Salvation

Did Christ take the cross for what you did or to redeem who you are?

This question looms large in the lives of believers across the world today. After all... Everyday many believers who have been saved and bear the title Christian return to the altar time after time to confess, repent and reclaim their salvation.

At what point does what we know become who we are... At what point does it become more about who we are in Christ than what we did to need salvation?

A few weeks ago I went through a forty hour intensive training opportunity offered through my church and employer. I had been signed up for the training long before I took the position in the church offices... So it goes without saying that I was doubly excited that my new position with the church was now tied to this vital and beneficial training I was about to receive.

That week I received two revelations. I will write and post about the first revelation on Friday, but today I want to write about the issue of pardon versus identity.

You see John 3:16 does not say, "For God was so grieved by the sins of mankind that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever should believe in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life..." (Loosely paraphrased with spin.)

No... The Cross was about love. Love always has an object - not a list of do's and don'ts. The object of God's Love and ultimately His redemption is people... Sinners. Translation: All Mankind, the World.

Now think of it, when I become ill and visit the doctor's office, I don't go to the Department of Public Safety and have them change my name on my driver's license to reflect my name as "Patient." That would just be weird. My illness presents a condition or circumstance in my life which gives me a temporary status, but that does not change my identity.

So it is with sin.

Sinfulness is my condition at birth -yet, it is not truly my identity. Though I bear the title Sinner from birth - my identity is not rooted in sin. It is rooted in my Creator - the One True God of the Universe who has spent all of time building up to the moments recorded in His Word and the millions of moments since then as He has been wooing mankind to come back to the Garden of Relationship with Him.

My identity is in Christ... And, all of life is about discovering that identity - something in us is bent toward it. Just like the Sun spins things in orbit so the Creator draws out of the heart of His creation a desire to know and be known by something, someone greater than themselves.

In the Garden, Adam and Eve ate from one of the two forbidden trees. Which one? The tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Their sudden awareness of good and evil changed their relationship with God and made necessary God's plan for redemption. What did God desire to redeem? The people or the deeds that would be done out of the knowledge of good and evil. The obvious answer is the people.

However, what is prioritized in our churches today? Come to Jesus, ask Him to forgive what you DID, what you've DONE, and BE SAVED. Is that really why Christ died? Did He go to the cross to create some divine behavior contract that binds us into a list of religious rites and principals to correct the behaviors we commit ourselves to based on the knowledge of good and evil?

OR Did He go to the CROSS because HE SO LOVED THE WORLD (AKA as MANKIND, HIS CREATION, HIS BELOVED) and wanted to keep them from perishing in the knowledge of good and evil.

Is it possible that good, church-attending, Bible-believing Christians have spent a lifetime trying to live out a divine behavioral agreement with God and missed the point of redemption and salvation all together. Redemption is not about correcting what we've done wrong in the past and what we have the potential to do in the future. Redemption is about trading one thing of value to acquire something of greater use and value to the one who pays the price.

Jesus Paid the Price For You. Not to redeem you as property - but as SONS, Co-Heirs... Saints.

In allowing Himself to be nailed to a tree, Christ became the Tree of Life (the other tree mentioned by name in the Garden) for us. He spent His earthly life building a vision of a Kingdom meant for people of a royal heritage who would come into His Kingdom and find rest for their weary souls, life for their dead spirit and love to satisfy their broken hearts.

When we make the deeds of mankind the point of redemption we really cheapen grace and set ourselves up to JUDGE. We, the human race, have been doing it for years. Defining ourselves by titles, roles and deeds when God has so much more for us to discover.

"At least I didn't do that..."

"I've never murdered anyone..."

"I've lived a good life..."

"I only lie..."

"The only person I've hurt in this is myself..."

"I walked the aisle..."

"I gave my life to Christ..."

"I just feel like I've done too much to ever be forgiven..."

"If God really knew what I've done..."

The list of rationalizations and religious rhetoric is endless.

