One of the biggest struggles of living this Christ-centered, Christ-following life is to understand and embody the identity that we have in Christ Jesus. My own journey with this has been challenging and continues to cycle. In my late teens, I distinctly remember being confronted by three dear friends related to my pride and self-focus. My own struggle with pride did not manifest itself in arrogance or ego but instead in insecurity. My insecurity brought about a fear and anxiety about what others thought about me, which in turn resulted in my focus always being on myself. While perhaps a different form of pride than some are used to seeing, this insecurity was (is) indeed pride and can be just as damaging personally and in relationships with others.
I found myself serving in a church as a worship leader in my early twenties and feeling like a fraud most of the time. I deeply desired to be close to Christ and to lead others out of the overflow of that relationship but my pride (along with some other sin in my life) was keeping me from being me all that God had created me to be. In this season, I was invited into an accountability group of men (I was by far the youngest) who were genuinely living their faith and pursuing holy love in covenant relationships together. It was life changing for me. I was so challenged by watching these men, not only at church but in their everyday lives (had the privilege of living with 2 of those men during that year). One night, I knelt beside my bed in desperation feeling like God was a million miles away and that I was missing something fundamental.
In His grace and mercy, God took me to I Corinthians 5 and what happened that night would forever change my life. In this passage, Paul talks about it being Christ's love that compels us and that we are a new creation in Christ (old is gone not just made better). We have been given the same ministry of reconciliation as Christ has and thus serve as Christ's ambassadors to the world. This is all what I longed to experience. Verse 21 brought it all home to me that night. "God made him [Jesus] who knew no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God."
Everything changed that day because it was the first time I got a glimpse of myself the way God sees me: as a Child of God and a Person of Worth (COGPOW). My worth comes not from my service of God but simply because I am a child of God. I discovered I didn't have to earn love but simply had to live in it, enjoy it, and respond to it. As Paul said, "Christ love compels us." This is what Jesus is getting at in John 15 as we hear that our focus needs to be in Abiding in Christ. That is where the life comes from and is also where all the Spirit's fruit comes from. We are to abide in Christ's love just as Christ abides in the Father's love.
Theologians refers to this Abiding in Christ as Union, and Union must necessarily precede Kenosis. Have you ever tried to serve God in your own strength? Have you ever tried to produce the fruit of the Spirit without truly being connected to (Abiding in) Jesus Christ? This is the reality for way to many of us, including those who are supposedly leading others.
Our self-giving, self-emptied (kenosis) life of love for God and others comes only in relationship and response to Abiding in Jesus Himself. This is where we must begin every day. Help me Lord Jesus - be my center, my everything. You must increase, I must decrease!
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