Resurrection Community Church
Real Freedom
Each individual will eventually make a priceless discovery if they choose to “go deeper”. They will be able to cease from constantly scrutinizing the other person, judging them, condemning them, putting them in his particular place where they can gain ascendancy over them and thus doing violence to them as a person. Now they can allow the brother or sister to exist as a completely free person, as God made them to be. Their view of love expands and, to their amazement, for the first time they see, shining within his brethren, the richness of God’s creative glory. God did not make this person as I would have made him. He did not give them to me as a brother or sister for me to dominate and control, but in order that I might find within them the Creator. Now the other person, in the freedom with which they were created, becomes the occasion of joy, whereas before they were only a nuisance and a pain.
God does not will that I should fashion the other person according to the image that seems good to me, that is, in my own image; rather in his very freedom from me God made this person in His image. I can never know beforehand how God’s image should appear in others. That image always manifests a completely new and unique form that comes solely form God’s free and sovereign creation. To me the sight may seem strange, even ungodly. But God creates every man in the likeness of His Son, the Crucified One. After all, even that image certainly looked strange and ungodly to me before I grasped it. And the truth be known I’m still having trouble grasping it.
Strong and weak, wise and foolish, gifted or ungifted, pious or impious, the diverse individuals in my community are no longer incentives for talking and judging and condemning, and thus excuses for self-justification. They are rather cause for rejoicing in one another and serving one another.
Jeremiah 15:19……….”Therefore thus saith the Lord: “If thou return, then will I bring thee back, and thou shalt stand before Me; and if thou learn to take forth the precious from the vile (perceived in people), thou shalt be as My mouth………”