What is your relationship to Jesus Christ? Is he a casual acquaintance? Is He someone you know about from others? Is He someone you have dedicated your life to serving and we could say you are In Christ?
Most people have a second hand relationship with Christ. They only know of a hand me down religion, more reliant on what someone else has told them then an actual personal experience with God. As a result, there is a lacking of fully grasping all which is available to us as Christians. As a result, we don’t totally understand what it means to be born of the Spirit and water.
The Bible says salvation is total deliverance. How many would agree with me that old things have passed away, all things have been made new? When Jesus died on the Cross, He said, “It is Finished.” The price for our salvation was totally paid for. God looks to the cross as being the total redemptive work. What we need to know is How to Live in Christ.
Jesus was the name given to the man, his human side since God is 100% man and 100% God. The name for his divinity is Christ, which is “the anointed” Messiah.
We are called to live In Christ, in the anointing of the Lord. I have seen the bumper sticker Christians aren’t perfect just forgiven. Unfortunately this allows us to lower our standards, and for some it has become a crutch, an excuse for their sinful behavior. We are sinners saved by grace but this does not mean we are to continue living like sinners and justifying the behavior by grace. I hope this is making sense to you. I want you to rise up and live in Christ. John wrote in 1 John 2:1 My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. He then says, But if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is not telling us to sin, but saying if we sin, not we will sin, then we can receive forgiveness.
We seem to spend out entire lifetime dealing with sin. Are you ready to move away from that preoccupation and begin to truly live in Christ? John 3:6 Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. There is no way you can make your flesh spiritual for it can only produce flesh. The Bible generally uses flesh in reference to an unrenewed heart. Spirit is a renewed heart and mind. Flesh never changes, it will always remain flesh.
Remember what Romans 8:1,2 tells us? Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life sets me free from the law of sin and death. Paul is speaking of our experience of living in Christ. If you are in Christ there is no condemnation because you have been set free from the law of sin and death. This means you are no longer caught in the vice of sin, you have a means to live sin free, in Christ.
Vs. 3 For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And do He condemned sin in sinful man, That is, he condemned sin in the flesh. Vs. 4, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit. Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life. So the carnal mind is going to die, while the spiritual mind is going to have life and peace. Vs. 7 the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God. You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature, but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. We are living in the Spirit if the Spirit of God dwells in us.
If we are mindful of the flesh, then we will never reach out and obtain the potential God has for us. Too many people have become self-righteous instead of righteous in Christ, living in the flesh of self-sufficiency rather than depending on life in Christ. Vs. 10 But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. That is a good word for us tonight, in Christ we are alive because of righteousness.
In Colossians 1, Paul is offering a prayer of thanksgiving praying in vs. 13 For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves. We have been delivered from the darkness of the world and so we are now to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord. Back up a verse, 12 Paul prayed, giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light. You can put you name where it says you, he has qualified Bob, he has qualified Laura, he as qualified, and just insert your name, to share in the inheritance. Our qualification comes from being in Christ. We need to get the big picture, to see what it is that God has done to change our situation, to get us out from darkness and into the light of Christ. He did it when we become in Christ. It is time to stop sitting on the fence and dangling your legs over on the heaven side just in case an earthquake comes along and knocks you over, we need to start walking in the divine inheritance of the kingdom right now. The only reason we did not get ushered into heaven when we prayed the sinners prayer is so that we can share in His kingdom. We already have one foot in heaven through salvation and we can walk out it out with others here on earth, encouraging them to find the same salvation, the same satisfaction we have found being in Christ Jesus.
Picking up in Ephesians 2:17 He came and preached peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit. Consequently you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him (in Christ) the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by His Spirit.
Sin should not be a natural characteristic of Christians. Sin is an act of sinners and we have been delivered from sin. We need to rise up and rain down with the things from heaven. You cannot rain down from the earthly realm, you can only do it from the heavenly realm. Rain falls it does not rise up. Only the saturation of the rain will come up.
Paul said we are not strangers or aliens to God, but saints in His house. We are the Holy Temple of God in Christ. We are citizens of heaven with all rights of citizenship.
2 Corinthians 5:14 For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!
People, we are not to live our lives for ourselves, but for Christ. It says if one died, we all died, but now we have live through Christ so we should live our life for Christ. Listen, our spirit and our body belongs to the Lord, so we need to live for Him. We are called to recognize no man in the flesh. In the flesh we knew Him as Jesus, but now, in the spirit we know him as Christ, the anointed, our redeemer.
When we asked Him into our lives, we are now a part of Christ, we don’t just belong to Him as some attachment, we live in Him. And because Christ is the anointed, we can be anointed in our ministry to the world.
Paul prays in Ephesians 3:14 For this reason I kneel before the Father from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of His glorious riches, he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than we ask or imagine according to his power that is at work within us, to him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever! Amen.
We are to be filled with the fullness of God, and the Holy Spirit represents the power of that fullness. The only way to do more that we can ask or imagine is to allow the Holy Spirit to flow through us as we live in Christ. The only limits we have are the limits we place upon ourselves.
John 14:21 Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him. Then Judas (not Judas Iscariot) said, But Lord why do you intend to show yourself to us and not to the world? Jesus replied, If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.
Get this picture, if we keep His commandments, the Father and the Son will come and tabernacle with us. They will dwell with us. The Christian world is a beautiful world if we will come out and live in it. It is a world where we are not incapable of sinning but we are not given over to falling into sin over and over again. When we find ourselves trapped in the vices of sin over and over again, we then have to look to find the flaw in our character which is preventing us from escaping. We are to walk and obey God, we are to be one in Christ. We are to live in the realm of the Spirit and experience a part of heaven as we walk this earth. Heaven is not as far away as we might think, when we walk in the Spirit we might have an experience like Stephen without the stoning. We might well see the heavens open up. Heaven does not open by squinting our eyes, it opens by walking in obedience, walking in the Spirit living in Christ.
Ephesians 2:6 tells us we are seated in heavenly places in Christ. Vs. 10 states we are His workmanship created in Christ. Galatians 2:20 says we have been crucified in Christ Jesus.
We have been seated higher than all principalities and powers. Are you living in that position of authority in Christ Jesus. Are you ready to see a miracle break forth in your life? Or do you have so many fleshly desires you have no time for the kingdom because you are too busy trying to make all those desires come together.
You might be here tonight and need to be delivered from some of those sinful acts which have been holding you back, to throw them away and throw on Christ. We are going to open the front up and allow you time to talk with God and settle things with how you will live. In the flesh or in the Spirit.
Worship team come and lead us before the throne so we can obtain God’s mercy and His grace, empowered to live in the Spirit, in Christ Jesus.
