Someday Or Now?

“Someday” or “Now”?

“I am the light of the world, He who follows me will not walk in the darkness but will have the light of life.”

The Gospel can be summed up in four words: darkness, light, death, and life. The message Jesus spoke was clear—He was and is the Light and those who know Him can and will walk in His light. He was and is the Life and those who know Him can and will walk in His life. God is Light. God is Life. We were made to be one with God. Christ made a way for us to experience that unity.

Of course, when our own experiences don’t line up with this miraculous message we can easily find doctrines and teachings that explain why. But what Jesus spoke must be true whether we have experienced it in its fullness or not.

Perhaps the question we all wrestle with is WHEN this “oneness” takes place. Is it instant? If so, why don’t we all immediately begin operating according to the Spirit, living our lives as closely connected to our Father as did Christ? Can we only know true communion and oneness after we pass out of this life into the next? Were Christ’s statements only about the future? If so, what was the point of His resurrection and His teachings? Why did He command us to walk in love? Why did He tell us to “be perfect” if that perfection was impossible?

Paul declares godliness a “mystery”—and He is right! “We ARE changed”; yet we “SHALL BE changed.” We are called to “lay aside the old man” now—yet not until “someday” will “this mortal put on immortality.” We experience Him at work in us now, “renewing” our minds, and are amazed at how quickly He begins to “transform” us—yet we still only know “in part.” We are still waiting to see Him face to face. We still don’t completely understand the “power of God for Salvation.”

Maybe the answer to the question is that it’s both.

Our relationship with God is based on a covenant between God and His Son. As with any covenant (agreement), there are terms. As we are unable to keep the terms of the covenant in our own strength, Christ does it for us.

Salvation is instant—when Christ died FOR us (Romans 5) and AS us (Romans 6), we were forgiven and raised to new life. This is an instant reality.

Salvation is a process—we still dwell in mortal bodies (Romans 7) and wrestle with the lusts of our flesh—we have not yet been “saved” from that body, but we have been delivered from the power of sin and death that once ruled it. Christ enables us to overcome in the battle with our flesh by filling us with the Spirit of God (Romans 8) to “help us in our weakness.”

Salvation is instant because of what Christ has done for us—and it is a process because He is still working His salvation in us. Call it what you wish, “salvation” “sanctification,” etc. It is what it is: Christ delivered us once and for all; Christ will continue to deliver us.

The only thing we must do is “abide” in Him—something Jesus constantly admonished us to do. “Apart from me you can do nothing” (Jo 15:5). “God is at work” in us, “to will and act according to His good pleasure.” (Phil 2:13) His Spirit in us teaches us “to deny ungodliness and to live holy lives” (Titus 2:11-14), and enables us to serve Him “without fear, in holiness and righteousness all of our days” (Luke 1:74-75).

Our own flesh, the enemy of our souls, and the world all constantly tempt us to abandon the power of God found in the “new man” (Christ) and subject ourselves, once again, to the “old man” (Adam). Someday, the war will be over and we will finally know the fullness of His love and power toward us who believe. Until that day, we cling to the promises Christ Himself made to us: light, life, rest, peace, comfort, and power.

All of these promises are true. God is able to make “all grace abound to us.” We have been granted “everything we need for life and godliness” through Jesus Christ. To believe otherwise is to deny the power of God to create something out of nothing, to raise the dead, etc. To deny the battle would be naïve. Even Christ was tempted by his flesh, the devil, and the world! (Mt 4, Heb 4:15).

“Eternal life” is to know Him—eternal life begins today. But only when our mortal bodies are literally exchanged for the immortal will we know the fullness of this reality.

So, let us press on. Let us not give up in our battle against darkness and death or settle for anything less than Perfection—which only means to be “made complete”—in other words, let us press on to experience what it means to be one with God. Not in our own strength, but in His.

As Paul said, “Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may clay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus.”

“Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 3:12

May this be our attitude as well.

“ . . . that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. . . . Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let us therefore, as many as are perfect, have this attitude; and if in anything you have a different attitude, God will reveal that also to you; however, let us keep living by that same standard to which we have attained. . . . (8-16)

For our 1citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ; who will transform 1the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself. (20-21)

His,

Stephanie

“Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him.” Genesis 5:24

Stephanie Staples
www.stephaniestaples.com
www.stephologie.com
[email protected]