True Life
Notes
Transcript
Handout
His Message – Our Mission: Go!
His Message – Our Mission: Go!
Last week I preached a message called, “New Hearts”. It was about the fact that God says He will take our hearts of stone and give us a heart of flesh. We often call this idea, “Jesus is in my heart”. Then we watched as dozens of missionaries where sent out from this area (South Texas District) into the world. Each time a missionary reached the shores of another nation, we realized that they were carrying the message that God has made new hearts available. I’m glad that we get to be a part of this mission.
We have highlighted missions this month. 2 weeks ago the evangelist John Arroyo was here to reach out to fire, police, and veterans. They need to understand that they are appreciated, but, more importantly, they need to realize that they cannot live in their own strength – especially with the difficulties they experience. They need to have new hearts in Christ. Just like God told John Arroyo to get up, they need to hear the same Spirit encourage them. They need to understand their purpose, meaning, and destiny in Christ. We’ve also highlighted BGMC and STL. You and I have been challenged to pray and give to missions through our faith pledges. I’m pleased to say that Grace Chapel has given $17,000 over the past year to missions! Although missions doesn’t end next week, we will cap off the celebration with Roger and Debi Audorff a week from today.
What is a Christian?
What is a Christian?
What does it mean to be a Christian? At the bottom of the “All For Jesus” graphic is a verse reference to Galatians 2:20. I looked it up to see what it was:
I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
It is a familiar verse – maybe many of you have memorized it. I was familiar with it but it really challenged me to think more deeply about it – especially in light of missions. One preacher talking about it said:
If you could have one verse of Scripture engraved onto your tombstone, what would it be? Or if you could have one verse and only one scripted and framed to hang in your living room or kitchen, which verse would you choose? Or, to put it a little differently, if someone were to write a biography of your life and put one verse on the title page, what verse would best summarize your aspirations and experiences as a Christian? I'd like to suggest that out of the 31,102 verses in the Bible, you'd have a hard time coming up with a better choice than the verse I'd like to use as a text today--Galatians 2:20.
I began to think about how this verse sums up what the life of the Christian should be. In just a few words it tells us that Christianity should be:
1. A Dead Life
2. A Dual Life
3. A Living Life
4. A Faith Life
Certainly there are other verses, even books of the Bible that helps us understand how to answer the question, “What is a Christian”, but here it is in one verse – profound, succinct, and powerfully expressed. In this verse we see the powerful work of Christ on the Cross, His resurrection, and the ongoing activity of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
So, let’s dive in to Find True Life in Jesus Christ through the Power of the Holy Spirit.
The Christian Life Is…
The Christian Life Is…
A Dead Life
A Dead Life
I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
Scholars have looked at Paul’s phrase “I have been crucified with Christ” in different ways. This could mean that
• all believers participate in the benefits of Christ’s death and resurrection;
• all believers experience death and new life because Christ did so on their behalf;
• all believers will have experiences like those Christ endured (Romans 8:17; Philippians 3:10); or
• all believers actually participate in Christ’s death and resurrection because of the mystical union that believers have with the Lord (see also Romans 6:4–8; Colossians 2:12–14, 20; 3:1–4).[1]
I have preached probably all of these over the past 17 years. They are certainly all true. How have we been crucified with Christ? Legally, God looks at us as if we had died with Christ. Because our sins died with him, we are no longer condemned (Colossians 2:13–15).
When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins,
having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross.
And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.
This is an amazing change! We were dead; now, we are alive. Unfortunately, Christians don’t understand this, and they continue to live like they did before they were saved. I remember when I made the decision to become an officer. It was a big decision. As an enlisted soldier we took pride in the fact that the enlisted men were the backbone of the Army. Officers were paper pushers, they were outsiders. However, I realized that if I was going to do the full 20, it would be a benefit to my family for me to advance. Now, the strange thing was that once I got my commission, I would have to leave my unit. The old relationships with other enlisted could be difficult if I was suddenly their superior. So, I was reassigned to a unit in Austin were no one knew me, and I didn’t know anyone either. The past was gone. It was new.
In a way, that is like the moment that you got your new heart in Christ. You were different. The past was gone. You were ‘crucified in Christ’:
For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin—
because anyone who has died has been set free from sin.
This isn’t just conceptual. This is who we are in Christ! This helps answer the question of what it means to be a Christian. Our Daily Bread has a devotional adapted from Ethel Barrett's work "It Only Hurts When I Laugh"…In her book It Only Hurts When I Laugh, Ethel Barrett tells how four outstanding servants of God died to self and sin.
· George Mueller, when questioned about his spiritual power, responded simply, “One day George Mueller died.”
· D. L. Moody was visiting New York City when he consciously died to his own ambitions.
· And evangelist Christmas Evans, putting down on paper his surrender to Christ, began it by writing: “I give my soul and body to Jesus.” It was, in a very real sense, a death to self.
· John Gregory Mantle wrote, “There is a great difference between realizing, ‘On that Cross He was crucified for me,’ and ‘On that Cross I am crucified with Him.’ The one aspect brings us deliverance from sin’s condemnation, the other from sin’s power.”
Also -
· Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German Christian who died in Nazi hands, once said, “When God calls a man, he bids him come and die.”
Recognizing that we “have been crucified with Christ”, we should consider ourselves “to be dead indeed to sin.” Victorious Christians are those who have died—to live![2]
A Dual Life
A Dual Life
Death doesn’t stay dead for the believer. There is always a resurrection. The old man was crucified with Christ. It is dead but the new man is resurrected and now Christ lives in me.
