It is amazing to me how often the Bible repeats itself. Kings and Chronicles are two perspectives on the same stories, the crucifixion shows up in four books of the Bible, and the 10 Commandments show up in two places. It seems as though we human beings need a constant reminder of some things. One of the things we need constant reminder of is our identity.
Most of our learned identity is through two words: "Good" and "Bad." No matter what the identity is, you can be "good" or "bad" at it. I'm a good student, a bad auto mechanic, a pretty good kayaker, a pretty bad basketball player. We can be good citizens, bad consumers, I think we all get the point. Our identity is wrapped up in good and bad. That includes Christian. We think of ourselves as good Christians and bad Christians, and develop a set of criteria to judge whether or not we (or others) are good Christians or not.
Take a moment and do a Bible search for the phrase "Good Christian." Don't worry, I'll wait. If you want to speed up the process, just click this link for the results of a Bible Gateway search for "Good Christian."
Fascinating, eh? Something we worry about so much is not at all on the Bible's radar. In fact, when Jesus is called "good," His response is that only God is good (Mark 10:18). So why are we so fired up about good and bad?
God has other words to describe us: "God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved" (Colossians 3:12), "A chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God" (1 Peter 2:9), and others fit into a similar vein. Take this opportunity to reread 2 Chronicles 6. Over and over again, Solomon refers to Israel as "Your people;" that is, God's people. You are God's. You are not defined by your actions, you are defined by God. So when we get honest and declare before God the comfortable and uncomfortable truth, we are not forgiven because of how sorry we feel or how earnestly we want to "do better." We are forgiven because we are God's. And in that, I rest today.
Would've been good to read this as we were talking about the "Slough of Despond" from "The Pilgrim's Progress on Sunday. John Newton probably had this in mind when he wrote "Amazing Grace" and I need to remind myself of this more often... We are indeed His, never to be abandoned... couldn't be any sweeter than that... ( :
ReplyDeleteAgreed. Finding our identity in God is a radically counter-cultural concept and really hard to live into. Good thing there's a Holy Spirit within us.
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