Simultaneous Contrast

A few years ago I experienced a physical challenge that left me anemic, fatigued, and depressed. After six months of medication, I faced major surgery and another four months of recuperation and fatigue. But nearly a year after this puzzling storm began, the clouds cleared. I woke up one morning renewed. I wasn’t achy or tired or sad. As wonderful as that morning felt, it would have seemed totally unremarkable if I hadn’t been sick for so long. It was the dissimilarity that made my wellness clear.

A dear friend who is an artist once told me about a phenomenon she called simultaneous contrast. She could never be sure a color was the right one in the tube or alone on her palette. She could only assess and appreciate its true hue on the canvas next to the other colors in a painting. The simultaneous contrast gave the new color she was applying its real tone. In the same way, only when we see our new life in Christ up against the old color of our formerly dead state can we begin to embrace our identity and truly live.

We died with Christ to the old, sin-ruled self, and we are raised with him to a new, God-directed, God-infused, God-empowered life. In Christ Jesus we are forgiven, emancipated, made righteous, and fully loved. We are heirs with Christ, sons and daughters of the Lord God, indwelled by the Holy Spirit for good works that he has prepared for us (see Ephesians 2:1-10). That’s who we are—and we come to see it by contrast. The glorious truth of our identity in Christ should help us sleep soundly tonight and wake up tomorrow hopeful, expectant, and full of unshakable joy.

Now in Christ Jesus you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For He Himself is our peace, who made both groups into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall, by abolishing in His flesh the enmity, which is the Law of commandments contained in ordinances, so that in Himself He might make the two into one new man, thus establishing peace, and might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross, by it having put to death the enmity.

Ephesians 2:13-16, NASB

From the book