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“But now having been set free from sin and having become slaves of God,
you have your fruit to holiness, and the end, everlasting life.”
Romans 6:22
Father Matta El-Meskeen (Matthew the Poor)
BEFORE THE COMING OF THE SON OF GOD and His incarnation man was a slave to sin and the fruit of sin is death. But with the coming of God’s son and the fulfillment of redemption on the cross He freed us from sin and its bondage. We consequently became free from sin and slaves of God who saved us from sin and death.
As slaves to God, actually sons of God, God became for us the source of inspiration of every good work. Every good work therefore presented us to God who accepts them and sanctifies them because they acquire their holiness from the nature of God as they are fulfilled through Him and for Him. He is thus the owner of our works and their sanctifier. The conclusion to nearness to God and offering Him suitable worship is to finally attain the right to enter everlasting life, meaning to live with God and be members of His beloved household with the saints since the beginning.
Instead of bondage to sin we became slaves of God, and instead of suffering in this world we are invited to the Kingdom of God to live with Him our everlasting lives.
In sake of such a joyful destiny God planned for us since the beginning a new spiritual creation i.e. to move us from the creation of dust to enter a new spiritual creation that would qualify us in the end to enter the Kingdom of God to live with Him, in Jesus Christ His Son, an everlasting life.
This is the New Testament that Christ inaugurated for man through the shed of His blood on the cross, in atonement for our sins, outpouring on us His righteousness and the abundance of His grace so as to begin God’s New Testament through the anointment of blood and the action of the Holy Spirit. We can thus present ourselves before God a new creation in righteousness and the holiness of truth to acquire adoption through Jesus Christ, who gave us His filial relation to God and the righteousness He received from God. He gave us His glory, Christ Himself having said: “And the glory which You gave Me I have given them”1. Christ at the end of the Gospel of John, intercedes for us before His Father, asking Him to give us the love God had for Him: “that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them”2.
3 John 17:22, 23.
The new man thus became qualified to offer God the new fruit of the work of grace and of the Holy Spirit, the fruit of holiness, and the fruit of the righteousness of God He had outpoured on him. Therefore the new creation of man shares with God in His holiness and righteousness due to the mediation of Christ who presented us to God with our sins forgiven without cost clad in the righteousness of Christ.
Christ’s words, beyond our understanding, was thus fulfilled when He addressed His Father saying: “And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one. I in them and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.”3
The creation of man was thus moved from its old position on earth having been qualified by Christ to share His glory, living in Him and Him living in them to become a new heavenly creation, whose homeland is God, becoming members of His household at the Head of which is Christ, may He be glorified.
Prayer
To You Son of God I go forward sure of the effect of Your blood.
Make me qualified through Your intercession instead of my weakness so that I may inherit the gift of life in You.
I was weak and enfeebled, Pour on me Your strength.
I long to serve Your brothers, the poor, so qualify me for Your service.
I do not own anything of this world, because I own Your love which suffices me.
Your love is double: Your love for Your Father, and Your love for Your poor. Give me both of Your loves.
8 July, 2005
1 John 17:22.
2 John 17:26.
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