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9.21.2005

Why acting from God's will makes you a real individual with real liberty 3


To see how you have real liberty the more you act from God's will use the analogy of a kingdom.

Does an individual who a king makes a duke or a baron and gives a large estate and responsibility in one part of his kingdom to and even gives him his own army of knights and so on...does this individual have more liberty than the person in the kingdom that is living on a little rented patch of land scratching out a living growing food and maybe repairing pots and pans on the side? Of course the duke (or baron or whatever) has more liberty.

And remember we're talking about the Kingdom of God, not some corrupt aristocracy with a syphilitic king at the top. (And as for the guy scratching out a living and repairing pots and pans remember that the lowest in the Kingdom of God is greater than the greatest in this world.)

The duke has to answer to the King, so he doesn't have total liberty. Yet that just means he's not the king. The King is the king.

As a regenerate Christian you are a king (with a small 'k') and Jesus is the King. You're not Jesus. You're not God, yet you have quite a position in God's Kingdom (you're an heir of God and you have what God has; striking, radical promises in the New Testament). Alot of liberty (and responsibility, but responsibility that you can handle because you have self-command and you desire responsibility from the King...you live for it).

But just as the duke has his estate in a part of the kingdom and isn't under the thumb of a dictatorial presence above him (he's treated as an individual) the same in the Kingdom of God.

Yet you still have God's will as real command above you that you follow.

God doesn't regenerate you to make you a robot or a frightened, obsequeous slave. He wants men. Real, developed kings in their own right. In fact: prophets, priests, and kings. Which is the image of God.

Note: the question arises as to who the lower subjects are in the Kingdom of God, but in the Kingdom of God all are equal in state but just unequal in standing due to natural development and reward. The New Testament speaks of degree of reward and degree of level of being among glorified, saved individuals in the afterlife. It just does. The main point about that though is this: wherever you are in the hierarchy is natural for you to be. There is no unfairness or unhappiness about it. One can also fairly and not wildly speculate that there is vertical movement in God's Kingdom. Maybe very different than what we know about here or can even speculate about, but as above so below, generally speaking...

Note 2: the fact is: in all this that involves God's Plan God is calling and regenerating royalty. His royalty. His people. What the responsibilities of his royalty are, and what activities they are involved in, in what areas of God's creation, who knows. But remembering this fact and knowing you are being tested now can and should be a constant shock to you. When you conform or give in to the world at critical testing moments you are failing God and yourself.

Note 3: Read the first five verses of chapter 5 of the apocryphal book Wisdom of Solomon. It's not Holy Writ, but it has value when it has value...

1 Comments:

Blogger c.t. said...

Don't allow associations from worldly kingdoms and the whited sepulchre reality of aristocratic classes overwhelm the biblical analogy of Kingdom.

No one's getting a raw deal in the Kingdom of God, and level of being matches level of hierarchy.

(No one's getting a raw deal in hell either, for that matter...)

September 21, 2005 at 9:02 PM  

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