The Son's Breastplate

To guard your heart is to refuse to allow yourself to let anything that anybody says about you to shape the way you see or define your God-given self but remaining defined by God alone in Christ! Even when behaviors make us guilty by association, His Greater behavior already made you wholly innocent by association. He identified with us even as we identified with sin... And with there being no sin in Him, what's true in Him erased whatever wasn't true about us, namely, our sins. We now know sin isn't the truth of man, God is. Anything contrary to Truth therefore has lost it's power to deceive you into identifying with it. Not only are there no sins or flaws in you, but neither do your own innocent behaviors or righteous deeds define you. Good or bad, your own actions were completely stripped of the right to define you. You are not by the hand of man, but by the hands of Jesus. This truth remains true regardless of what men do with their hands. If if they crucified HIM by hand, and He still embraced us and returned to human life, what can you do by your own hand to top that? How can you ever change His mind? The truth is: You can't. No one can, not even Him. His final word defines you and alone declares you; we ourselves, along with all creation, similarly arose from this, His declaration, and so we are Lord over creation, having sprung from the same source though your name be more excellent than theirs. -F