Your Most Valuable Asset
12/6/08 Insights from Study Since creation God has dealt with the world in various ways – sometimes sternly with the “tough love” of the Old Testament, sometimes with great hope and sympathetic direction, as when He came to us through Jesus, and sometimes with the great loving mercy we often feel today as we more and more realize our dependence on Him.
He doesn’t leave us or turn His back on us. No matter how He chooses to deal with us, we are aware that He is present and working in our lives. We love Him in response to His love for us. And our love in turn brings us closer to Him, repeating the cycle of give and take until perfection is reached.
In Christianity we believe we inherit this right through the sacrifice of Jesus, and when Jesus had to leave us He sent the Holy Spirit to guide us to perfection. We don’t expect any other manifestation of God in our lives – to use the Holy Spirit to our full potential is only logical and gratifying.
Christian Mysticism is all about welcoming, recognizing, receiving, and accepting the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. This work is a gift from God, but what’s really important to remember is that the ability of humanity to deserve the Holy Spirit is a gift from God too. It’s the direct result of Jesus having taken on the sinfulness of humanity, dulling it with His own humility and obedience, vaporizing it with His death, and showing us by His resurrection what, as a result, is now possible for us. So if you distance yourself from God because you don’t feel you deserve His love, you are not being virtuous – you are being ungrateful.
The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus shows us how much God love us, and makes possible our entry into eternal life with Him.
Now, the full mechanism by which God reconciles His perfect justice with His unfailing mercy is not shared fully with us. Since it’s not shared fully with us, it’s one of those things we do not need to know or pursue. Remember, for each glimpse of the mind of God we are able to assimilate for our use, there is an awesome balance of infinite mightiness that’s none of our business. I tend to think that most of what is the Creator’s mind-force will never be known to us even in the afterlife, because in eternity with God the need to know and the satisfaction of learning will not follow us there. When you have perfect joy you don’t seek more – one can’t accumulate more than all.
Having been gifted with the presence of God, we realize more clearly that He is a personal God; a loving God. The wrath of God displayed in the Old Testament is no longer necessary after the passion of the Christ. The Old Testament sacrifices are no longer necessary because Jesus was the scapegoat for all our sins. The Old Testament law made way for the new covenant. No longer are sins of the father visited upon the son, or the sins of a nation the downfall of the individual. This is an expansion of the law – now, because God’s mercy benefits the individual, it’s the individual who must desire virtue and act consistently with it.
To impart this virtue on us, God again manifests Himself to us just as Jesus promised He would. For Christians, the Holy Spirit is God’s spirit working with our own spirits. It’s a shame to gloss over this phrase just because as theology it appears to sound like it’s beyond our understanding. We should roll these words around in our minds every day – in them is said all of what’s really necessary to realize about our relationship with God, whether we welcome that relationship or are running away from it.
The most precious thing you own, your spirit, is being visited with loving care at every moment by the almighty Creator of the universe. If that doesn’t appear at the top of your list of most valuable assets, I feel so sorry for you. You are not experiencing the joy that God wants for you; the peace which is achieved merely by the asking.
