2 Corinthians 5:17-21 Phillips For, if a man is in Christ, he becomes a new person altogether—the past is finished and gone, everything has become fresh and new. All this is God’s doing, for He has reconciled us to himself through Jesus Christ; and He has made us agents of the reconciliation. God was in Christ personally reconciling the world to Himself—not counting their sins against them—and has commissioned us with the message of reconciliation. We are now Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were appealing direct to you through us. As His personal representatives we say, “Make your peace with God.” For God caused Christ, who Himself knew nothing of sin, actually to be sin for our sakes, so that in Christ we might be made good with the goodness of God.
“Environment, nurture, wounds, relationships, choices, and experience—all of these leave their mark on us. Over time, our responses become habits, habits become patterns, and patterns begin to feel less like something we do and more like simply who we are. The deeper these “hollow pathways,” the less we even notice we are walking in them. That may be the most dangerous thing about the old self: from the inside, these “hollow pathways” can feel perfectly normal. We need a life other than our own to expose them—a different Spirit, a different standard, a different way of being human. And this is precisely what Christ gives us: not merely a better pattern to imitate, but His own life within us.” Mark Slomka, my pastor for life, from his Merely Human Blog
Observation
We humans are a messy bunch. We are imprinted with the experiences of our pasts – good and bad. Our families can be nurturing or wounding or both. The struggles – emotional, physical, spiritual – that mark our lives can establish strong character or undermine us. “Over time, our responses become habits, habits become patterns, and patterns begin to feel less like something we do and more like simply who we are… That may be the most dangerous thing about the old self: from the inside, these “hollow pathways” can feel perfectly normal.”
This is our legacy from Adam and Eve choosing to make themselves the gods of the knowledge of good and evil. Humans are much to swayed by pride, inconsistent and wobbly in sense, perspective and understanding, to be any good at it. In Christ, we have an opportunity to reconcile their mistake. We can bypass the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and, through reconciliation provided by the Cross and continued submission to the work of the Holy Spirit in us, reestablish and sustain the relationship our God intended at the beginning. “For, if a man is in Christ, he becomes a new person altogether—the past is finished and gone, everything has become fresh and new. All this is God’s doing, for He has reconciled us to himself through Jesus Christ…” What an extraordinary price to pay for relationship with us!
Impact on Me
The quote above is from a very wise pastor that God gifted into my life. One of the gifts he exercised so well was challenging me to examine and evaluate the “hollow pathways” of my life. He challenged me to be made new in Christ, to live above the circumstances of my past (temporary and temporal) by pursuing and embracing the eternal and holy. He was an example to me of a merely human person in active pursuit of the fullness of the relationship Christ died to provide. I provided a link to his blog above.
“For God caused Christ, who Himself knew nothing of sin, actually to be sin for our sakes, so that in Christ we might be made good with the goodness of God.” This is my goal. To allow this mere human (emotionally wobbly and flawed) to be overcome, overwhelmed and overflow with the goodness of God, with the mercy and grace of Christ, with the anointing of His Holy Spirit. This is what Jesus died for me (and us) to be. It is up to me to allow Holy Spirit to do the work to make it happen.
Devotion
Father God, Creator, Redeemer, Lover of My Soul, You are worthy of all worship and praise. I stand in awe of Your love for us, the value You place upon a relationship with us, the lengths to which You are willing to go to pursue and woo us. I want to be surrendered to Your Holy Spirit so completely that You can dwell in me and I will be completely at rest in You. I know that this will require sacrifice – forgiving/letting go of my past wounds, laying down my rights and expectations, being willing to be a fool for Your purposes and so much more. Help me to remember when the choice comes that this is departing my hollow pathways to journey with You. Make it so, in Jesus’ name.
Pressing On In His Footsteps 