A Devotion (I know it's long, but I hope it's encouraging)

The other day I was in charge of giving the devotion for the student council meeting at Seminary. This is my second year serving on the council in an elected position. My official position is the women's rep. and I really enjoy the meetings and the collaborative work that goes on between the council and the staff. Ok, that is not the point of this post, but now you know a little more about me! What I really want to share with you is the devotion that I gave. I have found myself thinking a lot about 2 Corinthians 5:16-21,

16 From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. 18 All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; 19 that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. 20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

I spoke a little about what it means to be a "new creation" according to the passage. Once a person excepts Christ as their Savior their lives change in the eternal sense. They are no longer called by the name Sinner, but are rather given a new name, Redeemed! The old order of life has passed because, through their union with Christ, they now have the ability to not sin and to live to glorify Christ in all that they do. But if I am honest with myself I don't feel like a new creation very often. I still feel plagued by the brokenness of this world. I still sin against those I love all of the time. I feel pain and experience sickness. BUT, the passage says that we are new creations and it is telling the truth. However, though our newness has been initiated, we still wait to be made completely new. We live in a tension right now between the 'Already' (redemption has come because of Christ's death on the cross) and the 'Not Yet' (though we can see affects of his redemption we won't see the completion of it until he returns). So we wait and we live in this tension. But even in this we live with hope!

The second part of the passage reminds us of our calling as Christians. To bring this message of reconciliation to the world. As I was reflecting on this passage I began to question that, while often we work really hard to bring the message of reconciliation to others, do we ever bring it to ourselves? My pastor recently gave an illustration about a women who faced domestic abuse. She was finally moved to a safe place, but one day the knock on the door came. The abuser had returned, and she was tempted to yet again to open the door and let him in. This was used to illustrate how we often respond when sin knocks on our heart. As I was listening I realized that this not only means the sins that we do, but the sins that have been done to us; the sins that have hurt us and caused us to feel shame, the sins that have caused us to tell ourselves over and over again that we are not worthy of love, that we are stupid, that we are ugly, or that we are responsible. We need the message of reconciliation when we are tempted to believe those lies. We need to shut the door to the continuing patterns that we find ourselves in. The message of reconciliation is one that we need to remind ourselves of everyday as well as we interact with a world that is need of the reconciling Savior.

Lindsey