How does my Identity in Christ inform my expectations?
The Mongols were a bold and warlike people. They could ride for days on end through cold and desert, subsisting on the blood of their horses. They could shoot from horseback at full gallop, hitting a bulls-eye thrice on the approach, and thrice at a retreat. They spent their leisure hours hunting wild animals, wrestling, and perfecting the arts of combat. A Mongol warrior was peerless. Yet the Mongols before Genghis Khan were a petty people. They were divided into tribes, with no thought of nationhood or greatness. They were perpetually manipulated by the settled peoples on their borders, particularly China, fighting each other for empty titles and scraps of gold from the seemingly boundless Chinese coffers. No one feared the Mongols. True, in the empty wastes and endless steppe they were fearsome, but outside their limited sphere, they were simply another barbarous insignificant people. They were a contradiction: more formidable, yet more insignificant than any of their neighbors
Until Temuchin was born. Temuchin united the various tribes of the “people who dwell in felt tents” into a single Mongol nation, took the name Genghis, and became the Khan of Khans, supreme ruler of the Mongols. While this is a notable achievement for the Mongols, it was a relatively insignificant thing in global affairs. No one cared who the Mongols chose as their khan, it could hardly matter to the mighty empires that dominated the world. But something unexpected happened. For 20 years Genghis Khan and his hordes would ride across the world, from China to eastern Europe trampling all his enemies. China was decimated. Persia was almost entirely annihilated. European armies fell like dominoes before him. An estimated 40,000,000 people died, and all would bow their knee to this nomad from the wilderness. His empire would endure in some form for hundreds of years, shaping the world today in profound ways. No mere human (apart from Adam and Noah) had a greater effect on the globe than Genghis Khan: politically, culturally, religiously, and even genetically, his mark is seen everywhere.
What was his secret? How did he mold this petty nation of nomads into the greatest military machine mankind had ever known? Did he teach them new modes of warfare? Did he institute new training regimens? Did he possess superhuman craft and skill? No, none of those things; he simply changed their expectations. For countless generations, their expectations had been determined by the outside nations; China pandered to them like children, and they became content to act like children. This was all anyone had ever known, and familiarity developed into a sense of inevitability. Mongol dreams must be small, and so Mongols became complacently content with their meager dreams. This was not enough for Genghis. If Mongols really were the most formidable of all people, why shouldn’t they ride where they please when they please? If Mongols are the greatest warriors on earth, why not prove it by conquering the earth? His simple message to his people was to be Mongols, and let their expectations ascend to the lofty heights of Mongol power until the whole earth feared them. The Mongols enthusiastically eliminated the contradiction between their identity and their expectations, and rode across the globe daring to do what no one else had ever done before; simply because they were Mongols. They dared to be Mongols, and set their expectations on everything under the “eternal blue sky.” Nothing less would be worthy of them.
We Christians are a contradictory people as well. We acknowledge that the astounding realities and promises in scripture are so, and we sincerely believe them. We know we are literally joined to Jesus Christ himself, and enjoy all the privileges of that union. We occupy a station above all the rest of creation, for we are seated with Him even now. We are an elect people, specifically chosen by God to be the vehicle of his work on this earth. We have unconquerable, omnipotent power behind us, for the Son has decreed that nothing shall escape his authority or prevail against his church. We have the will of the Father, the blood of the Son, and the indwelling Holy Spirit all working our sanctification in us with an assured and glorious result. We have truth at our grasp, prayers on our lips, and the Lion of the tribe of Judah to lead the van. We truly are fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners.
Except we really aren’t. Our days of turning the world upside down has long since passed. We are only marginally more holy than the worldlings, and that only comes through painful self-denial and legalistic forms. We follow our Savior, but only insofar as we can within the bounds of the American dream and our own plans for our lives. We give the gospel, but we do it like traveling salesmen, rarely seeing the power of God that we saw in days of old. We huddle in our church buildings, thinking ourselves singularly successful if we manage to preserve some measure of truth in our midst while managing to keep the lights on. We dream small. We don’t ask God for big things because we simply can’t imagine what we would do with those things if we got them. We are content with a “normal” life: taking care of the everyday matters like the worldlings and having some little ministry to our name so we can think ourselves useful to God. We are content with outward holiness, never dreaming of the kind of personality altering sanctification that reaches to the heart. We expect little things, and congratulate ourselves when we achieve them, all the while developing a complacency that soon births a terrible inertia. The thoughtful among us even seek to codify this inertia by developing a theology of inevitability, where God cannot be expected to do Godlike things anymore, and rational, human means are all that is left to us. What we have seen is all we will ever have, and all we can have. Though our pitifully small expectations are entirely contradictory to our glorious identity in Christ, we have embraced this contradiction for so long that we do not even see it anymore.
Our expectations are no longer determined by who we are in Christ, they are determined by the whispers of Satan. This is a brilliant tactic. Satan cannot stand against a believer living in the light of his identity in Christ, for sovereignty and omnipotence are at his back. Instead, Satan attacks our expectations. Everything in the cosmos conspires to tell believers what is or is not possible. This is the age of reason; overt divine working is not for this age. Look at the depths of depravity within human nature, only a fool would set his sights on internal holiness. Revival? Have you seen the state of this world? No revival can take place in such a sin cursed place. Preaching the gospel? Do you really think people listen to preaching anymore? Better to be content with the few who stumble into your church, the multitudes belong to the prince of the power of the air. Furthermore, our own flesh echoes these diabolical whispers. A work of God? You barely have the faith of a mustard seed; how can you expect what you know to be clearly impossible. You just sinned so terribly this morning, will you aspire to righteousness? Revival? How can such a hypocrite as you pray for God to work mightily? You, a tool for the furtherance of the gospel? Don’t make me laugh, you can barely live it yourself.
The worst part about these accursed accusations is that they are true, at least in part. The world really is dark, and my flesh really is depraved; and we, finding these to be true, accept the rest without question, allowing the accuser of the brethren to mold our expectations to his own will. And so, Satan speaks to the souls of believers, and we listen; day after day, year after year, century after century until the crushing weight of history adds to the dreadful inertia and keeps our expectations right where Satan wants them. If we were to set our sights on setting the world ablaze, Satan could not stop us, but he has no need to worry, we are not so foolish as to expect such things anymore.
But brethren, these things need not be so. In Romans 8, after a powerful discourse of all the things the Triune God is presently doing within the soul of the believer, Paul asks a simple yet profound question: “what shall we say to these things?” He does not ask whether these things are true of you, for if you are in Christ, they ARE true of you. You were born with these realities if you were born of God. He does not urge you to try harder or do more, for what can human effort do against the terrible weight of darkness within us and around us? He does not encourage you to believe these truths, for he takes it for granted that you do. He does not even say be better, for how can you be anything more perfect than what God re-made you to be? No, he asks “what shall we say to these things:” what should our response be to the weighty truths of what we are in Christ? Romans 8:31-39 will go on to encourage us to shape our expectations around who we are in Christ, not around the lies of the Devil. We are Christians, and it is past time that we be what we are, and in so doing make the goodness and greatness of our God known in all heaven and earth. It is past time that we lived up to the incomparable and wonderful realities of our birthright, and trample Satan under our feet as our Elder Brother has. We will not attain this by excitement, human effort, or clever strategy, but by allowing our identity in Christ to be the sole factor that shapes our expectations.
What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:31-39)
