Clothed in Christ
By Stephen Terry
“Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will
not all sleep, but we will all be changed—in a flash, in the twinkling of an
eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised
imperishable, and we will be changed.” I Corinthians 15:51-52, NIV
We have all had the experience of shopping
for something and finding just the right item across the room while searching
for it in a store. Excited, we hurry over. We can tell it will be just right. It’s
the right color, the right style, and the right size. We can almost see it in
our home where it will finish off the décor perfectly. But our excitement is abruptly replaced with
disappointment as we come to the item and see a “Sold” notice fastened to it. With
sadness we turn away as we realize this item will be in someone else’s home,
not ours.
The devil must
feel something like that when he encounters someone who has a living relationship
with Jesus. The Bible tells us we have already been sold. As Paul put it in his
letter to the Corinthians, “you were bought at a price…” 1
Corinthians 6:20, NIV That price was paid by Jesus on the cross. It was the price
of love. “For God so loved
the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall
not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16, NIV
God
beat the devil to the sale. The Bible says, “For he chose us in him before the creation of the world
to be holy and blameless in his sight.”
Ephesians 1:4, NIV You see the
price for our sale was determined and arranged by God before we were even
created. God knew that mankind was perfect for a place in His home.
Unlike the object we saw in the store,
however. We can choose to remove the “Sold” label God has placed on us. We can
choose not to go to His home. We can do this in several ways. We can choose not
to accept the label in the first place. We can say, “This is not the right
owner for us. We will wait for another.”
Since there are only two shoppers in
this store, we will then end up being sold to the devil. The devil is a sharp
bargainer. He never pays full price. He never sees our worth as God sees it. He
will point out our flaws and how hard it would be to fix them. In the end, he
argues the price way down and then does not even pay up front. He loves credit.
He puts us in his truck and drives down the road full of promises to pay, but
he never does. By refusing God’s purchase, we end up sold for little or nothing.
We might also refuse to go to God’s home
by doing all we can to demonstrate that we just don’t fit there. When our Owner
tries to take us one way, we choose to go another. When He tries to speak to
us, we refuse to listen. When He places a cloth over us to hide our flaws, we
can refuse to wear it. We can even flaunt our flaws, acting as though we are
proud of them. Even though we belong to Him, we can do everything we can to
hide the fact.
The strange thing is that God never
gives up on us. As many times as we might choose another path, He stands ready
to show us the way to His place. As many times as we refuse to listen to Him,
He still continues to speak to our hearts. As many times as we remove the cover
that hides our flaws, He keeps trying to put it back on. He hopes we will
eventually agree that we look better with our flaws covered. His patience with
us is infinite.
Another thing that is amazing about all
this is that He does not do this because of the very high price paid for us,
but because He loves us. He loves us so much that He would be heartbroken if we
were not with Him. The Bible puts it
this way, “This
is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the
world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but
that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” 1 John
4:9-10 NIV You see God
does not love us because He paid a high price for us. He paid a high price for
us because He loves us.
And
that cloth he keeps trying to put on us? That cloth is the perfect character of
Jesus. Jesus wants us to wear it because it looks better on us than our flaws
do. When a man and a woman are in love, the man wants his lady to look great,
and the woman wants her man to look great as well. God is in love with us, and
He knows we will look great in the character of Christ. He knows that we will
see it also. He knows that when we see how we look in Christ’s character, we
will feel so great about ourselves that we will do all we can to make our
character like His.
The
Bible describes it like this, “…you have
taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which
is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.” Colossians 3:9-10,
NIV If we accept what God gives us
to wear, we will experience this change as Paul said in his letter to the
Romans. “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of
this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be
able to test and approve what God's will is— his good, pleasing and perfect
will.” Romans 12:2 NIV
Elsewhere, Paul wrote to the
Corinthians, “Therefore, if anyone is
in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” 2
Corinthians 5:17, NIV But this transformation is not a work we can
accomplish in and of ourselves. No, this transformation, just like the cloth of
Christ’s character, comes from God.
When we are introduced to Jesus, we want
a relationship with Him. Then that relationship, through the influence of the
Holy Spirit, awakens in us a will to be like Him. We try to do that on our own,
but that does not work. In frustration, we finally come to God and confess our failures
and allow Him to do what we could not. Then He begins to transform us. He
builds us up where we need building up and prunes away what is hindering us. He
is very patient. He works as fast or as slowly as we are able to go.
Like a craftsman working on a fine piece
of furniture, he burnishes and polishes us until we reflect all the light He
shines on us. He sees in us the beauty that we cannot see in ourselves and
lovingly brings it out where all can see it. I cannot help but love a God like
that I want Him to take me home to his house and polish my character to make
that possible. Don’t you?
This Commentary is a Service of Still
Waters Ministry
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