God doesn’t transform us through fear. He transforms us through favor. He doesn’t change us by threatening us; instead, he changes us by luring us with “the more” of Jesus. You and I in Christ are coheirs with Jesus, and therefore all that he is and all that he has is ours because of our union with Him.
Because of the Cross, we get to participate in the life that Jesus lives and the favor He lives under, and it is that union and that favor that the Holy Spirit tempts us with that separates us from compromise. All the treasures of Christ have been deposited in our lives, and it is the temptation to possess more of our possessions that awakens our hunger to be more Christlike. The more Christlike we become, the more of Christ’s treasures we get to experience and manifest. Therefore it is not the threat of withdrawal that God uses to lure us further up and further in; it is the temptation to apprehend experientially all that has been deposited in us that drives us forward.
I don’t want to spend my life just talking about the fullness of Christ and all the experienced riches and all the glorious riches that are available in Him. I want to experience it all and then talk about what I have enjoyed and “the more” that is yet to be realized. THERE IS MORE!
God doesn’t call us out to humiliate and reject us when we fail. He calls us forth to fully manifest the new creation that we are in Christ. This is His way. Jesus, and the lure of Jesus, is the way.