There is a consistent pattern in the Bible. First, we’re told who God is. Then we’re told who we are. And only then are we given instruction in how to live.
For example, the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20 begin with “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” He is the Lord who rescued the people from slavery – and they are his people, no longer slaves.
This pattern is strongly evident in Paul’s letters to the Ephesians, Colossians, Galatians, and Philippians. The first third to half the letters are theology – describing the character of God, and we as new creations in Christ – before giving practical instructions in how to live with one another, and as ambassadors of Jesus in the world.
Study the patterns of human behavior: our perception of the world and events, our responses, and our corresponding successes and failures directly flow from our self-image. By our self-image I mean, our deep understanding of whom we are (and Whose we are).
You can diagram it this way:
Please notice that it is a feedback loop. The wrong kind of self-image – from thinking incorrectly about ourselves – not only limits our successes but reinforces the cycle. We dare not succumb to the world’s idea of a replacement trinity (My Thoughts, My Needs, My Feelings), but stay connected in Christ to the exalted glorious Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit!
As a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, His disciple, you are in Him and He is in you. He has given you a new heart. You have been set free from slavery to sin! As we continue to renew our minds by thinking about whom God is and who He has made us, we set ourselves in a positive feedback loop. This is discipleship!
This newly married man will be able to love his new wife more deeply when he strengthens his understanding of who he is in Christ. (Please note: not who he will be someday, but who he is today, now!) Why? Because his perceptions of himself, his wife, and events will be interpreted correctly, and his responses will be more godly.
That’s why we need to remind one another, every day, of the reality of Christ in us, the hope of glory (ref).
Reviewing Romans 6:1-14 is a good place begin:
“What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.”
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*Not her real name
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