Nielsen’s Nook

Vibrant Sanctified Life

God in his mercies gave us in Christ Jesus a new mind a new set of desires that are beyond what we could imagine before. Paul is urging us on here to that greater immeasurable Christian imagination. Now why do I put it like that?

Lewis put it something like this:

Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.[1]

We are far too easily pleased, indeed. We come to worship Christ, the River of Life, on Sundays content to drink of him with eyedroppers and shot glasses, when he bids us to drink of his inexhaustible grace. We come expecting to hear a good sermon that tickles our ears and maybe makes us laugh when Christ is here presenting himself to us boundlessly, strengthening those of us who confess our weakness and sin. We pray that God would make our lives more convenient when He has bound himself to us for the purpose of walking with us through valleys of thick darkness to lift us beyond the mountain tops of our own imaginations.

¹See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. ²Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. ³And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure. (1 Jn 3:1-3 NRSV)

You see, Jesus would give us himself, endlessly, and we settle for a diluted version because we don’t, won’t or can’t imagine the full throttled love that God demonstrates for us as he grows us up. The joy of renewing our minds and offering our bodies according to the holy, pleasing and telic purpose of God for us is that we have fellowship with him now as he grows us up in our faith that could not be imagined apart from Jesus Christ.

But what could it be like for us? Would you imagine for a moment what life might be like with a participation in Christ Jesus deeper still? What would it be like in your life, in the life of your church to have a greater purity of fellowship with Jesus as you would participate with him in the purification of your bodies and minds? Not only would there be transformation in this present time - now - but we would participate in the very telic purpose of God for us as human beings.

[1] Lewis, Clive Staples. The Weight of Glory. (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 26.