The new Self ...

Thursday, Dec 15, 2016. I am still working myself through the ideas about the new self which the apostle Paul describes in Colossians 3. What about you? Do you like these ideas? Do you turn away from them? Do they impose an impossible demand on you? What about your environment, perhaps you see some of these demands imposed onto you by your environment?

Demands …

We have learned from the pioneers of psychology, that the demands, which we have taken up by our parents and our environment, can develop their own life in our mind and our phyche. Yet, in the biblical books we are challenged - let us grab why this might be the case … starting with the original words again:

12 Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, 13 bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. (from Colossians 3)

We cannot deny that we are faced with clear claims, with clear demands and commands in the New Testament. They come from God himself - it is not individual apostles or disciples which formulate these claims. It is Jesus himself, it is God through the prophets. He wants our life to be … what? Different, truthful, faithful, loving, good, free!

Our hate and fury …

Perhaps we feel fury about the commands? Perhaps we feel fury about various things in our life, about the work environment, about particular people … all this can have real and good reasons. Perhaps the circumstances are terrible or at least annoying. We are challenged, in school, in our education, in our company. We need to learn things we are not good in, there are so many things …

I think that the main point here is that God sees all this, and that he wants to free us, wants us to gain ground. But he does not do it by taking it all away easily. That is not a sustainable and good way. Rather, he is giving us his spirit, and the spiritual tools (gifts, commands, behavioral patterns) to live in it … and overcome it in a different way.

God can take things away, difficulties. But he wants to do us better than just taking some difficulty away. He wants to use it to shape our mind and our heart - and by shaping our heart doing fantastic and great things in our life! His love shows itself in particular in the situation where he does not take away the pain of some situation, but comes with spirit and mercy into our heart! (Roland Potthast) ... more texts