The Jesus who Forgives Me Lives in Me

As we end this week’s study of Jesus’ self-giving death as our example, Miles Steele sent us a reflection on Salvador Dali’s painting “Christ of Saint John of the Cross.” Miles is a non-traditional student currently studying web design and digital media at JCCC after graduating from KU with a BA in Art History. When he has the time Miles can be found coding at his desk or working on a personal project in the JCCC ceramics studio. To see Dali’s striking vision of Jesus’ cross with Miles’ commentary, click here.

As a young minister, Methodism’s founder John Wesley tried hard to be holy and thought he did well. Yet after two hard years in the colony of Georgia, he wrote in his journal, “I went to America, to convert the Indians; but oh! who shall convert me?…. I have a fair summer religion. I can talk well…. But in a storm I think, ‘What if the gospel be not true?…. I left my native country to teach the Georgian Indians…. But what have I learned myself in the meantime? Why (what I the least of all suspected), that I who went to America to convert others was never myself converted to God.” * His journal went on to his famous record that he went to a meeting where someone was reading from Martin Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans. As he listened, “About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.” **

• The apostle Paul’s testimony in Galatians traced a spiritual journey very much like Mr. Wesley’s. Centuries apart, they both found (like millions of other Christians) that trying to follow Jesus’ example in our own strength just leaves us discouraged. But trusting that Jesus has already done on the cross all that was needed for our forgiveness and acceptance with God creates the spiritual synergy by which, as Paul put it, “Christ lives in me” and gives us the strength needed to reorder our life into one that follows Jesus’ example. As this series of sermons has been teaching us, the varied theories of the atonement do not compete with one another, but help us see various facets of Jesus’ powerful, self-giving work that saves us and transforms our lives. How does this week’s study illuminate how Jesus’ example provides a model of the kind of life God calls you to as his forgiven, accepted, and beloved child?