You can’t make yourself right with God—I’m not able to make or restore a right relationship with God through anything I’m able to do in and of myself. It just doesn’t work that way. Jesus is the only one that makes that happen and we get to abide in him to then be in right relationship with the Father.
That first step is about return, rebirth, and being made different and new through Jesus. It is what it is and I am who I’ve become because Jesus has made it so. After that first step though, is a lifetime of steps of me being and doing what I’ve become. The ‘be’ comes before ‘do’, but the doing is where the becoming plays out.
For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first.
—2 Peter 2:20 (ESV)
This isn’t the only place in the Bible that this idea is worked out. The truth of our calling is that we’re called into a new way of living and doing and behaving and working—because we’ve been reborn as a new being. This verse in 2 Peter kept reminding me of what Jesus said in Matthew, “When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, but finds none. Then it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when it comes, it finds the house empty, swept, and put in order. Then it goes and brings with it seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there, and the last state of that person is worse than the first.” (Matthew 12:43-45, ESV)
... Then it goes and brings with it seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there, and the last state of that person is worse than the first.
—Matthew 12:43-45, ESV
Our identity is by the grace of the Father through faith in Jesus by the power of the Spirit. It’s an act of God that gives us new life.
How am I living my new life?
We are molded by God’s hands, but we are also shaped by our decisions in life. I am renewed by Holy Spirit but I can easily let darkness chip away at my heart. I can now abide in Jesus and have true life, but I also pursue life on my own terms and gain.
Is that just me?
At this moment I am meditating and reflecting on this letter and these words from Peter. I’m thinking about the grace and love of Jesus, seeking more of God—a life filled more with God. And as this moment passes, what does the next moment bring for me? What do I bring to the moment after that? How many moments are there in my life? In the Bible, it’s a moment of being transformed in Jesus. In life, it’s moment after moment after moment of… whatever I choose to fill it with.
What I do gives way to what I will do more of. What I fill my mind with shapes the direction of my life, doesn’t it? Where my heart is drawn to leads to seeking more of it and with greater intensity.
I’ve found that each moment we have in life only leads to the moment that follows it. In my lifetime of moments, where each one is connected to and shapes and forms the next, I can become what God has said I’ve become in the moment of his grace and truth and forgiveness found in Jesus, being saved to escape the defilements of this world.
Or, I don’t.
That journey away from God is one we already know, one we’ve been set free from. That darkness only grows darker with time, moment by moment.
