What would you say if I pitched you a movie adaptation of the Bible starred Tom Cruise in the roll of Jesus, John Travolta as King Solomon and Elizabeth Taylor as Moses’s mother? What if I could get Steve McQueen, George Harrison and Marlon Brando as featured extras. Would you be interested? While you might be scratching your head about these casting choices, there’s a Bible Museum in Ohio that’s reclaiming old waxwork figures to illustrate scenes from the greatest story ever told. And you know what? God’s doing the same thing with us!
From the time of creation we were called to be God’s beloved children. We were designed by him to enjoy a close relationship of trust, hope and love with our creator God. But acting out of distrust and pridefully choosing sin in the Garden of Eden, we cast ourselves as another character in a story of our own making. And just like the replacement waxwork movie stars who had nothing to do with the original script, that road has led us to alienation from our author and director. We’ve been disconnected from the loving source who gave us life and as a result, our story now resolves in darkness and death.
But God hasn’t forgotten us.
Through the incarnation and atonement of Christ, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, he has recast our role once again, giving us a new identity in Christ, ensuring that we’re included in his great story of redemption. See how Paul writes about it in Romans: “We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourself dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Romans 6:6-11 ESV).
We may never get a chance to see the movie adaptation of the Bible was pitching earlier. But as we enter into a relationship with Christ, answering his call to us, we know that through him, we are cast as leads in the only story that matters: His!
I’m Joseph Tkach, Speaking of LIFE.