Settled?

 "May God Himself, the God who makes everything holy and whole, make you holy and whole, put you together-spirit, soul, and body-and keep you fit for the coming of our Master, Jesus Christ." I Thessalonians 5:23  

The Message Bible

It's common in the church today to hear from many different corners, some form of the exclamation, "We're all broken." I agree with this to a point. We are born into a broken, fallen world. As a result, we, like the world we come into, are broken. Here's the message I think the church has been failing to proclaim, and proclaim loudly. "Yes, we're broken, but in Christ, we need not remain broken." In Christ, what is broken is made whole. One of the enemies greatest victories has been to convince huge numbers of believers that even with Christ, they remain broken, deeply flawed beings. It's one of his most damaging lies.

I recently heard a woman named Kim Gravel say, "We're not broken, we just live like we are." Broken people always have the mindset that they need fixing. They either seek to fix themselves, and always fail, or they look to someone else to fix them, with the same results. If we are truly Christ's, we have to stop seeing ourselves as people who are broken and in need of fixing. In Him, we have been "fixed." On the cross He cried out, "It is finished!" He meant that everything He'd come to accomplish on behalf of the human race had been accomplished on the cross and in His soon resurrection. All who come to Him, believe upon Him, not only receive life, but they receive resurrection life. Brokenness is a condition of death. Death was defeated on the cross and in His resurrection. If His resurrection life is coursing through our spirits then we are no longer broken. We have been made whole in Him. Our part is to believe and receive that we are.

This is not to say that there is not going to be an ongoing work of spiritual transformation in our lives. There will be, but we are no longer broken and crippled vessels. As He said to the cripple at the pool of Bethesda, "Rise and walk," so has He said the same to us. The cripple's brokenness that had held him almost all his life ended with those words. As he stood up, he stood upon bones, muscles, and nerve endings made whole by Christ. With each step, they were strengthened. So too has He made all those who are broken without Him, whole in Him. And with each "step" in Him, our wholeness becomes ever more real. It will continue on into and through eternity.

All of this is simply the reality that we need to start believing that we are who He has said that we are. He said that in Him all things are made new. All people. You and me. He does not see us as broken and in need of fixing. We have been "fixed" and made whole in Him. We need to start living like it. He told the cripple at the pool to roll up the mat he'd been lying upon for years. It was no longer needed. So too do we need to roll up all the "mats," all the tokens of our crippled lives before Him. They're not a part of our life anymore. He's called us to rise and walk, let's do so, and as we do so, we trust Him more deeply each day to make our newfound wholeness more real each day. We don't buy the devil's lies that we're broken and so we don't live like we're broken. We're new creations in Him. 

Upon first coming to Christ, I often heard preachers and evangelists say, "God said it, I believe it, that settles it for me." He has made all things new. He has made me new and you new. He said it, I believe it, that settles it for me. Has it settled it for you?

Blessings,
Pastor O