LESSON 238
August 26
"On my decision all salvation rests."
PRACTICE SUMMARY
(See Part II Practice Summary, and also Part II Introduction)
COMMENTARY
In Lesson 236 I saw that I alone rule my mind. God has created me free to choose to listen to His Voice, or not to listen. Salvation thus rests entirely on my decision. The message of today's lesson is that, if this is true, God must have a great deal of trust in me. As humankind is typically pictured, it is weak, vacillating, or downright rebellious. Sinners at the core, and totally untrustworthy. But if God "placed [His] Son's salvation in my hands, and let it rest on my decision" (1:3), that dark picture cannot be the truth. If I was such an untrustworthy being, if humankind were so unreliable, God would never have put such enormous trust in us. Therefore, "I must be worthy" (1:1). "I must be beloved of You indeed. And I must be stedfast in holiness as well" (1:4-5). In sum: If God trusted me, I must be worthy of that trust.
It isn't just my own salvation that rests on my decision; "all salvation" rests on it. Because the Sonship is one. If one part remains separate and alone, the Sonship is incomplete. Yet God "gave [His] Son to me in certainty that He is safe" (1:5). If God is certain that the Son is safe in my hands, He must know something about me that I have forgotten. He knows me as I am (1:2), and not as I have come to believe I am. The trust He displays is amazing, because the Son is not simply His creation, the Son is "still part of" Him (1:5). God has entrusted part of His very Being to my care, in confidence of what my decision will be: To freely, willingly, choose to join with and enter into His Love and His Will. He knows that in the end I will not choose otherwise and cannot choose otherwise, for He formed me as an extension of His own Love.
Let me, then, today, reflect often on how much God loves me; how much He loves His Son; and how God's love for His Son is demonstrated by entrusting all salvation to my decision. Let me rest assured that the outcome is as inevitable as God. Let me take confidence in God's confidence in me.
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Arizona, USA.
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