There are only two things to do in life,
[h=1]Mark 12:30-31(ESV)[/h][FONT="]30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”[/FONT]
BUT there is a catch to them. Can we? (That's it. Can we do them?)
Paul says this:
[h=1]Philippians 3:14(KJV)[/h][FONT="]14 I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.[/FONT]
ESV calls it a goal, instead of a mark, but "the mark" captures it more for me. Dead-eye into the bullseye. If you could measure the edge of the bullseyes from your arrow, it would be equal perfectly all around. That's the mark we press onto.
And how is that accomplished? Not through our abilities. It's not just one of those moments when we just have to try harder and we'll get there. We CANNOT get there. This IS what it is to be in Christ. He has to do it for us, and in us. Not hold our arm, but be our arm. Not see the bullseye through our eye, but through his eye.
I cannot do justice to this thought, but Spurgeon did it for me today.
“The iniquity of the holy things.”
- Exo_28:38
What a veil is lifted up by these words, and what a disclosure is made! It will be humbling and profitable for us to pause awhile and see this sad sight. The iniquities of our public worship, its hypocrisy, formality, lukewarmness, irreverence, wandering of heart and forgetfulness of God, what a full measure have we there! Our work for the Lord, its emulation, selfishness, carelessness, slackness, unbelief, what a mass of defilement is there! Our private devotions, their laxity, coldness, neglect, sleepiness, and vanity, what a mountain of dead earth is there! If we looked more carefully we should find this iniquity to be far greater than appears at first sight. Dr. Payson, writing to his brother, says, “My parish, as well as my heart, very much resembles the garden of the sluggard; and what is worse, I find that very many of my desires for the melioration of both, proceed either from pride or vanity or indolence. I look at the weeds which overspread my garden, and breathe out an earnest wish that they were eradicated. But why? What prompts the wish? It may be that I may walk out and say to myself, ‘In what fine order is my garden kept!’ This is pride. Or, it may be that my neighbours may look over the wall and say, ‘How finely your garden flourishes!’ This is vanity. Or I may wish for the destruction of the weeds, because I am weary of pulling them up. This is indolence.” So that even our desires after holiness may be polluted by ill motives. Under the greenest sods worms hide themselves; we need not look long to discover them. How cheering is the thought, that when the High Priest bore the iniquity of the holy things he wore upon his brow the words, “HOLINESS TO THE LORD” and even so while Jesus bears our sin, he presents before his Father’s face not our unholiness, but his own holiness. O for grace to view our great High Priest by the eye of faith!
And that is his mark! I'm still thinking of selfish reasons for pulling out the weeds.
So, press on to his mark. (I got to too.)
