A Deadly Plan

Colossians 1:15-22 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation . . . You, He has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death . . .

As an addict, my opinion regarding my need for pain medications is suspect. If I came to the clinic with a subjective complaint and no objective findings, no physician in his or her right mind should give me pain medications. I have proven, in my addiction, that my defective view of pills cannot be trusted.

Likewise, my view of my will is so warped by my own self-centeredness, that it is not reliable. In my self-addiction, I continually gravitate towards Scott’s plan, not God’s. It is not that God is not interested in my well-being. He very much is. It is just that His plan looks very little like mine.

In today’s passage, Paul described how God’s grand design was that Christ come to Earth, suffer and die to restore me to a right relationship with Him. It is His will that I become like Christ in his death so that I may participate in His life. Seen in this light, it is apparent that God’s plan is not about my comfort, but about that which is ultimately best for me.

His plan is always deadly to my own will. It is only through continual death to self that I continually know life. This is not a once-for-all decision of the past. I must daily die to self if I want to continually embrace true life. I find His life only through my death.

In my perpetual self-addiction, I worry that God’s plan will cause me to miss out on the life I want. The only thing I miss out on in self-sacrifice though, is my own destruction. In dying to self, I abandon death and misery, trading it in for true life in Christ. God’s plan is always deadly to self, but it is more than a fair trade.