This Intelligent Carelessness

Jack Miller:

Christ is for us in the gospel and freely justifies and adopts us as sons and gives us the Spirit of adoption.

But we must not stop here.

We must be for others with the same intensity that Christ was for us. We must get back our joy by having a holy disregard for personal safety. We reject the status of civilians and the mindset of the civilian. We are soldiers/sons of God.

Therefore we gladly renounce me-firstism, and then bend our ears to hear the voice of the ascended Commander-in-Chief.

The Son of God tells us that the kingdom always comes with overturning force, and requires a forceful response from us. He has declared war on the world and the devil. He aims to 'set the world on fire' and bring peace to the heart but war to the evil in ourselves and the world. For us this means that we must throw away our lives for Jesus as we take the gospel to the lost. This intelligent carelessness is our true security. Anything less is dangerous compromise. We who once were enemies have been justified by faith. We must not fall asleep in self-preoccupation and comfort zones. Instead, justification is meant to release us for the battle.

What is the battle?

To risk unpopularity by preaching the cross as a real cross on which a real Savior shed real blood for real sinners headed for a real hell.

The battle is giving up the pretence that we are all nice people.

The battle is to own nothing in order to own Christ.

--Jack Miller, 'Recovering the Grand Cause,' included as an appendix in The Heart of a Servant-Leader: Letters from Jack Miller (P&R, 2004), 311