But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh in regard to its lusts. - Romans 13:14 NASB

Little children, make sure no one deceives you; the one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous; - 1John 3:7 NASB

He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. 2 Corinthian 5:21 NASB

If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably asked yourself – Since I have already received Christ Jesus and He dwells in me, why then am I asked to put Him on? And how does this “putting on” work? Plus, won’t this be works?

I’m going to be frank and say that this really confused me for a while and no matter how hard I tried, I kept getting the same “Christianese” answers that did not help or provide any clarity. But now that the Holy Spirit has helped me to understand, I feel the need to put it out there.

So, I have before me a bottle of liquid laundry detergent, it’s opaque, and full of detergent. (Feel free to go pick one up right now, and if you don’t have one, any opaque bottle would do).

Let’s imagine that this bottle is who we were before we were saved by Jesus Christ. One day, we’re your everyday regular shmegular bottle of detergent, and then then we get really lucky and meet Jesus and what does He do? He pays for us, empties out our detergent content, (Romans 6:6) replaces it with clean water, and puts us back on the shelf to come back for us later.

To everyone else, we still look the same. And even to ourselves! We know that something has happened, but like the bottle, we can’t see what really happened within us, we just know that something has happened. But knowing that something has happened is not the same as knowing exactly what happened and what it means for us.

Now, this water represents the new life that we have received – Christ Life – and though we have received this water, we do not know how to be a bottle of water, we only know how to be a bottle of detergent. We need to unlearn everything we know about being a bottle of detergent and learn how to be a bottle of water.

So, when someone comes by and tries to pick us up, we let them know that we do not contain detergent, and we have been paid for by someone else (we refuse to submit ourselves to them).

In this analogy, the process of unlearning the habits and behaviors of a bottle of detergent is how we put to death the deeds of the flesh (Romans 8:13), while the process of learning the behaviors and habits of being a bottle of water is how we put on Christ, manifest the Life of Christ Life and practice the righteousness that we have already received.

We practice righteousness because the life we received is righteous. If you say that your detergent has been poured out and replaced with water, if anyone pours you out, water not detergent should come out, no matter what your bottle looks like. This is why our fruit is the only significant sign of who we really are. (Matt 7: 16-20)

To conclude, as with all other things we must start with Jesus – the author and finisher of our faith, therefore the first step is Knowing and believing – as far as that scenario is concerned – the finished works of Christ. Once that is out of the way, the rest becomes possible. 

Because, if Jesus is not the beginning, how then do we expect to finish?