What Labels Do You Wear?
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, that person is a
new creation. The old has gone, the new is here!
– 2 Corinthians 5:17
What is your label? Who are you, to the world and to
yourself?
Think about it. Are you an employee, a spouse or a
parent? Are you a liar, a thief, a hypocrite? Are you someone who thinks highly
of yourself or do you feel sorry for yourself? Are you someone who makes
excuses or who takes responsibility? Do you know everything or do you judge everyone
by standards no one could reach?
What does the world say, and see, when it looks at
you? Are you a failure or a success? Are you a giver or a taker? Are you honest
or do you skirt the truth when it benefits you? Do you have potential or have
you stumbled so many times no one expects anything else from you?
We all carry labels. Some we place on ourselves. Some
labels others brand us with. Some of those labels are justified and some aren’t.
When you become a Christian, when you accept Jesus
Christ as Lord and Savior over your life, you become a new creation. You have
been washed clean by His blood. What is past no longer defines you. Yes, there
may still be consequences from past choices but they don’t define you. That is
no longer your label.
The hardest part isn’t moving beyond your past. The
hardest part is ridding yourself of the labels you and the world use to define
who you are. God may have forgotten our sins the moment we repented, but we
haven’t and neither has those around us. It’s like lugging a ball and chain
into the future. It sure does slow the journey down.
We all are guilty. Have you ever watched a recovering
alcoholic try to make amends and peace with what their actions did to their
children? It doesn’t matter how many years they’ve been sober, they still beat
themselves up over a past they can’t change.
Have you ever listened to a parent trying to make
excuses for an adult child? They can’t seem to grasp that the adult child
continues to make bad decisions. They are full of excuses. Admitting anything
else means they failed as a parent, doesn’t it? Better to pretend something else,
anything else, than to know and accept that sometimes you can do everything
right and still have a child repeatedly make poor choices.
Have you ever cheated on your spouse, even if it was
only in your heart? Have you ever told a “white lie” rather than deal with the
truth? Have you ever spread gossip, played “politics” at work, or taken
advantage of someone and called yourself justified?
I’ve asked a lot of questions. Sometimes the hardest
part of labels is looking ourselves in the heart and taking inventory of what
is real, what is the past, and what belongs to the world. It isn’t an easy
journey. We aren’t nearly as awful as we think. And we aren’t nearly as
innocent as we want to believe. It’s easy to point the finger. It’s easy to
wallow in past mistakes. It isn’t so easy to get up, dust ourselves off and go
forward as a new creation.
Jesus gives us an opportunity to take a different
path. He calls us beloved, child of God, forgiven. Does your life reflect that?
Really? Think about it.
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