Walking with the Lord (badly)

I've been contemplating Genesis, and thinking about the patriarchs' lives. It seems like everyone in Genesis has some serious moral flaws, but Scripture speaks highly of them. And I realize this isn't new: many, many people have commented on it.

But as I've been mulling this over, a thought occurred to me: perhaps we can take from Genesis that walking with the Lord, badly, is still walking with the Lord.

One of my daughters said a few years ago, "Faith without works is dead (James 2:17), but it's still faith."

Or as brother SAP said, "Faith without works is dead (James 2:17). We are justified by faith without works (Romans 4:5). Therefore, dead faith justifies." He said it, not me!

So I'll join in with, "Walking with the Lord badly is still walking with the Lord." 

Now, I know that I'll be accused of saying that it's OK to sin. Nope, it's not OK to sin, and that's not what I'm saying.

There's an old saying that "anything worth doing is worth doing well."  

There's another old saying that "anything worth doing is worth doing badly." 

The first means, don't give half effort and half attention to your work. The second means, don't wait until you're an expert to do something. It's better to work hard and do a less-than-perfect job than it is to not try at all.

Well, I think Genesis gives me license to say something similar about walking with the Lord: without making any excuses for sin, let's not wait until we're spiritual giants to walk with the Lord. Let's do it now – with all our failures and shortcomings and blindnesses and faults – because walking with the Lord is better than anything else we could be doing, even if we do it badly.

Christ as a means to an end

I spent the last week or two of January with COVID-19. It was pretty rough, and the road back to normal has been longer than I anticipated. All told, I spent about ten days with a fever, and another week after that with absolutely no stamina. I told someone this morning that I went out to split some firewood, and when I came in thoroughly exhausted, I realized I had been gone something like 15 minutes. So my plans have been entirely disrupted. At the same time, I don't want to complain too much: I know several people who had a much worse time with it than I had.

So as a tentative step back into writing this blog, I want to share some simple thoughts on Christ as a means to an end. I was listening to a talk on Colossians 1:24ff this morning – a very good talk, by the way – and as I sat listening, I was struck by the thought that a great deal of what was said can be summed up, "Don't think of Christ as how we get to blessings, but learn to see Him as the blessing itself." Now, that isn't a great summary of the book of Colossians, but it is one of the major themes in that Epistle.

We might be able to think of several times where the Lord spoke of Himself as a means to an end. John 6:48–51 comes to mind. In that passage, it sounds like the blessing offered is eternal life, and the Lord has come to give us that life. But as we read on further in that book, we come across the remarkable statement, "And this is the eternal life, that they should know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent" (John 17:3). So yes, it's true that the Lord presents Himself as the only way to get eternal life; but it's just as true that as we go on, we come to see that eternal life is really knowing Him. And if we go on to read 1 John, we find that He is eternal life, He is the eternal life that was with the Father and was manifested to us (1 John 1:1–3).

So it's true that the Lord is a means to an end: He is how we get the blessings God has for us. But it's just as true that as we come to see God's mind in blessing us, we realize He doesn't offer us some of this blessing and some of that blessing. No, He offers us His own Son, and all our blessings are in Him (1 Corinthians 1:30–31). There really isn't anything God has for us that isn't in Christ Himself.

It seems to me that it's a sign of spiritual maturity when we learn that Christ is not only the Blesser, but also the Blessing.