becoming who we are in Christ

Growth for a believer (someone who has acknowledged their need for Christ's offer of salvation and received it) is becoming more of who we already are in God's eyes. It is coming to the place that our experience of God's perfect, infinite love increasingly matches - i.e. becomes the same as - the actual love he has for us. 

Our experience of His love now is based primarily on our trust in that love - "the just shall live by faith" - not sight.

As a child of God, we are already fully loved, yet we rarely sense being fully loved. In Christ, God is fully accessible and present, yet we often don't fully sense his presence.

Why is this? 

We don't fully believe or grasp our glorious status as his perfectly beloved child. Unbelief is an internal (heart) problem. 

Unbelief - distrust - was the essence of our rebellion in the Garden of Eden and also of our present brokenness. This will not be fully remedied - our experience will not match our status - until we are glorified and face-to-face with Christ. At that time faith will no longer be central to our relationship, for ¹love will be right in front of us in Christ - i.e. by sight... face to face. 

For now, not only are we still broken - our internal problem - but we live in a broken world full of pain and suffering - our external problem. This includes the brokenness of others resulting in offenses coming to us but also the physical world itself being in bondage and decay. 

One day we will be entirely free of both internal and external bondage... but not yet. No matter how close we draw near to God now, troubles will be part of our experience until we and all creation are delivered from bondage and fully restored. That is an external issue and the reality of our existence in a broken world that is in the bondage to decay. 

As broken image-bearers of God, we attempt to be our own god - our internal problem - seeking to control other persons or things to derive from them a sense of meaning, purpose, and love. We do not look to the one and only true God in whom alone these are found and freely offered. 

This lack of trust - that we already have all of this in Christ - hinders us from fully experiencing the love of God fully secured for us by Christ.

The solution? 

Know who God truly is as the all-loving, beautiful, and good God, the source of life, love, and all things. The Father sending Christ is our greatest proof.

Knowing who you truly are as a bearer of God's image, designed for infinite love, that can only be truly satisfied in a completely unfettered and unobstructed relationship with your Creator. Knowing both of these things is our hope and God's promise in Christ.

Understand and grasp what Christ has done for you; that he has removed the condemnation for your distrust of His Father by bearing the consequences of that distrust himself and has also assigned-credited all Christ's good deeds (perfect trust - obedience) to your account. Now, in Christ, you are fully received by the Father in the same way and extent Christ is - as his beloved, precious, and perfect child.  

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¹It is not that love is not vital now or even central, but until we are in eternity our experience of God's love being completely ours - more than our current  experience seems to indicate - is based on faith. We are told we are loved based on what God did in sending Jesus - a past event. Sometimes we see evidence of it in our current circumstances or feel that love within, but that feeling is not constant. When we look face-to-face into the eyes of love - Jesus' eyes - it will be. Then we will fully be like him for we will see him with our own ²eyes as he is, i.e. perfectly loving. 

²Vs the "eyes of faith."