The expression of Christian character is not good doing, but God-likeness. If the Spirit of God has transformed you within, you will exhibit divine characteristics in your life, not good human characteristics. God’s life in us expresses itself as God’s life, not as human life trying to be godly. The secret of a Christian is that the supernatural is made natural in him by the grace of God, and the experience of this works out in the practical details of life, not in times of communion with God.
~Oswald Chambers (1874-1917)
Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same way of thinking, for whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human passions but for the will of God.
~ 1 Peter 4:1-2
Beloved, it’s over. The old life we once had is done. Read it for yourself. This passage, Romans 6, Galatians 2, Colossians 3, 2 Corinthians 5 (just a few highlights here). You’re dead. That old dead flesh that tries to scream out in your head has suffered, been crucified and is just a dead voice calling from the grave.
Well, but where does that leave me now?
Alive in Him.
What?
Yeah, now in Him, you are perfect (read complete). Gorgeous. Powerful. Quietly confident. Enslaved only to good. Totally free from all the bad. And simply JACKED about what G_d is about to bring about in our lives.
G_d has hit the reset button on our lives. Him. Perfect Him, in His perfect ways, has fulfilled His perfect law and brought about His perfect righteousness by making us into a totally new creations that have an identity totally unlike before.
And it only gets better from there.
Everything He does in our lives now serves to actually upgrade us from the new and beautiful position into which He has placed us. Everything He does towards is is unceasingly magnificent.
Are we getting this? We are no longer occupied by our circumstances. We occupy them. In Christ, we overwhelm them. In Him, we are more than overcomers. Everything is working together for good, because we are one with One who is entirely good – and does not change.
This is very good news.
So, is that change in our circumstances really worth worrying about? Could this writer be so bold as to say: No, not even close. Rather, might we re-hit the reset button and see that the perfect will of a perfect G_d is playing out in our lives. That He is using whatever He is doing in our lives as an opportunity to upgrade us from perfect to magnificent in His Kingdom of righteousness, peace and joy in the power of His Spirit.
Thanks to Graham Cooke, and his series on “The Art of Thinking Brilliantly” for many of the key phrases used in this post.
