What does it mean that we have died and our life is now hidden in Christ?
"For you have died,
and your life is hidden
with Christ in God.
(Colossians 3:3)
How would you live now as a person dead in some way that wasn't physical, but alive in Christ? If Jesus took over and began living your life for you, as if He took your body and used it as His own to start living your life, what would happen?
“But the fruit of the Spirit is
love,
joy,
peace,
patience,
kindness,
goodness,
faith,
gentleness,
self-control.
Against such things there is no law.”
Galatians 5:22-23
Funny being young and beautiful is not on the list. Why??
Or what about intelligence?
Perfection?
Success?
You can lack perfection but still have joy...
or you can lack intelligence yet emanate love...
You can fail at something and maintain gentleness...
You can even be ugly and have self control...
You can grow old and have increasing amounts of kindness...
The list matters because it makes what is listed matter, and it makes everything else basically not matter. It doesn't matter if you're young or old, if you fail or succeed, if your beautiful or ugly, if you're smart or dumb, if you're perfect or extremely flawed. The list reminds us what matters.
What does it mean to matter?
It means to have a whole life. To be in Christ. To drink and eat of God's will daily.
It must mean that you are approved. You are a Yes in God's eyes. Like Jesus. He was a yes in God's eyes.
The trouble is I lack deeply in many of them. I lack especially in patience, faith, and self-control. I think I've got the other ones down to a decent degree, but I'm probably overestimating and I'll find out when it's tested in the fires of suffering. But at the moment, the three I listed are definitely lacking.
The trouble with lacking is ....if I lack some or even one, though I lack all in terms of the whole of it, am I in Christ?
Yes, of course you might be wanting to chime in, but I know that too. I know my "fruits" are contingent on the fruit Christ first gave me. I have love because I was given love by Him, I have joy because I was given joy from Him, I have peace and patience and gentleness because He gave those to me first.
I know this.
What I mean is what am I actually doing?
I have these fruits or I seem to lack some fruits that indicate the Spirit's work in me, but what's happening when I see a lack?
Did Christ suddenly cut off His supply to me?
I'm cold.
It feels that way. If feels like God looks at me with tired and fed up eyes and sternly takes away my one mina and gives it to the guy with 10, and then I'm the idiot that He hates.
That's actually not what it feels like, haha.
It's more like this:
I'll have moments in intervals where my chest will feel so tight and my heart so heavy, and I just want to burst out in tears. And then like the tides that sweep back into the ocean the feeling is gone in an instant only to return in the next moment. I don't know why I'm crying or why I want to cry at the beginning of these tides. Then it hits me, and I realize I want to cry because I'm so broken. I'm a failure, I'm flawed in so many ways, I'm getting older and seemingly uglier as a result, my intellect is not up to par, and the weight of my worries are crushing me--smashing my fragile heart to pieces. This is one of the reasons for why I want to cry. But at the very same moment I find that the next tide is different. The next tide is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, goodness, and self-control approaching me in the form of His presence. The very Spirit of God walks into the mess of my tears and like Peter I want to say, "Go away from me, because I'm a sinful man, Lord!" (Luke 5:8)
Now I'm crying (or badly wanting to cry) because He wraps His perfection around me! I'm crying because I'm allowed to be broken and smushed, and He scoops me up ...this moment brings me to even more tears! So I'm crying because I'm broke, and I'm crying because I'm in awe of Him. I want to burst into tears because I'm failing and falling, and then I'm on the verge of sobs because He loves me. It's rather strange.
So what then?
What happens after that, right?
Let me see...
It is like Stillness, a peace that surpasses my ability to give reasons for, and a quietness in my soul.
It's not some resolve or answer that clicks in my mind, but it's just everything becomes right just as it should be, all is well and I am usually just as broken as before, but...it's as if I must be.
I get to be...? What I don't mean is that sinning is by any means a good thing, but that my being a sinner, or my recognition of being a sinner puts me in a position of simultaneously recognizing the work Christ finsihed for sinners. My sin correlates with His love for me, and perhaps before sin entered the world Adam knew God's love in a different way, but now we know it in part by the sin that kills us. The very thing we cannot escape is the exact item that is kissed and touched by God who takes it away and leaves us in awe. We might've tried hard to let go of our sins somehow by our efforts or by discipline, but God says we give them to Him to kiss and hold in that grace-full way that transforms and actually makes the sin go away.
I am a sinner, and I get to be so in order to not be so, not in hopes of not being so, or in efforts of trying not to be so, because He died to save sinners not the perfect or intellectual or beautiful or successful, but sinners. I get to be a sinner by grace, not one by law. I'm chosen to be deeply flawed so His power is made evident in my mistakes. All my sin reaches the body of Christ and is buried in His death and in return I am given the life of Christ in me, the Spirit of God. Just. Like. That. No fancy formula or initiation or test to pass....just Jesus.
Why not can I just be perfect? Holy? Beautiful and the smartest?
Why can't I be a god?
Because,
"Listen, Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is One." (Deuteronomy 6:4)
We get to be united to Him, not by being a god, but by Jesus who extends His love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, goodness and self-control to us by grace--unmerited favor. We are extensions of Christ, and now His life is in us.
It's like this: imagine or pretend that you were Jesus. How would you think about God? What would you start to see that would be different about you? Particularly, what would that mean about how God viewed you? How would you understand and experience God's love toward you if you were Jesus?
Because it's not pretend. That's precisely what it means to believe in Jesus. To remain in Jesus, and then to bear much fruit because of being in Him.
“I am the vine; you are the branches.
The one who remains in Me
and I in him produces much fruit,
because you can do nothing without Me.”
John 15:5
So fruit is not our work, it's our being.
Jmegrey
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