About Jesus  -  Steve Sweetman

I Am Proud

The month of June has been designated as pride month in those societies that have adopted the western-world's, redefined, view of gender and sexuality.  It's all about recognizing, embracing, and celebrating, one's individual distinctiveness.   

I am proud, but my pride is not in my gender or my sexuality, which by the way, conforms to the conservative Biblical consensus to which I adhere.  My pride is in the fact that I am no longer the person who emerged from my mother's womb.  I have been recreated into a new and distinct individual, as stated in 2 Corinthians 5:17.  The Christian Standard Bible puts it this way. 

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, and see, the new has come!"

According to Paul in the above verse, a Christian is one who has become a new creation in Christ.  He is not who he once was.  Jesus described this transformation of one's personal identity in terms of being born again of the Spirit of God (John 3:3). 

I was conceived, and subsequently born, because of an intimate union between my mother and my father.  I was born a second time because of an intimate union between God's Spirit and my spirit.  If, then, the Spirit of God Almighty has joined Himself to me, it is only logical that I am now someone I once was not.  I am, thus, distinctly different from one who has not been united with the Spirit of God Almighty.  

I realize that those who have not experienced this spiritual birth view me as being insane, and thus, a detriment to a tolerant society.  Why would they recognize my claim to be a distinctly different, born of the Spirit of God, person.  You would think that in a culture of tolerance, others should recognize who I claim to be just as much as others expect me to recognize who they claim to be.  Of course, our culture is not as tolerant as it claims to be. 

As a woman is distinctly different from a man, so one who has been born-again of the Spirit of God is distinctly different from one who has not been born-again of the Spirit of God.  I am a distinctly different, born-again, Christian, and for that, I am proud.