Put On Our New Nature
The clothes I invested in went on to fail me. The “pants from hell,” from part one of the series, eventually stopped fitting me. I went from needing the pants in a triggering season to those pants no longer being the solution.
Could any pants truly cover the valley left inside of me?
Like me, are you or a loved one finding that the thing you are using as comfort isn’t snapping you out of your valley? Does every day feel like Good Friday? The vacation comes to an end, and you still came home to life’s demands. Death proves to sneak up on you. Maybe, a betrayal consumes anything good happening around you. And, the trauma you experienced continues to feel heavy.
When I was diagnosed with cancer, people would ask me which kind of lymphoma tortured my body. I’d go on to tell them, and it never failed. “That’s the good one, right?” The people closest to me would continue to speak over me. That my lymphoma wouldn’t consume me like a different version of cancer could.
We are all familiar with some version of life being consuming–stealing the joy we thought was entitled to us. The chasm that we can’t cover; even with well intended steroid pants.
We want to stop flailing between seasons. Needing something this world can’t buy. We get to put on our new nature in Christ regardless of the valley that’s at our back.
In part one of the “Put On” series, we looked at God making a way in the wasteland (Isaiah 43:19). Not only did Jesus die for our sins as the perfect sacrifice on Good Friday, but he rose to life so that we too can have a new life in Him now and for eternity (Ephesians 4:21-24 NIV).
When Jesus was on the cross, he reminded the criminal next to Him, that he possessed this new self and it would land him in paradise. Not because he was dying, but because he believed.
The criminal declared this to the third person on the cross, “Don’t you fear God,” he said, “since you are under the same sentence? We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.”
Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
Jesus answered him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:40-43 NIV).
We no longer entertain ourselves in our own desires, triggers, and sorrows, but in the things of God. He bridges the gaps between what we are walking through and where we are going.
We bank on Jesus being the good in Good Friday, and the good in “the good cancer.” We have a good Father who gave up HIs Son, so that we could put our sinful self to death and continually put on our new nature.
Will you join the criminal on the cross in not getting the hell that we deserve?
There’s gold out there. Let’s find Easter every day. Fixing our eyes on exactly that: the lavish gift of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection
