What Are We?

PRAYER OF CONSECRATION Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.  Abba, 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. Abba, we belong to you.  Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.  Psalm 139:14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. CONSIDER THIS I spent the last year teaching a Sunday school class for seventh and eighth graders at Gillett Methodist Church here in Gillett, Arkansas. We had six students comprised of five young women and one young man. It was a pure delight. We started a text group between us that has continued beyond the class. Each person has a day of the week from Monday through Saturday and it is their responsibility to discern a verse from the Bible and send it out to the group the night before.  Every day, at my instruction, they write a preamble to the Scripture text, which says the following words, and in ALL CAPS: I AM AN UNBELIEVABLE, INCONCEIVABLE, UNREPEATABLE MIRACLE OF GOD.  I tell them they have to type it in—no cutting and pasting.  It is my summary translation of Psalm 139:13–18. I want you to hear the whole context which further amplifies our daily affirmation. See if you can hear it too.  For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. How precious to me are your thoughts, God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand— when I awake, I am still with you. I have mostly heard this text used as a defense of unborn children—which is certainly an apt and noble application. However, this is a text for any and every human being at any age at any time. Something I observe almost constantly among most people and notably I see it in more and more young people. People have a terrible view of themselves.  Yes, we understand from Scripture that we are sinners and born into our sinful condition. It is unfortunately true. But there is a much bigger truth. The Bible does not begin with Genesis 3, original sin, and the fall of the human race. No, the Bible begins with Genesis 1 and 2, which reveal original righteousness and goodness and glory. It reveals to us that we, as human beings, were made in the image and likeness of God—male and female—miraculous beings charged with stewarding the whole creation. Scripture tells us we are a phylum beneath angelic beings and crowned with glory and honor. Say it with me: I AM AN UNBELIEVABLE, INCONCEIVABLE, UNREPEATABLE MIRACLE OF GOD.  The problem comes because we have conflated human nature with fallenness and sin. You've heard it a thousand times and probably said it yourself in the face of someone making some egregious error or moral failure: "Well, that's just human nature." To that, I say: "No. That's not human nature. That is fallen sinful nature." Human nature is created in the very image of God—who created our inmost being—a sacred dwelling place for the very presence of God.  Yes, we are plagued, all of us, from birth with a fallen, sinful nature. But it does not change the fact that we are "fearfully and wonderfully made" as a miraculous work of God, "knitted together" by God in our mother's womb, and seen by God before our bodies were even formed. Even before our first day, all of our days were ordained by God for us and written in his book. Sinful nature is the second word about human beings. Human nature created in the image of God is the first word. Neither does sin get the last word on human nature. I love this footnote offered in the NIV for verse 17: How amazing are your thoughts concerning me.       How vast is the sum of them. Were I to count them,       they would outnumber the grains of sand. God has more thoughts concerning you than all the grains of sand on all the beaches and sandbars in the world.  We cannot know who we are until we know whose we are, but once we know whose we are we can begin to answer the bigger question of what we are. So what are we? Say it with me. I AM AN UNBELIEVABLE, INCONCEIVABLE, UNREPEATABLE MIRACLE OF GOD.  This is why Jesus, the Son of God, came—to redeem us from our sinful and fallen nature and to restore us fully to our human nature by reconciling us to God. In Jesus, we see the perfection of human nature on full display. He is the unbelievable, inconceivable, unrepeatable miracle of God. Perhaps the biggest miracle is the way he miraculously repeats himself in us. Indeed, he is who we are becoming.  THE PRAYER FOR ILLUMINATION Lord Jesus—Word of God from before the beginning—our Great Teacher, Thank you for speaking the word of my life into being, for making me fearfully and wonderfully, for fashioning my inmost being, and for coming to dwell there by your Spirit. Thank you for redeeming my sinful and fallen nature and transforming it by your glorious human nature by the power of your fully divine nature. I belong to you. Would you wake me up now to what I most truly am: an unbelievable, inconceivable, unrepeatable miracle of God, and teach me to live from this reality?  Lord, it will be for your glory, for others' gain, and for our good.   Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise him all creatures here below. Praise him above ye heavenly host. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen!