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The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me...
...to proclaim liberty for the captives...
...to comfort all who mourn...
...to give them beauty for ashes...
that they may be called TREES OF RIGHTEOUSNESS,
the planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified.
ISAIAH 61:1-3
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If you don't know where you're from,
you can't know who you are,
you can't know where you're going,
and you can't experience intimacy with God.
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Salvation is not only about what God has done for us
through forgiveness.
Salvation includes what God has done in us
through His dear Son. |
I hope the following acorn and oak tree illustrations are helpful regarding our new heritage and our new identities in Christ.
A NEW HERITAGE
Referring to Himself, Jesus said in John 12:24 that a seed must be planted and die before it can bring forth fruit. And because Romans 6 says that God spiritually placed us into
Christ, we died and were buried with Christ...and we rose with Christ.
Reverently using the acorn as a picture of Christ, God placed each of us in this acorn. We died and were planted (buried) with this acorn. And out of
the tomb of the acorn in the ground, each of us rose with Christ a brand new creation!
We are no longer a product of our past. We are a product of the cross! The cross, including the resurrection, is where we now originate from. This is our new heritage.
A NEW IDENTITY
For years, I knew God's forgiveness, but I didn't know my true identity in Christ. My intimacy with God was inhibited because I was spending most of my time seeking an identity through my works. My focus was on me, or at least who I thought I was.
I began hearing about how Christians do have a new identity in Christ. This sounded great. I even memorized what Scriptures appeared to say about me. However, apart from knowing my new heritage through the cross and resurrection, these truths were only labels placed on me. The focus was still on me.
What an amazing freedom I experienced when God revealed my new heritage in Christ! God showed me that my identity in Christ is not a lifeless label, but a living reality as a result of what God has done in me through the cross and resurrection! I am united to the risen Christ! The focus is now on Him!
Returning to the acorn analogy, I once was a dead non-oak tree. When I was placed in, and re-born from, the acorn, I became something I had never been -- a live oak tree. Yes, a brand new creation -- all because of a brand new heritage!
CLOSING
When you and I were first re-born in Christ, we were spiritual babies. And we don't have to strive to be better Christians. We are free to grow in dependence on Christ to enable us to walk with integrity out of what is already complete and true about us.
Returning one last time to the acorn analogy, when we were first re-born, we were oak saplings (above left photo). But as a friend once said, "As an oak sapling grows, it doesn't get oakier. Oak is oak. It simply matures into what it already is" (above right photo).
So, we don't have to get better, or oakier. :) We can grow as "trees of righteousness," a reference to the righteousness of Christ already given to each of us!
 
PS, I am mentoring a young man who is being freed from a stronghold by believing his heritage in Christ. His previous distorted view of his identity led him to try overcoming the stronghold on his own...but to no avail. As he is believing his true identity in Christ, he is surrendering his old ways of overcoming the stronghold, and is growing to depend on Christ in him.
PSS, If you have time, I believe you will be blessed by reading about George Washington Carver in the right column. It is testimony of Proverbs 3:34, "God gives grace to the humble."
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