Morning. I do hope that by now in our Christian life, we have learned that our hope is in Christ. Every other ground is sinking sand.
Let us begin with a word of prayer this morning.
Lord, as we come to Thee this morning, we look that, as we consider Your Word, Lord, Your Holy Spirit would move in our hearts and deepen our spirits; that, Lord, we might have understanding of what is on Your heart, that You might be able to share Your heart with us this morning.
Lord, we really do come because we are totally dependent upon Thee, Lord, and on Your Spirit to move and to work in our hearts. Lord Jesus, do not let Your Word fall by the wayside this morning, but may its seed find good ground in our hearts, that there might be a difference. We ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Well, in recent weeks, I have been sharing on living the life. And, of course, the life that I am talking about is the Christian life—living life as a Christian, not life as the world would know it.
We have been talking about this matter of the exchange life in Jesus Christ: that we, as Christians, do not live by our own life, but by the life of Christ. In order for that to happen, something has to have taken place, or we will never be willing to exchange our life.
That event was worked out on Calvary by Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, when we were crucified with Him. Let us look at a couple of Scriptures.
Galatians 2:20 is our theme verse:
I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live;
yet not I, but Christ liveth in me:
and the life which I now live in the flesh
I live by the faith of the Son of God,
who loved me, and gave Himself for me.
Yet not I—not the old “I”—but Christ liveth in me: the new “I.”
Galatians 5:16:
Walk by the Spirit,
and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.
And verse 24:
And they that are of Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh
with the passions and the lusts thereof.
If we live by the Spirit,
by the Spirit let us also walk.
Romans 8:13:
For if ye live after the flesh, ye must die;
but if by the Spirit ye put to death the deeds of the body,
ye shall live.
And Romans 8:29:
For whom He foreknew, He also foreordained
to be conformed to the image of His Son,
that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.
In sharing upon this matter of the exchange life, of being transformed into the image of the Son of God, we need always to keep in mind that the cross is God’s means to God’s end. And His end is that we might be conformed to the image of His Son.
In being conformed to the image of His Son, we find out that we have been called according to purpose, a little earlier in this chapter. That purpose is that we might be the body of Jesus Christ, and that the matured body of Jesus Christ might be the bride of Christ.
And in so being, we will fulfil God’s desire to have a helpmate for His Son with whom to walk throughout eternity, in whatever calling we will be called to at that time.
So our transformation—the change that God is looking to do in us—is not just for us alone. It is that we might be conformed to His image, the fullness of Christ. And that can only be accomplished in a corporate body: the church, which is to become the bride.
We need to be very clear on what is happening. God’s way of bringing us into this transforming life, of bringing us into God’s full eternal purpose, is the cross. Last time, we shared that the first eight chapters of the book of Romans are all about what God has accomplished on the cross so that our lives can be transformed.
It is God’s way. It is God’s work. It is His only way.
As I was thinking about this matter of being transformed, some of you may have seen it on television: there is a program called Extreme Makeover.
What they do is try to find some of the ugliest people they can find. Now, I am not trying to—well, how can you say it? I mean, that is the program. That is the whole design of the program. They get ugly people, and they transform the women into beauty queens.
It is amazing what they can do with dental work, liposuction, hair transplants, and all these things. Everything is just a new person. And, of course, these people come out thrilled to death because now they look so much better.
It will be interesting to see ten years from now how these people will consider themselves with their transformed look. I do not know. I do not know.
Transforming the outside seems to have some marvelous benefits for some, but the real thing that God is after is an internal transformation. Actually, God has made the ultimate transformation.
“Makeover” is probably not a good word. The ultimate transformation.
As I shared last time, we were sinners. We have a sin nature in our lives, and therefore the wrath of God was upon us, according to the book of Romans. We had a destiny that was not too good.
Frankly, in God’s eyes we were totally unacceptable and, from His standpoint, obviously very ugly, because sin is our nature, and He cannot look upon sin.
But God did not choose to utterly destroy us, in the sense that we are no longer anything. God proposed to transform us, and His way of doing it is a little bit unique.
As we learned last time, what He has done is put us in Christ, in His Son; and on Calvary’s cross, He crucified us. He crucified the old man, according to Romans 6:3.
He said, “All right, I have looked at you. You are not acceptable, and it seems like the simplest solution is just to do away with you.” Yet there is to be within your soul a transformation.
An exchange of lives will take place, where your life—which has been crucified as the old man in Christ—is taken out of the way and replaced by the life of Christ in you.
Now, I do not know if there is any way to really explain what God has done on the cross in crucifying the old man, because our minds are limited. No matter how good or bad they may be, they are limited.
