“Becoming What We Already Are”

Focusing Idea: Striving to live out our calling in Christ.

When the Apostle Paul urged followers of the risen Christ to “celebrate the festival” [verse 8], he was encouraging us toward becoming what we are in Christ.  To make this point, the apostle drew on the old covenant festivals of Passover and Unleavened Bread.  During these festivals, the Israelites could neither eat anything with yeast in it nor even keep any yeast in their homes.  In our text for day, Paul demonstrated how these festivals point forward to Christ.  Christ is our ultimate Passover lamb who was sacrificed for us (verse 7). We are now living, then, in an ongoing Feast of Unleavened Bread, where we must purge any spiritual leaven (that is, corrupting sin) from our midst to live holy lives. 

It is not that we purge evil from our lives in order to become holy, for only Christ can make us holy; instead, we must become what we already are.  By seeking to become what we are, we hold two principles in tension. First, we affirm that Christ has died to sanctify us as holy.  Second, we acknowledge that we have much more sanctification left to go.  While justification completely and perfectly pardons us of our sin and imputes to us Christ’s righteousness, so that we may never fall into condemnation, sanctification gradually and increasingly subdues sin and infuses in us Christ’s holiness so that we grow toward perfection, even though we will not reach that goal in this life.