Inexpressible

Everything in me wants to sit down at my computer tonight and account for my tempestuous emotions over the past few days. Exhaustion and distress have always been, for me, the contractions that give birth to self-expression. So, why the reluctance now? Labor pains signify…labor. Shouldn’t I be crying and thrashing and pushing out the words that produce new life?

Ahh…but my life is no longer found in those words. This heart has changed so much in the past year. I can finally say that I count even the “gift” of writing and the self-knowledge that this gift brings—I can count it as loss in comparison to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ. And if this weren’t shocking enough, I’ve discovered a new reticence to talk about my heart in terms of its is unless I can also assert its oughts. This is more than just the shift from descriptive to prescriptive; this is a shift from reflective to redemptive.

The tension was almost unbearable today. Within a few hours of being offered a public forum in which to write redemptively about one of my sin struggles, I was pressed hard into the clutches of that exacting master again. I sink into my chair tonight feeling utterly defeated, and I will go to bed with a heavy heart unless I can lay my burden at the cross. So, what do I know to be true? What comfort can I take; what can I give?

Just from Colossians, where I happen to be tonight, I can testify that “He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (1:13-14). My sins—even those willful ones tonight—are forgiven! Or, later in the same chapter, that I will be presented holy, blameless, and above reproach before the Lord if I do not shift from the hope of the Gospel(1:22?). This tells me that not only am I declared righteous but I am also being made righteous. I have been redeemed and am being sanctified. And, hearing this, I find courage to put away these “earthly things”—the ways in which I once walked (but now stray).

I have hope, today, that I can put them away in victory. Death, where is your sting? Sin, where is your power? Defeated. All defeated! The writer in me must cling to the fullness of the word 'inexpressible' and cry aloud, “Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift!”

Paschal Pleasures

Once the passions of my flesh held me captive. According to my desires, I presented my members to sin--unaware that all the things I loved were killing me. I boasted that I was free from the clutches of righteousness, unaware that I was obedient unto death (that is, to sin). My only freedom was the freedom to die.

So sin, seizing an opportunity through the law, produced in me all kinds of evil. Impurity bred impurity; lawlessness bred lawlessness. I was willfully blind to the downward spiral in my upward ambition. I believed each lie from the mouths of my idols--man, self, pleasure. And I set up systems by which to buffet my body into obedience. I carried around in my flesh the penalty of my sin--the mark of death--and each sip of pleasure was tainted with the bitterness of death. Would I, could I, must I drink this cup?

Like creation itself, I was subjected to futility in order that I might be freed from bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.But while I was still weak, at the right time, Christ died for ungodly me--drinking the cup of God's wrath that was placed before me. And if while I was an enemy I was reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that I am reconciled, shall I be saved by his life! I was buried therefore with him by baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, I too might walk in newness of life. Now I consider myself dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. My old body of sin has been brought to nothing that I might not be a slave to sin but a slave to righteousness leading to sanctification. I am released from the law, having died to that which held me captive so that I might serve not under the old written code but in the new life of the spirit.