“I have met the enemy and he is me” – Pogo the Possum (personalized but not edited!). This bit of insight from
the famous cartoon character of the 1970’s expresses beautifully what we have been discussing the past few weeks—living by the grace of God.
It is important that Pogo’s wisdom is absorbed by us with ginosko (experiential) knowledge, rather than just eido (intellectual, arms-length) knowledge. This is because we all remain experientially susceptible to our former diet, the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, as we continue to live in a fallen world in unredeemed bodies.
For example, I can see that I am still vulnerable to falling into living by the “ought to’s, need to’s and should’s” of God’s law, even though I know better, intellectually. Because I live in a sinful body, in my mind I am addicted to constantly thinking of ways I can perform “to extend the Kingdom” by what I do, rather than just trusting God and His love to do that, naturally, spontaneously and unconsciously (NSU), in the very midst of my sin!
It is so easy for me to forget that God’s agape love does not SEEK its object but CREATES its object! In other words, God does NOT seek someone to love and use who meets His qualifications, but creates those qualifications in the one He already loves and is using! I do not please Him because I obey Him, but I obey Him, NSU, because I know that He is already pleased with me! Obedience to God is always ONLY a result. Anything other than this is not the Gospel of the Grace of God!
But, even in those times of unbelief when I feast on the wrong fruit, I know that I received, at the cross, what Adam and Eve never had. They communicated with God externally (audibly) only; He did not live within them to communicate internally.
However, the very life of God DOES LIVE WITHIN ME—to change me, to motivate me, to empower me. That life is activated by my repentance from my addiction to eating again of the fruit that God forbade, and then returning again to faith, simple trust in God and WHAT HE TELLS ME IN MY HEART alone. You were right, Pogo! Now, if I can just remember what you said!,
Adam and Eve never ate of the fruit of the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden. They were innocent, until at that other tree, they rejected God’s love and care. They were never righteous or virtuous, because the powerful, sanctifying life of God was never resident within them.
But, at the cross, we partake of the fruit of the Tree of Life, which is Jesus Christ Himself. As we saw last week in the beautiful hymn by Don Moen, written in the 1990’s, “The Mighty Cross has become a Tree of Life to Me.” At the cross, the actual life of God has been made available to us! Our old man, who loved to strive to be like God by obedience to the law, as found in both the Old and New Testaments, is now dead, and we have been raised to a new life of faith. We have been made “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). It is true. Believe it!!
When God captures our hearts, we begin a journey that involves learning to welcome and embrace our “Tree of Life,” the cross. What does it mean to “embrace the cross;” to “take up your cross” and follow Jesus (Matthew 16:24); to be “conformed to His death” (Philippians 3:10)?
Dying on the cross, experientially with Jesus, means learning to ruthlessly recognize, own, embrace, and then openly (in “the light” – 1 John 1:7, 9) repent of all the self-aggrandizing, self-promoting death-struggles our flesh continues to make, as it desperately seeks to avoid death.
The list of those death-struggles to circumvent that ugly old cross is endless: blaming others for relational difficulties (“It is my wife’s fault”), avoiding personal responsibility for sin and failure, looking at the sins of others rather than our own, protecting our reputations as “good Christians” by not being honest about our besetting sins, refusing to learn from others, seeking to impress others with our biblical knowledge or our holiness, and on and on.
However, God always has favor on us! Thus, He will open our ginosko eyes to make us increasingly aware of this pervasive, ever-present sin in our hearts. We will say to Pogo, “You are right on, and that’s why God sent us His Son to die for us!” We will embrace the cross by eagerly and openly owning ALL that sin and repenting!
We will know and believe that our death, resurrection and ascension in Christ are not just theological claptrap, but reality! As we do these things, NSU (and we will!), we will become an aroma—of life to all who are being saved, and of death to those who are perishing (2 Corinthians 2:15, 16). We will have been captured by the scandalous gospel of the grace of God!
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