The glory of God is a human being fully alive.
— St. Irenaeus of Lyon
A popular paradoxical promise of Jesus was that finders will be losers while those who lose their lives for His sake will find it (Matthew 16:25) The promise contains truth that can only be experienced. Loss is how we surrender our lives to God.
Committing to becoming fully human is saving our life now. Becoming fully human is a conscious choice that not everyone makes. There is more than one way to do this, but as Christians, we do it by imitating Christ.
Studying the teachings of Jesus, we gather that God would much rather be in a relationship with us than us merely being righteous on our own.
In the Bible, we see God using the wounded lives of very ordinary people. God’s revelations are always concrete and specific. Revelation is not something we measure, but something or Someone we meet!
The spiritual path is through becoming fully human beings. Jesus preached and modeled this by revealing God in the ordinary. The principle of the Incarnation proclaims that matter and spirit have never been separate. Jesus came to tell us that these seemingly different worlds are and always have been one.
The imitation of Christ is the fulfillment of His incarnation in our life. A personal relationship with Him is a relationship with our Triune God. The abundant life, then, is in being fully human.
John 17:21 “I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one—as you are in me, Father, and I am in you. And MAY THEY BE IN US so that the world will believe you sent me.”
