Jesus is My Life
THE SAVING LIFE OF CHRIST
Romans 5:10
Great Commission Church - Olive Branch
Intro: What makes the Christian faith more than a religion? What makes it more than a set of morals or a set of ethical behaviors? What makes it more than an idle pursuit? What makes the Christian faith relevant to every human in every era? The answer is that Jesus Christ Himself makes the whole thing tick because He is alive in His people.
1 Thess 5:24 He who calls you is faithful, who also will do it.
The One who calls you is also the One who does the very thing He calls you to.
Phil 2:13 for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.
He is Himself, the very dynamic of all He demands!
Christ did not die simply that you might be saved from a bad conscience. He did not die exclusively to remove the stains of your past failures.
Jesus died to remove every barrier standing in the way of Him walking the earth showing God’s love and ministering the gospel to sinners in your body.
You have been told that Christ died to save you. This is gloriously true in a vital but limited sense.
Rom 5:10 For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.
The Lord Jesus Christ therefore ministers to you in two distinct ways: (1) He reconciles you to God by His death (2) He saves you by His life.
What does this imply?
It is true that the very first word of the gospel is a word that reconciles or brings two parties together who had been separated.
2 Cor 5:19 God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation.
Because the Lord is righteous, He has no choice but to find us guilty as sinners. We are by nature dead in trespasses and sins.
He must pass the sentence of death upon each of us. We have forfeited the ministry of the Holy Spirit. We are alienated from the life of God.
But more than 2,000 years ago, the Lord stepped out of eternity into time through the physical body of the Son of God and is extending to us today the nail-pierced hands of One who suffered “the just for the unjust” to bring us to God (1 Pet 3:18).
He bore our sins in His own body on the cross (1 Pet 2:24).
This is what makes the gospel so urgent!
Nodding our head in agreement and giving mental assent is not enough for true faith. Making a moral choice is necessary.
Christ is God’s last word to man and God’s last word to you, and He demands an answer!
How you respond to Jesus Christ will determine your condition in the sight of God – either redeemed or condemned.
Yet, this is only the beginning of the story. “For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled [now an accomplished fact], we shall be saved [as a daily continuing process] by His life.”
What is the glorious fact of the matter?
No sooner has God reconciled to Himself the person who has responded to His call, than He imparts to him, now a forgiven sinner, the presence of the Holy Spirit.
When Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to indwell believers at Pentecost in Acts 2, God had now returned to earth in spiritual power rather than physical presence.
The first time the Lord came, His Father clothed Him in sinless human flesh. He was conceived by the Spirit in Mary’s womb and walked among us as the perfect example of how a man should live before God.
But now Christ has sent the Spirit of God to impart to us His own divine nature. Jesus now clothes Himself with our human flesh. He speaks with our lips. He works with our hands. This is part of the miracle of the new birth. It remains at the very heart of the gospel.
Jesus lives in us!
Gal 2:20 I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.
The One who calls you to a life of righteousness is the One who by your consent lives that life of righteousness through you!
The One who calls you to minister to the needs of others is the One who by your consent ministers to the needs of other through you!
The One who calls you to go into all the world to preach the gospel to every creature, is the One who by your consent, goes into all the world and preaches the gospel through you!
Unbelievers do not read the Bible, they read us.
Therefore, we welcome the ministry of the Holy Spirit within us to deliver the love of God to sinners.
This is the divine genius that saves us from useless self-effort. The gospel is not, “try harder and you might please God.” It is “cease striving and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10).
If this were not true, the call to be saved and follow Jesus would be utterly frustrating, and everyone would quit. We would constantly be foiled by our own inability.
Major Ian Thomas – If you will but trust Christ, not only for the death He died to redeem you, but also for the life He waits to live through you the very next step you take will be a step taken in the very energy and power of God Himself.
You will begin to live a supernatural life, yet still clothed with the common humanity of your physical body.
Your life will still consist of having two feet firmly planted on earth, while your heart will be united with Jesus Christ in heaven.
You will become totally dependent upon the life of Christ within you, but never before will you have been so independent or so emancipated from the pressures of your current circumstances.
Whatever it is you are enduring at the moment will no longer paralyze you.
You will be restored to your true humanity – which is to be…
the human vehicle of the divine life.
Your faith will open the windows of heaven and God will move in to do the impossible.