You see man lost more than just his privilege of residing in the Garden of Provision called Eden when sin befell Adam and Eve at the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. They lost their ability to identify themselves in relationship with God.

Before we were born, or even a "twinkle in our mother's eye" as my father likes to say, God had an identity - an original, true identity - with purpose, dignity and value all wrapped up in His love for us attached to it... For each and every person. He fashioned and knit us with unique skill sets, talents, and giftings. He hand selected the color of our skin, hair and eyes... He positioned us precisely in the moment in time which He wanted us to live and breathe and bring forth life. He had us in mind the entire time.

Then man was created and he fell from the relationship with God he had in the Garden.

And, as that tracing of original sin has been reproduced in us and our human nature time and again from the moment the Cherubim locked the gates of Eden we have lost the most vital part of our existence - our ability to identify ourselves with God. Yet God so identified with us that He allowed His own Son to take on the limitations and agonies of flesh only to suffer Him and allow Him to be tortured and to die a harsh, cruel and criminal's death so that we might one day be free.

However, most of mankind is doing the same thing Adam and Eve did in the Garden. Staring at the knowledge of Good and Evil and buying the same old lie of Satan as we go along life's way. We spend all our time jumping back and forth between the limbs of the knowledge of good and evil and completely miss the Tree of Life knocking at our door waiting for us to invite Him into our lives for good. To dine with Him, to relate to Him in the depths of intimacy and affection and to discover what He has known about you all along.

We find really good religion by living our lives based on the knowledge of Good and Evil but we never really discover the truth about ourselves. We spend all our time trying to change ourselves by focusing on what is wrong with our environments and behaviors and never delve into what it is we truly believe about ourselves, our God and well about the Life He gave us to live.

Instead, we listen to the murmurs and the rumors of Satan. The little lies he whispers when some experience we begin to define ourselves by goes awry. Our marriage ends... We're a failure. A Divorcee... I was raped... I'm a victim. I stole something - I'm a thief. I spanked my child - I'm a bad parent. We hear it. We see it. We feel it. And every time we experience something that reopens those old identity wounds and affirms what we feared to be true... We take another bite of the lie. We swallow it down in sobbing gulps and allow it to take residence within us - to be the thing we feast on in our weaker moments and dwell on when all else seems lost. And in it, Satan achieves the same victory he sought in the Garden with Adam and Eve. He robs us of our identity. Threatens to steal our faith and destroy our lives... And he speaks it to us in our own voice.

The truth is unless we deal with what we believe about ourselves and God - line it up with His Word and allow the Truth of Christ to transform and renew our mind - nothing in our lives will ever truly change. We just end up swinging from the branches of that same old tree in the Garden wearing ourselves out and never getting anywhere. No Life.

But, when we allow God to tell us who we are. When His love begins to penetrate our lives and our thoughts... It works its way into our hearts and we begin to realize that just like illness makes me a patient but doesn't have anything to do with the God Created Definition of my life. So it is with Sin. Sin cannot define me anymore than illness or failure or trauma or death can. But all of those things can distract me from the truth:

Salvation is not a Behavior Contract. It is the point at which the old me dies on the cross with Christ and the new me - the original, created me that God purposed for me to be - comes to life.

The other night in my journal I was reflecting on John 17:1-9 and this is what I wrote:

"When the Truth makes Himself know to me, my response must be self-examination, confession and repentence. This brings sanctification and cleansing as well as relationship.

When I am sick, my condition (illness) makes me a patient, but my condition does not define my identity (my existence). My condition gives me a title related to my circumstances - that does not change who I am. Recognizing I am sick sends me to the doctor for remedy. And, so it is with sin.

Sinfulness is my condition, and Sinner is the title that defines my condition. My identity is not sinner, but my condition drives me to God to seek restoration of my life and healing, to reconcile me to my true identity in Christ.

The utter depravity of my soul requires God's healing and restoration of my original identity. God did not send His Son to die for what I did --- though He took care of that on the cross, and I am so grateful He did. He died to redeem who I am - who God created me to be.

