"Swans"

"Swans"

     While God's being and doings always perfectly align, the same is not true of His trusting children in our present earthly existence.

    "Ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord.  Walk as children of light" (Ephesians 5:8).

    We are children of light.  However, we do not always walk accordingly (as confirmed by the necessity of a Biblical commandment to encourage such behavior).  Salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ reconstitutes our innermost being through the entrance of the indwelling Holy Spirit: "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away, behold, all things are become new" (II Corinthians 5:17).  The "all things" referenced by the Apostle Paul clearly involve the "who" of our spiritual being and identity rather than the "what" of our doings.  We are new creatures within, but our fleshly, earthly components presently remain without.  Thus, we may still think, believe, speak, act, and relate in accordance with the humanity inherited from Adam rather than the spiritual being birthed through Christ.

   Paul's command to the Ephesians basically states, "Be in mode and manner of life who you are in the Spirit and truth of Christ."  The challenge we face is that we still often feel and appear to be who we were before our new birth.  We may, to borrow from Hans Christian Anderson, be swans who still act as if we are ugly ducklings.  For example, the Apostle strongly affirms the Corinthians' relationship with God as the epistle opens (I Corinthians 1:4-9).  However, he quickly raises serious attitudinal and behavioral issues, ultimately indicting the Corinthians: "Are ye not yet carnal, and walk as men?" (I Corinthians 3:3).  Their doing did not flow from their being, but rather from their flesh.  They were not being who they were as they walked in darkness despite the grace-given newness of being God's "children of light."

  Throughout the epistles, the Bible affirms the being of born again believers, while encouraging and challenging a corollary walk that faithfully reflects the truth that we are God's sons and daughters.  Recognizing the difference between being and doing, as taught in Scripture, greatly helps us in proper interpretation.  Thereby we also grow in a subsequent life that increasingly results in our "What" revealing our "Who."   We must know and affirm the swans we are in Christ if we are to overcome our native tendency to think of ourselves as the ugly ducklings who "passed away" in Christ...

"Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over Him. For in that He died, He died unto sin once: but in that He liveth, He liveth unto God. Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord."

(Romans 6:9-11)

"If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit."

(Galatians 5:25)

Weekly Memory Verse

    The earth is the LORD's, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein.

(Psalm 24:1)