Are You Really You?

Why do the ramifications of being born again startle us?  When a child is born into a family, it is a complete revelation to the home, a revolutionary break with the old structure and forms.  Each child, even when added to large families destroys absolutely the old family and restructures it into a new dynamic that permanently ruptures all of the relationships built before.  Abortion is the ultimate fear of the new beginning.  So to think that when one becomes a Christian we are to be the same old person with a religious overcoat thrown on top of us is ludicrous.  We mustn’t let the stored memories and genetic layering fool us into believing that we are the same when Christ comes to us and makes us new.  We are new and it is not temporary.  We play mental games with ourselves thinking the old behavior patterns that made up our days before will be able to continue into our newness.  The bitterest and saddest and most disappointed people in the world are those Christians who try to keep up the charade of living and doing as they did when there was no Holy Spirit a part of them.  The adultery and corrupt business practices and snobbish indifference to grudges bottled within are not just contemptible within the Christian community, they are a sign that the believer has failed to acknowledge just how new he or she is.  Perfect peace and sustained joy are given over to us when we live freely in Christ and not when we remain bound in the chains of our old way of being.  Dogs return to their vomit but Christians grow increasingly disgusted with the old patterns of sin.  We are born again that we might become perfect and holy…it does not go another way than that.  The sooner we accept our lovely fate, the speedier will come our peaceful happiness.  Dogs gnaw on bones, bears hunt for berries, otters dart about in the water, eagles build nests in the cliffs and each species holds true to itself as the years pass.  A Christian who thinks like a prostitute, dreams like a miser, whines like a selfish prig and is petulant like an unrestrained child is good for nothing.  All the sweetness and courage and steadfastness and contentment put in him by God is wasted by the believer who will not walk in the Spirit and live by the Scriptures.  You are made good by Christ that you might live good; to do otherwise is like dropping diamonds down the drain. 

He put a new song in my mouth…     Psalm 40:3 NIV

The Magic of the Spell

There is in our time a certain morbid fascination with death icons.  Perhaps it is due to the relative ease with which we can kill ourselves and others.  Satan whispers in our ear and we buckle in the knees, unwilling to take a stand against the lunacy of our age because we are beguiled.  Death and sin walk hand in hand and to love the imagery of one is to be wed to the other.  Sin ushered in death; it was not the other way around.  Sin is the enemy; death it's prostitute.  The sin of man so thoroughly disorients us that we can think there is something magical, mystical about death but every sane person despises death; is nauseated by it.  Rarely does the atheist welcome it; even those who seem oblivious to what lies behind it.  Death is the enemy in every way and we should hate it...but not because it is the object, it is rather the verb.  Sin is where all of the horror resides; where the terror springs forth.  We die because sin is there.  Without sin, death would never touch our lips.  We are wrong when we give death the idol's gaze; take your eyes off death and look at sin squarely.  That is the place where you must give all your attention and make the most of your time now in your hand.  Sin must be faced and hated with all the passion you once gave death.   The Son of Man did not come to raise us from the dead; otherwise He would have just gone about emptying graves.   He came to kill off sin and to do so, He had to die.  He never feared death; it was sin that broke His heart.  When Christ bore your sin to the tomb, He buried death with it.  He is the Resurrection and the Life because He wrecked sin in one final violent blow.  We live a righteous and Godly life not to please God but because we realize just how horribly despicable sin was for Jesus Christ and like the mother who stomps on the head of the viper that has just bitten her child, we in the righteousness of Christ's holy life crush the breath out of each sin we find lying at our feet.  Be done with sin.  Despise its poison.  Hate its smell.  Detest its look.  Make certain of the enemy.

The enemy boasted, 'I will pursue, I will overtake them.  I will divide the spoils; I will gorge myself on them.  I will draw my sword and my hand will destroy them.'   Exodus 15:9 NIV