Re-purposing Our Lives

UV 3908/10000 Re-purposing Our Lives
Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed
I Peter 2 v 24
Jesus being absolutely without sin was the perfect sacrifice, acceptable to God for all the accumulated sins and unrighteousness of mankind. Now that we have identified ourselves with the death and resurrection of Christ in our baptism, we are to dead to our old sinful nature and alive to righteousness of Christ. “I” becomes a new personality, a new creature, re-created in the full image of Christ- Christ-in-me. We no longer live to satisfy our old cravings and lusts and to satisfy our own egos but to please the Lord. We are to crucify or put an end to all that offends the spirit of the Lord in our lives. We are instead to bear fruits of righteousness, each of us like a tree of eternal life, planted on the banks of the river of heaven, nourished by the streams and river of the Holy Spirit, bearing a different fruit every month of the year. Even our ‘leaves’ or our thoughts and words and feelings are to heal the nations of this world of its sin and curse.
The process of re-purposing our lives makes us whole and healed. The price was paid by the wounds inflicted on the body of Jesus. Since we are now living in Him and for Him, we have access to His grace or His resurrection power to live a victorious or righteous life. A righteous life is a life of excellence. We are to excel and do all things for the glory of the Lord. The spirit of prayer and worship and thanksgiving pervades every aspect of our lives.
We no longer think and plan short term or long term but in eternal terms. Our perspective and our priorities, our beliefs and our values, our habits and practices, our actions and reactions are now to increasingly, degree by degree, to conform not to the image in which this world wants to cast us but in the image of Christ. He gives us the power or anointing from within, the enablement to be more, to do more, to have more, to give more. He heals us of “hamartia” or the shortcomings of sin. We no longer fall short of the glory of God by grace but fulfil the purpose for which we were created and redeemed. The healing the uni-verse speaks of is not just physical healing but healing of the whole human person, in spirit, mind and body. It is also a healing of our relationships and the world around us.
Prateep V Philip