The Struggle to be who we are already in Christ

Why do many Christians carry the burden of numerous religious activities? Sometimes, it is due to an honest desire to be righteous and holy. 

The desire and commitment to holy life is God's mandate for us but our undoing is the thought that becoming holy depends wholly on our efforts. This is the burden most Christians bear; the struggle to be righteous through religious activities.

Self-dependent effort to earn righteousness is an unattainable and frustrating quest. There is nothing good in us to meet up the righteous requirements of God. God has rather provided the basic righteousness through Jesus Christ. Upon acceptance of the free gift of salvation, we become new creatures,  created anew in the righteous image of God ( Gal. 2:20; Rom. 6:6). This knowledge determines the kind of lives we’ll live afterwards. The sad thing is that, this is often taken for granted.

Christians who do not pay attention to their new identity in Christ by the virtue of conversion often rely on self-efforts and religious activities for righteousness.  Paul the apostle had that experience with the believers in Galatia in the first century. After they accepted Christ through the gospel he preached to them,  they stopped living by the grace of God and started struggling for salvation through religious effort (Gal. 3:1-9). 

Christian practice that ignores God's gift of life by the grace through faith in Christ Jesus is a false one. It is a spiritual pride to overlook or take God's grace for granted. It is an attempt to do what only God can do.  And it is deceptive and destructive to venture into  doing what only God can do for us.

True Christianity springs from the true knowledge of who one is in Christ Jesus; righteous and holy sons and daughters of God by the grace through faith in Christ. John the apostle says that:

See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God; and such we are.” (1John 3:1a). 

When we meet the simple two conditions given for salvation as stated in Romans 10:9 (believing in Jesus to be the son God who was raised from dead and confessing Him to be Lord), we instantly become children of God. This  means that our souls and human spirit previously dead to sin have been saved from the nature of death to the nature of God, the nature of holiness and righteousness (1 Corinth. 5:17).

True Christianity accepts a new identity  in Christ Jesus by faith. It is faith in God and not in our ability to attain  any righteous standard through activities.

We are not meant to struggle to become  children of God because we are already his children by the virtue of faith in Christ Jesus. We are rather meant to live from who we are and not to live struggling needlessly to be who we are already.

This understanding gives us peace and rest of mind. The knowledge that one is a child of God gives a profound peace to live freely from the terrors of Satan, it also gives confidence to live boldly for God.

Christians are meant to rest in the finished work of Christ (Heb. 4:1). However, when a Christian fail to understand what God has done or who God has made him or her in Christ, he will live with the burden of struggling for righteousness.  We can only live righteous lives because we are made righteous in the first place. This is the paradox of Christian Faith that can only be understood by the help of the Holy Spirit. we pursue righteousness out of righteousness. We pursue righteousness out of the righteous image we have been made in Christ Jesus. 

It is easy to recite " we are the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus (2Cor. 5:21b)" but difficult to live by this confession.  Just a look at the church will tell that the message of this text has eluded us. The church needs to grapple with this message and start living as who she really is. Christians are not to struggle to be righteous, they are. The scripture says: 

For you were once darkness but now you are light (Eph. 5:8). 

 

If the unbelievers are struggling to be righteous only by morality because they have not come to the saving knowledge of God, and Christians too do the same, how then are we  different?  The scripture says:

We are the light of the world (Matt.5:14). 

We are called to live out our light before men and not struggle to be light. We can struggle to shine the light in the midst of the thick darkness of the world but not to struggle to be the light.

It takes faith to realize who we are in Christ. And it  is difficult for people to accept the reality of who they are in Christ  because it takes faith. On the contrary, it is much easier to struggle to earn righteousness by human effort because that doesn't require faith. And very often people unconsciously prefer to seek self-righteousness to accepting the righteousness of God. True righteousness or God-kind of righteousness comes only by faith in Christ Jesus (Phil. 3:9).  There is no righteousness outside faith in the work of Christ. We are meant to embrace the gift of righteousness given by God through Christ and be righteous.