December 12, 2020
Last week we learned how to Experience Salvation in a personal way:
• We sense our need.
• We acknowledge our sinfulness.
• We repent and seek forgiveness.
• We accept Christ’s sacrifice for us.
Today we will go a step further by growing in Jesus.
Transformation – Sanctification {free from the POWER of sin}
Spiritual Growth is a popular phrase within Christian circles, but we don’t always understand what it means:
• Reading the Bible more?
• Praying more?
• Attending church more?
None of those things are spiritual growth - they are the tools we use for growth.
Just because we are Christian’s doesn’t, by default, mean that we are deeply rooted in Christ, growing spiritually, or maturing to be like Him.
A quick look in the mirror will give us that answer, are we acting the way Jesus would act, doing the things Jesus would do? Are we more loving, kinder, less angry than we were a year ago…five years ago…ten years ago…twenty years ago?
• Galatians 5:22-23 - But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.
If we are not becoming the above, then we might be aging but we are NOT maturing spiritually.
Growing in Jesus means we come and walk alongside him, go where he is going and learn what he is teaching, because that’s what a disciple does. As we do those things, we begin to reflect Jesus in character and action --- we become the sort of people who do what He would do.
• John Ortberg {The Life You’ve Always Wanted pg. 23} – when morphing happens, I don’t just do the things Jesus would have done, I find myself WANTING to do them. They appeal to me. They make sense. I don’t just go around TRYING to do the right things; I BECOME that sort of person.
It has been said {Victory in Christ by Charles G. Trumbull} that, while all true Christians know that they are justified by faith through grace, most of us have been brought up to believe that for transformation, we have to figure it out for ourselves. That is why so many justi?ed Christians are so pathetically and miserably disappointed in the matter of a personal experience of transformation.
Jesus makes two offers to everyone. He offers to set us free from the penalty of our sin (Justification) and He offers to set us free from the power of our sin (Sanctification – Transformation). Both these offers are made on exactly the same terms: they are a free gift and we accept them by letting Him do it all.
• Romans 5:16-17 - And the gift is not like that which came through the one who sinned; for on the one hand the judgment arose from one transgression resulting in condemnation, but on the other hand the free gift arose from many transgressions resulting in justification. 17 For if by the transgression of the one, death reigned through the one, much more those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.
• Galatians 2:20 - I have been crucified with Christ; and 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 delivered Himself up for me.
The many references throughout the New Testament to Christ IN you are a literal, actual, blessed fact. They are promises made to us by the King of the Universe.
• John 15:4-5 - Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you, unless you abide in Me. 5 "I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me, and I in him, he bears much fruit; for apart from Me you can do nothing.
• Ephesians 3:14-19 - For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, 16 that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man; 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.
God has promised each of us personally that if we abide in Him, He will change us.
Wrapping Up
What are the conditions of this Victorious Life?
1. Believe that God has set you completely free from the POWER of sin:
• Romans 6:14 - For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law, but under grace.
• 2 Corinthians 3:17-18 - Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.
• Philippians 1:4-6 - In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy 5 because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, 6 being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
2. Surrender absolutely and unconditionally to Christ:
• Matthew 26:39 - Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, "My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will."
Jesus set the example with his absolute surrender to the will of His Father. He asks nothing of us that He has not already experienced.
So, there you have it. We are free from both the PENALTY and POWER of sin. God has accomplished it all through Jesus and He gives them to us as a free gift. As we experience salvation and grow in Jesus, we become more like Him = Transformed!!