I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
Relationally, we have become one with Christ and identified ourselves with him, and his experiences are ours. There is a union of Christ and man like marriage. Marriage is a union of one man, with his unique personality, and one woman, with her distinct personality, joined together with one another. The husband and wife maintain their unique personalities, but now there is a mysterious new relationship designed by God in which the two "become one flesh". So here in Galatians 2:20 Paul is describing the nature of our union with Christ in which our Lord obviously remains Christ and the believer retains his or her personality and physical nature. This mystical union does not mean that I no longer have any responsibilities in the Christian life. Paul is saying, ‘Yes, I still live, but there is something so different about life, for Christ now lives in me. It is not me, alone, facing the demands of life. It is not me, alone, trying to work out my salvation, living out the demands of the gospel. It is Christ in me, living in me, living through me His glorious life".
Remove the Pentium processor from your computer and what's left? A useless contraption fit for the junkyard! What happens to the Christian if you remove "Christ" (i.e., you try to live the Christian life and perform Christianwork without Christ living and working out His life through you)? You have 3 letters left, from which you can compose the acronym…
A Living Life
A Living Life
“I live”
I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
And yet the focus of Christianity is, not dying, but living. Because we have been crucified with Christ, we have also been raised with him (Romans 6:5). Legally,we have been reconciled with God (2 Corinthians 5:19) and are free to grow into Christ’s likeness (Romans 8:29). And in our daily life, we have Christ’s resurrection power as we continue to fight sin (Ephesians 1:19–20). Relationally,we are no longer alone, for Christ lives in us—he is our power for living and our hope for the future (Colossians 1:27).[3]
Christian living is about living with the Spirit of Christ:
“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.
Hudson Taylor said that Galatians 2:20 taught what he referred to as "The Exchanged Life". Taylor understood that none of us can live the Christian life in our own strength or resist temptation by our own will power. He came to realize that only Christ can successfully live the victorious Christian life for it is, after all, His resurrection life which reflects His victory over the power of sin and death. Hudson Taylor understood that when one comes to Christ in surrender, Christ begins living His life through us. On one level Christ lives His life through the yielded believer, producing the Fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22, 23 "the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control… "), this "fruit" being essentially the character of Christ Himself! The other arm of "the exchanged life" is Christ working His works through us (see also study on Good Works).
A Faith Life
A Faith Life
Finally, Galatians 2:20 reveals to us that the Christian life should be a life of faith:
I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
I have heard the term “The Crucified Life” and pictured the life of a Christian as a life of continually crucifying the flesh. It sounds more like the life of a medieval monk. The Apostle Paul points out that we “have been crucified”, Christ was crucified once and for all, we died with Him. J Vernon McGee straightens this out:
We are not to seek to be crucified with Christ… There are many people today who talk about wanting to live the “crucified” life. That is not what Paul is talking about in this verse. We are not to seek to be crucified with Christ. We have already beencrucified with Him. The principle of living is not by the Law which has slain us because it found us guilty. Now we are to live by faith. Faith in what? Faith in the Son of God. You see, friend, the death of Christ upon the cross was not only penal (that is, paying the penalty for our sins), but it was substitutionary also. He was not only the sacrifice for sin; He was the substitute for all who believe. Paul declares, therefore, that under the Law he was tried, found guilty, was condemned, and in the person of his Substitute he was slain. When did that take place? It took place when Christ was crucified. Paul was crucified with Christ.
That has already taken place. We aren’t supposed to live in that place continually. Paul said “I live by faith”. McGee continues
But “nevertheless I live.” How do I live? In Christ. He is alive today at God’s right hand. We are told that we have been put in Christ. You cannot improve on that. That ought to get rid of the foolish notion that we can crucify ourselves… There are many ways to end your life, but you cannot crucify yourself. When you nail one hand to the cross, who is going to nail your other hand to the cross? You cannot do it yourself. You must understand what Paul is talking about when he says, “I am crucified with Christ.” Paul was crucified with Christ when Christ died. Christ died a substitutionary death. He died for Paul. He died for you. He died for me.[4]
Christian, Who Are You?
Christian, Who Are You?
You are dead to sin, united to Christ, living full throttle for Him through a life of faith! That’s who you are if you are in Christ. This is the measure of a Christian man or woman according to the Galatians 2:20.
At first, I wondered why the leaders of the mission’s department would choose Galatians 2:20 but I think you can see why. It explains the life of the Christian. As we close, I read something that the author Max Lucado wrote. He told about coming across an interesting tombstone…a more than usually depressing one. The epitaph did not give the dates of her birth or death. It included only her name, the names of her two husbands, and this melancholy mini biography:
Sleeps, but rests not.
Loved, but was loved not.
Tried to please, but pleased not.
Died as she lived--alone.
There is an entire world that this describes whether they know it or not. We now know the truths of Galatians 2:20 but they do not. Who is going to tell them?
[1]Barton, B. B. (1994). Galatians (p. 76). Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House.
[2] R W De Haan (Our Daily Bread, Copyright RBC Ministries, Grand Rapids, MI. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved) (Bolding added)
[3]Barton, B. B. (1994). Galatians (p. 78). Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House.
[4] McGee, J V: Thru the Bible Commentary: Thomas Nelson)