The Good Life

To believe in the supernatural is not simply to believe that after living a successful, material, and fairly virtuous life here one will continue to exist in the best-possible substitute for this world, or that after living a starved and stunted life here one will be compensated with all the good things one has gone without: it is to believe that the supernatural is the greatest reality here and now.

T. S. Eliot

Read

Matthew 5:17-20. 

Think

Life for me so far has been a cake-walk. Sure, I’ve had my share of messes, most of them brought on by myself, but I can’t say I’ve really faced adversity or persecution, certainly not poverty or major illness. Life is good. I have a loving, supportive, talented wife, 3 fantastic kids, a really great job, friends that I love and who love me, and a comfortable place to live and sleep. The fact that I have a house, 3 vehicles, and a job places me in in a better financial position than most of the planet’s population. But the fact that I haven’t really suffered, or that I’m comparatively wealthy isn’t really why I say that life is good.

Life is good because God has made Himself available to me. Life is good because my obedience or lack thereof has no bearing on my qualification for the Kingdom. Jesus says that unless my righteousness exceeds that of the Pharisees, I have no hope of entering the Kingdom. Well, he’s right. Because if it depends on me, I know myself too well. I know how things usually go when I try to will myself into being a righteous person. I usually end up like the Pharisees, holding myself and others to laws that God did not give and trying to qualify myself to enter the Kingdom.

Life is good because Christ took my death-sentence and I have been declared righteous when I believed. When Jesus offered Himself as a sacrifice, He fulfilled all the requirements of the Law. And when we look to Him, believing, He becomes our righteousness. God looks at His sacrifice, smacks His gavel on the bench and declares us righteous.

Life is good because my experience of eternal life began when I fully embraced the life that Christ has for me. When I first believed, I held on to the idea of living in my self-righteousness, trying to achieve the Kingdom in my flesh. When I came to understand that my eternal life is already mine, and I can relax and really live my life, it opened whole new doors for me.

It was for freedom that Christ has set us free. Therefore stand firm and do not subject yourselves again to the yoke of slavery.

Galatians 5:1

Pray

Ask God to help you to embrace the good life, the eternal life He has for you, not just for the future, but right now.

Do

Think about some of the things that you consider just plain wrong. Are you holding yourself and others to rules and laws that God did not give?