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About Jesus - Steve (Stephen) Sweetman Embodied
Belief As I've often said, the
one thing I appreciate most about my Methodist roots is the emphasis on
being born again of the Holy Spirit, resulting in a newly birthed person.
Methodists also taught me that the Christian life was far more than
just another religion. It was
a relationship with God, making it stand alone among religions in that it
is more than a system of ritualistic beliefs.
It's being what you believe. It's
"embodied belief." I'm not excited with
associating Christianity with the word religion, but I get why people do.
Today's concept of religion is a compilation of certain belief
systems that encompass varying world views, moral issues, ritualized
practices, and more. My
Christian life is far more than that.
It's especially more than a mere mental belief system.
Our English word
"religion" appears a few times in our New Testament, depending
on the version you read. It's
translated from a couple of Greek words with slightly different meanings.
We read it in James 1:27. "Religion that God
our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans
and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by
the world." James gave an example of
what he called true religion. It
was caring for the needy. Beyond
that it keeps one from being polluted by the surrounding culture, which is
sadly lacking in many now claiming to be Christians.
Their Christian claim is hypocritical because there is no
distinction between them and those in the world.
I am referring to their behavioural patterns, like selfish
aggressiveness, arrogance, nastiness, militant speech, divisiveness, and
appealing to humanistic solutions alone to solve spiritual problems.
They exhibit a false narrative to the Christian life, to the degree
that the word "Christian" is associated with a political movement instead of
the Jesus movement it is meant to be.
You may say, "we're
all human. We're not perfect.
Your assessment borders on being judgemental."
I reply by saying that Jesus told us to make righteous judgments
(John 7:24). More importantly,
we cannot lower our behavioural standards by reducing them to "we're
only human." The bar must
be higher than that. In fact,
Jesus Himself is our standard. Yes,
perfection comes in the next age, but Jesus is still the standard.
Yes, God's grace is available in our imperfect state.
That being so, His grace includes His divine ability given to us to
accomplish His will. With that
ability, step by step we walk with Him toward holiness and a sanctified
life, other terms from my Methodist roots.
Our walk towards holy
sanctification begins when we are born again, when God's Spirit enters our
very being. His Spirit joins
our spirit and we become one with Him (1 Corinthians 6:17).
The Christian life is more than a ritualized belief system.
It's more than a convenient conversion to promote a personal or
political cause. It's becoming
what you believe because the One in whom you believe, via His Spirit,
lives within you. I call it
"embodied belief."
Scripture
References John 7:24 "Stop
judging by mere appearances, but instead judge correctly." 1 Corinthians 6:17 "But the person who
is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him."
Postscript
To learn about my view
of judging, you can read my book entitled "Clarifying Biblical
Judging" found on all Amazon sites.
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