A new destiny
Colossians 3.16 —“Let us live up to what we have already attained.”

Read these words from the letter to the Philippians: “Let us live up to what we have already attained.” God has declared who we are in His eyes. And we are learning to live like it is true. Essentially, it is letting what God says about us shape what we believe about ourselves. This is why shame has no place in the Christian experience. It is simply against all that Jesus is
for.

This is repeated by the writer of Romans who states, “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

None. No shame. No list of what is being held against us. No record of wrongs.

God is not interested in shaming people; God wants people to see who they really are. “Let us live up to what we have already attained.” You are not who you were. Old person going away, new person here, now.

Reborn, rebirthed, remade, reconciled, renewed. Jesus put it this way: “You are in me and I am in you.” So when the first Christians went all over the Roman Empire telling people the Jesus message, they spent most of their time explain- ing who people are from God’s perspective. Who we already are. They insisted that people can live a new life, counting ourselves “dead to sin but alive to God.”

Jesus said that as this new reality takes over our hearts and lives and minds and actions, we are crossing over “from death to life.” He called this new kind of life “eternal life.” For Jesus, eternal life wasn’t a state of being for the future that we would enter into somewhere else; it is a quality of life that starts now

Stop and breathe.

God help me understand what it means to live in eternity now, not when I die. Today I choose to live the kind of life through your eyes. May I choose each day to be dead to sin and alive in Christ.