Today's Scripture Reading (April 21, 2024): Romans 6
In Galatians, Paul writes these words; "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live,
but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith
in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me"
(Galatians 2:20). Okay, obviously I have not been literally crucified with
Christ. But that is not the point. If I am genuinely going to be a Christian,
that means that something inside of me has to die. And it is something vital.
It is a concept that brings me to a question: Have I
died? It is not an easy question to answer, but I guess it
is not supposed to be. Maybe that is the problem. We are looking hard for the
easy way. The promise is this: if you have been crucified with Christ, if you
no longer live, but Christ lives in you, then sin no longer has its claws in you.
Yet, every fiber within me stretches out for life. Every fiber within me wants
to live and struggles for it.
But,
to be successful, at least on some level, I must be partially dead. Consider
this: dying to self is characteristic of a successful politician, especially a
President or Prime Minister. One of the most fundamental promises of a
politician is that I will put down my dreams to embrace yours. I will die so
you can live. The problem is that that seems to be an impossible thing to do.
But Paul says the same thing is also required in our spiritual lives.
Consider
this: I have seen the examples of several Presidents during my lifetime. The
first President that I am politically aware of during my life was Richard
Nixon. I was a big Nixon fan, which tells you a lot about how I got to where I
am today. I remember Nixon's assertion, "I am not a crook … The people
need to know that their President is not crooked." Nixon was very
concerned with how people saw him. And his concern told us just how alive he
really was.
Gerald
Ford became President upon President Nixon's retirement from office, and after
Ford was a peanut farmer named Jimmy Carter. At the time of his re-election
campaign, Jimmy Carter is in a challenging political race with Ronald Reagan
while, at the same time, working hard to get hostages out of Iran. I clearly
remember turning on the television and seeing the number of days that the
hostages had been in Iranian captivity getting higher and higher. It occupied
the mind and heart of all of the American voters. It doesn't matter how we view
the presidency of Jimmy Carter because the truth is that the number that came
at the end of his first term in office was the summation of Carter's
presidency. Why doesn't the United States do something? They have this military
might; maybe it is time to put it to use.
Meanwhile,
of course, what we didn't know was that some of the hostages were safe in the
Canadian Embassy, and Carter and Prime Minister Joe Clarke were working hard to
get them out before any further action could be taken. I am convinced that
Carter could have won the 1980 election if the people had known what was
happening in the Canadian Embassy and the details of the behind-the-scenes race
to free some of the hostages. But it wasn't about him. In some way, Carter had
died, and what he needed to do was what was right. Of all the Presidents, I
think Jimmy Carter was the complete opposite of Richard Nixon.
Ronald
Reagan restored Pomp and Circumstance to the White House, something the peanut
farmer didn't care about. George H. W. Bush continued the reign of Reagan. Bill
(I did not have sex with that woman) Clinton suffered through some moral
issues. Barak Obama held the office with a measure of grace that had been
missing from the office for many years. Donald Trump, rather than dying to
self, seemed to elevate self, and his followers loved it. Trump was cut from
the same cloth as Richard Nixon (whom I admit to being a huge fan).
And,
of course, Joe Biden, well, maybe I need a little more distance to evaluate his
time at the helm of the nation. My point, though, is that a politician that
dies to self is actually a rare thing. It is also rare in Christianity, but
that shouldn't be true. We need to be united with him in death to be united
with him in the resurrection. But dying to self, as Paul tells us, is
necessary, and it isn't easy. Therefore, it is something that we need to pay
attention to every day.
Tomorrow's Scripture
Reading: Romans 7
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