Day 2: Receiving what Christ did on the Cross for you
Colossians 3: 1 - 3
Since you have been raised to new life with Christ, set your sights on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits in the place of honor at God’s right hand. 2 Think about the things of heaven, not the things of earth. 3 For you died to this life, and your real life is hidden with Christ in God.
Growing up , my mother wasn’t a consistent church go-er. She was very loving and kind, but now that I am older, I realize she didn’t exactly understand what her life being completely devoted to Christ looked like. She thought that she was trying her hardest, but she really wasn’t. Some would say, that’s a result of her fleshly disobedience, yet I have to disagree. I really believe it was a result of her not understanding what Christ did on the cross for her fully.
When we think about what Christ did, sometimes we just shallowly think of the fact that his act of dying and resurrecting gave us forgiveness of our sins, but it gave us so much more than that: It gave us an identity that we could be confident in. One of the textbook definitions for the word identity is “a close similarity or resemblence”; with synonyms such as likeness or parallelism. Whatever we find our identity IN, we believe that we resemble or are of a similar likeness with.
When you are having an identity crisis, you are confused and not confident about what you resemble or have similar likeness with.
Just follow me on this one for a second. Jesus came to earth as a physical man. The son of a carpenter from a small insignificant town called Nazareth. When he became of age to start his ministry, it seemed oddly peculiar to most common people that he would declare his self the messiah or even manifest many of the miracles that he did. This was not a problem as much for the Roman empire. They didn’t bother with the problems of the Jews, because they believed that there were multiple Gods anyway, and some of them believed they were Gods themselves. Jesus became a problem to the Roman Empire when he started professing that he was the king of kings and there was none higher than him. The king at the time was named Tiberius Cesear Augustus, and it was blasphemy anywhere in the kingdom if you declared that there was any king other than him. The people saw what Jesus was doing, and many believed in him, yet for fear of being put to death behind following this new “king”, many of them were not as open with their faith as they could have been.
The most public, disgraceful, painful and humiliating death back then was a crucifixion. You were hung on this cross in such a manner that on top of the nails being pierced through your skin, you were positioned to where your arms would grow tired and every time you breathe in and your chest would contract, it would cause the pain to bear even more excruciation. Everyone was afraid of being crucified. Everyone. It would be like today’s version of the electric chair.
Jesus went through this excruciating death and rose again so that no man would fear the grave if they were identifying as his follower. The teachings that came forth explained that death was not a sentence of eternal damnation but an invitation to be with their heavenly father forever. Through this showing, even the perceived most horrific death, was nothing in comparison to the power that he held, and all of his followers who were baptized with the Holy Spirit would hold. Through the death and resurrection we were not only forgiven of our sins, but given a living breathing example of our identity.
This is where the foundation of our confidence holds the analogy of “a house built on a rock”. The house is you. The rock is Jesus. When we build ourselves using the identity of Jesus who is the rock, we have confidence that we can do all things. We have confidence that we can move all mountains. We have confidence that we can live a life in abundance. We have confidence that we can have joy even in the midst of trials. We have confidence that we can overcome all sin and temptation. Not because we can find our identity ourselves, but because when we find it in Jesus, we acknowledge and live in that resemblance and similar likeness.
Today I want you to constantly remind yourself that your identity is found in what Jesus exemplified on the cross and through the resurrection. I’m not going to give you any references today. I want you to search the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and find 7 things that you saw Jesus exemplify that you need to resemble in your life. Then decree and declare that you have confidence in your identity through Jesus to (insert quality) just like (insert scripture).
For example, if you want to resemble abundance. Read the miracle of the 5,000 men, women and children in Mark 6 and say out loud to yourself “I decree and declare that I have confidence in my identity through Jesus to multiply in abundance just like Mark 6:41-42 “41 Jesus took the five loaves and two fish, looked up toward heaven, and blessed them. Then, breaking the loaves into pieces, he kept giving the bread to the disciples so they could distribute it to the people. He also divided the fish for everyone to share. 42 They all ate as much as they wanted,”