So it is with us in our spiritual life, learning to submit our will to Christ is not simply a singular event. By nature it could not be. For if the weight of all existence rested on only one decision that we were permanently bound to, we would be in fact slaves to our own decisions. To truly have freedom of thought, one must be able to create, and to change their minds as they wish. This freedom is required to truly understand what love is. It is also a dangerous freedom in that it allowed Satan to break trust with God and pursue self-interest resulting in the evil we know today after eons of life in perfection. It is also dangerous in that it would allow you to relinquish God and pursue your own self-interests, forsaking the victory that was once His gift to you.
Even God is able to change His own mind. Take for example our wickedness nearing the time of the great Flood; it made God “repent” that he had made mankind. Our evil was so great it made God “sorry” that He made us at all. And scripture foretells it would be similar in our day as it was in Noah’s. Also we can look at Hezekiah, who pleaded with God not to die, and God granted the wishes of Hezekiah over His own plans. God told Moses not to plead with Him any longer on entering the Promised Land, not because He did not love Moses, but because He loved Moses so much He did not want Moses to persuade Him to change His own mind. Even Christ in His moment of agony, was completely free to forsake the weight of our sins that were upon Him. He could have not risked His own permanent separation from His Father, and left us to the fate we deserved. He was free to do this, as we did nothing to earn His sacrifice. But He followed through despite His ability to change His own mind. That by definition is love – a freewill choice to love - despite the ability choose not to.
So it is in our Salvation, we are not permanently bound to the evil we once pursued, but nor are we the slaves of a loving God. We remain free to choose throughout our existence here and in the Heaven that is to come. Daily decisions are required. Daily choices must be made. Not the choice of whether to sin or not, in this world that is no choice at all; rather the choice to submit and trust or not. Our sports analogy echoes the words of Christ when He says … “by beholding we become changed”. What we focus on affects us. When we focus on Christ and the submission of our will to Him, we become changed into His image. Our urge to sin abates, disappears, and is gone forever. But as we look away from Christ, becoming too busy, or too distracted to remember to submit our will to Him; we become susceptible to failure and relapse.
There is little worse feelings than to blow a winning record. Imagine the disappointment of a team who is going undefeated in a season, only to lose a game due completely to simple careless errors. It is not that the opposing side was better, stronger, or more determined. It is simply that our team got complacent, relaxed, and unfocused. We begin to rely on the history of our records, than on the mechanism that achieved the results. And once a game is lost in an undefeated season, the record remains tarnished for the duration of that year. However, the next year begins the records once again, and another season can be started with the hopes and dreams of seeing it completed undefeated once again. So it is with us in our spiritual warfare. We do not fight our enemy, we allow God to fight for us. But failure does not mean hopelessness. No need to make excuses for our loss, the reasons are clear, and the blame always falls to us. Our champion never fails, but sometimes we fail to put Him in the game.
The question falls on us, how will we deal with our own defeat. Judas saw his own mistakes as insurmountable. After all, he betrayed the very Son of God to His enemies and His death. The death of Christ was something Judas saw himself as personally responsible for. But Judas was not alone. Peter too, by denying his very association with Christ, betrayed His Master who only hours before he had sworn to die for. Peter too, left the scenes unfolding in the death of Christ, in shame and defeat. Judas chose to allow the weight of his crimes to overcome him in hopelessness. His failure defined his destiny, NOT because of the wishes of his forgiving Lord, but because of his own choices to abandon the hope of forgiveness and reform. Judas sealed his fate by making permanent his choice to abandon hope, we can only wish he found redemption in the seconds before his death, but God alone can judge.
You see Judas and I have much in common as he does with you as well. We are both equally responsible for the betrayal, torture, and death of our Lord Jesus Christ. Christ had to die for my personal sins, not just those of Judas. It was then my hands on the hammer and nails, the whip, the crown of thorns. It was me who did this, whether by action at the time, or by behavior since. This responsibility is mine personally as every time I fail, I cause the need for this sacrifice in order that I might be forgiven. To grow callas to this idea, to become indifferent that my failures require this price, is to forget the enormity of what was done in order to redeem me. To be content with forgiveness alone certain that it must occur again and again simply by neglect is again to ignore the enormity of the cost of my crimes. I must accept the forgiveness Christ offers as Peter did. But I must also accept the life changing power of Christ in absolute humility as Peter did, in order to become changed. Notice the humility in Peter’s response to Christ’s question … “do you love me?”. Where before Peter would have answered from the certainty of self-pride and arrogance, he now responds in abject humility and defers even the answer to this basic a question to the wisdom of an all knowing God.
Peter had not yet achieved perfection, but his journey towards it had begun based on his humbling himself, and subjecting his decisions, desires, and will to his Savior Jesus Christ. Judas chose not to allow or begin this process; instead he internalized the enormity of what he had done and chose to seal his fate in death. Our failures must not be allowed to be the end of our journey. Our relapse over victories once given need not be a predictor of our ultimate outcome. Instead we must accept the forgiveness they require and then return to the method that will prevent their reoccurrence. Our God did not leave us ignorant of the way to keep His laws, bind His precepts in our hearts, and awaken a spiritual discernment in our lives – all of these begin at the foot of the cross, and continue as we like Peter submit ourselves to His designs.
The greatest danger of failure is the willingness to repeat it again and again. Our preferences become actions, which become behavior, which become habit, until they define us. This cycle of slavery has the side-effect of warping our minds to enjoy what we do, despite its painful consequences. Over time if left unchecked and un-submitted, a war begins to wage over whether we even want to return to the victories of our Lord, or remain in the state we find ourselves. Once the evil of our hearts overtakes the desire to return to God, our minds reject the only hope we have of redemption. Should we continue in this state, our salvation, our redemption becomes lost. Not because God removes it from us based on our behaviors. But because we choose to remove ourselves from His forgiveness and victories He would offer. In short, we freely reject His gifts, and choose the slavery of self instead. This is the condition we began life if prior to our encounter with the Savior. And though regrettable, it is a condition we can return to if we let slip the daily decision to follow our God.
We do not achieve perfection in a moment (until Christ’s return), neither do we choose to leave God forever in a moment. The decisions trend over the course of our lives in one direction or the other. God does not compel us to follow Him. Unlike Adam, God understands that true love must allow the object of its affection the choice to reject it. God craves our love, and wishes ONLY to love us fully. But love itself demands we remain free to decide what we do with His great love. Our victories are certain when grounded in Christ, for they are His gift to us. The change in our minds and hearts that enable us to become one with His laws and precepts are His great gift of salvation to us. A failure need not pull us away from God. But we must not allow a failure to define a change in direction away from our victories. Let us instead seek forgiveness and ask again for the humility and perseverance to submit ourselves to our Savior, that His work of perfection in us may continue without the painful recurrence of relapse into evil.
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