Today Kwan Porter and I continue our conversation on identity. We are being renewed ourselves as we remind ourselves of who were before Jesus and who we are with Jesus.
We are sons and daughters of the King. We were darkness. Now we are light. We were sin. Now we are righteous. It’s who we are.
We have been looking at the law. Col. 2:13-14 says, “And you being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses, having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it.
God said, I’ve not only taken away your sin, I’ve taken away the requirements. This is scary to people, because if there are no requirements, then what do I do? Does that mean I get to do anything? Well what you do depends on what your identity is and who you are.
God took away the requirements because He doesn’t want us looking to them and then our performance to try to earn acceptance in the family of God and by Him. God has taken care of the requirements by fulfilling them, not by getting rid of them.
Kwan shares how the Holy Spirit spoke to him and said, “Kwan, you still try to do things that fulfill requirements. By doing that you are actually diminishing the power of the cross.” The Holy Spirit revealed Kwan’s heart posture was one of “adding to” what was already done on the cross.
In Matthew 5:25 it says to settle your case quickly with your adversary before you come before the judge. Jesus already settled the case. The case is closed. That’s why Jesus said, “It is finished.” There is no more condemnation. There is no more settlement. There is nothing else we can add to it. We are trying to bring a case before our heavenly Father that in His eyes doesn’t even exist.
Now if we rest on the case that Jesus already settled on the cross and through the resurrection then we get the benefits of that case: eternal life and intimacy with Him.
I used to treat Jesus atonement as if it wasn’t sufficient. I wouldn’t have said that, but I realized I approached following Jesus as a works based religion. It was the atonement plus. It was what Jesus did on the cross AND my behavior and works.
Just sit in the revelation of the complete finished work of what Jesus did on the cross. It’s as if I want to bring my little bag of rocks and set it on the mountain of gold, thinking I’ve added something and earned something. Jesus says, “No. You don’t earn my love, my acceptance. It is a gift.”
His love is unsearchable. It’s His love that put sin so far into Him that He became it. It’s His love that snatched that sin out of the very fiber of my being and made me into a new creation that now I can receive His love.
I John 4:16 says, “We have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love.”
It’s a two part process: believing in God’s love and knowing it firsthand.
This week pray the prayer Paul prayed in Eph. 3:18. Ask the Holy Spirit, “May I know the breadth, length, depth, and height of your love for me!”
