01/27/2018
Are you a practicer of the Spirit? Do you do those things of faith by utilizing spiritual gifts, and then once complete set those gifts aside, to be used another day? Or, do you possess Spiritual Grace, a state in which the gifts of the Spirit have become who you are?
“until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.”Ephesians 4:13-14 ESV
We are meant to mature in Christ, and to become more than the mere image of him, but to be as He is. We begin our Christian lives as a photograph of Jesus. All of our efforts are spent in learning of Him so that we can imitate Him more closely, and to change the old man that we were into what we see as Christ. We learn what sin is by understanding the law, but begin the process of separating ourselves from it through Jesus.
“For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.”Romans 7:5-6 ESV
Then, as the photograph develops and we more clearly resemble Jesus in our ability to imitate Him, something wonderful begins to happen... we begin to mature into an amazing new creature; we are changing yet again. What we have been perfecting externally begins to turn inward. We take our knowledge of Spiritual Gifts and slowly internalize them as we develop Spiritual Grace.
Have you ever heard the song “The Rain in Spain”? It is from a wonderful play, and movie, titled “My Fair Lady”, which is about an uncultured cockney girl who a phonetics professor attempts to transform into a person who can speak and act in such a way as to fool those cultured people around her into believing she is one of them. The instructions begin in a series of painful lessons, in learning the mechanics of speech, and behavior. Some of the tools used are wonderful songs such as... “The Rain in Spain” which we all now know “falls mainly on the plain.”
So the arrogant phonetics professor begins the lessons, and the girl eventually imitates a cultured lady; she talks like a lady, walks like a lady, and exhibits the mannerisms of a lady, while continuing to revert at will back to her old self. The man is perfecting a photograph... no, a motion picture, of a lady from this crass creature he began with.
Then something remarkable happens... she ceases to imitate a lady and finds that she has become one, and not only has she become one, but her teacher falls in love with who she now is. She had taken those things that were once imitation and made them real within her. If you have never watched this movie, I highly recommend you do so because it is a prototype to what we experience in faith.
We begin by painfully learning to imitate Jesus, then as we perfect His speech and mannerisms, we are able to convince those around us that we are indeed Christians, then something further, and amazing, happens. We find that what we once imitated has become who we are; we are no longer a reflection of Christ but an embodiment of Him. We are now unable to separate from Him and return to the person we left behind. Now we are no longer the users of Spiritual Gifts, but the embodiment of Spiritual Grace.
Are you moving towards this graceful creature that God desires you to become? Are you morphing into what can be smoothly absorbed into Jesus, and into God? Or, are you caught in constant imitation as you return time and time again to who you were before you met the Lord? There is an old saying that goes like this “Practice makes perfect”, and that is true, but at some point the practice must end, and the real event must take over. Are you taking your lessons to heart, and allowing them to transform you, or are you putting them on and taking them off like a change of clothes?
There came a point in the movie “My Fair Lady” in which Eliza Doolittle discovers that her new clothes had become those in which she was most comfortable, and that her old clothes were repulsive to her. We find this to be true as Christians as well. The person we once were can never please us again, and who we are in Christ has become our true selves.
Sure you are a Christian, a believer, a person of faith, but don’t get caught in the vicious cycle of returning so frequently to your own cockney self that you never become who God desires you to become... you never take the image of Jesus you have been imitating, and realize that it is now a photograph of you. The person of Christ now lives inside you, and you in Him. The person who once worked at forgiving now forgives without thought.
“In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.”John 14:20 ESV
Prayer:
Father, thank you for the Spiritual Gifts you have provided us, and for the Holy Spirit that teaches us. Thank you for the role model of Jesus, but even further Lord, thank you for perfecting us as We are separated from sin, and become new persons in Him.
Thank you Holy Father for the Spiritual Grace that now defines me. Thank you for who I have become, and for my inability to return to the life I once knew. You have taken my use of Spiritual Gifts, and transformed me by them into a new creature. Paul said of us that “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” (2 Corinthians 5:17) And I praise your name for making me this amazingly wonderful creation. Use me Father to your glory, and may my new self in Christ please you always. I pray that your grace become more than my salvation, but my very being. Holy, Holy, Holy are you, now, and through eternity.
Rich Forbes