Somewhere inside of me. Something within you.
The image of the invisible God, who is Christ, shapes something of who we really are. I say “something” and “somewhere” because I cannot quite put my finger on it, find adequate words for it, or identify the God-in-us reality of which Paul speaks.
Christ in you, the hope of glory. Colossians 1:27
This “made to be like Christ” within us is a promise of further likeness, glory, as Paul describes it. We are becoming more like what is already within us by grace.
The “us” which is of this true Christ within, and flows from it naturally, is not the self we are most familiar with, the person we think we are. The more superficial self of our personality and obvious characteristics. As we progress spiritually, that self is giving way to an emerging likeness conformed to the image of God already within us. We misapprehend our true selves. We are more than we know or suspect.
Do you not know . . .you are not your own? For you were bought with a price . . . 1 Corinthians 6:19-20
We are held, embraced, defined, formed, sustained, and set free into the freedom of Christ who is in us. We are loved of God certainly, but more than that. We are truly “of God” in how we are made. This has nothing to do with our efforts.
Life has a way of pushing us to let go of our illusions that we are good or commendable. We know we are flawed, we regret certain actions, but hopefully we know there is love to hold us if we let go. What we might have resisted as unthinkable can become a respite. The joy of letting go.
Christ would have us lose our lives to find them, to be relieved to know we are not who we tend to believe we are, but far more! Would you be willing to let go of yourself, your life and identity, if you were assured that a more secure, sure, and beautiful you is really there, waiting to be discovered?
It is good, very good, to be who we are right now as the dynamic, growing but not yet whole, still on a journey, becoming, and the ever-being-transformed children of God. Our present imperfection is not a predictor of the future, but a promise of enduring, boundless grace moving us toward wholeness.
God was pleased . . . to reveal his Son in me. Galatians 1:15-16
Maturity, wholeness, wisdom, and a truer self are only realized in us through a process of Christ being revealed in us. He is, after all, the image of God in whose likeness we were formed. Christ is us, our reality that is also our destiny. We are growing up “into the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:13), for he is what the end looks like for us as children of God.
Somewhere inside of you. Something within me.