I’ve written on this a lot, but I have a feeling there will be something new to emerge out of the piece, purely because what I speak of is an incarnational phenomenon — as we LIVE this concept of material defeat in our own lives, welcoming loss as the apostle Paul did, we find but a glimpse of the eternal life that is eternally on offer to anyone experiencing such loss.
An important caveat: I’m not talking about the loss of a human being. That loss is often different. Unless the loss of that person has given us additional purpose and power.
The losses I discuss here are the material losses we experience, whether we caused them or not. The idea is that if loss cannot crush our hope, nothing can. And realistically, we don’t possess anything in the pure sense in this life anyway. Like with Monopoly, all the pieces — the cards, the cash, the credit cards, the houses, the hotels — they all go back in the box at the end of the game. Add to this, we, our lives I mean, are blades of grass.
Paul’s boast wasn’t in anything this world values. His boast was in something the world can never impact. It was beyond “messengers of Satan,” and every temptation to pride and foolish self-sufficiency, to all manner of spiritual attack, knowing we wage war beyond physical realms.
Everything the world and our pride entices us with are all puffs of smoke.
The Christian life is the victorious life precisely because it isn’t.
Not the worldly kind of victory, that is. Worldly victory is self-defeating.
When we lay no claim on anything that can be taken from us, life is ALL upside. Suddenly from this position we’re owned by nothing and nobody and WE become an enticing proposition.
Think about possessing a spirituality that covets nothing, that lives for the simplest ideals, that endures hardship just the same as experiencing triumph — Rudyard Kipling was right in his poem, If. Triumph and disaster are both imposters.
Is this life an easy life to claim? Not for one moment would I ever say that, but what I can say is that’s the life that we’re invited by God into. It’s the Jesus life. It’s the way he lived. He could be bought with no price — he was sold out to God alone in a humility of praise and gratitude. HE is our ideal to follow.
Suffering anything is a blessing to the degree that we experience loss that opens the door to spiritual possessions available only as material possessions are foregone.
The Bible talks about suffering incessantly, yet it’s not a ‘popular gospel’ in our privileged age. We henceforth have foregone acquisition of the hidden spiritual blessings that could be ours if only we embraced life humbly, accepting loss as opportunity.
Imagine the audacity of Paul saying he “delighted in weaknesses,” speaking to a clueless church at Corinth who undermined him. The value of such theology was lost on the majority of them, just like the majority in our day are more interested in the trinkets of current affairs and issues to be lobbied for.
The Christian life is nothing when it’s operationalised in worldly ways, as if we can argue a sensible logos. What compels the world to sit up and pay attention is when they see the Incarnation working in and through us. That is, to live like Paul stated he did.
Our motive? “... for Christ’s sake” Paul delighted in weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, difficulties. That’s a challenge to each of us in 2022, isn’t it?
What is it that our lives are saying to us in living more of this truth? How much more joy is accessible to us when we demand nothing of our lives be changed right now? What premium for peace that can come no other way? A peace that always accepts everything as good. What about hope? In these environs, hope thrives, and despair is history.
This ‘gospel’ is superior to any other ‘gospel’ because it’s the true gospel of him who “made himself nothing.” It’s a gospel that’s a safe gospel wherever there is power, and just think of how prevalent power in the church is in this world and throughout history.
Power has corrupted the church because the church hasn’t lived its own gospel.
But the prize of faith is simple if only we can reject everything that presents itself as a counterfeit joy, peace, and hope.
We must come down to the power of the gospel to transform our OWN lives or we simply carry a false gospel into the world. Too many winsome speakers swoon people with words and hype and glitz but none of it is transferrable for anything other than a feeling that promises much yet delivers little.
The beauty of the real and true gospel is embodied in the disciple, living incarnationally, which is Christ through them, who can live as Paul lived, “content in any and every situation.” That’s a state of living that is not cajoled with or by power, a state of life that demands nothing, a personhood that is threatened by nobody, and no threat to anyone.
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