Refocus

For not one of us lives for himself, and not one dies for himself; for if we live, we live for the Lord, or if we die, we die for the Lord; therefore whether we live or die, we are the Lord's. (Romans 14:7-8)

I have been thinking about this verse off and on for quite awhile since I started this chapter in Romans wondering what it really means. It seems that the way it is usually approached is so idealistic or vague that it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense in everyday life. I am praying for more insight about what God wants me to know about these verses.

What comes to mind this morning is that religion has become so self-focused and human-centered that God is trying to remind us that the center of all our attention needs to be outward focused and directed toward His heart. This comes right at the end of a whole passage delineating differences between beliefs of people within the body of Christ that conflict with each other. Now it appears that Paul is saying that focusing on our differences is not nearly so important as focusing on God.

If we view our relationship with God like spokes on a wheel then this would make a lot of sense. If viewed from a position on the opposite side of the wheel, other spokes will be very much out of line with our viewpoint and opinions. It will be very easy for us to compare others position on issues with our own and criticize, condemn and pass judgment on their views. But the same would be just as easy for them to do to us. Conducting ourselves in this way only tends to highlight our differences and create more and more division and disharmony within the body. No matter how right we may feel we are, pointing out perceived faults in others tends to only alienate and tear down the work that the Holy Spirit is seeking to accomplish at the heart level.

In these verses I see a call to realign our thinking and focus back onto what is important and what will bring us closer to the real and only point of legitimate reference for any Christian. Religion is not something we are to perform to earn anything from God. No matter where we are coming from theologically, if we center our focus on God, seeing truth about Him more clearly for ourselves and deepening our affections for Him ahead of everything else, then we will inevitably find ourselves coming closer and closer to each other as we approach the common center of all truth.

Not one of us lives for himself... I sense that Paul is writing from within a social context of community experienced by the early church that is so foreign to most of us today that we do not really understand most of the implications and assumptions of those within that body of believers. While they certainly had a lot of personal problems and each person was very much in a healing process, there was a level of transparency, vulnerability and mutual love and trust that would be shocking and even frightening to most people in churches today. I believe most people who now consider themselves quite religious would be scandalized by the level of openness that was required in order to participate in that early community.

When Paul talks about one of us, he is referring to those who have chosen to be absorbed into the body of Christ and fully participate in community with all its implications. I have to admit that not only is my church a very long ways from reflecting that kind of unity and openness but that I have never even seen a community or group of people who were experiencing that kind of intimacy. I certainly believe that God fully intends for us to live in that kind of oneness with each other and it will happen with or without us very soon. I am quite hungry to find and experience the kind of fellowship as described in the New Testament church but am also very skeptical of claims by people today to have achieved this kind of community. When they are more closely examined it is usually found that they are carefully orchestrated image management programs that are trying very hard to create the external symptoms of community life without properly addressing the root causes and creating an atmosphere where hearts can really thrive in a safe environment.

The early New Testament church was so energized, quite literally, by the dynamic inner power and working of the Holy Spirit that it was downright dangerous to your very life to try to join yourself to that intimate fellowship of vulnerable believers unless your were willing to dismantle all of your charades and masks you had acquired throughout your life. Ananias and Sapphira found out the hard way that you had better not mess with the intense power surging through a real church that is full of transparency and healing power from the very real presence of God in their midst. They thought that they could maintain their status quo of pretension like everyone else they knew that was part of typical religion, but they discovered too late that this was no typical religion. This was the real thing and the power in this religion was a great deal more than they had bargained for.

Quite literally, the early believers had to choose between continuing to live for themselves or to surrender control and authority over their hearts to the one and only Lord worthy of that role. It is important to note that they were not surrendering control of their hearts and minds to any human leader. That is how most counterfeit religions work. True spirituality does not assign any human being to be the channel of control over anyone else. In Christ's kingdom there is only one Master and that is the humble, graceful, kind and perfect Jesus who is no different now than when He lived here physically on this earth.

Every person in the true body of believers must be connected and subordinated directly to the Lordship of Jesus Himself individually from their heart and not to any other lord. Everything in their life then flows out of that relationship with Jesus and the intimacy that is enjoyed with Him is openly shared with all others who are likewise fully submitted to the complete authority of Jesus within their hearts. Intimacy is one of the most important things our hearts were created to enjoy and thrive on but has been mostly lost through the effects of sin in our world.

The counterfeit of true intimacy for which our heart constantly craves is the myriad offers of satisfaction through the various means and adaptations of everything sexually oriented in our world today. Satan knows that we crave intimacy almost more than life itself and he has spent thousands of years perfecting complex counterfeits that hold out convincing promises to satisfy that insatiable longing within us. But every one of them when indulged in leave us empty and even more hungry for the real thing. The deeper a person gets into the counterfeits the more intense and obvious they become aware of their deep need for real intimacy.

It sounds all too much like a cliché, but at the deepest level it is still unavoidably true: Jesus Himself is the only way we can find the intimacy that we each crave so deeply. Even the intimacy enjoyed by Christian couples within the context of true marriage is only a dim taste of the real intimacy that Jesus desires to ravish our heart with in direct connection with His own heart. This intense hunger inside of us has only one food that will hit the spot, and we can never feel really satisfied until we are realigned with our original wiring diagram, repaired and restored to our original destiny and purpose. Only when we are properly in intimate relationship with our Creator can we experience the true joys of pure, satisfying intimacy within the fellowship of true believers. Whether we live or die, we are the Lord's.

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