Fitting In

Pride has been said to be the mother of all sin. Out of pride, we have all chosen to love created things more than God. We think we know what is best for ourselves, and we make decisions based on our knowledge instead of making decisions based on God’s knowledge, which happens to be much greater than our’s (in case you didn’t know).

In our pride, we do all that we can to appear the way we want to. We all live in cultures built around said or unsaid rules. Some cultures look at different “holy scriptures” and attempt to obey all the commands and rules. They do this in order to maintain an appearance of living the way they believe is right. Other cultures look down on religions, and the rules you must abide by in order to appear good in these cultures is to accept all people, no matter what they believe, say or do.

Said or unsaid rules exist in every culture, and in our pride, we do all we can to appear obedient to them.

The culture around us is going to try to shape us into its image, and in our pride, we are going to struggle with wanting to appear like them. We are going to want to look the way our culture does because we want to fit in.

But Jesus has created a new culture for his people, a culture whose foundation is him, a people who recognize they have been made in the image of God. Sin damaged us as image-bearers and made it impossible to reflect God perfectly. But Jesus came and lived sinlessly in our place and has given us his Holy Spirit so we can reflect him correctly! Made in the image of God, remade in the image of Christ: this is the person with faith in the Gospel.

So the Christian culture is one of humility and service. If Jesus humbled himself even to an undeserving death on a cross, we are to image this same humility to those around us. Jesus served us more than is possible apart from God. Nobody could pay the price for our sin, but God paid the price for us through Christ. The work of salvation is completed, and all that is left is for Jesus is to come back and redeem the physical world to himself. Jesus was the perfect servant. And we are able, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to be servants as well, both to our church family and to the world.

This is the culture Jesus desires. There isn’t pride allowed in it. And though we are commanded to humble ourselves, we have actually been freed from the power of pride because of what Jesus has done. If you have had faith in Christ, you don’t need to appear a certain way to fit into the Christian culture. If you have had faith in Christ, his appearance has become your’s, and you are now able to image Christ’s example. As one preacher has put it, the Christian is becoming who he already is.

If you have had faith in Christ, you are sealed for salvation, and your life is one of imaging God, which brings him glory. We don’t have to image God in order to be saved, we get to image God because we have been saved. We get to display God’s loving and humble character to everybody around us by the way we live and speak. This is what we were created for, and this is what Christ has made possible for his church.