Welcome to my latest series rebrand! If you remember, long ago, I wrote a series called “Who Am I,” where we looked at almost forty titles we can claim as a follower of Christ. With the updates in my writing style and newer understandings of God and scripture, I want to share a new view of this series that no longer ponders “Who Am I” but confidently claims “Who I Am.” My hope, through the Holy Spirit, you hear what your identity in Christ is. It’s a current journey I’m walking through, so you will likely see raw, emotional, and honest testimonies from me. I want to share my wrestling with you for both transparency and selfishness. I have a goal that this clears some things up for me that I have doubts and questions over, but also to show that I’m human in all of this and am not an all-perfect, all-knowing being. The scripture and studies you will hear from me in this series come from my Bible study and my testimonies and thoughts. I have twenty-nine pages of notes and more thoughts than grains of sand at your nearest beach, so let’s get into this.
This week, I want to focus on four titles that are also internal affirmations. Our first one is this: I am alive in Christ.
Ephesians 2:4-5 says this:
4 But God is so rich in mercy, and he loved us so much,
5 that even though we were dead because of our sins, he gave us life when he raised Christ from the dead. (It is only by God’s grace that you have been saved!)
My immediate takeaway is that our sins cause our earthly death, but through God’s love and mercy, we will have eternal life through Christ Jesus’s works. Is this an accurate understanding? Let’s talk about it.
Paul wrote to the church in Ephesus to help strengthen the believers there in their Christian faith by explaining the nature and purpose of the church and its community. The section where our passage is reminds us that each of us is a part of the church body that must work together with the other parts. The goal should be to eliminate all gossip, jealousy, anger, harsh criticism, and more because these are barriers to a healthy church community.
Think of this. There are 78 organs in a typical human body. Each organ has its responsibility to function on its own, as well as the responsibility to work together with other organs. If one organ malfunctions, it loses its functionality and possibly affects the functionality of another. Before we know it, the body is shutting down. What happens if your congregation of 78 has not been functioning healthily? What happens if they’ve been shutting down the work of God with gossip or criticism, or cynicism?
How does the body get fixed when a part of it isn’t working? Our immune system may be strong enough to fight the issue independently, and we must rest. Sometimes we have to take medicine, either over-the-counter or prescribed by our doctor, to fix our bodies because we may need additional help. Sometimes we must take severe measures and make lifestyle changes or go to the hospital for surgery or a procedure to regain proper functionality. Sometimes the church needs to heal independently, with healthy conversation and conflict resolution. Sometimes the church might need to call on a third party to heal the hurt that happens. Sometimes the hard decisions will need to be made to ask the person the leave or fire the staff person. In all situations, the goal is to have the body work together healthily.
With this in mind, we must remember that we do not need to live under sin’s power. The penalty and power of sin are no more through the sacrifice of Jesus. By faith in Christ, we no longer are guilty of sin. This fact doesn’t mean we’ll never sin again. We’ll still feel like sinning and will sin. The difference is that our sins control us, and we’ll have a spiritual death. We can live eternally through Christ and lean on him to help us avoid sin. Jesus teaches us how to live with genuine joy and absolute freedom that sinful actions tend to substitute.
Our sins can lead us down the same path that Jesus offers. We can find hope, joy, and freedom through our sins, but they aren’t legitimate. They are feelings created by substitutionary acts that have a shelf life. Excitement while gambling can only last if you have the money to gamble. The feeling of connection while watching porn can only last until you climax. The feeling of peace from smoking can only last until you run out. Following Jesus allows us to experience all these things for an eternity. The love and mercy that comes from being a Christian is something we can never lose and never run out of. Just like the things of this world can end, our earthly life ends too. With Jesus, it still ends, but we have a new beginning that comes with our spot in heaven.
This understanding is what it can mean to be alive in Christ. To live with an eternal mindset, not an earthly one, as we often attempt to do. Paul had something similar to say in Romans 5:6
6 When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners.
We are weak. We are helpless. We can do nothing on our own to save ourselves. We can’t reach heaven without accepting Christ as our Lord and Savior. We must live with an eternal mindset that brings the Kingdom of Heaven down to the earth. This principle is what Jesus taught his disciples and us to pray in Matthew 6. May we live knowing that we are alive in Christ.
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The second title we’ll talk about is “I am holy and without blame before him in love.”
Ephesians 1:4 says this:
4 Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes.
God chose us to show others salvation depends solely on God. God saves us because God gifted it to us. Our wisdom and good behavior don’t influence the reason God saved us. It was because of his mercy and his plan for the world. We cannot, and should not, take credit or pride in this decision. Doing so ignores the holiness and reverence that God deserves. God wouldn’t get the praise for doing this if we took ownership of the decision. Granted, we also have to accept the gift of salvation, which requires our decision, but it’s still a gift—a gift granted by our heavenly father to save our souls from the temptations of the world.
