It’s Just Not Who We Are
By Linda Rex
In the past few years it has been brought to my mind over and over how our relationship with God is very much like that of an expectant mother, and our relationships with one another are very much like the cells in a human body. These are only analogies and they have their shortcomings and flaws, but they provide windows into the human soul and our human existence.
This morning I was reminded again how wonderful our bodies are. When something foreign enters our skin or enters our bodies, if we have a healthy immune system, the object or alien cell is immediately surrounded and attacked. The self-defense system within our human bodies is really amazing, but it has been known to even attack an unborn child if the antibodies are triggered by any antigens within the fetus. Obviously, this is not what antibodies were meant to do, but it can and does happen.
I pray God will help each of us to see ourselves as human beings held in the life and love of God, who upholds all things by the word of his power (Hebrews 1:3). And to see ourselves as sharers in Jesus Christ who has in his life, death, resurrection and ascension has made us participants in his very being, in his perfected humanity. For then we might begin to grasp—and I myself struggle to fully grasp this—sin and evil are alien to our true being. Any way of being which brings death instead of true life—the life Jesus brought us into—the life and love which exists in the Father, Son, Spirit relations—is foreign to our true humanity.
Maybe it’s time we begin to see our human proclivity to do what is evil and unhealthy from the point of view in which it is foreign to who we are. As the apostle Paul said, “if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me.” (Romans 7:20). That which is not you or me is what we find ourselves doing, even when we do not wish to do it. The desire to do what is life-giving and loving comes from God the Spirit, not our natural human flesh. When we are awakened to Christ in us, we find we want to do what creates harmony, joy, peace and communion, not division, destruction and death.
As humans, we have been joined with Christ in the hypostatic union of God and man which he took on as the Word of God in human flesh. Jesus Christ took our broken humanity with him through the process of forging out a sinless life, he hauled us with him onto the cross, and with him we died the death we deserve to die. In Christ, as he rose from the grave, our humanity has taken on a new form. We do not live anymore in our human brokenness because God in Christ by his Spirit is awakening us to a new way of being which he has created—Christ in us, the hope of glory.
This new way of being is who we really are—this is our true humanity. Persons living in union and communion with the Father, Son, and Spirit, and with one another, are who we were created to be. To live in opposition to the perfected humanity which is found in Christ is to live in opposition to who we really are. We are the beloved children of Abba, sharers in the perfect relationship which exists between the Father and the Son in the Spirit. We are created to reflect and to live in this way of being—where our personhood is bound up in these inner relations in God, and in loving relationship with one another.
So saying that, the elephant in the room is our proclivity to not live in the truth of who we are in Christ. In other words, there are a lot of things we think, say, and do which do not agree with who God has created us to be. We live with others and with God in ways which are self-centered, greedy, lustful and broken, and which bring death rather than life. We are created for life, not death. But we find so many ways to live in death and sometimes we even imagine these wrong ways of living bring about life.
We walk in darkness, not realizing the Light of God shines in us and through us. We even think following a bunch of rules, manmade or God-breathed, will give us life, forgetting that our real Life is found in a Person, Jesus Christ, and in our relationship with Abba through Jesus in the Spirit.
Our sinfulness is not our bad self, and our obedience to God and his ways is not our good self. We are not divided in two. We talk about bad people and good people, and I wonder whether we have ever considered exactly what it means to be a bad person or a good person. Exactly how much badness makes someone a bad person? And just how much goodness is needed to make someone good instead of bad?
What a revelation it can be when we realize we are all just a messy mixture of dark and light, of bad and good—we are all just very human. And as humans, made in the image of God, warts and all, we are, in Christ, God’s beloved and forgiven children. That’s who we are!
Evil and the evil one are constantly seeking to destroy this new body of Christ, as members in particular and as the corporate body. But the sins and sinful passions of our broken human flesh do not define us. Christ defines us. We are citizens of a new kingdom. And even though we don’t always live like we belong to the kingdom of light, we do indeed belong there.
We’ve been given the glorious clothing of the kingdom of light to wear, and we have the privilege of living moment by moment in a close, personal relationship with the King of the kingdom right now. We have a new humanity we are able to fully participate in because the old is rapidly passing away—in fact, in Christ it is already gone.
Maybe it’s time to quit listening to the lies and sitting in the dark, and awaken to the reality we are already a part of a kingdom of light which has been in the works since before the beginning of time—an absolutely amazing kingdom in which righteousness dwells. Maybe it’s time to embrace our true humanity.
Lord Jesus, thank you for including us in your life with the Father by the Spirit. Thank you, Father, for drawing us up into the life and love between you and your Son in the Spirit. Enable us to turn a deaf ear to evil and the evil one, and to never again fear death, knowing we are hidden with Christ in you, God. Amen.
“On the other hand, I am writing a new commandment to you, which is true in Him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true Light is already shining.” 1 John 2:8 NASB
“For this is the message which you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another;…” 1 John 3:11 NASB
Our Life in the Trinity 