Today’s entry in MUFHH is right at what I have been working on or moving toward these past ten months. I get this entry, and I really like the way he put it. The basic idea here is repentance. Unlike much of the teaching in church today, repentance isn’t something I do, but a choice I make. Repentance doesn’t mean that I start or stop doing something; that unit of measure is used by others to evaluate my repentance. Repentance means I change my mind to agree with my Master about my sin.
One of the keys often missed here is that sin is not always what I do. Sometimes it is simply a disposition. I can do the good things for the wrong reason, and be sinning without anyone knowing, sometimes without me knowing. The unit of measure for sin is my obedience to my Master, not the moral sensitivities of my fellow believers or human beings. I have struggled with people pleasing for so long, I really find it difficult to change my unit of measure. When I care more about what others think than I do about what my Master directs me to do, I’m in real danger.
In such a mindset, how can I not keep sinning? And the stress level of that mindset is terrible. The saying goes that I can please some of the people all of the time, all the people some of the time, but I can’t please all the people all the time. Trying that is stressful. I reduce the stress by trying to limit the population I try to please, but if their happiness depends on me, again, I’m in real trouble. I don’t have that sort of power to make it work.
The way Chambers describes sanctification as realizing my need for His sanctification (process of being made holy), the Spirit of my Master acts to impart His heredity of holiness to me. I fulfill the moral imperatives of my Master only when I own my need for His help, accept the work of His cross to pay my debt, and submit to the work of His Spirit in my own. Then those impossible moral imperatives (like in Matthew 5) become second nature; His nature in me.
The work on my part in my salvation is submission, first and last. I confess Him to be my Master on the frontend, and I live in submission to Him throughout the rest. Somewhere in the eternity I have, sanctification becomes complete and I see Him face-to-face. But right now, in this tiny scrap of time I have on this space rock I’m glued to, I’m still submitting imperfectly, living imperfectly, and struggling to focus on my Master more perfectly.
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