About this blog

This blog will be dedicated to my random posts and reflections on the Christian life, prayer, and occasionally other themes that cross my mind.

This blog is named “hidden in Christ” as a tribute to what has been my favourite verse for awhile now – Colossians 3:3, “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” Reflecting on the hiddenness of my life with Christ has been much of the content of my own spiritual walk in the past few years, and I hope to share that experience with you.

What captivates me about this notion of “hiddenness?”

Well, the Bible teaches us that there are two realms – the seen and the unseen; one is beheld by sight, the other by faith. Much of my Christian life, I was taught and trained to focus on what my eyes could see – miraculous healings, physical manifestations, powerful deliverances, etc. While there’s nothing necessarily wrong with any of that, I’ve found that the predominant emphasis of scripture is on the unseen realm – that which requires the eyes of faith to ‘see.’

When Paul writes, “your life is hidden with Christ in God,” among other things, he is saying that the Christian’s true identity, deepest ‘self,’ is not to be found within; it is to be found without. The core of our identity is actually external to ourselves. This is a strange notion, because everything in our upbringing and the world has taught us the opposite – we are our habits/character/sum of our decisions/etc. All those things are internal to our “I”. As such, we become an aggregate of all our cumulative successes and failures, and we hope we have much more successes than failures on that score.

This is both good and bad news. It is good news because we are told that our vices do not define us. No sin, shortcoming, weakness of will, bad decision, is ultimately definitive of our identity. There is much comfort to be derived from this truth alone. In fact, as fallen beings we naturally have this tendency to shift blame away from ourselves, or specially excuse ourselves from particular shortcomings. In fact, it is a rare sinner who is able and willing to stare his own sin straight in the face and own it as his own. This is the good news for such a sinner – what you see coming out of the depths of your heart does not define you.

But the bad news. Just as we are not defined by our sins, weaknesses, and vices, we are also not defined by our virtues, goodness, and strengths. If we’re honest, this gets to be a bit more than what we bargained for. We’re perfectly happy for Christ to take away our sins; our bad, but most of us won’t be so sure about accepting Christ’s life as our own. On the cross Jesus does not just expiate our sin, he offers us his very own life to take on as our own. We are not just offered escape from hell, but we are offered the very life of Christ himself. If we accept it, what would be true of Christ would be true of us. Christ’s love is counted as my love, his compassion, my compassion, his patience, my patience. And so all the times when I am anxious, or am enraged, or short-tempered, they are indeed still a part of me. But Christ calls me to accept that, at bottom, God reckons me as loving, trusting, compassion, patient, kind, because of my reception of Christ’s life. God does make us righteous in a very literal sense!

This can be unsettling to people who are used to a meritorious culture, or people who have not learnt what it means to receive gifts from young. There can even be a sense of contempt or unfairness about it. After all, we should only enjoy what we have worked for. Dependence is frowned upon in modern culture, be it financial, emotional, or otherwise. “How can I be counted as trusting if I experience such anxiety in my heart?” That is part of the mystery of the Reformation doctrine of ‘double imputation’ on the cross. All of my sins imputed to Christ, and all of Christ’s life (righteousness) imputed to me. That is the Christian offer of salvation – to receive Christ’s life as our own.

The chief difficulty of this reception is our having to lay down our own life. Most of us understand that solely in terms of self-denial. That is certainly included, but it is incomplete and shallow. We are called not just to deny ourselves our old sin habits, we are called to deny even our own quest for significance and self-actualisation, even in the spiritual sphere. It is possible for the quest for character transformation to become an idol in the Christian life. It is easy to spot the idols of fame, career, wealth, influence. But it is not as easy to spot formation as an idol because it looks so right and sounds so pious. And yet there it is.

In the face of my own anger and anxiety, whereas previously my immediate turn would have been to, “God, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have gotten angry. I shouldn’t be so worried about this situation. I’ll try harder next time.”

Now it is an invitation to this instead, “Father! Look how angry I am! Look at all this rage within me! Where does this all come from?! Look how overwhelmed I can get by it! Look at this worry too!! It’s obvious that I don’t trust you as much as I thought I did, or would like to, otherwise this worry wouldn’t be there. Why don’t I trust you? Father, I know it is not within my power to suddenly ‘decide’ to trust you, or to immediately ‘turn off’ my anger. Teach me about my anger and my worry. Show me more of my heart and why it is the way it is. Help me to receive your love in those places of my heart, to know that I am loved in those angry, anxious places.”

It is precisely because of the hidden nature of our true selves that we are able to come out in confidence and complete honesty to God. We know that God does not judge us by what he sees just from our character (our weaknesses and failures). But he relates to us always, always through the person and work of Christ (Rom. 6:4-6). The call of the Christian life is therefore to boldly draw near to God (Heb. 4:16) in the truth of our hearts. We no longer fear condemnation from God (Rom. 8:1) because of what he has done for us through Christ. In the person and work of Christ, God has ‘shown his hand’ regarding who he is for us – he is on our side (John 3:16). Christ’s work is utterly complete and sufficient such that there is no more ‘leftover wrath or anger’ in God towards his children who are in Christ and adopted into his household.

Boldly draw near to God in the truth of your heart today.