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.