Romans 14:8–No Matter What: We Belong to Him!

Romans 14:8: "For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord.  So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's."

I find this verse incredibly profound as it remains wholly comforting.  It must be stated upfront, though, that while this is a true statement it is a statement solely for those of us who belong Christ.  Part of the nature of God's relationship with mankind is that He has given human beings a choice.  There are two possibilities: either we will belong to Christ in faith and obedience or we will claim ownership of ourselves.  Now while the latter possibility may seem like a positive thing, it is merely a facade, a dire and eternal facade.

The reality, however, is that the same God who created the vastness of the universe by the power of His Word also created every person by that same modem.  It is then inescapable that we belong, ultimately, to God.  When we refuse to accept that truth and we live our lives in foolhardy reprobation and utter disregard for who we are in Christ, then it is no wonder that God is just to 'leave us to our own devices.'  In a sense, it would be unjust of Him to bring us into His presence kicking and screaming!

Therefore, it is a great and lovely joy to be reckoned as a child of God and to be counted as His.  Let us take joy in this reality: that by the blood of the lamb, who is Christ Jesus, we have been permitted to enter into the holy Kingdom of God.

Amen!

Eph. 2:10–We Are His Workmanship

Ephesians 2:10: "For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them."

Identity and purpose are two of the most significant journeys that humans embark upon in their lives.  And there is a veritable deluge of possibilities vying to be the source and vision that we would adhere to, that which might define our identity and our purpose.  But this verse, along with many other verses is a solid and sobering reminder that our identity is and will always be found in God and in God alone.  The precursor to this verse is the famous: "For by grace you have been saved through faith and this is not of your own doing so that no man may boast."  But this statement about workmanship speaks primarily into identity.

I want this to be clear and unequivocal: there is no source of identity and purpose to be found anywhere but in Christ.  Image bearing is our identity and our purpose.  We should not ever forget this simple but profound truth.  It is who we are and it is what who are to be.  Let us keep this before us.

An Identity Crisis

Who do you think you are?

This is the question that was raised by the pastor to the church on Sunday morning.  It is a question that, at its core, is a matter of identity.  In this world, there are many identifiers.  I could say that I am a man, a husband, a son, a brother, a friend, a guitar player, a writer, a college graduate, and a whole host of others.  But while each of these may be true, none of them fully encompasses the core of who I am.

I, as with all things that have ever been created, derive my being from God.  He created me, He gave me my being.  More than that, He made me in His very image, created to reflect His being.  This is the very depth of who I am; there is no escaping it.

But there's more: I am saved.  By the death and resurrection of Christ, I have been transformed from a sinner into a saint.  By His grace I am no longer trapped in the mire of sin, but I have been saved.  So in the end it is who I am: a child of God.

This is the answer to the question of who I am.

Living by Faith in terms of Sweat Pants

Notwithstanding the fear of exposing my vanity I must confess that I have far-too many clothes.  It is more than a single dresser may hold and it bloats my closet, ties and slacks bursting through the doors.  Yet with all the variety that such a wardrobe affords, I still find myself wearing a relatively small rotation of garb.

Actually, I were to be completely honest, apart from socks and underwear, I could probably get by with little more than a couple of outfits.  To my discredit, there is one pair of pajamas, the grey ones, that I could wear nearly everyday.  Their comfort seems to call to me from the pile as soon as I walk through the door.  I find that I nearly always heed to its wooing and by the end of the night I am invariably wearing my grubby grey sweat pants.

But isn't life so like this, more specifically, isn't Christian virtue so like this.  We have all sorts of options to choose from: vanity, pride, humility, and charity, et al.  But we, more often than not, put on the same-old habits, those tired character traits and personality flaws that we've lived with for however long.  We hear the voices of vice court us and we fall prey to our own inhibitions and habitual deficiencies.

But there is another way.  Christ has made another way.  He has told us to shed ourselves of such rubbish as vice and to live new, reborn lives in Him, in His name, and by His strength.  It would seem not enough to say that we are called to live a 'life lived by faith.'  But this is just it.  It is as if every time I hear the voice of my sweat pants I wear to listen to the other voice reminding me that they were dirty and that there were another pair of sweat pants, clean and new, untarnished or soiled from my previous misadventures and escapades.

This is what being a fully-devoted follower of Christ is all about.  It is not merely theological affirmations or ascending to rites and rituals; no.  It is a full-on identity change.  Let us then choose to claim that identity change so that when the dirty laundry of our past days tries to infiltrate our sanctification we would be able bodied to choose the better way in Christ.

New Year: New Creation

Paul writes this: "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.  The old has passed away; behold, the new has come." (2 Cor 5:17).

2013 is here.  At this transitional time, people around the world look back at the past with a critical eye.  We all want to make this year progressively better than the last.  We want to lose weight while earning more cash, and be, generally, greater than this year compared to years past.  But, beyond that, all of want this year to be at the very least a good year.

For this, I want to make a proposal to Christians to claim our identity in Christ, to stop dwelling on who we were apart from Jesus and live as we are in Him.  Claiming this identity is key.  It means that we will no longer think of ourselves, but we will earnestly set our sights on discovering who we are in Christ Jesus.

