Discipleship part 5
I want to end this Rant series where I started it, with John 13:35. I'm going to quote that Scripture in a second, but first I want to quote 2 Corinthians 11:3, "But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ." And I want to focus on that verse first because sometimes I think we make this "Christian life" to complicated. We take our insider words and terms and we kind of use them to feel superior to everybody else. We make things like holiness and discipleship into things that they really aren't. When Eve was beguiled, she believed the lie that says you have to do in order to be. She believed she wasn't good enough, and only through her own efforts (in that case, eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil) could she become good enough. But that's not the simplicity that is in Christ. In Christ there is no condemnation. In Christ there is no earning. There is only receiving (and releasing) the gift of God which is eternal life--which is knowing the Father and the One whom He sent; that relationship between Father and Son. We make it so hard to be a "good Christian," when really I don't think there's any such thing. You're either a believer or you're not. We seem to put a lot of faith in faith, when we're supposed to have faith in God. It's the Holy Spirit that is leading and guiding us into all truth. The Holy Spirit revealing the change that took place on the cross. The Holy Spirit showing us who we really are by showing us who Jesus really is in us and through us and as us. So rather than trying to be somebody we're not... we begin to understand that true discipleship is being a student of love. Learning how to love by learning how God loves us. Testing the height, and depth, and length, and breadth of God's love for us by loving each other. Which is exactly what John 13:35 says, "By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another." Love. One to another. It's that's simple. Love IS the simplicity that is Christ. And I've said this before, as simple as it is... it's endlessly vast. You can spend your whole abundant, eternal, everlasting, Resurrection Life exploring God's love and never come to the end of it. In fact, that's what we're here to do. That's our EPIC destiny. Our Eternal Purpose In Christ. We are here for no other reason than to be His disciples. To be loved and to love each other with that same love. That's what real life is all about. To live is to love and to love is to live. If you don't have love--or rather, if you don't KNOW that you have love--in your life... then you'll do whatever you can to try to get that. You'll spend all of your time looking for love in all the wrong places. But when you know (and believe) just how loved you are... then you can be a student of love. You can learn what it's all about because you're not trying to get it, but you're experiencing what you already have. And the best way to experience it is by sharing it. The best way to receive it is by releasing it. That's how we make disciples--by being disciples! It's that simple. Love one another as Jesus loves you.