So it does come down to a matter of faith. You have to see with the eyes of faith that you have been crucified with Christ.
That old fallen nature, the old man, the Adamic life that you received from your mother and father—what you are in Adam—has been crucified in Christ.
The Word goes on to say that that is the end of Adam. That is why the Word of God says that Christ came to be the last Adam, but God’s second Man, which I shared on last time.
In Christ, God took all that was in Adam, and on the cross of Calvary the Adamic race ended. In God’s eyes, it is over. His judgment has fallen upon man—that sinful man that comes from the life of Adam that you and I both have.
He said, “No more. It is over. It is over in My Son, Jesus Christ—the work that was done on Calvary’s cross.”
But Christ was also the second Man. So, in resurrection, we see the second Man. That is why the Word can say, “In Christ, you are a new creation,” because now you are no longer of the line of Adam; you are out of the line of Christ. You have been born again.
Therefore, you have a new birth. And in this new birth, it is a spiritual life and not a life of the flesh.
We have to, on the one hand, by faith accept our death in Jesus Christ. On the other hand, we have to be willing to take Christ as our life.
What I have tried to emphasize is that in your Christian life this should occur when you accept Christ, but it does not always work out that way.
We need, in our life, at some point, the experience of faith to say, “Lord, not I, but Christ.”
All my life, I have been looking to You to give me victory so that I can overcome. But today I see, Lord, that I will never overcome. The old “I” cannot really ever overcome. What I need is You.
I want to exchange my life for Your life—my life of defeat for You as my victory. So it is not just a matter of gaining victory. What you gain is the life of Christ working in you, giving you the victory.
It is the difference between life and death. It is the difference between trying to live the Christian life the old way, as opposed to Christ living in you.
Another way to say it is: we can live this life in Christ, or we can live this life outside of Christ.
Now, I need to be theologically correct, okay? God put you in Christ. The Word says, “Of God are ye in Christ.” That is a work that God has done. It cannot be undone. Thank God for that.
But, brothers and sisters, it says that we walk by faith. We have to live by faith. The just shall live by faith. We have to have God open our eyes to see that He has put us in Christ Jesus.
Otherwise, because of a lack of faith that we are in Christ, we live our lives as if we are outside of Christ. So I want to be clear: in the work God has done, He has put you there, and that is where you are. Thank God.
You can never be taken out of Christ. But we can live our lives as if we are not in Christ. We can live our lives, so to speak, outside of Christ. That is why often we find our Christian life so weak and without power.
We live our lives in the flesh. And what is the flesh? The flesh is what we are in ourselves outside of Christ.
Let me give an example. I wanted to come up with a good example that would help us this morning, and this is a limited example.
This morning at home, I left about nine o’clock—actually, I left at five till nine—and got here at nine twenty-five. It takes about thirty minutes to come from Ashland in my car.
As long as I am in my car, and I have become a driver in my car, I can get here in twenty-five minutes. But if I had chosen not to get in my car this morning—to live in my car, to drive my car—I would have had to depend on myself.
If myself was going to get here this morning and I did not get in my car, did not live in my car, so to speak, then I would have walked. Because that is the old life without a car. You know, without a car, that is the old life: you walk.
And I would have arrived here about three o’clock this afternoon. Now, I would have actually made it here, amazingly enough, in the old life. But I would not have been here for the Lord’s table, for worship, for ministry, for sharing, for fellowship.
I would have really missed everything that was in God’s heart for me this morning because I chose to get here in my old life, depending on my old way of walking outside of being in the car.
Now, that is not the greatest of analogies. But, brothers and sisters, this is the way we live our Christian life a lot of the time. Instead of living as if we are in Christ, by faith laying hold of the fact that we are in Christ, we live in actuality outside of Him.
The consequence of that is that we depend on our old life to live the Christian life. We may get somewhere, but we are going to miss a lot of what God is after in our lives.
To be clear, or to try to be clear, the flesh is how we live outside of Christ. It is our life outside of Christ. It is the life in our soul that is outside of Christ.
In Galatians, it says:
They that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh
with the affections and lusts thereof.
Then it goes on to say that if we walk in the Spirit, we will not fulfil the lust of the flesh.
What we get confused about in these Scriptures is that we say, “Well, Lord, were we not crucified? If we are crucified, how is it that we find the flesh fighting against the Spirit, and the Spirit fighting against the flesh?”
Brothers and sisters, it is because what you are outside of Christ, you are still capable of living that way, and that is called the flesh. But what you are in Christ is by the Spirit, and we can walk in the Spirit and walk in the life of Christ.
If you look inside, you will always find flesh until one day we are with the Lord, and that will be gone. But right now, in the life that you live today, you can look inside and you will always find the flesh.
