A
New IDENTITY In CHRIST
Ceitci
Demirkova, Missionary to Bulgaria
I recently heard a story of a man
whose cat died. Because he loved her so
much, he buried her in his back yard with the tail sticking out of the
ground. He reasoned that he could dig
out his cat's body when he started to miss her too much. What do you think happened each time he
opened that grave? The smell of decay
would get stronger and stronger. Though
this is quite a funny story, it serves as analogy of how many times we drag our
old nature, our old past with us into our current life-situations. Sometimes we think that our past has been
buried in Christ, but perhaps there is a 'tail' of an old experience still
sticking out reminding us of a failure, of a loss, of a defeat. Whatever we focus upon will eventually be
expressed in our conversations, our thought life, or our life style. Each time we begin to dig out something
that God has asked of us to leave behind and bury in His love and forgiveness,
we will find ourselves in the 'stench' of condemnation and fear. Through Christ's death burial and
resurrection we have been given the greatest gift. We are to live as a new man/woman who is
renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him/her (Col.
3:10). In other words, we have been given a new nature, the nature of Christ in
us, the hope of glory.
To die to self, to our past, simply means to fall out of correspondence
with our old identity and recognize who God has made us to be. "For I have been crucified with Christ,
it is no longer I who live but Christ
lives in me, and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith
in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me." (Gal.2:20-21)
TODAY WE CELEBRATE NOT
ONLY CHRIST'S RESURRECTION BUT THE NEW LIFE AND IDENTITY WE HAVE IN HIM!