No, Salvation is not a behavior contract.

It's the moment when I experience Christ in such a transforming way that my life and I will never be the same.

For God so loved YOU (the World) that He gave His Only Begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.... John 3:16 (my memory...)

Tuesday's In Other Words: The Joy of My Salvation

Blessed and enviably happy [with a happiness produced by the experience of God’s favor and especially conditioned by the revelation of His matchless grace] are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted!
Matthew 5:4 (AMP)

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This week's IOW quote is from a sermon taught by Robert Morris. When he began the series "Happiness Redefined" he began by explaining just what the Amplified version of the Bible shows us, that being blessed in a Biblical sense means happy and enviable. I could relate to what he was teaching because a season of mourning had been my life for many months. But then he took the message to a new level:

“Is it possible we could experience the joy of our salvation if we mourned [over our sin] as if someone had died? We cannot experience joy without mourning.”

~Pastor Robert Morris, Gateway Church. From the Sermon: “Those who mourn are happy”~

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Throughout this series, Pastor Robert drove home the point that the Beautitudes were about more than just a state of Blessing, but he pointed to each step in our Spiritual Journey with God from Salvation to growth through Persecution. Every level listed in the Beautitudes represented a milestone in the Christian experience and a new state of Blessing that followed. So when he got to this message and shared this insight I began to say - that is what I've experienced... Truly. Not in the grief over my son, but in the grief I had experienced over my past, my sin and the cost of Salvation paid on my behalf.

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"Do you not know that your body is the temple (the very sanctuary) of the Holy Spirit Who lives within you, Whom you have received [as a Gift] from God? You are not your own, 20 You were bought with a price [purchased with a preciousness and paid for, made His own]. So then, honor God and bring glory to Him in your body."

1 Corinthians 6:19-20 (AMP)

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For me I had shame, regret and a deep sense of guilt over my sinful past - over the prodigal years I spent squandering my youth in wild living and contaminating the lives of my children with ungodly, unsanctified behavior. I hated the person I had become back then and spent years running from the truth of my existence. I was certain God was angry with me, and would want nothing more to do with me if I poured out all those years of painful, self-induced misery before Him.

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And the Lord passed by before him, and proclaimed, The Lord! the Lord! a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abundant in loving-kindness and truth, 7 Keeping mercy and loving-kindness for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but Who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children, to the third and fourth generation.

Exodus 34:6-7 (AMP)

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I was in every way guilty of the most heinous and vile sins. I was the harlot caught in adultery waiting to be stoned, the thief waiting for them to cut off my hands, and worst of all I walked into a church as the new wife of a good, unsaved man and pretended - yes, PRETENDED to be good, too. The only problem with a past full of sin - there are skeletons from that dead life wondering around in your closet just DYING to get out. Better to get them out before God than in front of a congregation full of your "closest" friends. Get my meaning?

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"If we say we have no sin [refusing to admit that we are sinners], we delude and lead ourselves astray, and the Truth [which the Gospel presents] is not in us [does not dwell in our hearts]. 9 If we [freely] admit that we have sinned and confess our sins, He is faithful and just (true to His own nature and promises) and will forgive our sins [dismiss our lawlessness] and [continuously] cleanse us from all unrighteousness [everything not in conformity to His will in purpose, thought, and action]. 10 If we say (claim) we have not sinned, we contradict His Word and make Him out to be false and a liar, and His Word is not in us [the divine message of the Gospel is not in our hearts]. "

1 John 1:8-10 (AMP)

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As a growing Christian I had heard many leaders in the church say that their past was covered by the Blood and they did not have to deal with that past anymore because it was forgiven. I began to claim that for my past, too. Only problem: I had never surrendered my past to God allowing Him to cover it by His Blood. I convinced myself there was no need to confess those sins because I had already said, "God I'm sorry for everything I've ever done wrong. Thank you for forgiving me in Jesus Name, AMEN."

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But, was that enough?

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Not according to 1 John 1:9... Confession. Naming and agreeing with God what I had knowingly done against His will and His Word to put Christ upon that cross for my personal sins. That is confession. I had more than ten years of past that I had left unconfessed. Let me tell you something about the enemy of our soul... He is waiting for us to leave some stone unturned, some sin unconfessed and uncovered - He is just chomping at the bit to get to God's throne before we do and the words he speak resound in our ears -
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UNWORTHY, UNHOLY, SINNER, BAD, HARLOT, SHAMEFUL, UGLY, UNGRATEFUL, LOSER!
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"10 Then I heard a strong (loud) voice in heaven, saying, Now it has come—the salvation and the power and the kingdom (the dominion, the reign) of our God, and the power (the sovereignty, the authority) of His Christ (the Messiah); for the accuser of our brethren, he who keeps bringing before our God charges against them day and night, has been cast out! 11 And they have overcome (conquered) him by means of the blood of the Lamb and by the utterance of their testimony, for they did not love and cling to life even when faced with death [holding their lives cheap till they had to die for their witnessing]."

Revelation 12:10-11 (AMP)

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You name the insult and he is hurling it like a dart straight at your heart of hearts. He used all of those and more on me. I didn't want to confess my sins to God because it meant I would have to face the DEPRAVITY of MY OWN SOUL. I didn't believe I could handle facing what was hidden deep within my heart. It was not because God could not forgive it. He already had. It was because I didn't trust that promise. I believed that if confessed my sins would outweight His grace and I couldn't bear to face that possibility. .

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But God already knew that. In 2003, He arranged six weeks to uncover that sinful heart of mine and expose my sins so we could examine them and He could cleanse me of all that mucky, messy unrighteousness I had walked in as a young woman. He had been waiting for me to trust him with the most bruised and broken places of my life. To confess to Him the most shameful and defiled moments so that He could wash them clean. Heal them. And make me new.

One night, as I lay in bed sleeping a voice startled me awake.

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...GET UP AND WATCH THE VIDEO...

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Believing my dinner was talking and my dreams were a bit too vivid. I glanced at the clock. 3:00 AM. I lay back down and pulled the covers up snuggly around my neck. I sighed heavily before closing my weary eyes begging for a few more hours of sleep..

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...I said GET UP. Watch the Video...

God?

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Watch the video.

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I realized then I was not going to get any rest until I watched the second week's video from Beth Moore's study, "When Godly People Do Ungoldy Things." I kicked out of covers grumbling under my breath much the way a disgruntled child gets up to ready themselves for school. NOT A HAPPY CAMPER..

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I walked in the living room, fumbled in the dimly lit room for the videos and pulled out the DVD of choice. I hastily grabbed my book off the box and sat myself down with a HRUMMPHH! in the recliner. I didn't even bother to turn on the light. .

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Half way through my heart broke into a jillion pieces as every vile and heinous thing I had ever done began to run through my mind. My sin was overwhelming. The volumes of lies, vanity, profanity and shameless flaunting of God's standards ripped at my heart, my soul and my mind. I felt like a knife pierced my heart each time a new memory clouded my mind. One by one, I began to confess those horrific images out loud to God. I was on my knees, face to the ground weeping bitterly over my sin. I confessed my unworthiness and that it was my sin that had cost the Savior His life not just the curse of sin left to us by Adam and Eve in the garden. My choices had crucified Christ. I was broken apart, aching inside - not because of what it had cost me, but because of the precious price that had been paid in my place. I was weeping because of what my sin had cost God.
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That's when it happened. In the midst of an exhausting, full-on ugly cry I confessed the last of the memories that had surfaced in my heart. Then I lay there weeping, struggling to find clarity when I suddenly asked, "God? What do you want me to do now?".

...Go look in the mirror....

Look in the mirror? But God, I've been crying. There's....

... I said, Look in the mirror....

Okay..

