Behind Enemy Lines

I would have to say that the second biggest OSU rivalry is with Penn State.
My mom went to OSU for a degree.
My brother went to OSU for two.
My dad has worked, and I believe still is working, on OSU's campus for different building projects.
I grew up not 30 minutes from campus. Every Saturday a game was on TV, or the radio if we weren't home.

One can say that OSU is in my blood. I bleed Scarlet and Gray.

But now I'm a campus minister in Altoona, PA, an hour south of State College, the main campus of Penn State, at a Penn State branch campus. Whenever I meet someone in this new town one of the first things they ask me is, "Where are you from?" to which I respond, "Columbus" because no one will know where my home town is. As soon as I say Columbus, I get crap about being an OSU fan, and how I'll need to convert to Penn State.

Where I'm from has given me part of my identity. I am identified here as an OSU fan. Not just a campus minister, or even as myself. I'm the Ohio State fan. And I'm behind enemy lines.

Recently I had a class on the Doctrine of Salvation, and while we're sitting around a table talking about a lot of big concepts, we get on the subject of atonement. Now before this, I haven't thought a lot about what I believed about atonement theories. But I did come to the realization that I never believed in penal substitution atonement.

But there's a lot there and I don't want to get into that. Let's just suffice it to say that I don't believe in that form of atonement.

Instead I believe in Identification Atonement. Or, I identify with Christ, and because of that I am forgiven. And because I identify with Christ, I am counted as righteous as him. I am now his ambassador, a fellow minister with him of the ministry of reconciliation. I am a new creation! And though I am in a world that is broken and full of sin and the consequences of sin, I still identify with Christ. I am behind enemy lines, and I make it known because I am proud of that fact.

I'm proud to be a Buckeye, and I'm more proud to be a disciple of Jesus!