From Head to Heart

In him and through faith in him we may approach God with freedom and confidence (Ephesians 3:12 NKJV).

The Bible makes a very interesting but subtle distinction in this area of Scripture.  Paul is telling us that we are able to approach God with freedom and confidence based on two conditions, which at first glance seem synonymous, but are not.  Our ability to approach God is based certainly upon our faith in Christ, but not that alone.  It is based equally upon our position in Christ.  There are many people who believe in Jesus, but are not in Jesus.  I was one of them for many years.  I believed in who Jesus was in the same way I believed in who Abraham Lincoln was.  It was completely a head knowledge that had no impact whatsoever on my life.  Not until I transferred that information from my head to my heart did I find myself “in Christ.”

Our faith in Christ must go beyond the intellectual understanding of the facts about Jesus.  Yes He is the Son of God, lived on planet earth for 33 years, was crucified, buried, and rose from the dead, and His life and legacy was to rid the earth of sin.  That information is critical to the story of redemption, but the facts alone do not redeem.  When those facts become pertinent to me personally is when transformation happens.  When I have the “aha” moment to realize that Jesus didn’t die just for the “sins of the world,” but for “my sins” specifically, it begins to become personal.  And when it dawns on me that He didn’t just raise from the dead and go sit down on the right hand of God, but is alive and looking straight in my eyes for a response to these facts, that’s when the knowledge goes from my head to my heart and I am no longer able to have a mere distant respect for the Son of God, but am able to be embraced by the passionate love of a Savior who gave His life for ME!

There are many people who call themselves Christians today because they have given a mental assent to the facts of the Gospel, but they are no more positioned to approach God than someone who does not believe at all.  That’s why you see this distinction between our position in Christ and our faith in Christ in other areas of Paul’s writings as well:

For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation (Romans 10:10 NKJV).

To be positioned “in Christ” requires an interaction with the heart.  Anyone can say they believe in Jesus, but a heart touched by God will say it without words.  A changed life is the outcome of being confronted by a personal realization of how much God’s intimate sacrifice cost in order to allow me personally to be “in Christ.”

Lord, I am grateful for the facts of the Gospel, but I am overwhelmed and engulfed in the reality of their implication in my life.  Help me live “in Christ” today in a way that adequately expresses the radical change that transition brings.