Parson to Person - Christ lives within us

We are name-changers. We grasp the potency of language. It?s as if we?ve all memorized the book The Beginner?s Guide to Giving Your Sin a Holy Name. As I once named a childish prank ?fixing the car,? so we christen our greed as ?wise business sense.? We dub our slander as ?truth-telling.? We brand the slaughter of infants as ?a mother?s freedom.? We talk of racism as ?love of tradition.? We identify adultery as ?looking for our true soulmate.? On and on it goes.

What I find most revealing about this renaming tendency is the pressing need we feel to justify our actions. Think about it. Hardwired into us is the desire to be in the right, no matter what. We cannot stand the thought of admitting that we have lied, cheated, stolen, hated, or slandered, because the moment we confess these wrongs, we confess that we are standing outside the house of justification. So instead of confessing our sins, we sanctify them. Why? So we can declare ourselves justified in the eyes of God and our neighbor. So deep is our desire to be in the right that we will do every wrong to make it seem otherwise. Our greatest fear is revealing who we really are.

What we don?t realize, however, is that our greatest freedom actually begins when we confess who we really are. When we un-name our renaming of sin, we open up the possibility of true righteousness?and along with it, true peace and forgiveness. When we say, ?I am a thief. I am a slanderer. I am a murderer, adulterer, bigot,? we strip away our self-justification and admit that we stand naked and filthy before the only true judge of our actions, God Himself.

At that moment we are exposed to an astonishing truth: that God doesn?t want sin to be sin either. He too wants us to be righteous. What He does, however, is not rename our evils or excuse our sins; He removes them. Or to say it more accurately, He transfers them. He takes our lying and cheating and all other wrongs and wraps them round the body of a substitute. He says, ?Jesus, take these away. Do for Your brothers and sisters what they cannot do for themselves.? And He does. He assumes ownership of our wrongdoing. He willingly becomes our scapegoat. He says, ?These transgressions are mine. All evil is mine, past, present, future. It is no longer yours. And I won?t ever give it back.?

But Christ outdoes Himself. Not content merely to pay the penalty for our crimes, He invests us with the riches of His own righteousness. We assume His identity, wear His clothes, are called by His name, are treated as royalty. Jesus dies, and we in Him, and so our lives are hidden with Christ in God. Who He is, we are, and who we are, He is.

Is Jesus perfect? So are we.

Is Jesus holy and righteous and pleasing to His Father? So are we.

Is Jesus the heir of heaven, the Father?s child, the beloved of God? So are we.

It is no longer we who live but Christ who lives in us.

All of this sounds crazy and outlandish. It breaks all the rules. But it is true. It?s as true as the fact that the sun shines and the rivers flow. Christ has done it all for you.

As for the book, ?The Beginner?s Guide to Giving Your Sin a Holy Name?, you don?t need it. In quite another kind of book you are renamed as the Father?s beloved, the brother and sister of Jesus, the temple of the Spirit, a forgiven and justified saint. And those new, God-given names now define who you are. And will, to all eternity.