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And although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds, yet He has now reconciled you in His fleshly body through death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach
(Colossians 1:21-22)
In the life we live apart from Christ, we give no thought to the truth that we will one day stand before God and give an account for our life. If we have even heard of the coming judgment, we deny that it is true. If someone asks us if we are blameless or above reproach we cannot say that we are blameless in the truest sense. But we do try to explain away any sense of guilt we have. In our condition, we are actually indifferent or even unaware of our having any guilt before God. We are living with little or no concern about what impact our lives may have on other people. We really don't give much thoughts to the hurts we cause others. Sure, we may apologize if we hurt someone we care about, but that is out of our self-centered concerns, not out of a godly concern for the other person. In fact, are likely to be ways that we hurt others in order to make ourselves feel better, whether consciously or unconsciously. Generally speaking, we don't think that there is anything we are doing that is really a serious issue. We probably even would describe ourselves as being basically a good person. We cannot picture ourselves as deserving to be blamed for anything or causing any kind of discredit to anyone. Yet the way we live our lives indifferent to God, perhaps even hostile to Him that brings discredit to the One who created us. We don't recognize it, but we are the only one to be blamed for living our life apart from God, for ignoring Him. Because we are blind to this, we have no idea regarding the depth of our sin or the blame that is upon us before God for the harm we have done to ourselves, to others, to God's creation, and even to the truth of God. But, if someone were to ask us, we would say that there is no serious guilt that would stick to us.
In encountering the Lord Jesus Christ and our beginning to check out who he is, we find that he was often confronting people who felt they had life and God all figured out. We might even say that he was telling those who thought they were really good people that they were far from the truth about themselves and about God. We also find Christ speaking firmly but lovingly to people that were clearly living in ways that didn't honor God and calling them to a different way of living. In observing Jesus, we start to discover that there is a seriousness with which Jesus addresses the way we live life. We see it in the way he speaks to the people in his day, but what he says is also challenging us personally. As we have moments of honesty, reflecting on what Christ says and looking at ourselves, we realize that we are not the person we thought we were. We recognize that we are actually guilty before God.
This serious reflection and personal evaluation is for our good as it brings us to a crisis point in which we have to decide whether we truly believe what Jesus says and what it means for us. In this moment of crisis which is not marked by a clock, we believe the truth about Christ and what he has done to deliver us from the death our sin deserves. Before this moment we would not have described ourselves as a sinner, at least not in a serious manner. But now we are seeing our sins for what they are and we are broken by what we see in ourselves. We cry out for the salvation we hear spoken of in the gospel message. He are hearing and believing the message and are finding that Christ truly is the Savior of the world, even our Savior. The truth penetrates our heart and mind that only in Christ is there forgiveness of sins, that he is God's only remedy for our sinful nature and choices. Upon him have been laid the sins of the world, including all of our sin. We hear him tell us to follow him and to live for him and we respond to our Lord by following him. This transformative encounter with Jesus Christ has started changing our perspective. We begin to learn what it means to live for him rather than for ourselves. We commit ourselves to following him. Having accepted the salvation that is in Christ, we really begin to see ourselves and are even more aware of the guilt we have before God for how we have lived. We may feel a sense of struggle between our past and the picture of life in Christ, but even so we are seeking to live more for Christ and less for ourselves. At times it seems easy to walk with Christ while at others we may even wonder if Christ has saved us at all.
As we grow in Christ, our love for him and our faith in him continues increasing. For a time our love and faith has more of a personal focus in which it is more about us. Even so, there is an ongoing transformation taking place within us by which we are also discovering a new concern about how we impact the lives of other people. As we look at ourselves we may not always pleased with how we handle things. Guilt about our past may creep up on us and we may try to work through our issues. We truly do want to be free from our past and to live for Christ alone, yet somehow it seems that our past keeps coming to mind, whether through intentional or unintentional means. We are told we are saved, but doubt wants to creep in. It may be that we are struggling with the truth regarding the fullness of God's forgiveness. Or it may be that we simply have not grasped that the blood of Christ is truly sufficient. It is possible that our focus is more on ourselves and our past than on Christ and the promised future. Whatever the reason for our feeling like we struggle, we eventually come to understand that Christ's death on the cross is sufficient for all of our brokenness and sin. That the blood of Christ does cleans us from all sin. That we truly have been bought with a price and that price is the blood of Christ. Though we may not think about it on a conscious level, the blood of Christ is the means through which we are discovering that we can live free from the guilt of the past. An interesting change has taken place in us. Once we had no sense of guilt. The enemy of our soul held us captive in the domain of darkness. But then we were set free in Christ from that captivity. In response, our enemy tries to convince us about our past guilt that we had denied and has now been taken away by Christ. Seeking to keep us in bondage the enemy is trying to turn the table on us and once again get us to deny what God has said about His giving us life in Christ and freedom from sin and death. When we grasp the truth of our freedom through the blood of Christ, we find freedom in Christ to live free of our past so that we can live in the present with an eternal perspective that enables us to grasp the hope we have for the future.
As a mature Christian, our heart's desire is to glorify God in all that we say and do. Our focus is no longer on ourselves, but on Christ. We are not seeking to satisfy our own desires. Rather, we are choosing to live in the love of God and expressing that love by loving our neighbors. The result is that we are living life in the manner that God intended and desires for us. Our life in Christ is a life lived without blame from our heavenly Father. Being in Christ, we are no longer doing things that bring reproach from God nor reproach from human beings. Sure, there may be many who cannot understand the way we live and even punish us for living for Christ, but any reproaches we may be suffering are for the sake of Christ and not a reproach from Christ for evil. Our focus is on Christ. We are listening to what he says and doing it. It is not an effort for us to live in the present in a blameless fashion because we are living for Christ and by him. What's more, we abide in his word and the word is hidden in us so that we are living with the knowledge that one day we will be presented by Christ before God as blameless in His creation. The truth sets us free for we know that eventually we will be standing before the throne and will not have to bear any reproach for our past because Jesus Christ bore it for us. How amazing it appears to us as we look back at our past to see what God's grace has done for us and in us. We are amazed to realize that God has formed us in His image and we have come to look like Jesus.
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