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It’s strange being around people who have known me my entire life growing up but who don’t really know who I have become, who I am now. It’s hard to be who I know I am outside of this place when I return home. Jesus, break me free of the silent sludge of shame and the sulking shadows which slink in trying to stifle and stagnate your Life and your Light in me.
It’s hard for me not to condemn myself for what I’ve done in the past. I know with my head and with one compartmentalized portion of my heart that King Jesus died for those things of my past. But I have just realized something – I have had an incorrect, inaccurate view of God and myself for many years.
A view as if the death of the King was a onetime thing that cleaned you just once. Hear me out, yes, "the death [Christ] died, he died to sin once for all…" (Romans 6:10a). But, for some reason, I had this idea that since I came to know the Lord, since I had been made aware of my sin and my guilt, that I should know better (and I do know better because I have the Spirit of the Living God in me) than to sin. And since I do know when I am sinning and that it is wrong, I have had this problematic perception that these thoughts, actions, and words (sin) count against me and cake on the dirt over my previously cleaned body. I have subconsciously viewed God as a Father in Heaven who gets disappointed in me and the sin nature that persists even after I’ve been set free from sin.
This is not so.
For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin – because anyone who has died has been freed from sin. (Romans 6:6-7).
But what about when our "new selves" sin? What about all of the sins you continue to struggle with and all of the times that you say "I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do" (Romans 7:15). Yes, we understand that "as it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me" (Romans 7:17). But do our souls grasp the fact that even after beginning our relationship with King Jesus and becoming adopted into His Royal Family (sweet!) we will still sin sometimes? I think we know this… but do we accept that "from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace" for those times, those thoughts, and those words of darkness (John 1:16)?
Yes, "therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!" (1 Corinthians 5:7). Yet idealism can sneak in and be used against us in thinking that the new has come and that the new will never see corruption, that the new will never sin again, and that if you have become a new creation in Christ then we should not sin any longer. Praise the Lord that through Christ sin has no hold over us: "Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God" (Romans 6:8-10). I am just thinking that if we don’t give ourselves grace and if our view of God’s goodness, mercy, and forgiveness is clouded then we allow a target to be placed over our heads for the Enemy to use guilt and shame against us.
Simply remember that "those who look to him are radiant; their faces shall never be ashamed" (Psalm 34:5).
Okay, so hear me out. This is what I’m trying to say:
Guilt and shame have no place. They must leave. For, "where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom" (2 Corinthians 3:17b)!!!! Jesus rescues we, who were once captives, and he declares for that we "’Come out,’ and to those in darkness, ‘Be free!’" (Isaiah 49:9). And we can praise him freely with our newfound lives, "But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin…you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness…But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life" (Romans 6:17a;18;22).
So on this Christmas morning, we can sing praises with our lips and ask King Jesus to "create in [us] a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within [us]" for "the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning…" (Psalm 51:10; Lamentations 3:22-23). We are constantly renewed, redeemed, restored, and revived; for we have been resurrected with Christ Jesus, for "just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life" (Romans 6:4). In all of His grace and mercy, "God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace…" (Ephesians 2:6-7). For truly, truly, "it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God" (Ephesians 2:8).
God’s grace gift took the form of baby Jesus, who was, and is, and is to come. He is the greatest gift—truly, ‘a gift that keeps on giving’ as those catchy commercials advertise. Receive the grace upon grace that is offered in abundance, not just the first time you placed your faith in Jesus Christ, but for every second and every day after that initial step you took in the beginning of this long journey with Jesus.