No fair? Mango-Pops!

When you claim something of value that someone believes belongs to them and is only theirs to give, namely forgiveness of an offense against them, the receipt in your pocket justifies your ownership of the fully paid for possession! The Word in your heart of His victory over death and His reign in heaven is the receipt proving our ownership of every good thing we hope in Him for our eternal supply of in the fullness of Him. As for anyone who does not respect the authority of your Heavenly receipt of Faith in the Risen Christ, they overestimate their righteousness and position themselves as judge of truth and sin as if they themselves were not only blameless by the law but elevated by it to the level of executor and judge. That person has no case against you! Mis-Trial indeed.

Taking the Father's Side [a reflection on C.S. Lewis]

Here I'm discussing the "Jacob Syndrome" cured by God in His revealing of "Israel" as his new name. The man's natural identity had been defiled by the self-appointed condemnation attached to his act of deceiving his brother Esau to gain his name's first-born blessing rather than acknowledging God's appointment of him as the rightful heir over his brother, he was distracted by the plots and devices sanctioned by his mother's flesh which he employed in order to seize for himself the blessing promised him by God. Much like Sarah and Hagar before, Jacob's mother Rachel mixed the raw iron of sheer unadulterated will to cause God's promise to come to pass with the soft clay of her son's hear, leading him to consider himself the initiator of the blessing pronounced him. It having been given him by God was veiled by the sin-consciousness of his personal contributions, but we know no one has anything unless God gives it! To remedy this confusion, God gives Jacob a new identity in Israel, a blessed name from the Highest source made his own independent of his own doing, but given to him freely BY God. A name given man by God Himself is eternally secured by the surety of His own will (though Jacob was allowed to engage God as if he'd grappled the blessing away from God as from a foe, that it was God Himself He'd have to subdue in order to be considered as rightfully blessed by his own, it would only be by God's own willing submission to the man Jacob that Jacob would ever hope to subdue God). Just as Christ would ultimately relinquish his will to our own, submitting His life to us though no man take His life, becoming as a Son to a Father in submitting to the will of the Father's whose will we ourselves are, He submitted Himself to us. This grappling of a reluctant God for the promised blessing of a new name is exactly what defines Israel's pursuit of blessings, and until an as of yet recent moment, my own as well. That He'd call a man defined by that pursuit by the name Israel is right, but that He now calls Israel and all mankind by the name "Christ" is righteous! No longer do generations of Jacob's have to wander in Laban's wildernesses, seeking to by their own demonstrated set-apartedness from that which they'd come to associate as sin, but now we've been given the freedom of a brand new name and blessedness sustained not by our own effort or willpower engagements but by the word of God. The blessing on Jacob had been affirmed from God as being dependent only on His own will and His promise to a past generation in dynamic fashion by the unveiling of "Jacob's Ladder" from Heaven, but past experience in the flesh ignited the veil of sin consciousness from which a tolerance of suffering on behalf of good was put into effect. Jesus is the only one who rightly suffered on behalf of God, but none who fall short of goodness could ever suffer their way to goodness as goodness is not a reward for suffering or our own labor but is a gift of grace. The tolerance we have for suffering for being righteous is to the degree of the tolerance we have for a thought of a God in Jesus who'd rather have us suffer for our own good than suffer on our behalf for our good. Such a father could never be the God and Father of the Lord Jesus who freely gave His own most precious possession to redeem every member of humanity as equally precious in His sight. The stately status of "sanctified" and "holy" set apart from that which is common or lowly was given to EACH of us by God's humbling of Himself in His Son as our Servant. In a world full of people who by religious law, pomp, and circumstance either seek to qualify themselves for or disqualify themselves from the promised blessing of our new name in Christ Jesus, we're set apart as a dynamic generation with One Father, established securely on a promise sustained above and beyond any edit. That C.S. Lewis thought he would be extra set apart from his dad and extra consistent with the stand he took against his neglect of him by devoting himself to do the opposite, he now tolerated someone whose will was equally opposite his own as his own was from his father but unlike his father, he submitted to the will of that one for the whole of her life, 32 years total of servitude... blissful, ignorant servitude he thought needful in order to separate his name from the name of his earth father. Enjoy the reflections on C.S. Lewis' life and also the greater reflection in our own circumstance of a God who already promised and gave us everything we've worked for and given up on acquiring for ourselves. It's all already ours in the gift of His new name, our name filled to the brim with the eternal weight of His endorsement... His glory. Our names now revealed in His and His name revealed as ours!

Acknowledge Him

It's not in doing as He does, but in being as He is that a man is proven righteous in God's sight. That we are as He is isn't for us to labor toward but is by the discovery of having been gifted with life as a result of His labor for us. When recognizing humanity was birthed anew when Jesus rose from the dead, we discover that we are now as He is in His sight! Man isn't proven righteous not by subjecting him to a law of works, but by examining the law of faith. Just as what God believes about man is the only measure of man's righteousness, our having the correct image of God in our hearts is the only measure of ours! Humanity is a being reflecting God and as the image of God, that we know Him is our food on a spiritual level. What our experience of righteousness is all about is know that we see Him as He is! His faith in Jesus proves humanity justified as His image and likeness bearers regardless of their condition in life, His being a God that calls things that appear as they are not as though they were, our rough places are compatible with His ability to make things silky smooth. Jesus is God confirming Himself as pleasing to us on our behalf, sparing us the deliberation and inviting us to a faith sustained by His own knowledge of Himself and not our own.

Included in the Beloved

The Light of the transfiguration was the unveiled Glory of God's opinion of Jesus, no longer veiled by Moses (or the prophets) as God distinguishes His Son above all. He's above every house-rule and has no need to look forward to anything because what He already has fully satisfies every expectation in His gaze. He is pleased with the end-result and always sees the end from the very beginning, disallowing any interruption to His restful pleasure.