Symbolism

"....When you believed, you were marked with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit,/ who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance......"  Ephesians 1:13-14

Today I had a moment.  It wasn't a moment where the heavens opened, velvet ropes parted, and the light of God shown down in my office.  It was as quiet a moment as when Jesus Christ came into our world.  At this moment, I realized that I had been portraying the true symbol of my faith completely wrong.

When Jesus died for our sins on the cross, he died as a servant to us.  He showed the world what it meant to give up ourselves and follow the Father. His death AND REsurrection showed us that God was for real and that He was going to do all He ever said He would do. Jesus Christ then became the symbol of our faith, NOT THE CROSS.

Too many times, we as Christ followers use the cross as a symbol of our faith.  But the problem with using the cross as our symbol means we only understand half the story.  Anyone can die and become a martyr to a cause.  Then whatever may have caused their death may come to symbolize their legacy.  The problem with the cross as the symbol is that the story of our faith did not end there.  It began when Jesus Christ came back to life on the third day.  Without the REsurrection, our faith is baseless and has no more merit to the world than the death of John F Kennedy or Joan of Arc.

Now you might be thinking, "what this has to do with the verse above?"  Well, if Jesus Christ is the symbol of our faith, the Holy Spirit is the part of the Trinity that seals us for eternity and permanently marks us as His.  That seal takes the form of actions, words, deeds, love, kindness, forgiveness, compassion, service and so much more that we live on a daily basis.  Our lives become the outward portrayal of the seal of the Holy Spirit. We become marked and the world will not know it from something physical, but from something much greater than that:  a life bent on service to God and others.  The seal cannot be hidden when we have truly put Jesus Christ as the only symbol of our lives, and we take the seal of the Holy Spirit as the Father has given us.

So I ask, can the world see that you are sealed with the Holy Spirit and do YOU see Jesus Christ as the symbol of your faith?

Freak