For those of us in Christ, we are washed clean by the blood of the Lamb. God sees us clothed in Christ’s righteousness – His perfection, not our own – which means that God sees me as His beloved child. The words He spoke over Jesus at His baptism – “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” – are the words that He speaks over those of us who belong to Jesus. God loves us and is pleased with us because of what Jesus has done for us. At the same time, the righteousness we are clothed in isn’t just a fiction or a falsehood. God begins to sanctify us, which means that He works in our hearts to make us holy, so that our salvation becomes to get “worked out.” He does a work in our hearts, and then that work comes out in our lives, so that we gradually begin to look more and more like Jesus in how we live and act and speak. We have days where we look more like Jesus than others, and God as a good Father sometimes disciplines us when we fail, not to punish us, but to grow us up until we look more like Jesus. That’s His goal for us, and that’s our great hope.
Trevin Wax born in Tennessee, is a scholar/author/professor who works at LifeWay. His favorite movie is It's a Wonderful Life, his favorite smell is bacon, his first job was at McDonalds, and when not engaged in academic rigor he enjoys riding his bike.
