WARNING PREACHY…
Have
you ever read Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper? It’s a wonderful story of a prince and a pauper
boy who happen to look identical and they decide to trade places. What happens is that when they swap, both boys
learn that they are out of their elements and don’t really fit their new
roles. The prince was not prepared to
have a drunken father who beat him and the pauper was not able to produce the
attitude of the privileged child of royalty. In both instances, the prince and the pauper had
been told, from their births, a narrative of who they were. The prince’s narrative made him stately and
confident while the pauper’s made him live life as a commoner fighting for survival each day.
The
other day I heard a sermon where the preacher made reference to the fact that
he is just a sinner saved by grace. While
his words are common lingo among Christians who understand that they were human
sinners that had been captivated by the extreme grace of Jesus and his Cross, I
cannot not help but recognize deception in his words that inadvertently takes the promise
of the Christian identity right out of the new life in Christ.
Romans 8:11
And if the Spirit of him who
raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead
will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in
you.
2 Corinthians 5:17
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ,
the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!
Please
forgive me if I am splitting semantical hairs here, but it seems important that
new Christians understand their new identities.
In The Prince and the Pauper, the two boys eventually went back to their
respective positions in life and all was well again. But in the Christian life,
when you and I become Christians, we must understand that we have abandoned our
positions as sinners when we took up positions as the Righteousness of Christ. We
no longer are what we were. Paul
teaches that we died to ourselves and were raised again in new life in
Christ. This is our current identity and our present narrative. I was, at
one time, a sinner but now I AM no longer – and neither are you.
You
my friend, if you have died to yourself in order to follow Jesus, then live your life in
that reality. You are, in all actuality, a
prince and a child of the King. You have
been adopted as a son of God and your life is not at all what it was, but rather it is
new and it is a privileged position of authority.
No longer think back and embrace the defeat of what you once were, but move
forward and victoriously live in the reality that you now are. You are NOT a sinner saved by grace, you ARE a Child of the Living God, a co heir with Christ our Resurrected Lord.
And
I encourage you to reject anyone who would suggest to you otherwise.
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