Only the Son of Man
Only the Son of Man could take a leper like me and let him stand. I still think back to three years ago when I came to know Christ as my Savior and Forgiver, one of the passages that had a huge impact on my conversion was John chapter 5: 1-10:
John 5: 1-10…Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for a feast of the Jews. 2Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. 3Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. 5One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. 6When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?”
7″Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.”
8Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” 9At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked. 10The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, and so the Jews said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.”
I remember the night God allowed me to make the connection between the passage above and my spiritual paralysis. I still remember clearly God saying “Ron, you have been a spiritual invalid for 35 years…just cross that line and accept my gift, pick up your mat and walk”. Wow, it still brings emotion to me when I stop and think about it.
Only the Son of Man could offer such saving grace. I remember how lost, insecure, depressed I felt and just how full of darkness I really was. I played the role in front of other Christians like I had it together or that I had a relationship with the Living God, but deep inside I knew something was not right.
1 John 2: 3-6 says… 3We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands. 4The man who says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him. 5But if anyone obeys his word, God’s love is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we are in him: 6Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.
I wasn’t walking as Jesus did, or at least when other Christians were around. Likewise, I did not even know what His commands were to be able to obey them. How could I have fooled myself for so long thinking I had a relationship with God when I did not even know His word or His commands? Even in a logical sense, that is like someone saying I am San Diego Chargers football player…and you don’t know the plays, you don’t go to the games, you don’t even associate with the real players. But somehow, I and I am sure others, have taken that same analogy and made it believable in a spiritual relationship. God is clear that His children will know Him and He will know us.
John 10:14-15 says… 14″I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me— 15just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep.
I urge you that if you have that deep down feeling something isn’t right or that you do not know his commands or that you don’t know Him, that maybe you take a hard look at what analogy you are telling yourself and find out if it is accurate or not. I fooled myself for way too long, don’t let Satan do the same to you any longer.
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