A Down Payment on the New You
To become a Christian is to be given a new nature and a new identity. “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17).
While it is vital to accept your identity as a sinner, which I wrote about last week, it is not sufficient. You must also live out of a sure grasp of your identity as a child of God’s freely given and personally transforming grace. These two identities must be held in a healthy tension and balance.
It is only the person who is deeply aware of his sin who gets excited about grace, and it is only grace that can give you the courage to humbly face the enormity of your sin.
The Lie of “You Don’t Have Enough”
No child of God can get by recognizing only his or her identity as a sinner. The weight of it will defeat you, and to press you toward defeat, the enemy will spin out endless variations of the lie that he first told in the Garden and has been repeating ever since.
This lie is meant to discourage and divert you. It is meant to force you into moral timidity and ethical paralysis. Everyone who has been given the humility to see themselves with accuracy, everyone who has come to admit that they might, indeed, be something less than righteous on their own, is susceptible to this lie.
The essence of this horrible, deceptive, and ultimately blasphemous lie can be expressed in just four words, words that have the power to alter how you live. Here they are: “You don’t have enough.”
The lie comes in a thousand forms. After all, Satan is the father of lies! “He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44).
- “You don’t have enough to deal with the struggles of thought and desire that war inside you every day.”
- “You don’t have enough to deal with that neighbor who seems more committed to their garden than they are to having a cordial relationship with you.”
- “You don’t have enough to live in a God-honoring relationship of love, unity, and understanding with your spouse.”
- “You don’t have enough to parent those children God has given you, who you wish would be compliant just once!”
- “You don’t have enough to deal with that boss who never seems able to be satisfied and thankful.”
- “You don’t have enough to love the people around you who are rude and critical, or different from you.”
- “You don’t have enough to fight the idolatry of materialism that greets you every day in Western culture.”
When you allow the poison of this “You simply don’t have enough!” lie to begin to seep into the cells of your heart, you will quit living with faith, hope, and courage. You will quit living with expectancy. You will quit looking for the good things God will do outside of you, inside of you, and through you as a child of grace.
You will begin to live cautiously and self-protectively. And you will end up giving way to things that, by God’s grace and as his child, you actually have the power to fight. You will end up settling for a human, second-best, survivalist lifestyle, a lifestyle several rungs lower than the life of faith and hope to which God has called you.
So yes, you are a sinner. And if that were all, the enemy would be right: you certainly would not have enough. But you are more than a sinner. You are also a child of grace.
While you haven’t fully lost the old identity (just yet), you have received a down payment on the new person you will fully become. And that process has already started!
The devil is a liar. You have enough as a child of grace. Be completely, totally, fully, confidently, and eternally sure of this, “that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6).
A Prayer for Today: God, I confess that I’m prone to believing the lie that I don’t have enough to get through each day in a way that consistently honors you. Please help me to reject the lies of Satan in my life and believe that I’m more than a sinner–I’m also a child of grace. And as a child of your grace, help me live in a way that demonstrates your power and provision in my life. For your glory and my good, and in your name I pray, amen.
Discussion Prompt for Children
1. How do you think someone gets the power to live in a way that honors God? What do people usually do to try and live the Christian life each day?
2. What does the word “grace” mean? What does it mean to be a “child of grace”? How can we know for sure that God gives us grace?
3. Why should we never believe the devil? In what ways does the devil lie to us? Why do you think the devil doesn’t want you to believe that you are a child of grace?
Reflection Questions
1. How does an awareness of your sin help you to appreciate the goodness of God’s grace in your life? In what ways does grace give you the courage to face the enormity of the sin in your life?
2. As a Christian, why is the lie of “you don’t have enough” such a big deal? How have you seen that lie play out in your own life? How has it hurt both you and others around you?
3. Why do you think it’s so important to embrace the truth that you are a child of grace when it comes to wrestling with the everyday struggles of life in a broken world? Even though you might give intellectual assent to the fact that the devil is the father of lies, how have you seen yourself fall for his lies when it comes to one or even several of the “you don’t have enough” statements above?
4. In what ways have you fallen victim to only embracing one aspect of your identity: you are a sinner; you are a child of grace? How does embracing only one aspect of your identity prevent you from living the abundant life in Christ?