If you can understand the concept of half-intentional sins, then it’s a lot easier to explain something else.
Surrendering your life to Christ (AKA “getting saved”) obligates you to the Covenant of Christ, but it does not automatically deliver all the privileges of the Covenant. You must stand where God has placed those privileges in your life. You must claim the territory and occupy it for His glory.
This not “works salvation”; it’s obedience. It’s not a question of performance, but of loyalty and submission. God is reading your heart, not your body. If your allegiance is His, He will know, and He will interact with you accordingly. But this does not oblige Him to pour out all His blessings on your individual life.
What if your religious leaders fail to teach you about the Covenant? You still lose. It will be held more against them than against you, but you still miss out on opportunities. You will fail to stake your claim on the territory God granted you as His vassal. You will fail to subdue and occupy it for His glory. Part of your life will still belong to the Devil, who will use everything he can get.
You will make mistakes and invest yourself into things that don’t glorify the Lord, but build the Kingdom of Darkness. It will hurt and make a big mess of your life. It’s not a question of individual guilt, but of missed opportunities.
Because your are misguided, you will not be fully aware of His divine calling for you. That’s the other half of the problem most Christians suffer. They have no standing to seek God’s face for a clarification of convictions; they are not fully engaged in the Covenant. They are not standing on Holy Ground.
You see, all those blessings mentioned in Scripture belong to the Covenant itself, not to us as individuals. This is a major mistake we make in western thinking. This is something Charismatics in particular typically get wrong. The Covenant owns you; you do not own it. Christ decides who gets what assigned role in His Kingdom, and you will be offered a particular selection of powers and authorities commensurate with your assignment.
If you aren’t faithful to the Covenant and all your assigned obligations, you will not be fully vested in your role. Again, you will make a lot of mistakes and become too deeply entangled in things of this world. And it will come back to bite you in the ass.
As with the teaching in Leviticus, once you realize your mistake, you can still find forgiveness and come into the Presence of the Lord. But you may also have to deal with certain consequences of your bad choices. It’s not a question of personal guilt; that’s a false concept from western thinking. God doesn’t hate you, isn’t angry with you. He is nothing like American justice. It’s a question of missed opportunities.
You can marry the wrong person, or maybe the right person under bad spiritual terms. You can have children who turn out to be hellions, or maybe you’ll get lucky. It’s pretty random without the Covenant. Within the Covenant, you will know what God asks you to face, what challenges He wants you to endure for His name. You might be another Hosea who is supposed to marry a Gomer. You might be another David with incredible talent and some flaws. You might be another Enoch who walks with God and never actually dies.
We know that Saul missed his calling. Who can say how many more in Israel failed their calling? How many times over the centuries have God’s Elect played the fool, and blew away their rich divine heritage? The question now is not you might have missed, but what is still left for you in Christ’s hands.
(This is your weekly Bible lesson delivered a little early.)
