Still Paying the Old Rent

Every morning at about half past six, before anything else, he pays.

That is what it amounts to and he has never used the word. What it looks like from outside is a man being conscientious. What it is, on the inside, is a settling up with an authority that has not held a claim on him for eleven years.

It goes like this. He wakes and there is an account, and the account is presented immediately, and it is presented by a voice he has known since childhood: what he is, what he has always been, what he did in the years he is not going to discuss, and what all of that means about what he can expect from today.

He does not argue with it. That is the thing to understand about Efrén. Arguing would be undignified and pointless. He listens to it the way a man listens to a bill he owes, and then he gets up and starts the day already in debt, and he has done that every single morning for eleven years including the eleven years since he came to Christ.

He knows the theology. He could teach it. He has taught it, in a small group, to men younger than him, and he taught it well.

He is fifty-five and he lives in a good street with his family and he is respected, and he has never once, in eleven years, woken up in the kingdom he actually lives in.

If you are still answering to something, hear the question. Why are you reporting to the old address?

Two verbs, and both of them are transfers

Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son.Colossians 1:13

There are two actions and they are both completed and they are both God's.

Delivered us from the power of darkness. The word for power there is the word for authority, jurisdiction, the right to give orders. It is not primarily about strength; it is about who is entitled to be obeyed. And Efrén has been obeying a jurisdiction he was delivered out from under.

And hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son. Translated is a specific word. In that world it described what an empire did when it moved a whole population from one territory into another: a mass, legal, administrative transfer of people from one jurisdiction to another, with the paperwork done at the top.

So the picture is not a man who escaped. It is a man who was moved, by an authority, into a different territory, with everything recorded.

You were delivered and you were translated, and it is already both, and both of them were done by somebody with the authority to do them. I am not encouraging a man on a doorstep. It is written in Colossians 1:13, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes two verbs of transfer and lays them on somebody who pays every morning at half past six.

Why the old voice still has an address for him

And here is the thing that will help a man who knows the theology and cannot make it work at dawn.

Being moved does not automatically stop the old system from writing to you.

Anybody who has changed address knows this. The mail follows for years. Somebody in an office somewhere has your name against the old street, and letters keep arriving, and they look exactly as official as they ever did, and none of them are enforceable, because you do not live there.

Efrén's mornings are that mail. The voice is real, the letters keep coming, and the thing he has never done, in eleven years, is check the jurisdiction.

He has been paying because the letter arrived. He has never once asked whether the sender has standing.

You are receiving mail from an address that has no jurisdiction over you, and the transfer is already complete. Scripture says He has delivered us from the authority of darkness, and the Holy Spirit is the one who checks the standing of a letter that arrives at half past six.

What his mornings could be instead

And here is what changes, because a man like Efrén will want to know the practical shape and not just the doctrine.

At the moment, the first voice he hears every day is the accusation, and the day is built on top of that, which is why he is a conscientious man who is tired in a specific way that his family have noticed and cannot name.

The alternative is not to argue with the voice. He is right that arguing is pointless; you cannot debate a letter.

The alternative is to speak first. To say, before anything else, out loud, which kingdom he is in, because a man who states his jurisdiction has answered every letter that will arrive that day in one sentence, and does not have to answer them one at a time.

You are able to speak first, and the jurisdiction is already settled, and stating it answers everything that arrives. It is written that He has translated us into the kingdom of His dear Son, and the Holy Spirit is the one who puts the true address in a man's mouth before the mail comes.