This is an important topic. It brings us to a related and central issue: the role of the believer's cross, the believer's or disciple's death. More and more folks are (rightly) trying to bring discipleship and transformation back to the center of the Church's mission. Jesus implied that there are many things we do regularly--prayer, service, etc. But I can only recall one thing he explicitly said would need to be the daily practice of his disciples: deny themselves, pick up their cross and follow him. This is to be a daily appropriation and embrace of the death of our former selves, enacted in our baptism (See Romans 6). What we see in that Romans 6 passage is that we leave the dominion or reign of sin through embracing and agreeing with God's judgment of death upon our old lives, which is what was placed on Christ. We learn to embrace that death on our old life to live a new one. We can't live two lives at the same time. We drop one to pick up the other. We leave the reign of sin and enter the reign of God through death and new life. We lose our life for Christ's, to find it anew with and in him.
I'm reminded of a common prayer among Charismatics for God to "fill me with your Spirit." I believe the chief impediment to this prayer is that we are often already too full, with no training on how to regularly empty ourselves, and embrace and appropriate the death to our old lives to pick up the new. Since Dallas Willard's strong praise for the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous over 20 years ago, I've slowly made the move into using the steps as a path for discipleship. They work by training people to identify when we're living the old life, centered on self, and drop that life in favor of the new. In other words, the steps train people to do what Jesus said they'd have to do daily. The steps train us to live our baptism. The old man, the old life, can't do God's will, live in his reign. It is trapped in the dominion of sin and death. But the new man is already joined to Christ and the Father through the Spirit, eager to do God's will in union with God. We have all these strategies for making ourselves whole and at peace. But Jesus says that anyone who tries to save themselves (make themselves whole, safe, at peace) will lose their lives. But whoever loses their lives for Christ will find them. We need the training and practice of identifying our old lives as we start to live them, so that we can drop them for the new life. We embrace our death, our cross, to find new life. In so doing, we leave the dominion of sin, for the reign of God.
I love this! I've never been comfortable connecting healing to the atonement, but thinking about it in this way helps to reconcile things. Thank you!
This is an important topic. It brings us to a related and central issue: the role of the believer's cross, the believer's or disciple's death. More and more folks are (rightly) trying to bring discipleship and transformation back to the center of the Church's mission. Jesus implied that there are many things we do regularly--prayer, service, etc. But I can only recall one thing he explicitly said would need to be the daily practice of his disciples: deny themselves, pick up their cross and follow him. This is to be a daily appropriation and embrace of the death of our former selves, enacted in our baptism (See Romans 6). What we see in that Romans 6 passage is that we leave the dominion or reign of sin through embracing and agreeing with God's judgment of death upon our old lives, which is what was placed on Christ. We learn to embrace that death on our old life to live a new one. We can't live two lives at the same time. We drop one to pick up the other. We leave the reign of sin and enter the reign of God through death and new life. We lose our life for Christ's, to find it anew with and in him.
I'm reminded of a common prayer among Charismatics for God to "fill me with your Spirit." I believe the chief impediment to this prayer is that we are often already too full, with no training on how to regularly empty ourselves, and embrace and appropriate the death to our old lives to pick up the new. Since Dallas Willard's strong praise for the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous over 20 years ago, I've slowly made the move into using the steps as a path for discipleship. They work by training people to identify when we're living the old life, centered on self, and drop that life in favor of the new. In other words, the steps train people to do what Jesus said they'd have to do daily. The steps train us to live our baptism. The old man, the old life, can't do God's will, live in his reign. It is trapped in the dominion of sin and death. But the new man is already joined to Christ and the Father through the Spirit, eager to do God's will in union with God. We have all these strategies for making ourselves whole and at peace. But Jesus says that anyone who tries to save themselves (make themselves whole, safe, at peace) will lose their lives. But whoever loses their lives for Christ will find them. We need the training and practice of identifying our old lives as we start to live them, so that we can drop them for the new life. We embrace our death, our cross, to find new life. In so doing, we leave the dominion of sin, for the reign of God.