Greetings, and welcome back to the A United Front course. I pray that your return today means that you are willing to do whatever it takes to receive the healing which is in Jesus.
In this lesson and the next, we will be seeking the Lord together for the foundational and motivating understanding we need to live as people who have been healed by Jesus.
Perhaps like me, you have many different roles to fill—spouse, parent, friend, employee, volunteer, etc. Such titles or labels can be useful in organizing our world, but sometimes we can get so focused on our temporal identities that we lose sight of our eternal identity, which can be harmful to our hearts and relationships.
When my husband and I began our healing journey, I felt adrift in a sea of emotional turmoil. I did not respond to my husband’s sin in faith as a child of God. I responded to my circumstances based on my feelings and fears as a wounded wife and frightened mother.
I felt like a failure as a wife, thinking that if only I had been a better, smarter, or prettier wife, then my husband wouldn’t have been tempted toward sexual sin. I feared that my husband was an addict who would never really change, but at the same time, I wanted our children to have a father, so I tried to regulate my husband’s activity and guilt him into repentance.
Question 1. Can you relate to the struggle I had with responding to my husband based on my fears and feelings? Please share.
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If we want to stand up against the temptation to respond to our circumstances based on our temporary identities instead of our eternal one, we must learn the truth about who we are in Christ so that it can dominate our thinking. To do this, let’s look together at 2 Corinthians 5:14-21. We will look at the first half of this passage in this lesson and then finish the second half in the next lesson.
“For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; 15 and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised 16 From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. 18 All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; 19 that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. 20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”