The rubber hits the road

Ok then; you’re walking down the road and you pass a church. There’s a big notice board outside with a brightly coloured poster with the following message….

NEXT WEEK’S MESSAGE: HOW THEN SHOULD WE LIVE? – DON’T MISS IT

What’s your reaction?

• “I wouldn’t miss that for the world; that’s going in my diary now”
• “I know exactly what that’s going to be about….things we ought to do, or ought not to do from now on; how to behave”
• “I think I’ll give that a miss, thank you very much”

What if the notice board advert also promised “This message will change your life”. You might be a little bit cynical. A message that will “change your life” has been the stock-in-trade in Christian circles for years. But, the one thing that will change your life though is The Truth – but there are conditions. 1) Believe it and 2) Apply it.

So, what follows in this blog is about “How we should live” but it is not going to be a list of things we ought to stop doing, or things we ought to start doing. It could change your life, but for it to do that you would have to believe it and apply it. It may sound too good to be true, but actually, because it comes from the heart of God, it is both good and true. Exactly as He is Good and True. Here’s the deal:-

• God has gone to amazing lengths to provide Salvation for us
• This salvation is so great (Hebrews 2 v 3) that every aspect of it is perfect.
• It covers everything, deals with everything and it leaves nothing out
• We are forgiven for all our sins; past present and future
• The power of Sin itself over our lives is broken (see last weeks blog Gospel = Good News = Freedom)
• He has made us “holy in His sight, without blemish and free from accusation……(Colossians 1 v 22)….For some of us this is a difficult concept because we know we still do things wrong sometimes. Imagine a brand new computer. Free from fault or blemish. It works perfectly. You watch some dodgy stuff on it. The computer is still perfect. Best thing to do? Stop watching and erase any bad files. The computer remains perfect all the time. That’s how it is with us.
• So I’ll say it again, we are holy in His sight, without blemish and free from accusation
• He has completely severed the link with our old lives
• He had to kill us to do it – you died, the old you was put to death on the Cross.
• The old you is dead and no longer lives. You are born again. A new person
• The Holy Spirit lives in you. You are wall-to-wall Holy Spirit.
• Things are just a tad different now!

Obviously we need to think differently about ourselves. Sadly two things are often said to us that make it hard to think any differently about ourselves. First up is: ‘We are just sinners saved by Grace’ Well that’s a lie. We used to be sinners (that’s what we gave ourselves to) but now we have been saved – no longer sinners but holy and blameless. Second up is: “The heart (of man) is deceitful above all things” Jeremiah 17 v 9. One translation has it as ‘desperately wicked’. This does not apply to us who are saved. This is a description of men and women before the Cross. This is old covenant, not new. Don’t let anyone use that on you.

So, here’s where the rubber meets the road. As we think about ourselves our focus needs to be on how we are different because of the Cross. It’s time to be permanently focussed on the fact that He has made us righteous. He has made us this way. He is not pretending that we are different. We are radically different. We are righteous, blameless, clean, holy…..like the new computer.

No longer should we be grovelling around thinking of ourselves as ‘sinners’ ‘unworthy’ ‘bound to fail’ ‘tolerated by God’ etc. Just like the computer, occasional misuse does not mean the computer has failed/is faulty. We my give in to temptations and sin, but that is no longer our norm. So, spending our time avoiding sins is not our norm. Our norm is spending our time living in the righteousness that has been made ours.

Our focus is on pursuing who God has made us, not on avoiding who we used to be. If our life’s focus is on avoiding sins, then we may be successful in that but all our effort will have produced sterility.

If our life’s focus is on enjoying the freedom God has given us, and going on an adventure with him, sins will not be much of an issue anyway – we’ll have found something far more interesting and we will be fruitful as well. This then is the answer to the question “How then should we live?”

It seems to me that we can live one of two lives. The first is one where we are grateful for our salvation but don’t understand what that means so we spend our time focussed on avoiding sin in a big effort to please God, all the while feeling guilty because we might not be doing enough.

Alternatively, the life we could be living is the life that Jesus paid the ultimate cost for so that we could enjoy. It’s a life where we know what He has done for us, our focus is on who we are now, no longer on who we were.

It’s time to leave the sin-focus behind. It’s time to fall in love with Jesus all over again. It’s time to follow the adventure He has for all of us. We are worthy, we are called, we are acceptable, we are without blemish, we are wanted. So it’s time to hold our heads up high. It’s time to ignore the lies and half truths of the enemy. It’s time to stand up, no longer beaten and cowed. It’s time to enjoy our life with Jesus. He certainly meant us to.