MrsDrPoe: "To Live is Christ"

Good morning to you all, and welcome to Theology Thursday on the blog!  As I do every week, I invite you to open your Bibles with me as we look at portion of God's word.

During this month's elections, I heard someone say, "I hate when people let religion get in the way of politics!"  I found this statement to be particularly ironic since this person would identify herself as a Christian.  This got me to thinking about how we often try to compartmentalize our lives, dividing our focus much like this pie graph:

We spend, say, 33.3% of our time at work or school, 22.2% of our time sleeping, 22.2% of our time with family, 11.1% of our time doing chores or running errands, and 11.1% serving God.  While this seems like a nice, neat way to organize our lives, we are missing the point of being a Christian.

In Philippians 1:21, Paul says, "For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain."  He goes on to explain his statement in the following verses: "But if I live on in the flesh, this will mean fruit from my labor; yet what I shall choose I cannot tell.  For I am hard-pressed between the two, having a desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better.  Nevertheless to remain in the flesh is more needful for you."  Thus, through death, Paul would "gain" by being able to be with Christ, and continuing in this life is "Christ" as he would spend his time teaching others about Him and continuing to pattern his actions as after the Lord's.

As we "imitate [Paul] as [he] also imitates Christ," (1 Cor 11:1), we too must strive to make living Christ in our lives.  Our focus pie chart should look more like this:

Not that our service to God has been removed, but that it's like a third dimension, permeating every aspect of our lives.  That means that when we're at work/school our actions reflect our Lord- we help others, we don't gossip, we don't lie or cheat, etc.  When we're with our family, running errands, or doing chores, we again make choices that would be pleasing to God- curbing our anger at 'stupid drivers,' examining the media we listen to/watch/read, etc.  Of course, in order to implement this lifestyle, we must know what is pleasing to Him- knowledge that we gain through intensive Bible study and fervent prayer, attempting to conform our will to His.

"To live is Christ," and we should strive to point to Him in every action we take and decision we make- even political ones.

MrsDrPoe: Putting Jesus in a Box

For this Theology Thursday, I invite you to open your Bibles, where we will be looking at several instances where individuals attempt to put Christ in a box.

Wait...what? A box? Like these??


Well not a literal box, my friend! Based on knowledge of what these individuals saw/heard Christ could do, each of them has some (limited) conception of His power. For instance, if we look in Mark 2:1-11 and 5:21-24, 35-43 we see two examples of individuals (a paralytic and his friends and a synagogue ruler, Jairus) who have the faith to know that Jesus has the power to heal both the paralytic and the dying daughter of Jairus. Subconsciously, however, these individuals are limiting the power of Christ (ie putting Him in a box) in that they believe that the sick person must be acknowledged by Christ and presented to Him.

If we compare these two events with the one discussed in Luke 7:1-10, we see that the individual in this story (a Roman Centurion who was friendly to the Jews) also has the faith that Christ is the only one who can heal his servant. This centurion places Christ in a bigger box, believing that Jesus can, acknowledging the sick servant, simply speak healing words from far away.

We can see an individual extend the box size again in Mark 5:25-34, when a woman who has had a flow of blood for 12 years believes that she can simply touch the hem of Jesus' garment (without His acknowledgement) and be made well. It could be argued that the box extended past a physical realm in the gospels when individuals bring their loved ones before Christ to have demons removed from them.

What is interesting to me is that, even though Jesus tells the paralytic (Mark 2:5) that his sins are forgiven him, no one comes up to Him after that and asks for that forgiveness. All of these "boxes" in the gospels are way too small.

So the question that we must ask ourselves is - do we put Jesus in a box? Do we "limit" His power to an amount that matches our understanding of what makes sense to us? Christ is the Word and the Word is God (John 1:1-5). He was there in the beginning when all things were created. He is all that is, was, and will ever be. His power and nature are incomprehensible. God essentially defines Himself in Exodus 34:6-7:

Jehovah, Jehovah God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and
abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands,
forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing
the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and
the children's children to the third and fourth generation.

The nature of God is so hard for us to wrap our heads around, but trying to box Him in any other (necessarily smaller) nature gives us a false sense of our God and is, thus, an incorrect response to the power of Christ, which is so much greater than we will ever understand.