Re: Arithmetic

"I am the way, the truth, and the life..."- John 14:6 (Jesus = Full Life)

I recently heard something that disturbed me. It seems that the world around me is looking for completion in religion and is being completely disappointed (What's disturbing about that? Stay tuned...). It thinks that completion and this notion of having a "fullness" or "full life" is what they are meant for and what religion is to them. Do I know where this came from? Well yes and no. I don't know the root of it all, but I can without a doubt recognize the deception of the expectation and in that then realize why so many people around the world are frustrated with their experiences of God or their faith or their religion in general. I will speak to Christianity here, and what I would like to know is the expectation. From what I gather, it seems that more often than not our expectation is that that Jesus will provide an abundant life and joy and completion and fullness on top of what we have already. As if our life were filled to a certain point and the only thing that can put us over the edge is Christ.

FALSE.

The life of Christ is not about fullness in yourself. It is not about being made complete with the understanding that you are holding parts of the puzzle already.

It is about EMPTYING.

Does that make sense? I think that too often we are looking for transformation and change as if something that we have is worth holding on to and the God we are looking for is the rest of the formula. As if:

work + family + knowledge + "love" + money + X + Jesus = Full Life

Sorry, that's wrong. He is the only piece. There is nothing else. There is no other thing that holds a place in a relationship with Him. We want to be filled, but we want the filling without the emptying that MUST take place before it. We want the completion, but we cannot bear risk recognizing our reduction for its sake. The world around us, and many believers that I personally know, want to be filled. Yet they want to be filled with Jesus as an additive, as something that comes along and adds to "life," not REPLACES it. We want the life of transformation and freedom, but rarely see that death is the only way to live it, because then:

work + family + knowledge + "love" + money + X + Jesus - work - family - knowledge - "love" - money - X = Full Life

Jesus + X ≠ Full Life

Jesus + NOTHING = Full Life

If we continue to market/approach Christ as an additive to life, as something that comes and flavors everything else and does not OVERPOWER and REPLACE it all, we will continue to see frustration, hypocrisy, bondage, carnality, deception, false expectation, and confusion within the lives of those testifying to knowing Him. Death precedes life and reduction precedes fulfillment. It is the paradox of His Kingdom, He came that we may have life more abundantly, but that life is not one that comes in addition to what we have already, it is one that entirely replaces it and declares something so radically different that we wonder how we ever called how we used to be "living." We wonder how we could ever had believed we knew what love was without first knowing freedom. I did not know love until I knew freedom. We wonder how we could ever have declared to have joy without first having truth. I did not know joy until I found truth. Most of us have lived shadows of what is intended for us. Most of those around us live poor, sunless, smeared reflections of what Christ has died that they may have, mistaking abundance for an affectionate relationship, wealth, power, physical health. etc.

This frustrates me and though it's not something I'm entirely good at communicating yet, I hope to be soon. We cannot go on promising a life of full life without first laying a foundation for emptying and dying. There is no other way. We are to die to ourselves and take up the life of One who knows no other way than holiness and truth and love. The life of Jesus was one of constant emptying that He may show us the fullness of God. We too must be emptied if we are to be filled. We too are to die if we are to live.

I had the frustration that I speak of. I know the expectation of "Jesus and." It's taught without intention. It's promoted without understanding. But it's still wrong. There is no "Jesus and," there is only Jesus, who is freedom, love, joy, and true life.

X + Jesus ≠ Life

X + Jesus - X = LIFE
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Matthew 6
Romans 5-9
John 14-16
Colossians