You can read today’s passage by clicking on this sentence.
This is a rich reading full of imagery. It would be easy to focus on the latter part of the reading’s insistence on the response to the goodness of God being a transformed ethical and moral life. The experience of being saved may well, indeed perhaps could be expected to, result in our day to day lives looking different. Some people think that the whole point of the Christian life is this developing conformity to Christ.But discipleship has to be about more than a changed outlook or set of standards. We are not all the same, nor are Christians designed to be robots.
In actual fact, I think discipleship is primarily about becoming ever more aware of the sufficiency of Jesus, and what it means to have died and been hidden with Christ in God. Most of us haven’t physically died, so this can be a hard concept to grasp. Even after we are raised to new life in Christ, in actual fact, much of our previous lives continue as they did before. It can result in a loss of hope, if we were expecting everything we previously disliked about ourselves and our lives to disappear when we come to know Jesus.
To be ‘in God’, though is to be in a place of safety and security, We have been welcomed in to God, because of his love for us, his invitation to us and because he did what was needed to make the way open. We’re there because of him. I might live in a way which shows that God is real and Jesus is who he said he is and did what he said he would do. However, the saving work wasn’t, isn’t and can’t be done by me. I want to be confident and content that my life is hidden with Christ in God. I want to let go of the guilt and shame of not living for God ‘properly’ or ‘well enough’, to stop looking at the lives of others and seeing their followings of Jesus as better than mine, and instead to thank God that I have been welcomed in to fellowship and unity with him. It’s this fellowship, this hope of glory within me that makes me able to love God, love others and love myself. This is the only way I can follow. The only way I can be a disciple.
I am hidden with Christ in God. I am safe, secure and free. Now let’s see how I can follow his example today.