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| The Christian Life |
| The Christian life is the simplest life to live on earth. It is the life of a child simply walking in complete trust in a Heavenly Father who will provide all his needs according to His riches in glory. We do not have all the rules and burdens of other ways of life but only one rule; Come unto Me. Where the world thinks that things must be analyzed and broken down so that they can be understood, dissected so that weaknesses can be determined and solutions arrived at, disciplines set up and programs followed, Jesus simply says, Come unto Me. Are you having problems in your family relationships? Jesus says, Come unto Me. Are you having problems with sin? Come unto Me. Do you need something? Come unto Me. What a simple and glorious way of life!. And will God correct and remove all the problems and difficulties? Not necessarily but He will give you rest in the midst of it all. That is the Christian life. Access to the Christian life is just as simple. Jesus said, Believe in Me. The principle of faith is firmly established in the Bible as the only means to obtain the life of God. Once again it is the simple belief of a child in His Father that God is, and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him. The Christian life is not living a good life because we are simply not able to live that way because of the weakness of our flesh which causes sin and makes us do evil. Christians who try to live a good life simply fail and fail again until they learn to stop trying and start trusting. Then God is able to do in them what they tried to do in themselves and could not. We stumble in our Christian lives because we try to do that which has already been done. We try to conquer our sins when God wants to save us from our sins. What God demands from us is that we look at Christ and see His glorious finished work at Calvary and believe. We only need to rest in His accomplishments and what joy that brings what peace and what power! Spiritually what happens in the life of a Christian is that a person is removed from the throne of his life and Jesus Christ is given His proper place as King. Jesus always spoke of the kingdom of God as being within us. It is internal not external. The kingdom of God is not eating and drinking but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. (Rom 14:17) Though the whole world may be falling apart around us the kingdom of God is alive within us for God rules within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who is given to us. The world looks at us and sees no external difference because the life of Christ is hidden until the return of the Lord and then we also will be revealed with Him. All that the non Christian can see in us is that we respond differently to the same situations of life than he does and he marvels at our peace and joy and righteousness in those situations. The reason why the Christian life is so easy for us is because of what it cost God. The Christian life cost God His Son and if God in His perfect love did not spare His Own Son but delivered Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things. (Rom 8:32) Because of the tremendous cost we are able to come into the very presence of God with boldness and confidence. But as there is a cost to God, so there is a cost to us also. Christ died on the cross and rose again to a new life of victory so we too, if we would enjoy that life of victory with Christ, must also die to all that is contrary to the life of Christ within us (sin). The great difficulty to the Christian life lies in one point and that is that men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil. It sounds so simple and easy that we need only to bring every problem to Christ, and it is, but in order to come to Christ we need to come into the light because He is the light of the world. When we do so any and all sin is exposed and Christ demands that it be dealt with. No one can come to Christ who is not willing to have the darkest things of their life exposed and so Christians with sin in their lives find a barrier to the victorious Christian life. This causes them to veer off of the path of righteousness into one of two wrong directions: Intellectual Christianity which lures them to seek doctrine and wisdom or experiential Christianity which leads them to seek for signs, experiences and feelings. (I Cor 1:22-23) The power of the Christian life lies in the resurrection of Jesus Christ and it is right here that the Christian can fail so badly. There is only one purpose for a cross and that is to die upon. God, at the cross, established for eternity the principle that life comes through death. It was through His death on the cross that Jesus purchased life for us and through the resurrection that He obtained victory. Therefore it is through our death to all that is contrary to the nature of God and our resurrection to a new life that the life of God will be revealed to us in our hearts. Those who think that they can find and enjoy the life of Christ without dying to the world, to sin and to all that is contrary to Gods nature will simply find frustration in their Christianity. They will only have a form of godliness, because they have denied its power. (II Tim 2:5) The life of God can be in us for he that has the Son has life but it is not revealed to us unless we by the Spirit are putting to death the deeds of the body... (Rom 8:13) It is at this point that a distinction is made between the Christian and the disciple. The concept of resting in Christ in the Bible does not carry with it the idea of laziness but that of actively standing firm in the amour of God. To live in the Spirit requires the action of setting the mind on the things of God and not on the things of the flesh. Romans 12:9-21 points out the disciplines of the disciple which leave no room either for self or for the flesh. The victorious Christian life is found in the person who will simply come to Jesus and present his life as a living sacrifice unto God. (Rom 12:1) Then, as God begins the process of sanctifying us (making us holy) we may squirm and struggle within ourselves as God through circumstances of life and loving discipline puts to death our old nature and sets us apart for His glory. Our focus of life is getting to know Him rather than getting to know about Him. We just rest in Him and while we do that we learn to look upon our Saviour and see the indescribable beauty of His nature and character. When we are really able to see Him it is transforming and we become like Him. We fix our eyes upon Him, we feed on His every Word, we speak to Him continually and our minds are set upon the things above and not on the things of this earth. We soon find that the world has nothing to offer us that can in any way compare with the blessings that are in Him. Self desires disappear as Christ takes rule in our hearts. God pours out His love within us and we find a great care and compassion for others that we never had before. We rejoice with joy untold and full of glory and we hate anything that comes into our lives and separates us from that peace and joy that we have in Him. The process is life long; it does not happen in our schedule but in Gods. The best we can do is keep crawling back on that altar by humbling ourselves, praying, seeking His face, turning from evil and allowing God to do His work, for we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. |