In my last blog, I attempted to offer some thoughts about what Jesus meant with the paradox of losing our life if we love it and keeping our life if we hate it. I talked a bit about the concept of dying with Christ so that we might also live with Christ. But that brings us to the next logical question… if I die with Christ, if I no longer live but Christ lives in me, if I decrease so that Christ might increase, is Christ asking me to disappear? Is He saying that I must abandon all uniqueness, all desires, dreams and goals in life?
David, inspired by the Holy Spirit, writes in his 37th Psalm that God will give us the desires of our hearts. And Jesus Himself taught that whatever we ask the Father in His name, He will do (John 14:13).
But the same Scriptures bear the stories of many whose “hearts” desired things that would have destroyed them had the Lord answered their prayers. “Lord, do you want us to tell fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” proposed James and John (Luke 9:54). Or what would have happened if Jesus had answered Peter’s request to not go to the cross (Matthew 16:22)! The Bible teaches that EVERY intention of the thoughts of our hearts are only evil continually (Genesis 6:5).
But Lord, if the desires of my heart are only evil continually… I don’t want you to give me the desires of my heart! Any good parent knows that no good parent would ever give their child something that harms them no matter how desperately they plead for it. So our heavenly Father would certainly not give us “the desires of our hearts” if they are “only evil continually.”
The solution lies in the words preceding “he will give you the desires of you heart.” David writes,
“Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.”
Psalm 37:4
So what God is saying through David is that when we delight ourselves in the Lord, our desires will be good for us and God as a good Father would be pleased to give them to us. But how are we to delight ourselves in the Lord if the desires of our hearts are only evil continually? Is there anything God can do to us to “fix” our hearts? Unfortunately, sin was an incurable virus that immediately spread to every cell of our bodies and souls. The only remedy was death and being born anew in Christ with a nature that has the ability to desire what is good.
This “new creation” is not only born “in Christ” but is also sustained “in Christ.” If you are like me, many times I feel like I’m not living out this “new creation” as I’d like to. I still struggle with my old nature that I should have completely died to. I find comfort in the words of the Apostle Paul who shares his struggle; he writes that he doesn’t understand his own actions and that he doesn’t do what he wants to do, but finds himself doing the things that he hates; “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing” and he goes on to say that it is sin dwelling in him that does what he does not want to do and goes as far as crying out, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Romans 7: 15-25).
But why is this so? Why does sin still live in me? Didn’t Christ come so that I could overcome sin? Didn’t I already die with Christ? Yes, Christ did come so I could overcome sin and yes, I did already die with Christ. But this is what Christian philosophers and theologians have called “already, but not yet.” Christ died? Yes. Christ overcame sin and death? Yes. If He hadn’t, we wouldn’t even have this struggle. We would just be slaves to sin with absolutely no ability in us to choose what is right. But we are still living in the “not yet.” We are still “groaning” as the Apostle Paul puts it, with all of creation “as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies” (Romans 8:22-23). The battle has already been won, but we must continue to “work out (our) salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12). We must continually remain united with Christ, refusing to conform to the world but be transformed to the image of Christ (Romans 12:2). It is then that we can enjoy having “the mind of Christ;” the mind that can “judge all things” correctly (1 Cor. 2:15-16), even now while we await in eager anticipation that glorious day when the struggle will end for eternity!
When we are so transformed that we have the mind of Christ, we begin to think as Christ thinks, to feel what Christ feels, to do what Christ would do, and it is then and only then that He as a good parent would gladly and without hesitation give us the desires of our hearts. It is then and only then that He will delight to see us flourish in our dreams and goals and uniqueness.
The God who created us each with a unique fingerprint, with a unique voiceprint, with a unique heartbeat “print,” with a unique character like no other on the face of this earth, will certainly not want to eradicate our uniqueness. The God who loved us so much that He took the risk of us abusing the free will He gave us, certainly never intended to create robots. The God who Himself paid the price of our willful disobedience, certainly does not want slaves who are forced to obey, but children who are so overwhelmed with the Father’s love that they choose to obey because they know their Father’s heart and trust their Father’s perfect goodness and sovereignty.
I’ll close with the words that C.S. Lewis used in his brilliant contrast between God and Satan in the Screwtape Letters. Satan here is speaking and says,
“He (God) really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of Himself–creatures, whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because He has absorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His. We (Satan and company) want cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in, He wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows over.”
C.S. Lewis
We worship an awesome God who is glorified in our uniqueness! We serve a God who paid the unfathomable cost to restore us back to fellowship with Himself; who calls us to such an unexplainable unity with Himself in which we are restored to His original design and image. An image so glorious that it radiates with His light so much that people would, just by looking at us and what we do, “glorify our Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:16); a life so distinct that people are drawn to “ask us for a reason for the hope that is in (us)” (1 Peter 3:15).
My friends, in dying with Christ, you will live with Christ and you will be “you” like you have never imagined “you” to be! You will actually like yourself! But this “liking” will never lead to pride because you know the secret; it wasn’t you at all! It was all His doing!