Why We Need a Better Bumper Sticker

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CONSECRATION

Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you. 

Jesus, I belong to you.

I lift up my heart to you.
I set my mind on you.
I fix my eyes on you.
I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice.

Jesus, we belong to you. 

Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen. 

THE WORD OF THE LORD

Romans 6:11–14 NIV

In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.

In the same way as what? Let’s remember back a verse earlier:

The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. (v. 10)

We do so in the same way as Jesus did—he died to sin once for all and rose from the grave to live to God. That’s how we count ourselves dead to sin and alive to God—we do it in Christ Jesus. We remember, in vivid detail and full color, the life and death and life of Jesus. We remember we are baptized into his life and death and life—which is to say we no longer live but he lives in us.

Most people simply don’t get what the New Testament is saying about the Christian life. We think of it as a moral or ethical life. We approach Jesus as a moral and ethical exemplar who lived a life completely beyond ours and which would, in fact, be impossible to emulate yet we must die trying. This approach can be best summarized in three words: believe and behave. Of course, that doesn’t work, which results in putting bumper stickers on our cars that say things like, “I’m not perfect, just forgiven,” and “Jesus is my copilot.”

Jesus tells us to “be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). He doesn’t mean perfect as we think of perfect. We think of perfect as flawless. The Bible thinks of perfect not as flawlessness but as fullness—the fullness of Jesus by the Holy Spirit. Now watch where the text takes us:

Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires.

But how?

Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness,

But how?

So far this could be interpreted as saying, “Believe and behave.” But then comes the secret sauce:

but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life.

The way is not believing and behaving. The way is made by beholding and becoming. This is the way of fullness. Because Jesus has wholeheartedly, unconditionally, and unreservedly offered himself to God for us, we can now wholeheartedly, unconditionally, and unreservedly offer ourselves to God for him. And then God wholeheartedly, unconditionally, and unreservedly offers the Holy Spirit to fill us with all the fullness of Jesus—for our good, for others’ gain, and for the Father’s glory.

And that, my friends, is perfect.

PS: Because of the pervasiveness of perfectionism, I tend to stay away from the word perfect altogether, but the bumper stickers we need are the ones that say, “I’m not just forgiven, I’m being made perfect,” and “Jesus is my pilot.”

PRAYER