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 PART OF OR THE WHOLE?

I was reading a devotional this morning and a phrase jumped out at me in the most jarring way. It went something like, “Make Jesus a part of your life and you will find peace.” That sounds like a great religious statement, but the truth is that I didn’t make Jesus part of my life. Jesus Christ made me part of His life, uniting me to His death and resurrection by the work and power of the Holy Spirit. I did none of that. All I could do was to respond to His initiative, to yield, to surrender the whole of life to Him. The truth is, for a follower of Jesus Christ, He is Life within you, you are not your own. In fact, you don’t actually have a “your own” for you have bought with a price and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.

Scripture makes it very clear that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. There is not a single aspect of who you are that God has not laid utter claim to. You are His by right of creation and by right of redemption. He is the Vine and I am His branch. The life flowing into me, working in me, and producing fruit through me is His life. I was dead in my sin when Jesus made me alive with His life. It was an impossibility for my deadness to be scrubbed up and made presentable. Dead in sin is dead in sin. There is no one more ineffective at life-change than a dead person. I was dead, but God’s grace and power united me to Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection when I was identified with Him in His death and resurrection through baptism.

Jesus Christ is not ever meant to be “part of your life” like some sort of religious lapel pin you sport to show your team colors. He becomes Lord, Master, Ruler, and we get to celebrate the rule of God in every aspect of human living! Salvation of the work of God. He brings me into His Life and Kingdom. It is not my invitation to Him to come into MY life, but His call for me to forsake death and be brought into HIS Life by the Holy Spirit.

There is a HUGE difference; an eternal difference! For the work God begins in me, He has promised to bring to competition. That is something I could never initiate nor bring to fulfillment. That is what makes the Gospel such GOOD news! God saves us. He has done everything necessary to redeem us and deliver us from the kingdom of darkness and to bring us into the Kingdom of His dear Son, in Whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of our sin; all of it! Repentance, made possible by the love of God, means turning around away from self and sin and turning to the Lord Jesus, yielding all of who we are to all He is that we might have Life and experience it to the full. He is the One, who by living Life within us, transforms us, making us whole, to be like Him.

It may seem that I am “nit-picking”, but if so, it’s a “nit” that needed picking!

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