“Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience…”
Colossians 3:12
A common thing I hear among believers in response to sin being revealed in their lives is “I gotta work on that…”
They get real impatient, and they say “I gotta work on that” or really angry and they say “I gotta fix that.” They see their lovelessness and say, “I have to change that.” But according to this passage, that is not the right response we should have.
Christians do not work on anything, as if we had the ability to change things about ourselves. We do not fix things, as if we had the power to correct things about ourselves.
Paul asks in Galatians 3 “Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?”
If it was the Holy Spirit who changed us, made us turn 180 degrees, gave us a new nature, gave us a rebirth, gave us spiritual eyes and spiritual sense, and all things necessary for the Christian life, why do we try to perfect ourselves apart from Him?
The truth is, the Christian life is mostly a life of surrender to the Holy Spirit. It is not us who live, but Jesus who lives in and through us. Therefore, we don’t fix our impatience, we replace our impatience with his patience. We don’t correct our selfishness, we replace our selfishness with his selflessness. We don’t work on loving others more, we replace our weak love with his great love.
So,
Don’t work on nothing! Don’t fix nothing about yourself!
Just be filled with the Spirit and let Him clothe you with his nature! That is the power for change!
