By Jason, E.Ed., M.A.R., Headmaster
"Since you have been raised to new life with Christ, set your sights on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits at God's right hand in the place of honor and power. Let heaven fill your thoughts. Do not think only about things down here on earth. For you died when Christ died, and your real life is hidden with Christ in God. And when Christ, who is your real life, is revealed to the whole world, you will share in all his glory."(Colossians 3:1-4, NLT)
So, now what? Have you ever thought that? Here I am, now what do I do? I thought that the first time I learned how to swim. I got my bathing suit on and I stood in the shallow end of the pool, and I thought, Now what? I was dressed for swimming and I was in the right place for swimming. I felt like I wanted to swim, but I really didn’t know what the next thing to do was.
That feeling came back to me when I moved away to college years later. My dad and I unpacked all of my stuff and I set my room up just the way I wanted it. My dad said good-bye and left for home. Now what? Here I was, 300 miles from home, sitting in a college dorm room and wondering what I was supposed to do first as a college student.
When I was in the pool and in my dorm room, what I was supposed to do was based on who I was. When I was five years old, I was a little swimmer, so I needed to know how to swim. When I was 17 years old, I was a college student, and I needed to do college student stuff—get to know people, explore the campus, go to class. In the same way, what you do as a Christian depends on who you are, and that, of course, goes back to Jesus again.
The Bible tells us that our real life is hidden with Christ. Actually, the Bible tells us a little more—it says that when Jesus died on the cross, we actually died with Him. In some way, we hung on that cross with Jesus, because Jesus was hanging there for us. Now that may not sound like much fun, but the Bible also tells us that when Jesus rose from the dead, we were there, too.
We were united with Christ in His death and in His resurrection from the dead. Now, don’t ask me what that means exactly—that could take all day. One thing it means is that in some way we died and in some way we were made alive again. The Bible tells us a little more than that, too. It says that we died to sin and that we were made alive again to God.
As long as we were sinful and rebelling against God, we could not have a place in God’s family. But once God forgave our sins and brought us into His family, we left behind out old identity—being in sin—and we got a new name, Christian, to tell us that now we are in Christ and not in sin.
So, now what? Well, now we need to live out what God has done for us. We need to leave sin behind us, because it no longer defines who we are, and we need to live more like Jesus, because He does define who we now are. Some of the sins we need to leave behind are selfishness, hatred, jealously, greed, anger, lying and disobedience. Some of the ways we need to live more like Jesus include loving God more, loving our family members and neighbors more, helping other people who need it, telling the truth, and sharing God’s love and forgiveness with those around us.
All of this is always a lot harder than we think it will be. Just because we are no longer in sin doesn’t mean we don’t sin anymore. And just because we are now in Jesus doesn’t mean we act like Jesus all the time. We need lots of time and lots of help to become more like Jesus and less like the sinners we’re used to being. Thankfully, God is patient and very willing to help us.