Dressing Up
Scheduled for October 26
(Gal 3:26-27 NIV) You are
all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, {27} for all of you who were
baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.
Or,
as the King James so eloquently put that last verse,
(Gal 3:27 KJV) For as many
of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.
It
is fashionable in some Christian circles to scowl at Halloween as a heathen
holiday, a tribute to Satan, a terrible thing to do. I will leave you to your
own opinion of this; but I must ask you to look at it, for the moment, through
the eyes of a child. Remember for the moment that “(Titus 1:15 NIV) To the
pure, all things are pure,...”.
Have
you ever seen a child dressing up for Halloween? For that matter, give a small
child a trunk of old clothes and the child soon becomes someone else. My
father was a soldier when I was growing up; how often did I play at being a
soldier! The uniforms may seem absurdly large to adult eyes -- but I looked at
them through the eyes of a child, and I saw a much finer picture.
The
Bible frequently assures us that we are the children of God. Indeed, our Lord
goes so far as to state,
(Mat 18:3 NIV) And he said:
"I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children,
you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
It’s
Halloween. We’re His children. So what would we dress up as?
Well,
some of us would dress up in our favorite fantasy. But I think that most
children, at any other time of year (i.e., with no prompting from the toy
makers) would dress up like I did as a child -- just like their father. We
would, as it says in the King James, “put on Christ.”
But
that’s not all. We have small children in our neighborhood, and they do dress
up once in a while. It’s really charming to watch them as they come to the
door and announce to you “I’m ....” We know who they really are of course, but
with a smile on the face, we say, “Of course you are!”
So
we go to our heavenly Father and announce to Him, “I’m Christ!” Or at least,
“I’m a little Christ,” for that is what Christian means. We have put on the
costume of Christ, imitating Him as we can. And our Father, smiling, says, “Of
course you are!”
The
privilege of putting on Christ is the privilege of being a child of God. That
privilege was gained for us at the Cross. My father’s uniforms did not come
from the costume shop, but from his hard service in the Army. My Lord’s crown
did not come by pretense, but by death, burial and resurrection. He paid the
price so that I might wear the crown.
