Our Standards

Some further times of sharing with others in the past, but speak loudly while it is yet called...Today!

Rich


"You will begin to see who you truly are in Christ and it will look nothing like what the world told you it should. You will never look the way they wanted you to. It will be all of his life and nothing of your efforts. You will never be that false image of what they said you should become."

I gleefully agree, adding, You will never be that false image of what YOU THINK you should become, either.

As grace believers, we're still tempted to do the same thing. We look at other believers and measure them up to our standards of what a gospel believing Christian should look like. But perhaps, just perhaps, their life of freedom will look differently than the freedom in Christ that you experience. Does that mean they're less free or does it confirm that fact that they're free to be exactly the person God has created them to be…?


Re:
'Measure them up to our standards of what a gospel believing Christian should look like.'

I’ve been thinking about what you referred to as ‘our standards’ and suggest the following:

The gospel of Christ eliminates any of "our standards". It has no bearing on the one Life that indwells all believers. I wonder if Paul was trying to "measure the believers up" to Paul’s standards? I don’t think so! The standard was Christ! He is the only standard. Because we are individuals uniquely expressing His life through our mortal bodies, we can’t help but look different.

Maybe the longing of Father God’s heart that seemed to be so evidently displayed in and through Paul was for each and every believer to be brought to a place of "knowing" all that was already theirs in Christ. (2 Corinthians 3:16, 17, Ephesians 4: 13-16)

Was Paul seeing something (Someone) that others were not yet seeing, meaning the standard of Christ, not the standard of Paul? He knew that he could not impart this knowledge to other believers. There are six recorded times he prayed for the believers, that they would come to know, that the eyes of their hearts would be opened and flooded in the true knowledge of Him.

Of course our freedom just might look different, no two people being the same. Though the expression is different, what is revealed is Christ - the One who is our freedom – our standard – the same life in every believer!

The means whereby we have fellowship is based on that One Life that indwells believers, but to the degree that we see that Life as a Baptist Life, or a Pentecostal Life, or a Catholic Life will determine the depth of our fellowship or the lack thereof.

Is it possible to be a Christian yet not see that there’s only one life in the believer, and that it has nothing to do with a denominational bent/slant/belief system, wearing makeup or not, talking in tongues or not, black cars with no chrome, black cars with chrome…from the sublime to the ridiculous in terms of what we have measured in standards as what is ‘holy’?

Maybe like the song says, 'Holiness is Your Life in me', maybe my life is to BE a living extension of the Holy One?!