffer because of it. Last week we looked at some specific ways in which Christians suffer for the name and you can refer to that post for the details if you’d like. Suffice it to say here that following the way of Jesus, following the way of the Cross is costly. It is costly to risk forgiveness and to seek reconciliation. It is costly to embody Jesus to help others bear their burdens. It is costly to look out for the weakest and most helpless in our society. It is costly to seek the welfare of others over our own needs. It is costly not to hate. It is costly to confront injustice where we see it and act within our abilities to do something about it, not violently or out of anger, but for the sake of the Name. Yet suffer we must if we want to be God’s children. Suffer we must because our Lord did likewise and commands us to deny ourselves, take up our cross each day, and follow him. That is costly. It costs us our self-centeredness.

Our suffering for Jesus’ name and sake is proof positive that we have a lively and saving faith in him, and that we have his very Spirit in us to help us bear our suffering.

But we are not called to do this on our own. Just as God called his people Israel collectively to be agents of his healing and redemptive power, so God calls us collectively to be his Messiah’s people, the Church. The Christian faith was never intended to be lived alone or in isolation. Doing so makes us vulnerable to be picked off one by one by Satan so that we cannot be Kingdom workers and bear Jesus’ presence for others. Neither can we confront the powers and principalities on our own as effectively as we can together. But the Church is not called to confront the powers and principalities on its own strength nor by using exclusively the political tools of the world. Rather, it is called to confront evil in precisely the same way our Lord confronted it in his life and death. Only then can we be true to our calling to be Jesus the Messiah’s followers.

And of course, it all starts with the true season of Lent in our heart, whether or not that season actually coincides with the Church calendar. God’s Spirit will not reside in a proud and haughty heart. If we are to open our very being to Jesus’ healing and transformative Presence, humility and contriteness are essential prerequisites.

Following our Lord is never easy because we are not naturally inclined to do so. We would much rather follow ourselves or gods of our own making rather than the one true and living God. But we have help with the battle. We are not alone. We have each other and more importantly we have the very Power and Presence of the Spirit living in us to enable us to be faithful Kingdom workers, pleasing in God’s sight.

Will we get it right all the time? Hardly. In fact, there will be times when it seems that we rarely get it right. But take heart and hope. When we have the Spirit in us we have the assurance, his assurance, that we are his children. The children may sometimes fight amongst themselves and are sometimes obstinate and rebellious toward their parents, but they remain children. Likewise, so do we in our relationship with our heavenly Father. Otherwise, how could we possibly call him Abba (papa or daddy)?? Do you realize what an massive privilege we have been given to call the God of this vast universe, “papa”? It quite simply boggles the mind! Despite our flaws and failures, when we love the Lord and have his Spirit in us, we will keep trying to show our love and devotion to him, just as we would toward our natural parents. And we have the assurance that we remain his children, not because of our faithfulness but because of the faithfulness of Jesus, and that is a powerful antidote to despair and hopelessness.

Suffering for the Name is inevitable. But the meaning, purpose, and joy that being his Kingdom worker brings is also inevitable. And as Paul reminds us today, we have an even brighter future in the New Creation awaiting us. What are you waiting for? Give your very self to the crucified God who loves you and gave his very life for and Spirit to you so that you can be his.

What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?  Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace. The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God. You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ. But if Christ is in you, then even though your body is subject to death because of sin, the Spirit gives life because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.

–Romans 7.24, 8.1-11 (NIV)

All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away. For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all those he has given me, but raise them up at the last day.

–John 6.27-39 (NIV)

In chapter 7 of Romans, Paul has been describing the deleterious effect our fallen nature has on us, even on those who profess to be Christian. We must constantly battle it lest it reassert control over us. Paul concludes by crying out, “What a wretched man I am!” This is from Paul, of all people, the one whom our Risen Lord directly confronted on the road to Damascus! What can that possibly mean for folks like you and me?

Paul tells us in Chapter 8, and what he tells us is good news. Yes, we are fallen individuals. Yes, we must constantly wage war against our fallen nature. But as Paul reminds us today, we don’t wage war by ourselves. We have the help of God’s Holy Spirit in us, helping us overcome our body of sin and reminding us of God’s glorious promise to us in Jesus.

This, of course, is why we engage in our Lenten disciplines of prayer, fasting, self-examination and denial, and reading Scripture–to make room for God’s Holy Spirit to live in us so that he can help us overcome all that is within us that keeps us separated from God. What this means in practical terms is this. While we may experience setbacks and detours along the way, our relationship with God will be restored because we have his very help in doing just that. It won’t make our work any easier because we are naturally self-centered. But we are assured final victory because we have made room for God’s Spirit to live in us and help us overcome our weaknesses and infirmities.

