As we see in Genesis chapter 1 and 2, when God speaks, it happens. “Let there be light”, and there was light. “Lazarus, come forth!”, and life comes out of death. When God speaks, it happens. So when God speaks, when the finals words that God speaks over Christian people is, “It is finished.” “Paid in full”. It sets us free.

When God speaks law and says, “You’ll never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever measure up”, we are crushed. And then when God speaks Gospel and says, “Because you could never measure up, Christ measured up for you”, we are cured!

What God speaks, happens! And when God speaks into detailed, hard reality of your life, whatever it is — and all of us are facing hard realities in one way, shape or form — whatever that reality is. Whatever it is about your life that feels like death? God speaks into that hard reality, into that darkness, into that nothingness. Just like He did the first time: “Let there be light!…You are mine! You are forgiven! You are loved!” In Jesus, God says, “Definitively, once and for all, I love you. I am well pleased with you. You are my son. You are my daughter.” And because the Creator said it, it is so.

What we discover in Genesis 1 and 2 is that we are known by a God that bends toward us even as we are perpetually bending away from Him. While we were yet sinners, while we were running from God, the hound of heaven tracked us down, magnificently defeated us, for the purpose of setting us free. That’s what Jesus said He came to do! “I’ve come to set the captives free!”

Captive to what? Enslaved to what? Enslaved to these self-salvation projects that plague all of us. “I have to create myself! I have to make something of myself! The burden is on me to secure my own validation and justification.” And what the Bible reveals is because we couldn’t, Jesus did. He came to justify the ungodly. So that our core identity; who we are, if we are in Christ, is no longer needing to be anchored in the trivial and passing fads of this world like wondering what we can get people to think about us. Our identity is anchored first and foremost in the Rock that can never ever be moved.