Fullness, Faithfulness, Fruitfulness

 From Romans 5 – 8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. 10 For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.

"Most Christians have a deferred hope, not a daily celebration," divides Chris Tiegreen in Feeling Like God: The Emotional Side of Discipleship - and Why You Can’t Fully Follow Jesus without It. "When we miss out on his joy, we miss out on his fruitfulness."

The apostle Paul makes the same connection in Romans 5. Yes, Paul and Tiegreen peer into a future eternal reckoning and are fittingly grateful that we are saved from the wrath of a just God. This is what Tiegreen refers to as our deferred hope. It's real and celebratory, but we won't experience it fully for a while.

With our incomplete sense of the atonement, we miss what Tiegreen calls the daily celebration. We miss what Paul calls in Romans 5:10 being saved by His life. For, does not much of the Gospel narrative bequeathed to us consist in details other than His death and Resurrection? These are precious indeed, and they are all the more precious because they imbue every day of His perfect life with meaning. We, His, get that also.

Christ's eating and drinking had meaning. Now so does ours, now so much more than a forestalling consolation. His work, carpentry and ministry, was a pleasing, perfect offering to the Father. Now, as His, our work is done as unto Him. Just as we are saved from a future judgment, we are saved from a present futility. We are saved BY His life into ours which now has meaning, continuity, and daily rhythms of intimacy with Him.

The perfume of Christ's faithfulness, it turns out, wafts over, around, and through all of the compartmental barriers we would use to divide the whole life He bought for us.

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