"The old has passed away; behold, the new has come."  Christians run the risk of forgetting this basic fundamental reality.  We are creations in Christ.  Our task now is to discover who we are, not in ourselves or based on what we have been, but in Christ.  This requires a good deal of personal flexibility and a certain level of selflessness.  For God wishes to surprise us by challenging our preconceptions of ourselves.

Who we think we are is nothing compared to who we actually are in Christ.  This year my prayer is to continually be impressed by God's imprint upon my life as a new creation to Him.  To be sure, this is not a passive process but is an active endeavor; a pursuit of devotion as God reveals who we are as new creations in Christ.  With this as our focus, 2013 will be a great year.

The Quest for Identity

We live in a world that values self-made identity.  The virtues of paving one's own way are heralded as the supreme exalted purpose of humanity.  At the core of this ideology is a deep vacuous longing in every human for identity, and an even deeper truth that compels us to create one: we each know, at the core of our beings, that there is some sense inside of us that our "true" identity is in some way broken or damaged in need of mending.

The world tells us that sees who we are as a blank slate, an empty page that is waiting for us to write upon it whatever we may desire or wish.  Again, the impetus for this thought stems from the basic truth that all humans recognize that our identity is some way damaged.  Unfortunately, how the world and the natural man deals with this discrepancy avoids the issue at hand, ignoring the original cause of the problem of distorted ideas of identity: sin.

In the Garden of Eden, before the Fall of humanity, Adam and Eve received all of their identity in God.  All that they had, all that they did, all that they were was given them by God.  Their very identity, who they were was found in God.  God created them and interpreted them too.  This is to say that God defined their identity just as much as He created them.

All this being true, the Fall so pervasively marred humanity that their identity, which was ultimately and truly found in Christ, was also marred.  And, as every human was in Adam, every human's identity is damaged and in dire need of repair.

Fortunately, God has provided us grace in His Son.  Now, through faith in Jesus, our original and true identity is repaired, regenerated, and reborn in Christ.  Therefore, the search for identity must begin not with an intense introspection but with worship and faith in the Lord.  For only in seeing the Holy Lord can we truly see ourselves as we actually are.  This is the true essence of true identity.  And any attempt to establish identity apart from God will ultimately be found to be insufficient for it is based on an insufficient finite instead of an all-sufficient Infinite.

The Self-Existent God

One a normal, sunny Saturday afternoon, a father is driving the car to do some errands, his toddler-aged son sitting in the passenger seat next to him.  Weeks ago the toddler got a new baby sister that mommy is at home caring for, giving the boy some much-needed daddy-time.  Bouncing in his seat, fiddling with the door lock and the window, it's clear that he's excited at the prospect of spending some alone time with his father away from her.


After some more fidgeting and squirming, the boy rights himself and, with an innocent look to his father, aks, "Daddy where do babies come from?"  The father, not totally shocked by the question, actually expecting it, surprised that it hadn't come sooner, answers the toddler, "Well, son, it came out of mommies tummy.  Daddy and Mommy put it there."  The boy, not missing a beat, shoots back, "Where did you get it?"

Although the father had anticipated the first question, the second had catches him off-guard, and he stutters for a response, still stammering as his son unloads his clip of machine-gun questions, "But where did you come from? Did Grammy and Gran Gran put you in Grammy's belly too?  But where did it all start?  Who put the first baby in the mommy's belly?!"  The boy's agitated but sincere inquiry causes the father to quiet in contemplation at the profundity of his toddler's honest but challenging questions.

The determined, dependent, and created nature of humanity is one of those great and difficult realities of life.  Man, for ages, has had to face his own nature which is ever-contingent upon others for being and identity.  Think for a moment of the toddler's questioning: every human is born to parents who were born to parents who were born to other parents on and on till before time, each living in a different scenario, in a different culture, in a different time.  All in all, humans must recognize that we do not exist in and of ourselves.  The postmodern ideal of autonomy simply does not cohere to reality.

In fact, only God is self existent.  The only self-existent being is "I AM," the One who was, and is, and is to come (Ex. 3:14; Rev. 1:8), by whom all of creation exists as a result of His hand of creation and sustaining, done so in and by His Son (John 1:3, 10; Psa. 33:6; 1 Cor. 8:6; Col. 1:16).  In truth, this is the fundamental truth of all existence, put forth by the first words of the Bible, "In the beginning God...(Gen. 1:1)."

Recognition of God as who He is should compel us in so many practical ways, not the least of all being our identity.  Because God is the Creator of the whole universe, including each one of us, and His identity is not derived from anything but Himself, He is the One from whom we receive our true identity.  This means both repentance and humility but also the highest of sincere devotions, meaning that we will come to God to receive our true self, from the One who is truth.

Therefore, when answering the toddler's questions, we will be clear and concise that the beginning and end of all things is, unequivocally, God.  Let us then, when pressed with our own limited, finite, dependent nature, draw close to the Holy Lord Almighty through faith in His Son, Christ Jesus!