Interest or Identification?

Today as my work day wound day I kept on look­ing at my watch. I wanted to leave by 5… but things kept on pop­ping up, which (gosh) delayed me to 5:15 (oh the horror!)

In the mid­dle of all this I started to feel that fran­tic feel­ing, you know, the kind that comes from self-entitlement. Self-entitlement has absolutely no place in the life of a Chris­t­ian! The life I live is not mine!

As this feel­ing arises I sit down, wait­ing for the com­puter to fin­ish backing-up… :: oh, I might as well stop being rushed and read Cham­bers while I wait::

Here’s what he has to say (which put the nail in the cof­fin on THAT feel­ing of entitlement):

“I have been cru­ci­fied with Christ.” Gala­tians 2:20

The imper­a­tive need spir­i­tu­ally is to sign the death war­rant of the dis­po­si­tion of sin, to turn all emo­tional impres­sions and intel­lec­tual beliefs into a moral ver­dict against the dis­po­si­tion of sin, viz., my claim to my right to myself. Paul says — “I have been cru­ci­fied with Christ”; he does not say — “I have deter­mined to imi­tate Jesus Christ,” or, “I will endeav­our to fol­low Him” — but — “I have been iden­ti­fied with Him in His death.” When I come to such a moral deci­sion and act upon it, then all that Christ wrought for me on the Cross is wrought in me. The free com­mit­tal of myself to God gives the Holy Spirit the chance to impart to me the holi­ness of Jesus Christ.

“… nev­er­the­less I live.…” The indi­vid­u­al­ity remains, but the main­spring, the rul­ing dis­po­si­tion, is rad­i­cally altered. The same human body remains, but the old satanic right to myself is destroyed.

“And the life which I now live in the flesh … ‚” not the life which I long to live and pray to live, but the life I now live in my mor­tal flesh, the life which men can see, “I live by the faith of the Son of God.” This faith is not Paul’s faith in Jesus Christ, but the faith that the Son of God has imparted to him — “the faith of the Son of God.” It is no longer faith in faith, but faith which has over­leapt all con­scious bounds, the iden­ti­cal faith of the Son of God.

Quite fit­ting for Good Fri­day Emily also pointed out that the Gyros Sand­wich that we ate today is also quite fitting.