March 18 (Colossians 1:28-29)
Him we proclaim, warning everyone and
teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature
in Christ. For this I toil, struggling with all his
energy that he powerfully works within me. (ESV)
Jesus is both divine and human, yet He is one person. God Himself eternally exists as three
persons, yet one essence, meaning we worship one God, not three. In other words, everything we know about God
involves both/and. Is it any wonder,
then, that we, who are created in His image, must also live both/and
lives? Is it any surprise, too, that Satan
tries to wreck our lives by getting us to think in either/or terms?
Take, for example, how we go about our daily existence. Some tend to do it all on their own, whereas
others want to do nothing and let Jesus handle everything. Now look at how Paul approached the most
important work of his or any Christ-follower’s life. His job was to proclaim the gospel of Jesus,
to warn and to teach, to present back to God everyone he met as a mature
Christian. How does he do it? He works hard at it. He toils and struggles, but he does so with
the energy that God Himself was using to bring that very toil and struggle to
fruition. He lived a both/and life.
One of the most difficult aspects of being a Christian is to
live the both/and life. It is a tension,
but it is a beautiful and mysterious tension, one that causes us to keep our
hands stretched in two different directions, which is an incredibly hard thing
to do. Just ask Jesus about His
experience at Calvary.
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