Marked for life

When people think of Revelation and being marked it is almost always in terms of the mark of the beast. However, that is not the only mark. In Revelation chapter 7:3 we read of the angels putting “a seal on the foreheads of the servants of our God”. Likewise in Ezekiel 9:4 we read of God putting a mark on the forehead of “those who grieve and lament the detestable things that are done in the [city]”. We live in a time when our society is jettisoning as much as possible and quickly as possible all its Christian heritage. An example of this is that this week a Catholic priest was removed from being a university chaplain for, well for following Catholic teaching. In a day such as this we need to have a very clear view of who we are in Christ and what we are here for.

Today at church the highlight of the sermon for me was the final point, realising the price that is been put on us by God, namely the precious blood of Jesus. As Paul says in 1 Cor 6:20, we were bought at a price. And in 1 Peter 1:19 we read that we were bought with the precious blood of Jesus. In days such as these it is easy to feel increasingly marked, as if we are aliens in this society, that our beliefs mark us out as targets. Well society may have all sorts of attitudes towards us, and maybe we will be marked out as a target, but we are also marked out by God. And we are indeed aliens in this society, and Hebrews 11:13 says that the heroes of faith admitted that they were strangers and aliens upon the earth.

But we are also marked out for a purpose. Esther was reminded that she was born “for such a time as this” (Esther 4:14). She had to take a risk, but she had been chosen by God and placed by God, and for a Godly purpose. We were chosen before the beginning of time. Eph 2:10 says that “we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do”.

We need to have a right view of ourselves, a Godly view of ourselves, and we need to live our lives in the light of this view.