I don’t think so. 
I think He is busy trying to kill off our efforts.
I think our efforts at making God our own are misguided at best and very damaging at worst.
We are His own. He makes believers out of us. The person who believes he is still in charge needs to be killed off. That’s what God does in Baptism. That’s what God does in His Supper and in His preached Word.
But since we are inveterate non-believers, we find it hard to give up the religious projects that makes little gods of ourselves. And we continue to sin. So we don’t abandon, or forget our Baptisms, but rather we return to Baptism, “daily” as Luther said. Baptism moves through life with us. It carries us.
You may not like it, but our God really is…God. He is in charge. He creates, and gives life where there was none.
Baptism is a gift of God. He kills off the old sinner in us and clothes us in Christ. St. Paul said that “all of us who were baptized have put on Christ.” That doesn’t sound like a mere ‘symbol’ of something to me.
One would think that would be Good News for people.(It is)
But many just can’t give up their “free will”.
“Free will” is not the solution…it is the problem.
God’s will, in His Word (and that includes the Sacraments of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion which are visable Word) IS the solution.
Ironically, rejecting the real presence of God in Baptism, or Holy Communion, doesn’t make one less religious in that self-centered way… but more so! Now the whole project revolves around you, and what you say, feel, think, or do!
I guess that’s it for now.
Thank you. Have a nice day.
PS- In trusting in our Baptisms, we can concentrate on what God has done, is doing, and will yet do for us…and we can take the onus off of ourselves. And we are free to concentrate on our neighbors. That’s where our “free will” can do some good, if we aren’t so obsessed with staring at our navels and cultivating our own holiness.
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Filed under: Baptism, Free will, Sacraments | 13 Comments »
The Old Adam Lives! 