Your friends will be puzzled, because you will have become a new creation – old things will truly have passed away and all things will have become new in who you are (2 Cor 5:17).
By peace with God, you will find the peace of God that passes all understanding.
If it’s true that the Lord Jesus will live His life through you on earth today, as He lived His life once in His own body more than 2,000 years ago, then we must discover how He lived then so that we may know how He will live through us now.
John 6:56 He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him.
Say what? Does Christ mean this literally? No. From the context, we understand that He uses the idea “to eat and to drink” to mean “to approach and believe.”
So that those who come to Him and believe on Him enter into a unique relationship with Him – they dwell in Him and He dwells in them.
John 6:57 As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me.
As Jesus lived by the Father, so we are to live by Jesus.
How then did Jesus Christ live by His Father? (Once we know the answer to this question, we will know thereafter how to live by Him, and at first the answer may be surprising).
John 5:19 Then Jesus answered and said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do; for whatever He does, the Son also does in like manner.
John 8:28 Then Jesus said to them, “When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He, and that I do nothing of Myself; but as My Father taught Me, I speak these things.
Jesus Christ, as a man, lived in total, unquestioning dependence on the Father.
By doing so, He fulfilled His true assignment as a man. He came in His sinless humanity to be what mankind through sin had ceased to be – which was the willing vehicle of the Divine Presence.
God the Father showed Himself to the world through everything Jesus did in His human body.
The Lord Jesus’ time on earth demonstrated perfectly what God intended man to be – His whole personality was yielded to and occupied by God.
Jesus lived in unbroken dependence upon God the Father. He took no step in a day without recognizing that He could do nothing apart from God.
In the same way, Jesus calls us to live totally dependent upon Himself – taking no step without recognizing that apart from Christ, we can do nothing.
John 15:5 I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.
In other words, we can do no more without Jesus than Jesus could do without the Father.
Question: How much could the Father do through the Son? Answer: Everything.
Jesus cashed in on all that the Father had made available to Him. He left nothing on the shelf. He used it all – every resource.
John 13:3 Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands…
Col 1:19 For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell
Question: How much, then, can Jesus Christ do through us? Answer: Everything.
He is limited only by how much or how little we cash in on what He makes available to us.
Col 2:9-10 For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; and you are complete in Him…
For us to know the fulness of life in Christ, we must commandeer what He is to us in the same way that we have already captured what He has done for us.
Relate everything, moment by moment as it arises, to the expertise of what Jesus is in you, and assumed that His power will operate.
illus: Wouldn’t it defeat the purpose to buy an automobile with a power engine under the hood and then spend the rest of your days pushing it? Exhausted and defeated, you would discard it as a useless purchase as soon as possible. Yet to many Christians, this may be God’s word to your heart. When the Lord redeemed you by the precious blood of His Son, in the language of this illustration, He placed a powerful engine under your hood! It is nothing less than the resurrection life of Jesus Christ onboarded to you through the ministry of the Holy Spirit. So stop pushing! Step in and rev up the engine to expose every part of your life to all the divine energy available to you through Jesus who lives in you!
Application:
To be in Christ – that is to be redeemed; but for Christ to be in you – that is to be sanctified!
To be in Christ – that makes you fit for heaven; but for Christ to be in you – that makes you fit for earth!
To be in Christ – that changes your destination; but for Christ to be in you – that changes your destiny!
(the one makes heaven your home; the other makes the world His workshop).
You have been summoned by God to walk by faith, to walk in the Holy Spirit, resting the whole weight of your personality upon the living Christ who is in you.
I wonder how it is with you? Have you ever put your trust in the Lord Jesus as your Redeemer? Have you been reconciled to God by the death of His Son? I wonder if, after being reconciled, whether you are at this moment being saved by His life? Have you learned to step out of every situation and relate it entirely to what Jesus is in you?
Prayer: Lord Jesus, how I thank You that You have not only redeemed me with Your precious blood, reconciled me to God, and established peace between my guilty soul and God my Maker, but I also thank You that You are risen from the dead, that at this very moment You indwell me in the person and power of Your divine Spirit; that You have never expected of me anything but failure, yet You have given me Your strength for my weakness, Your victory for my defeat, Yourself for all my bankruptcy! I step out now, by faith, into a future that is limited only by what You are! To me to live is Christ! For Your name’s sake, amen.