And as Jesus reminds us in today’s Gospel lesson, we engage in our Lenten disciplines willingly and with a glad heart for all that God has done and is doing for us. Sure, we lament our sins and our brokenness, but we engage in our Lenten disciplines with glad and thankful hearts because we know it is for our own good. The more room we make for the Holy Spirit to live within us, the more he will be able to help us overcome our brokenness and heal us. There will be days when we don’t feel like we have the Holy Spirit living in us but that doesn’t change the fact that he does! When we have the Spirit living in us, we have God’s assurance that we are Christ’s. And when we are Christ’s there is now no condemnation for us. By his wounds we have been healed (Isaiah 53.5). Thanks be to God!

So what will this look like in our daily lives? When we are Christ’s and have his Spirit living in us, it changes our whole outlook on life as well as our behavior. We cannot have Christ in us and remain the same. When we have the Spirit living in us and healing us, our orientation moves from an inward to an outward focus. We become more acutely aware of the needs and hurts of others and we are given power to minister to them. The Good News that by faith we believe is something we want to share with others. After all, who doesn’t want to share good news with other people so why wouldn’t we want to share the best news of all?

Moreover, when we allow the Spirit to control us, we become more willing and able to extend mercy instead of wanting to enact revenge. We seek reconciliation instead of enmity. We revel in forgiveness rather than ongoing hostility. We are open to Christ’s influence so that he can use us as he calls each of us to serve him by serving others. This will look somewhat differently for each person and your mileage may vary. But whatever it is Christ calls you to do, you can be confident that he is using you as an agent of his Kingdom. He is calling you to deny yourself, take up your cross each day, and follow him to bring God’s healing and reconciliation to his broken and hurting world and people.

This will require you to suffer at times for the sake of his name. It means that you will face opposition and sometimes active persecution. But you will see this as a badge of honor, not disgrace. It won’t feel good on one level but knowing that you are being faithful to your suffering Messiah will more than mitigate any bad feelings you might have over facing opposition and persecution for Jesus’ sake.

Yet none of this is possible if we don’t first make room for the Spirit to live in us and exert his wonderful influence on us so that we can conquer or selfishness, fear, petty agendas, and self-reliance. None of this is possible if we remain separate from and hostile toward God. But when we say yes to God and make room for him to live in us, the sky’s the limit on what he will enable us to accomplish for him. Our Kingdom work may never make us rich or famous but we will have great capital in God’s economy. We have life in us right here and now. We find meaning and purpose in living. We find ourselves, our truly human self, by losing it to the Spirit’s influence in us. And of course we have the promise and hope of a glorious and eternal future, the hope of New Creation, a New Creation that God is using us right now to help implement.

This is why we pursue our Lenten disciplines. It is not because we are masochists or some kind of dreary individuals. We pursue our Lenten disciplines so that we can say yes to God’s glorious invitation to us to enjoy abundant life starting right here and now, a life that will stretch throughout all eternity. It is life that not even the death of our mortal bodies can destroy. If you have not done so already, what are you waiting for? Say yes to God’s wondrous and mind-blowing invitation to you in Jesus.

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!

–Romans 7.15-25 (NIV)

Unless the LORD had given me help,
I would soon have dwelt in the silence of death.
When I said, “My foot is slipping,”
your unfailing love, LORD, supported me.
When anxiety was great within me,
your consolation brought me joy.

–Psalm 94.17-19 (NIV)

Anyone who takes his or her faith and the season of Lent seriously will instinctively relate to what Paul writes in the passage above because Paul powerfully and poignantly laments the futility of self-help in trying to overcome our body of sin. Anyone who has tried to put to death that within her that weighs her down and prevents her from having the kind of relationship with God that her heart desires, understands that Paul is spot on in his analysis of the human condition. We are thoroughly infected by sin and our sin keeps us separated from and alienated toward God. It is a wearisome and hopeless picture Paul that acknowledges.

That is why our Lenten disciplines are so hard to pursue. By God’s grace and through his Spirit living in us, part of us longs for a restored relationship with him, one in which we acknowledge God is God and we are not, and we act accordingly. But part of us, our fallen part, wants nothing to do with this and wages war against our efforts to deny ourselves, take up our cross everyday, and follow Jesus. This business of dying to self is hard and frustrating, and it can lead us to despair if we are not careful.

But it is precisely when we are tempted to fall into despair that we must remember that the Christian faith is not about self-help. Yes, we must do our part to maintain our relationship with God. We must be ruthless on ourselves and exert the needed effort to kill that within us that keeps us hostile toward God. We must be merciless on ourselves when it comes to self-examination. But we do not do this on our own. As Paul acknowledges at the end of his passage and as the Psalmist acknowledges, we have help in our fight against the evil in us that keeps us separated from God. We have the very help of God himself, living in us through his Holy Spirit. And this must bring us hope and strengthen us to persevere as we wage our lifelong war to put to death our fallen nature.

