God is the owner of the whole human. Soul, body, and spirit are God’s. God gave God’s only begotten Son for the body as well as the soul, and our entire life belongs to God, to be consecrated to God’s service, that through the exercise of every faculty God has given, we may glorify God[1].
In English, the above quote simply means “we belong to God and our entire life belongs to God.” While that might be oversimplifying the statement above, the truth is we were created in the image of God. God took the time to create human beings, to breath into the body, to form it from the ground. God counseled with others before he made humanity and afterwards they all thought it was very good. God’s decision to create us, gives God some ownership in who we are and what it is we are to do.
Now if you are anything like me, you have already shut yourself off because you don’t believe in being owned or controlled. Please do not mistake the words as authoritative in the sense of strict and unbending. We do belong to God in the sense that all creation is God’s. God created the world, therefore it is God’s and God is allowed to do with it as God wishes. Just like you belong to your parents because you are their child, we are the children of God. However, we have the freedom to make our own decisions and live how we wish. Within that freedom is the hope that each of us will choose to use our gifts, our bodies, and our lives to the service of God.
The service of God is a limiting phrase because one automatically thinks they have to be involved in some type of ministry or work in a church. The truth is you don’t. You don’t have to work in a church, surrender to the ministry, or be a missionary. Using our bodies for God’s service in the simplest way is putting God’s will before yours. Using your life to do God’s service is using it in a way that is good. When we use our lives to change a corrupt system, feed the poor, clothe the naked, open our homes to strangers, we are using our bodies to God’s service. We allow God to move through us.
Part of doing God’s service requires an imagination; it requires us to be creative. Being creative, my friend Milton once said, means giving life. Whatever it is we do with our lives, we are meant to be creative in a way that gives life to others. A few years back I was (and somewhat am today) on a journey to discover what it meant to be Christlike. I asked a pastor once that question and I told him to answer me honestly and he did. He said, “To be Christlike means choosing every single morning to live as Christ did. Each morning when you wake up and allow Jesus to come down from the cross and out of the tomb, and allow him to live out through you. That is what it means to be Christlike. You take yourself out and put Jesus in.”
I didn’t really get it. I understood parts of it but there was a cryptic message that didn’t make sense to me. How in a selfish world am I supposed to be unselfish? That was my question. The searches to answer that question lead me to another question that has become my daily question. A question that I have failed to fully answer time and again, but I still try.
In Mark 8:27-30 Jesus and his disciples are at a place called Caesarea Philippi and Jesus begins to ask them a question. The question isn’t a tough one or a loaded question; it was simply a question of wonder. Jesus asks, “Who do people say I am” and they answered, “Some say John the Baptist, Elijah, or a prophet.” But Jesus turned the question to them, “Who do you say I am?”
That is the question that we are to ask every day. When we ask that question and seek to answer it as Peter did, “You are the Messiah” our daily lives, vocations, jobs, hobbies, lifestyle, words, language, actions, and deeds will reflect that answer.
That question is a question we all have to answer for ourselves. It is a question that must seek into our lives and each day we attempt to live our answer out. Being created in the image of God has given an imagination, a will to be creative, a way to bring life, and if we seek to find God in the question, “Who do you say I am?” we just might be using our bodies for Christ’s service.
“Who do you say I am” is an important question because Jesus reflects perfectly who we think God is. Jesus is the depiction of God that God’s creation has wanted to see. When we wonder who God is and what God looks like Jesus is the image we turn to. But if we answer that question with the statement, “You are the Messiah”, then we too can become an image that depicts the character of God; and after all, isn’t that what living/using our bodies for God’s service all about?
[1] Inspired Healthy Living
No comments:
Post a Comment