Remember Who You Are

Posted by Chris Case on Dec 3, 2008 in Daily Bread | 2 comments

The first few weeks at a new school are vitally crucial to social status.  As you stroll onto the campus for the first time, you peruse the scene, seeing the different types of people: the rebellious crowd, the popular kids, the nerds, they’re all there.  Come lunchtime, you know that there will need to be a moment where you make a decision – what table will I sit at?  The magnitude of this decision echoes beyond a moment; it will likely dictate your friends and social vitality for years to come. Little do you know how much even single conversation can lead to who you are. Its tough, but who you associate with becomes who you are.

The same is true of the spiritual life.  Paul is writing to Greeks who often suffered from an overemphasis on the evil of the body and the goodness of that which i heavenly or otherwordly.  There was never any mixing of the two.  To quote popeye (or Edie Brickell), who you are is.. well… who you are. Those of the earth, which is of the flesh, dust, everything that the Greeks thought is profane, we have borne his likeness.  The Greeks would have been on board with Paul up to this point.  Here’s where Paul throws them for a loop.  Paul’s telling them that in Christ, if they associate themselves with Him, then they “shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.”  For the Greeks, this was almost blasphemy, but Paul was driving home that there’s a mystery (as he uses in the same chapter) about what is going on spiritually that exists in this world.  That the separation of the sacred and profane is not as wide a gap as once expected.  Why? Because of Emmanuel… God with us.

Therefor, we must remember who we are.  Although we are born of Adam, our ‘biological’ father, we have been adopted.  We have a father in heaven, and we bear His image.  This passage also is very eschatological.  We not only bear His image, but our bodies will be transformed to the likeness of His heavenly body (Phil 3.20-21).  Although we are still in our bodies of dust, and therefor still sin and continuously have a tendency to sin, we have also been made alive in Christ, given the ability to do good and overcome sin, and more importantly, bear His image.

There’s a great scene out of The Lion King that often gets me a little. It happens when Simba has really lost his way and Rafiki finds him and tried to remind him that he is the son of a King.  The dialogue delivered by Mufasa’s ghost is dead on, and we must remember who we are in Him.  We are the heirs to the kingdom, who by associating ourselves with Him, know we are part of His people.  We are not tied down to social clique like we were back in school, but have the ability to be part of the group who truly are alive. Here’s the clip: