Clothed in Christ
Jesus and Jiu-Jitsu // Devotional #89
There’s something to be said for comfortable clothes. And no, I’m not talking about the clothes you tolerate wearing to the office. I’m talking about that pair of jeans you’ve finally worn in. The T-shirt you throw on when you know you don’t have anywhere to be. Heck,maybe even that one Gi that fits better than the rest and doesn’t feel as terrible when it’sused against you in a cross-collar choke.
When we put on our old, comfortable clothes, we slip into familiar territory, and for most ofus, those are the clothes we wear off the clock. Even what we do in them is often familiar, whether we’re lounging around the house, reading a book, watching TV, or the dozen otherdomestic practices we gravitate toward.
When we wear them, we click into a familiar pattern of life, feeling comfortable not only because of the clothes we’re in, but because of how predictable our surroundings and lives feel.
In much the same way that putting on an old sweatshirt can provide a comforting sense offamiliarity, there’s a kind of comfort and familiarity in slipping back into our old way of life,the life we knew before we knew Christ. For many of us, our old lives aren’t second nature; they’re first. It’s the old pattern of thinking that barges in uninvited and unwelcome. It’s the anger that rises up without choice orintention.
It’s the instinctive, reflexive craving for any number of desires we used to numb ourselves with when life became too difficult to handle. It’s comfortable to live in our old pattern of life. It’s well-worn, predictable, and known. Even with its unique challenges, they’re ones we’ve grown accustomed to accommodating.
Yet, for all their comfort (and comfortable discomfort), our old patterns of life don’t lead to life at all; they lead to decay, where death steadily seeps in.
In the comfort of sin, our mind, heart, and will are slowly poisoned by something sweet enough to desensitize us to its steady sting. Sin gives us enough pleasure to distract us from the needle that injects us with malice, greed, envy, lust, and every kind of impurity. And over time, we become addicted to the pleasure of sin, letting our desires deceive us into believing we’re in charge, when in fact we’re just slaves to our own sin.
But read what Paul says to the Ephesians, as he warns them against falling prey to the patterns of their old life in Ephesians 4:17-24:
Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the utility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ!— assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. (ESV)
In verses 17-19, Paul makes it plain that sin darkens our sight and dulls our senses until we can no longer discern how it’s dragging us into its maw. The more we indulge in sin, the more callous we become to sin’s prick in our souls, until we can no longer discern between sin and righteousness.
But in Jesus Christ, our old self that belonged to sin has been brought to nothing because we’ve been crucified with Him (Rom. 6:6). If we are in Christ, who we used to be lies dead in the ground, and with it, our old pattern of life.
Yet we so often try to live in the shell of our old life. Like trying on clothes that no longer fit, we try to ease back into the way we once lived, only to find ourselves and our desires divided. Yet when we find ourselves yearning for the false comforts of sin, Paul encourages us not to just somehow ignore them, but to put on the new self, created in the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
We are to put off our old self and gladly receive the new self, born again to a living hope and patterned after Jesus Himself.
Don’t miss this: Paul isn’t exhorting us to merely try to live up to our new self or to fake it untilwe make it. No. Paul says we are to put on what’s already ours: God’s very righteousness,given to us in Christ. We are to live in the new life He’s made available to us today.
By daily rejecting our old life and receiving our new life, we let God renew our minds day byday, undoing by grace the damage caused by sin. Today, don’t fall into the comfortable,familiar patterns of sin that lead to death. Embrace the life freely given to you in Jesus, fullyclothed in Him.
Take time to consider these questions:
What patterns from your old life do you find yourself returning to again and again?
Why does Paul tell us to put on the new self? Why isn’t it enough to simply put off the old?
When we feel the pull toward our old life, what truth reorients us to our new life?
As you end your time, dwell on your old life, from which the Lord has so graciously pulled you out. As you do, confess the false desires of your old life and ask the Lord to reveal where they still linger in you. Lastly, ask the Lord to renew your mind in Christ and to give you the faith to put on the new life He’s already given you in Him.
