The Secret to True Christian Living
When we Christians are convicted in our hearts about living
more completely for Christ or forsaking sin, our usual response is to determine
that we will try harder. So we exert our
will power to be kinder, or more patient, or more devoted to Christ. Or we resolve that no longer will we give in
to some particular temptation. We will
be what God wants us to be, no matter what!
And what happens?
After a while, sometimes quite soon, we fail. We’re right back where we were. After that has happened several times it is
so easy to just quit trying and settle down into relative defeat. While we may not be committing gross sin, we
do not have a vibrant, powerful Christian life.
The problem is two-fold.
One, we do not understand what the Christian life is. Two, we do not
know how to experience it.
The Christian life is not the Christian living for
Christ. That is impossible. The sooner you realize that you simply cannot
live the Christian life, the sooner you will be on your way to understanding
it. The Christian life is not the
Christian doing anything. The
theological foundation for that is Romans chapter seven. That chapter teaches that we are dead to the
law. That simply means that by trying to
do good you cannot be justified nor become sanctified (holy). If you try to keep the law, even the
commandments of the New Testament, you are headed for defeat.
The Christian life is Christ living His life through
you. It is not you trying to live as you
should.
Galatians 2:20 says it well, and I’m going to paraphrase
it: “I have been crucified with Christ
(I am dead; see Col. 3:3), but I’m alive.
But it isn’t I who live in this body, it is Christ. And this life I now live in this body (Christ
living in me, through my body), I live by faith in the Son of God (I trust Him
to live through me, to empower me, to reveal Himself to the world through me).”
That is the Christian life. Christ living His life in and through
us. Now, how does it come about? We know all this is true. But what do I do to make it happen, so that
Christ is the one living in me, and not me?
Meditate on just one verse, 2 Corinthians 3:18, although
there are many others which support it. The clearest translation is in the ESB,
and it says, “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord,
are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to
another. For this comes from the Lord,
who is the Spirit.”
This verse says that as you gaze on the face of Jesus, the
glory of Jesus, you are transformed into
His image. The Greek word for
transformed is the word from which we get the English word metamorphosis. The change that occurs is a profound,
life-altering one. We use this word to
refer to the change of a caterpillar into a butterfly. Paul here further states that this
transformation increases as we continue to gaze on His glory: “from one degree
of glory to another.”
So the answer is clear.
If I am to be like Jesus Christ, if He is to live in and through my
body, I must look at Him – intensely focus my attention upon Him! I must stop trying to live for Him and begin
to fellowship with Him so intimately that the Spirit begins to transform
me. We do this by meditating on God’s
Word day and night (Psalm 1), by learning to pray like Jesus and Paul prayed,
by so letting the Spirit control us that we are “filled with all the fullness
of God” (Ephesians 3:19). My prayer is
that you may understand, and that you will begin to seek the Lord with all your
heart!
