In
her book, One Faithful Promise: the Wesleyan Covenant for Renewal,
Magrey R. deVega wrote; “The sum effect of composing your spirit is that you
realize you are of equal standing with everyone else in the human community,
and we are all connected to each other”.
She
was responding to John Wesley’s thoughts in speaking to an over-inflation of
our own individual worth: “As Christ will never be accepted, so can the
sinner never be received by Christ until the sinner lets go of all other props
…”, those “props” being the components of our inflated sense of worth in
comparing ourselves to others.
What
this means is simply this; we have no standing apart from the value we assign
to others. That is, if we think too highly of ourselves in comparison to
others (i.e., “at least I’m not gay”, “at least I don’t cheat on my spouse”,
etc.), we subject ourselves to a form of spiritual deception even we soon come
to believe to the detriment of our souls and to the community of the
Church. St. Paul wrote, “Do not think of yourself more highly than
you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment.” (Romans
12:3, NIV).
It
is one thing to finally come to know of the saving grace of our Lord; it is
another thing altogether to convince ourselves that our Lord so loves an
individual that He has no regard for another. We know (but probably
choose not to believe) that “their” sins are no worse than our own. If we
can truly get next to that, it is no telling what the Church community can come
to look like, no telling who may choose to become a part of that community, and
certainly no telling what The Lord can do for them AND for us!
We
are the witnesses to the Truth revealed in the Holy Scriptures, and the plain
Truth is The Lord does not love “us” more than He loves “them”. Wesley
would have said to those with an inflated sense of worth, “Get over yourself;
you ain’t all that!”
Celebrate
the reality of your worth in the eyes of our God and Father! Celebrate
the reality that our sins were once so deep, so scarring, so debilitating that
He chose to put Himself on the line for us … for all of us. This
is the essence of our embrace of “universal atonement”: Christ died for all,
not a few! So know this: in His eyes, you really are “all that” …
and so is your “neighbor” … and the “alien” … and the “stranger” … and your
“enemy” … and …
The
Lord is great, is He not?
Michael
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