Identities and rhythms

Whenever I study or prepare a study on something Jesus says (as I have this morning), two things invariably happen.

Firstly, I get humbled in a huge way as I realise how far I fall short of His ethical standards. His desire for my life is to “be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48) His requirements for personal morality and social concern, as evinced from His manifesto, the Sermon on the Mount, reveal how self-absorbed and cold I am – both in my love for God, and in my love for people.

Then, when I feel the true weight of my spiritual poverty and the inadequacies pile up, another thing happens. I realise that He did something that I could never do. He loved God and people in a way I never could. Not only did He live the life I should have lived but He died in my place, exhausting the wrath of God as my substitute. This is true for me individually but also us corporately. By rising from the dead, He shows us all that His atonement was effective, and that He is coming back soon as Judge. Through His Spirit, He also empowers us to live for Him now.

So, my new life, my new identity, is wrapped up in Christ. Because of that, my new rhythms, my new actions, my new ethics, are the overflow of an inner spiritual reality. My identity determines my rhythms.

So when Jesus says, “You are the light of the world” with all the massive ethical implications that that entails, I don’t hear the demands of a lawgiver but the invitation of a lover and friend. He invites us into spiritual communion with Him, that is our identity – our ethics are the inevitable outflow of a life lived in love with God. We now have the freedom and power to love others the way He did, becuase we have been re-connected to Him through faith.

Meaning? If I struggle to let my good works shine, if I struggle to love others self-sacrificially, then maybe the reality of what Jesus has done is not a reality for me. Maybe the ‘Gospel-penny’ has not dropped – ethics follow faith, so let us pray that our faith in Christ results in transformed lives. Not just for our sake but for the sake of our city, a city in desperate need of communities of counter-cultural Christians pouring themselves out in deeds of love and service.

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