Does this mean that we will always be successful in our efforts to rid ourselves of our body of sin? Hardly. We are profoundly broken, even with God’s Spirit living within us. And because God loves us and has created us with the ability to make moral decisions we have the freedom to sometimes choose the dark over the light, even when part of us doesn’t want to do that. But fear not. The God who loves us so much that he became human and died for us so that he could bear the just punishment for our sins will not let go of us if we cry out to him for help. As the writer of Hebrews reminds us, because Jesus was fully human he understands our weaknesses and stands ready to help us overcome them on multiple levels (Hebrews 4.14-16).

The season of Lent is the time in our Christian calendar where we take seriously our discipleship and are intentional in removing the barriers that diminish it. It is hard work and there are many setbacks along the way. But take heart and hope. We have God’s promise to be with us, to forgive us and pick us up when we stumble and fall. And when God is with us as he promised to be (see, e.g. the beginning and end of Matthew’s Gospel), we have legitimate hope. We have legitimate power to overcome our rebelliousness so that we can have the kind of relationship with God that he wants us to have. And when that happens, whether it comes suddenly or gradually, you will find the kind of meaning and purpose in life that nothing in the entire creation can destroy.

If you are looking for that kind of life, if you are looking for unconditional love and acceptance, or if you are looking for a love that refuses to leave you where you are because there is so much more to be had, then give your heart and mind to the Lord who loves you and gave himself for you. It will be the best (and hardest) thing you can ever do for yourself.

So, my brothers and sisters, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God. For when we were in the realm of the flesh, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in us, so that we bore fruit for death. But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.

–Romans 7.4-6 (NIV)

Here Paul reminds us why we have a season of Lent. God created us to have a relationship with him, to love and enjoy him now and forever. But our sinful rebellion got in the way and caused a rupture in our relationship with God. As Paul reminds us elsewhere, the wages of sin is death and on our own we are powerless to fix the problem.

But God is not powerless to fix the problem. As Paul reminds us here, living a Christian life is more than trying to follow a bunch of arbitrary rules (the Law). The Law exists to provide us with an example of how we are to uphold our part of our relationship with God. It cannot fix us or resolve the problem of alienation between God and humans that human sin caused. It simply exposes the depth of the problem.

So what to do? According to God’s eternal plan, at the right time he entered our history and took on our humanity to die for us, to bear himself the just punishment for our sins and to offer us a real and permanent way to end our alienation and exile from him. We have his very word in Scripture that this is true. We have the Risen Lord to provide us with the historical evidence that he is who he says he is–God’s Messiah. We also have his Presence living in us in the person of the Holy Spirit to remind us that God’s promises to us in Christ are true. God has done the hard work. Our part, hard as it is because we are so badly flawed, is really a walk in the park compared to what God has done for us in Christ.

This brings us back to the season of Lent. During this time we acknowledge that we are the source of the problem regarding our relationship with God. We have to decide whom or what we will worship and make our God. If we decide we want a relationship with God, then we have to work at killing that within us that prevents us from allowing God to be God. We have to clear away that within us that prevents his Holy Spirit from living within us to heal and transform us. For you see, God loves us enough to let us make our own choices regarding the kind of relationship we want to have with him. Like any healthy relationship, both parties must willing commit themselves to it. You can’t force someone to love you. Neither does God force us to love him. That wouldn’t be love at all.

While engaging in the Lenten disciplines of self-examination and self-denial, prayer, fasting, and confession/repentance is hard because we are deeply and thoroughly broken, we must always keep our eyes on the prize. We must remember the great and costly love God showed for us in Jesus so that we do not lose heart or hope. We must not engage in Lenten disciplines for the wrong reasons. Fear, guilt, and compulsion do not constitute a healthy basis on which to form a real and lasting relationship, either with other humans or with God. We must want to engage in our Lenten disciplines because we know that God will use our efforts to strengthen our faith and our relationship with him. Anything else just won’t do.

And as we seek to put to death in ourselves everything that would help keep us hostile to God, we will inevitably see a change in our outlook on life and our behavior. We will increasingly see the need to share God’s good gift of himself with others so that they can get it on the fun. We will increasingly want to live as Kingdom workers so that God can use us to bring his healing love and grace to his badly broken world. And when that happens, frustrating as it can sometimes be, we will find that life has new meaning and purpose. We will find a richness that is not possible to enjoy when we make life all about ourselves. But when we live to bring honor and glory to God for his great love and gift to us in Jesus, we will finally begin to understand what it means to live as God intended for us to live. If you are not already enjoying that kind of lifestyle, a lifestyle that consists of denying yourself, taking up your cross each day, and following Jesus and bringing his healing love to others in the context of your daily life, what are you waiting for?