1 Corinthians 13:12 TPT For now, we see but a faint reflection of riddles and mysteries as though reflected in a mirror, but one day we will see face-to-face. My understanding is incomplete now, but one day I will understand everything, just as everything about me has been fully understood.
The season of Lent is about coming out of hiding in light of the fact that everything about us has been fully known and understood. I often find that people are afraid to fully own their stuff because they believe if they come clean, they will be rejected and abandoned. Charismatics often refer to an “orphan spirit.” Whether or not there is a true demonic spirit called “orphan,” it is true that many Christians live with an orphan’s mindset, believing that intimacy and favor with God are somehow withheld from them if their performance is found to be lacking.
This is the mindset of Adam and Eve after the Fall when they sewed fig leaves and hid from each other and when they hid from God behind the trees in the garden. Ever since the Fall, humanity has struggled with the fear of abandonment. The result is perennial hiding. We hide behind status of all kinds, appearance, etc., which fuels a toxic self-consciousness. Self-rejection and the fear of rejection make the fallen world go round. The gospel is the good news that a Savior has come grafting us into His life, forever abolishing the orphan mindset.
John 14:18 – 20 gives us a fascinating insight into God’s plan to save us. “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. After a while, the world will behold me no more; but you will behold me; because I live, you shall live also. In that day (the coming of the Holy Spirit), you shall know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.”
One translation puts verse 19 this way; “In yet a little while, the world will no longer see me, but I will be tangibly visible to you in the very life we share together.” How did God keep us from being left as orphans? Our life was woven into His and His into ours. Think about it; if Jesus is in the Father and I am in Christ, then I, too, am in the Father. There are no orphans there. There is no abandonment, or forsakenness, or condemnation in any form there. If I am in Christ and Christ is in me, then Christ is my life – Colossians 3:4; and if Christ is my life, it can truly be said about me that “my life is hidden with Christ in God” – Colossians 3:3.
After the Fall, Adam and Eve hid because of their nakedness, but in Christ, Galatians 1:27 says that we have been “clothed with Christ.” If we are hidden with Christ, clothed with Him, then we can open up our lives to the one who fully knows everything about us. And what we will discover is that what He knows about you is the truth of who you are in Christ.
During this Lent, or in any other season of your Christian life, God wants to speak the truth about what He has accomplished in you in Christ, and if He shows you any lie that you believe about yourself, then it will never be to condemn you but to remind you that you are already forgiven, and the truth about you in that thing you’ve come clean about is found in the one who is the TRUTH about you. Jesus said in John 12:47, “for I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world.”