2. “On Atonement” Written 9/24/09
I have come to realize that the only way I can grow is by being honest about where I am right now. Where I am is not who I am; who I am is where I will be, where God intended me to be from the time He created me. But I can only make strides in getting there by recognizing where I am now. If I see my sin as who I am, then I give myself no room to grow. My sin is only an outward representation of where I am in seeking God. When I start to seek God in every area of my life, then I am never in the same place, I am always changing, growing to become more like who I am. Who I am will never change, because He who made me never changes. By being honest about where I am, I can move forward towards the goal of who I was originally created to be, who I am in God’s eyes.
Where God is and Who God is are the same thing because He never changes. The places in my life where God is absent are places where I find myself in sin. Those places do not really exist (because they are absent of God, and God is All, He is everything), and who I am does not exist in those places. When I am in a place that is absent of God, I am in a place that is absent of who I am. I will never find myself in places of sin, because I am not there. Who I am, who God created me to be, cannot exist in places where He is not.
Because of Jesus, when I live my life out in Christ, He in me and I in Him, asking Him to cover every one of my “non-God” areas with His forgiveness and His blood, then God is with me wherever I am, and I am able to live in relationship with Him. If I live through and in Christ, there is no place in my life that God is not. Who I am at my core is Christ, living in me, and because of that, all God sees when He looks at me is Christ.
I am not my sin.
Nothing I do will ever change the truth of who I really am, it will only slow the process of getting to the place where ‘where I am’ and ‘who I am’ meet and merge into the same thing. If where I am is in the arms of God, if where I am is covered in the blood of Jesus spilled on the cross, I can never live in a place that is separate from God, I can never live separate from who I really am.
That is what God did for me. I will never lose who I am. God will never let me go. I choose to live in Christ, and I choose to let Christ live in and through me.
