September 15, 2025

GOD’S WORD FOR TODAY:

“Therefore, if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.”  (Philippians 2.1-2)

TODAY’S REFLECTION ON GOD’S WORD TO US:

I was asked recently to speak to what it means to “have our identity in Christ.” While there isn’t one scripture that could be interpreted this way, there are many scriptures defining the nature and character of Jesus’ identity as the Christ of God. His life was a walking example of who He was in God. During the Passover feast on the night when Judas would demonstrate his own lack of understanding of who Jesus really was, Christ told His disciples, “The Father and I are one; if you have seen Me, then you have seen the Father.” (John 14) He would go on to pray to God His Father words of thanksgiving for the gift of the disciples. He would also ask that they be so one in Him that they would experience oneness with God. The powerful effect of sin is that it blinds us to see how close we really are to God, or how close God is to us. Even on the cross, despite that very unity of Father and Son, Jesus cried out “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani!” (My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me!” How powerful are those words to define the danger of identifying ourselves by the ways of the world and by sin instead of by Christ.

First, Jesus cried out to God who was His Good Shepherd, Strong Tower, Provider and Sustainer. He did not cry out, as He had taught the disciples to pray, “Abba, Father.” While Abba and Eloi (Yahweh Elohim, the Great I AM and God of gods) were in fact the same being. I can’t help but feel that Jesus, as He took on the sins of the world for all time, was identifying with the Prodigal Son whom He had taught about in one of the parables concerning that which had been lost: sheep, coin and son. Jesus knew that His salvation and His true identity was derived in the fullness of God. That fullness was not in a recognition of His Father (and He was not denying that relationship). The fullness of God comes in the recognition that God alone has the power of life and death, justice and judgment. Without Elohim, Jesus was nothing, the Spirit was nothing and we would be nothing. We know that truth from the very first verses of the creation story in Genesis 1. It says there clearly, defining the moment, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth and the earth was void and without form.” What an interesting identification of a life of sin: void (empty) and formless (incapable of containing any substance). In other words, the sinful life had true meaning and purpose. Yes, I know that sin has both meaning and purpose in the world as it helps us to see what is not righteous and holy, sacred and perfect and truly of God, by God and in God. And as I was taught again in worship yesterday, laments invite us to step back into the problem but never intend to leave us there. A true lament speaks of the fullness of the angst of our problem, our despair and our tribulation. It also speaks of how God is none of that. It also understands that God doesn’t leave us because we make bad decisions to let go of faith, close our eyes to justice and turn our backs on righteousness. Ultimately, a lament reaches out into the darkness to grasp the only thing that has fullness and form: God Almighty, Eloi!

Following the truth found in the Parable of the Prodigal, we hear the confession, “Father, I have sinned against you and against God.” The Prodigal in the story recognized the unique connection of “Father and God” which had always been present. It speaks to the culpability of the son to forsake both. To cut oneself off from that connection resulted in a powerlessness which could not be overcome. He sought out power and definition using wealth, pride, popularity and finally “to toil from the soil” as he not only slopped pigs (an unclean animal to Jews), he was becoming one of them. This is the consequence of a life of sin. It results in our disconnecting from God and leaves us “void and without form.” God, however, was not disconnected from us. He stills watches over us as was intimated in the story as to the nature and character of the father. He sat continually on the front porch waiting and watching. He undoubtedly had others keeping tabs on the son. He would have let him expend all his energies with the very hope that someone along the way the son would remember his identity in the word of God. Jesus on the cross got to that point in the midst of all our sin pulling Him into the pit of despair. This is the cry of lament we hear from Jesus as He hung on the cross, slowly drowning and bleeding out and losing consciousness of the world. What did not happen is that He lost consciousness of God who was His true identity. In God, not in sin, was He fully known. He not only cried out in lament of the problem but of the commitment to be a part of the solution. He said, “Into Your hands I commit My Spirit” and fully breathed out that Spirit in trust that God’s hand which held Him on the cross would hold His Spirit and lay it up as His treasure in Heaven.

At this point, mighty ones of God, our identity in Christ comes from the Holy Spirit of God which was breathed into us even before we were conceived and began to form in the womb. We are fearfully and wonderfully made. We are also made with a choice. That choice is to choose life with God or life without God. Ultimately, we are never beyond God’s purview and authority. We will be held accountable for how we accept and develop our true identity. Sin will misshape us into something that is actually void and formless. We see the evidences of this broken “DNA” in the world today. Some of it is so far from the design of God that we may be challenged to reconsider the goodness of God or even His reality. The choice must be to walk in faith knowing how we are made from the spirit within to our discipleship in the world. The question our faith answers is “Who am I in Christ?” How do we use our gifts, talents and abilities to promote the will of God which is to love the world into wholeness and keep it safe until Jesus returns? I believe this brings us closer to what Paul was calling the Philippians to embrace in “putting on the mind of Christ.“

TODAY’S PRAYER IN RESPONSE TO GOD’S WORD:

Father, in these days we are finding the need to believe even more than ever before. We all have known trouble, some in greater ways than others, but You are offering us the assurance that we will not be consumed by it forever. Regardless of the “time” we are in and the “time” we have been given, we ask for Your Holy Spirit which Jesus asked You to share with us, to lead and guide and direct us in the paths we should go. Teach us what we still need to learn. Empower us to put that learning into action. Bless our actions not as a works righteousness but as righteous works of faith, hope and love in Jesus’ name. AMEN.