FALSE FAMILIARITY

Then you will begin to say, 'We ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets.' But he will say, 'I tell you, I do not know where you come from. Depart from me, all you workers of evil!'
Luke 13:26‭-‬27 ESV

¶There is a false familiarity that we can develop by adding the element of "Christian" to our identity, to our concept of self-worth. Rather than saying "we belong to Him" we begin to say "He belongs to us". Rather than just receiving and appreciating His teaching, we begin to take credit for our knowledge and understanding of it. We can take Bible quotes and substitute them for true statements about our actual daily lived experience of God and His Word. It is through meditation, not mere quotation, of God's word and the Gospels that we are transformed. Our privilege is to look steadily into the Word of God "when Moses is read"...and, with unveiled faces, contemplate the Lord’s glory, and be transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit." (2 Corinthians 3:18). When the law is written, not upon tablets of stone, but upon tablets of human hearts, those born of the Spirit become living letters. Because it is not a result of their own efforts, a mark of those so embraced and encompassed by God's Holy Spirit is that they rarely can see it when it is happening, and lay claim to it, much less take credit for it.