Years ago, when I was still in seventh grade, my mother took my sister and me on a road-trip to San Francisco, then we drove down the 101 to get back home.
We were gone for about a week. Half-way through the trip, Mom called home to get back in touch with Dad, who had left a new phone message on the answering machine.
He shared with anyone calling in that his mother, my grandmother, had just passed away, and he was taking care of things in order to get ready for the upcoming funeral.
My grandmother on my Dad's side was an obese woman, one who just sat around and watched TV all day. She smoked excessively, and she rarely left the trailer where she lived. I was not surprised that she had died, since she had been living in such a way that it did not seem as if she would last very long.
The other account that I never forgot, the stop near a Santa Barbara hotel, was when we met with a homeless veteran. A black man who wore this blazing orange shirt, bald headed, and he was smiling a lot. For some reason, my mother started talking to him.
The veteran talked about how he still feels guilty about all the terrible things that he did and that he endured in Vietnam. My mother scolded him, "Who are you to keep feeling bad about what you did so many years ago? Are you saying that what you did is worse than what God did for you at the Cross through His Son?"
This is a valid point, one which escapes many believers to this day, who are trying with all their might to earn God's favor on this earth, although the believe that they are going to heaven because Jesus Christ died for their sins.
The cutting element, the one that divides mature men and women in Christ compared to baby Christians who still need milk is the issue of righteousness:
"For when for the
time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which
be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as
have need of milk, and not of strong meat.
"For every one that
useth milk is unskilful in the word of righteousness: for he is a babe." (Hebrews 5: 12-13)
and
"And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal,
even as unto babes in Christ.
"I have fed you
with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it,
neither yet now are ye able.
"For ye are yet
carnal: for whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and
divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men? " (1 Corinthians 3: 1-3)
We are carnal to the extent that do now walk by faith, resting in the truth that not only are we forgiven of all our sins, but that in Christ, we have been made a New Creation:
"Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old
things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." (2 Corinthians 5: 17)
If we feel guilty or shameful about the past, in our flesh, we are called to stand on God's word:
"Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto
God through Jesus Christ our Lord." (Romans 6:11)
The same mistake, the same grave error that the Vietnam vet, that my mother, that even I myself has struggled with until recently is that we do not identify with our feelings or our thoughts, but instead we are called to identify with Christ, who is our life:
"Herein is our love
made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he
is, so are we in this world." (1 John 4: 17)
We are now full-fledged children of God (1 John 3: 1). We are now sons of light (1 Thessalonians 5: 5). We are called to walk in the Spirit, not strive in the flesh.
Living by God's Word instead of trusting in our own effort, we enter the Sabbath rest which God has prepared for us:
"Let us labour therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the
same example of unbelief." (Hebrews 4: 11)
Jesus Christ has Finished everything for us — to think that we must keep doing something means that we do not know yet, or believe, that we have been transformed, made into the righteousness of God in Christ (2 Corinthians 5: 21).
Every believer must rest in the truth that in Christ, we have more than the victory, that we are called to walk by faith, taking God at His Word, trusting that He who gave His own Son will give us all things with Him.