Life Incarnadine

Yesterday, as I was walking home after my workout, I noticed how beautiful the sun was as it was moving toward the western horizon. The shade of the sun on the trees and the grass gave a very warm and peaceful feeling inside, making you think you still had a lot of evening left when in fact, you knew that it would be getting dark in a couple of hours. It was thrilling to see the trees, the houses, even the roads, bathed in the soft glow of sunlight that comes before sunset.
The soft glow of that sun is the same soft glow that is given through the blood of the Son, Jesus Christ. When life is bathed in the blood of Jesus, there is a sense of well being, of peacefulness, and added to that, a sense that there is still more to be done and a little more time in which to do it. The theme of this blog is: Life Incarnadine. The word, “incarnadine,” has a dictionary definition of “flesh colored; blood red.” That’s the way the Christian life is to be lived, bathed in the blood of Jesus. It carries with it the desire to give all that we have, our very life blood, to extend the glow to those around us, to cause our eyes to look up to the eternal God who is the Giver of life, to walk in Him every day of our lives.
I chose this as the title for this blog because I know many Christians who wonder if they are really getting all they should out of their faith, out of their Christian life. Many who attend church every time the doors are open still feel that something is missing, that what they read in the pages of the Bible seems so different than the life they are currently living. Many years ago a famous cigarette company used a phrase to sell their product: “Come up, come all the way up .” I think that is what Jesus cries out to the Jews who had a real heart to know God, but were so busy trying to fulfill all of the demands of the law that they never quite got the whole picture. Jesus knew that even the Sadducees, the Jewish sect that accepted only the five books of Moses and who didn’t believe in resurrection or angels, were looking for life when He said, “ You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. (John 5:39, 40. ESV). So even while criticizing them for their unbelief, Jesus points out a very common problem for anyone who would have more life than he or she now enjoys, that is, we think that we can find what we are looking for by merely going through the motions of religion without looking to the very One who is life, who is love, who is peace, joy and gentleness. Some even think that when Jesus talks about giving life in John 10:10 (“ The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”) that He is talking exclusively about eternal life, never realizing that God’s intention for His children was a full life here and now.
As subsequent postings will reveal, the purpose of this blog is to help us open our eyes to living our lives, not just committed to doing our best, but intensely saturated in the blood of Jesus to the point where we “get it.” One of the purposes of the church, in fact a function of the church, is to insure that every Christian “gets it.” This is why God gave the gifts of apostles and other spiritual leaders to the church. “And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.” (Ephesians 4:11-14, ESV) Think about it. God wants to build us up to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. He wants us filled up to the point where we not merely follow Jesus, but start to resemble Him. Only living our lives, bathed in His blood, will we begin to understand what it means to truly be Christ like. We question ourselves, “Can I do it? Can I really be like Christ?” If the answer is no, close this site and go do something else, don’t read your Bible, and by all means, don’t bother to pray for a Christ-like spirit. On the other hand, just think how thrilling it would be to have someone mistake you for Jesus! Or say to you that you are a real Christian! Paul, the apostle, said that the mystery hidden from the ages was “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” (Colossians 1:27) It is a mystery, it is a hope, it is Christ so filling you that you have a deep-seated hope in glory, glory that only the Father can give.
I hope you will join me from time to time, as we look at some aspects of living our lives “incarnadine.” Blood red. Flesh colored. Looking like Jesus, especially when he was beaten and bleeding, dying for us. That is where the real victory for Christians lies. We cannot expect our churches to grow or people to come to Christ if they cannot see the body of Christ living as He did. I hope to cover practical aspects of our Christian living as well as spiritual insights, for both are tightly woven together when lived in a Life Incarnadine.