How salvation works has been a mystery to the world ever since the world began. Christ’s sacrifice makes us holy and blameless in his sight, meaning that God looks at us if we never sin. We still sin because of our human nature, but God doesn’t see that because our sins got forgiven through Jesus’ death on the cross. God doesn’t look down on us because of our sins. God doesn’t treat us differently because of our sins. God doesn’t withhold things from us because of our sins. God still loves us and gives us grace, mercy, and salvation. All we can do is express our thanks for his incredible love.
Peter has a couple of things to say supporting Paul’s statement. 1 Peter 1:2 says this:
2 God the Father knew you and chose you long ago, and his Spirit has made you holy. As a result, you have obeyed him and have been cleansed by the blood of Jesus Christ.
Peter encourages his audience by reminding them that they are God’s chosen people. As mentioned earlier, salvation and security rest in God’s choice. There’s nothing that can take away the eternal life God is offering to those who believe in him. God still offers them; we just have to accept the offer. Peter further supports this by sharing how the Trinity works in our salvation. God the Father chose you and me before we even knew about him. Jesus, God’s Son, died for us because of our sins. The Holy Spirit, God living within us, brings us the benefit of salvation and sets us apart to do God’s will.
God’s pre-decision to choose us shows God taking the initiative before we understand what we did to deserve this. God knew about us and our world in 2023. God knows who would believe in him when and how, and he knew them very personally. The chosen ones are known by God the Father as a parent knows their children, except that God knew about them before that. Look how intimately God chose you and me. Before we even existed as a possibility in our parent’s minds, God chose us and prepared the gift of salvation for us. The only modern-day example is how parents put money away in a college fund when they have a newborn. Do they know they will go to college? No. Yet they prepare this gift for their future anyways. God knows who will and will not believe, and yet the goal is that all people will claim God as their Lord and Savior (Philippians 2:10-11). This belief shows me that God prepares this gift for all people, for all people will believe in God and accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior. The gifts are ready for us to claim if we haven’t already.
1 Peter 1:20 says this:
20 God chose him as your ransom long before the world began, but now in these last days he has been revealed for your sake.
Christ’s sacrifice was not an afterthought. God didn’t create humans first and then send Jesus to die for our sins. God set this plan in motion before he created the world. God knew he needed to do something after the fall of humanity in Genesis, which I believe jump-started this plan. Yet God knew the plan before the Trinity began creating the world as we knew it. They created this plan if it became necessary for humanity to need saving. God is all-knowing, meaning each possibility of something happening was in God’s sight. This mindset included God choosing us to be his people and to have God rescue us from the sins that we’ve committed, we commit, and we’ll commit later on. If we were to be rescued by God, God had to create the plan to send Jesus to save us.
We’ve talked in-depth about how we’re God’s chosen people rescued by Jesus’s sacrifice, but what does it mean for you and me to be holy? 1 Peter 1:16 says this:
16 For the Scriptures say, “You must be holy because I am holy.”
That doesn’t say much now. We must acknowledge that Peter is quoting scripture here. He quotes Leviticus 11:44-45, which says this:
44 For I am the Lord your God. You must consecrate yourselves and be holy because I am holy. So do not defile yourselves with any of these small animals that scurry along the ground.
45 For I, the Lord, am the one who brought you up from the land of Egypt, that I might be your God. Therefore, you must be holy because I am holy.
God wanted the Levites to be holy (set apart from the others), just as God is holy. God knew that they had two options:
- To be separate and holy
- To compromise with their pagan neighbors and become corrupt.
It’s why God wanted them out of Egypt, so they didn’t fall away from the Christian faith and follow Egyptian religious lifestyles. It’s why God designed specific laws and restrictions that helped them remain socially and spiritually separate from the wicked pagan nations they would encounter. God was calling them to live to a higher standard that aligns closer with God than the world. Remember that the Levites were the priests of the Israelite nation, so for them to live closer to how God wanted them to live was essential. Here’s how God calls us to be holy.
We should remain spiritually separate from the world’s wickedness, even though we rub shoulders with unbelievers daily. What does it remain spiritually separate from the world’s wickedness? I believe this means not doing things that don’t align with God’s plan that the world approves of. There’s a varied list of things that fall into the dynamic that may vary from person-to-person, so think about what this means to you and your Christian walk. Our holiness comes through the death of Jesus, which reminds us that we are holy and blameless. One of the ways we recognize this is through Communion. When your church takes Communion, it’s a reminder of the body and blood of Christ and what he went through on the cross—intentionally taking these moments to remind ourselves about what the death of Jesus means for us and how we can live into that with holiness and reverence to God. By following God, we can live in the world without the need to be of the world. What I mean by this is that because we follow God, we don’t have to live the way that world tells us to. God’s ways are higher than anyone else’s, so we must remember to live how God calls us to. Why? Because we are holy and without blame before God in love.
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We’ll discuss the third title: “I am free from the law of sin and death.”
Romans 8:2 says this:
2 And because you belong to him, the power of life-giving Spirit has freed you from the power of sin that leads to death.
