an abiding life

Since finishing my most recent reading of the Bible, I've been spending some time in the writings of John and asking myself a lot of questions, trying to get to the bottom of what it could mean to really follow Christ - to really abide in Him, as John so often wrote. This isn't a new pondering for me; actually, I've had it on my mind for several years. I think that the answer to this question is the answer to just about every other that may arise in the Christian walk.

But this time God has been speaking something a little bit different to me - or at least, convicting me in an area I wasn't sensitive to before.

I kept seeing in 1 John terminology like "righteousness" and "obedience" and "love." Of course I know, on the surface, what all of these terms mean - I could give you something close to the dictionary definition, anyway. But what do they mean in real life? In practice? What is righteousness when it's being lived, rather than just thrown about like a grand theological term?

Maybe it's obvious and I should have worked it out a lot sooner, but it struck me that the real, lived-out definition of all three of these words is simply this: self-denial.

If we are to abide in Christ and have Him in us - if we are to be one with Him - it follows that our actions, our movements must align with His. And the simplest summary of the life He lived and the death He died (which of course I'm stealing from Philippians 2) is just that - self-denial. It's the very thing that Jesus spoke when He said, "If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me" (Matthew 16:24b).

Some define righteousness as either "right choices" or "right with God." And both, if they truly are right, demand that we die to what's wrong - which is our sin nature, our natural selves.

And what is obedience, but the choice to submit to an authority other than our own?

And love, the greatest of them all, is defined by John himself like this: "He laid down His life for us."

I find that the world laughs at self-denial in this age. There may have been a time when it was actually lauded to sacrifice oneself for a higher cause, but now we praise the ones who pursue what they want, who follow their hearts, who expend their lives on the shallow calling of "finding themselves," rather than on the nobler cause of giving themselves up. John warned of this, too:

Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world. The world is passing away, and also its lusts; but the one who does the will of God lives forever. - 1 John 2:15-17

Life forever, in exchange for the death of myself.

And not only life, but an abiding life - filled with His abundance even here on earth.

Yet it's the hardest thing to actually do. I get jealous of the praise and attention given to those who freely follow their lusts, who don't seem to have to answer to anyone but themselves; and I get lonely when it seems I can't fit anywhere into this world. And then, the moment I think I've finally got it down, I catch a glimpse of my soul in the spiritual mirror of the Word, and am disgusted all over again.

Maybe we can take heart in the cloud of witnesses that have gone before us - the great self-deniers of Hebrews 11 fame, immortalized for their willingness to surrender their lives to the ultimate plan of God, even when He asked the unthinkable - and in the words of Elisabeth Elliot:

"One does not surrender a life in an instant. That which is lifelong can only be surrendered in a lifetime."