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There in that mirror I saw the face of a broken woman. A woman who had finally come clean. A woman who had let go of everything that had been holding God at arm's length for so long and I saw the truth. .

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Look what a mess you made, out of the beauty I created..

Not a moment of that sentence was condemning or mean-spirited. He said, I AM the beauty He created. A few week's later I came face to face with the price that was paid for me. The cross of Christ and His crucifixion described in graphic detail on May 3, 2003. That month in the Spring semester of 2003 changed my life.

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Therefore with joy will you draw water from the wells of salvation. 4 And in that day you will say, Give thanks to the Lord, call upon His name and by means of His name [in solemn entreaty]; declare and make known His deeds among the peoples of the earth, proclaim that His name is exalted!

Isaiah 12:3-4 (AMP)

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I ran to God with my confessions. .

If I found myself in the midst of a sin, conviction overtook my heart and I poured it to God right that moment. I still pray daily and tell on myself to Him. I tell Him everything I know I've done and I ask Him to make me aware of anything that I have left unconfessed. Oh and the beauty of it is that He does it so gently, so kindly - not accusing or angry. He just says, "See Here, Child. This is what I want to deal with." And it is done.

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The hardest part for me was receiving that grace. But just a few months ago I stood in my bathroom with a song in my heart I didn't understand. Whitney Houston's voice rang through my heart "The Greatest Love of all is happening to me... Learning to love yourself, it is the greates love of all."

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I turned my chin to the sky and cried out to GOD, "Why is that the song in my heart today?".

Then I saw my reflection in the mirror. His love washed over me anew. He was singing that song over me - the Greatest Love of all is God's love, and it has been happening to me over the last few years in a mighty way. He wants me to see myself through His eyes, live my life in His will and receive His forgiveness with a heart full of joy for the Salvation that I have been afforded..

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That day as Pastor Robert taught that message on mourning resulting is us being happy, he concluded the message with this Question: "What if we really mourned over our sin as if someone had died?".

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BECAUSE SOMEBODY DID..

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2 Looking away [from all that will distract] to Jesus, Who is the Leader and the Source of our faith [giving the first incentive for our belief] and is also its Finisher [bringing it to maturity and perfection]. He, for the joy [of obtaining the prize] that was set before Him, endured the cross, despising and ignoring the shame, and is now seated at the right hand of the throne of God. .

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3 Just think of Him Who endured from sinners such grievous opposition and bitter hostility against Himself [reckon up and consider it all in comparison with your trials], so that you may not grow weary or exhausted, losing heart and relaxing and fainting in your minds. .

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4 You have not yet struggled and fought agonizingly against sin, nor have you yet resisted and withstood to the point of pouring out your [own] blood. .

5 And have you [completely] forgotten the divine word of appeal and encouragement in which you are reasoned with and addressed as sons? My son, do not think lightly or scorn to submit to the correction and discipline of the Lord, nor lose courage and give up and faint when you are reproved or corrected by Him; .

6 For the Lord corrects and disciplines everyone whom He loves, and He punishes, even scourges, every son whom He accepts and welcomes to His heart and cherishes. .

7 You must submit to and endure [correction] for discipline; God is dealing with you as with sons. For what son is there whom his father does not [thus] train and correct and discipline? .

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9 Moreover, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we yielded [to them] and respected [them for training us]. Shall we not much more cheerfully submit to the Father of spirits and so [truly] live? .

10 For [our earthly fathers] disciplined us for only a short period of time and chastised us as seemed proper and good to them; but He disciplines us for our certain good, that we may become sharers in His own holiness.

Hebrews 12:2-7, 9-10 (AMP)

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OH I DO LOVE HIM SO!

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If you would like to share your insights about today's quote, please link up to your own post here using Mr. Linky and then leave me a comment. Thank you so much for stopping by today! I'm so blessed to have been able to share this quote with you.

For more information about Tuesday's In Other Words, please visit Loni at Writing Canvas and check it out!