The Victorious Life

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.