Sin can lead us to not having the chance to live an eternal life, meaning that when our time on earth ends, life ends. Yet, because we belong to God’s family, we don’t succumb to the power of sin. We live through the power of the life-giving Spirit, the Holy Spirit. The Spirit was present when the Trinity created the world and is active through the rebirth of every Christian. This power that was there also is with us always when we need to live the Christian life. How does this look? Paul says this later on in Romans 8. Romans 8:11 says this:
11 The Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you. And just as God raised Christ Jesus from the dead, he will give life to your mortal bodies by this same Spirit living within you.
Paul’s talking about how we’ll look when we transition to our eternal life. He reminds us that the same Holy Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead is the same Spirit that lives in us. That Spirit is the guarantee of eternal life for the believers. We need to have faith that we have the Spirit within us and that we’ll live with Christ eternally by that same faith. It’s hard to understand and rationalize tangibly because life after death is a foreign concept to humans. Our human bodies exist for a period of time, and then they exist no more. This mindset is how we understand life and death. Yet, our faith calls us to understand life and death beyond our understanding. We may not be able to explain it, but we can share with others that God does it for good. Paul shares a way of understanding the Spirit in 2 Corinthians 3:6, which says this:
6 He has enabled us to be ministers of his new covenant. This is a covenant not of written laws but of Spirit. The old written covenant ends in death, but under the new covenant, the Spirit gives life.
Living by following the Old Testament laws will not guarantee eternal life and will end in death. Through the belief in Jesus can, a person receive eternal life via the Holy Spirit. Jesus came to fulfill these laws and remind us that we need to love God with all we are and love others as Jesus loved us. The laws make people realize, recognize, and understand their sin, but it doesn’t free them from it and allow them to live after it. With this new covenant, we have eternal life through the Holy Spirit, and all people who believe can receive it. The moral law still calls out sin and shows us how to follow God, but forgiveness can only come through Jesus’s grace and mercy. How does Jesus do it? Check out what Paul says in Galatians 5:1.
1 So, Christ has truly set us free. Now make sure that you stay free and don’t get tied up again in slavery to the law.
Jesus died to release us from the bondage of sin and the long list of laws and regulations. It wasn’t to do whatever we wanted because our human nature would eventually get us back into slavery to our sins. Those who use their freedom to do whatever they want, whether it aligns with God or not, and indulge in their desires are falling back into a sinful nature. The concept is living for God versus living with God. We shouldn’t act with a law-based mindset, “God doesn’t say I shouldn’t do this, so I’m allowed to do it,” but instead with the mindset of, “Would God be happy with me if I did this?” Sometimes the actions can fit into both categories; the first bases God on law, while the last bases God on love. Christ set us free from a law-based fear of Christ, and it’s our job to stay free in a loved-based fear of Christ.
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The last title we’ll talk about is “I am God’s workmanship, created in Christ to do good works.”
Ephesians 2:10 says this:
10 For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.
God creates our gift of salvation. God works powerfully and creatively with us. God uses us as his canvas to share with others how God looks in the world. If God considers us his masterpiece, we better not treat ourselves or others disrespectfully or as inferior. God doesn’t make junk, as the Skit Guys state. God created our minds as beautiful when we see them as chaotic and harmful. God created our bodies as art when we look at the mirror as messed up or not pretty enough. Beauty lies in the art of the beholder, and what better beholder is there than God himself? Our gift of salvation is something he uniquely creates for you and me. God is painting the canvas of what that looks like in intricate details, specific brush strokes, and specific color choices. God works powerfully and creatively with us. Not within us, but with us, alongside us. God does stuff through us that we can reflect on and question how we even dared to do it.
I’m still amazed that for 2.5 years, I was able to grow three communities: my blog community (which has 90 followers), my previous ministry channel (which had over 300 videos), and my previous gaming channel (which had almost 75 subscribers and over 500 videos). I’ve always wanted to do those things, but I never felt like I could, but God worked alongside me to do and learn proper ways to create, manage, and advertise these communities. Now, I’m getting ready to start again. I’ve been writing new blogs for half a year now. I just recorded 10-15 TikTok for my channel (@marclivingtranslation). I’m preparing to record new gaming content for my new YouTube channel. God did all these things alongside me in the past to do those things again in the future, but my growth is what changed. A growth that only comes from the sculpting and pruning of God. God created me to do good works.
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Let’s wrap up the first week of our new series. We look at four statements we can claim as a believer in Christ. These statements are also internal affirmations that remind us of our value to God. Here they are again:
I am alive in Christ.
I am holy and without blame before him in love.
I am free from the law of sin and death.
I am God’s workmanship, created in Christ to do good works.
I encourage you to go through this week and say one each during your prayer time or to yourself in the mirror and see how your mood and day change. If you do this, let me know how it went down in the comments below or message me on the Bible Study Vibes Facebook page.
Next week, we’ll look at four more statements that we can claim as a believer in Christ from the perspective of being a part of the family of God. Until then, stay blessed.
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