Our quest is to daily conform to the image of Jesus (Gal. 2:20; cf. 2 Corinthians 5:14-15). Our prayer should be, “Lord, help us to be better Christians tomorrow than we were today.” We must follow Paul’s admonition to: “Not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God” (Romans 6:12-13).
Sin that was a part of our lives before we became a child of God, is no longer practiced (1 Corinthians 6:9-11; cf. 1 John 3:7-9). We have been “created in Christ Jesus for good works” (Ephesians 2:10), putting on the “new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness” (Ephesians 4:24 KJV).
We live a life that is “right” before God, simply because God knows what’s best for us (cf. Deuteronomy 6:24-25; Deuteronomy 10:12-13). We never want to self-righteously proclaim ourselves better than others; but we do proclaim ourselves “better” than we once were. As one old southern preacher so aptly stated: “We ain’t what we oughta be, and we ain’t what we’re gonna be; but, thank the Lord, we ain’t what we used to be.“
As Christians, let us always be aware of Who we belong to (1 Peter 2:1-10), daring to dream of what we can be in the Lord (2 Peter 1:1-4), as we become “even more diligent to make your calling and election sure” (2 Peter 1:10), always “pressing toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:14).
That uphill climb we mentioned at the beginning of this article, is indeed a challenging one, but the outcome will be worth every difficult step taken when we see that “inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade away” (1 Peter 1:4).
—Mike Riley, Gospel Snippets
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