That is why it is so difficult for many brothers and sisters in faith to lay hold of our co-crucifixion in Christ. They say, “Well, I thought it was dead, and now it is alive.”
Well, as long as you see yourself in yourself and outside of Christ, you will be very alive. As long as you depend on that life to live the Christian life, that flesh will be very alive in you.
So it is critical, brothers and sisters, that by faith we are able to lay hold of and take our place in Christ by faith.
Remember, in one of my previous messages, I think it was on truth and faith—or faith and truth—the truth is that the old man has been crucified in Christ. That is an eternal truth. It can never be altered or changed.
How you feel about it, or do not feel about it, will not change the truth. It is true in Christ, and that is the truth that sets you free.
What you are in yourself—you say, “This is true of me”—that is not the truth that sets you free. That is what binds you.
So it is important that we, as Christians, by faith lay hold of what we are in Christ and get our eyes off what we are in ourselves, in the flesh. In this way, you will truly experience what has been done in Christ.
I will say it another way. Our crucifixion in Christ is objective truth. It is something done by God. It cannot be changed.
The flesh tends to be our subjective experience. It does not have to be, but it tends to be because we live in the flesh instead of in the Spirit.
Why is it that often we find that we do not seem to have the power to live the Christian life? A lot of times, it is because the flesh in us wants to do it.
When the passions of your flesh are stirred up, you see something, something happens, and the passions of the flesh from that sin nature within you begin to stir. Now, what do you do when that happens?
You say, “Oh, man. Okay, Lord, I am going to stand against this. I am not going to do it. I am just not. I am not going to yield to this thing.”
“And if I can just hang in there long enough, I will get through this temptation.”
What we are doing at that point is using the old life to try to overcome what is stirring in our flesh. The lusts and passions of the flesh are still there in you, in yourself, outside of Christ.
When that begins to happen, you step forward, and you find that this sin—there are usually a couple of sins that easily beset you—it keeps coming back.
If we find that true in our life, it is because we are trying to do it with the old life outside of Christ. It is because we really like the old life. We are used to it, we understand it, and we are familiar with it.
It is just natural to fall back and say, “Okay, when the enemy comes, I will step forward and try to deal with it.” It is because we live outside of Christ. This is where our self-life, the life of the flesh and soul, operates.
So it is by faith. Let me read a few verses that may help us.
Romans 7 says:
I am carnal, sold under sin.
It is no more I that do it,
but sin which dwelleth in me.
For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh,
dwelleth no good thing.
In these Scriptures in Romans 7, you see a man who is a Christian. Paul is describing an experience he went through, and he says, “It is no more I that do these fleshly things, but sin that dwelleth in me. I know that in me, that is in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing.”
This might help us a little bit because it shows us what the flesh is. The flesh is sin in me. The flesh consists of the sin nature and also me—my old self-life. It has the sin nature driving it.
Now, how is the sin nature dealt with? We have to see ourselves in Christ.
If you see yourself in Christ, you will say, “Well, I am crucified.” And, as Paul says:
How shall we, that died to sin,
still live therein?
In other words, the old man has been crucified. If you can, by faith, take that step when the sin nature in you begins to stir, you can say, “Well, the old man, the sinner, the slave to sin nature, has been crucified, and therefore I no longer have to serve him. I can just remain dead.”
But the enemy comes to tempt you, brothers and sisters, and stir up that sin nature. Romans 7:5 speaks of the motions of sin that are still in our bodies.
James 1:14 says:
Each man is tempted,
when he is drawn away by his own lust, and enticed.
Then the lust, when it hath conceived, beareth sin.
That is the way it works. The sin nature is in us, it is enticed, it comes forth, and then it conceives. The only salvation is the one Christ has provided on the cross: that we have been crucified in Him.
But what we try to do is resist that temptation. We step forward—not in Christ, but in ourselves—and we start trying to resist. It is doomed for failure.
I think Stephen used this example one time of a little girl who had accepted the Lord. A man was talking to her about temptation and said, “Well, what do you do when you are tempted?”
She said, “Well, I go to the door, and I look through the peephole and I see Satan standing there. Then I just turn to the Lord and ask Him to answer it.”
Now, that is a very simple illustration, but that is indeed the way we live the Christian life. When temptation comes, we take our place in Christ and say, “I am dead. Lord, You have got to take care of it. I cannot wrestle with this thing.”
Then the Holy Spirit is allowed, in that way, to do His work. But as long as we are working, the Holy Spirit cannot work.
Remember, what wrestles against the flesh? The Spirit. It does not say you wrestle against the flesh. It is the Spirit in you that wrestles against the flesh.
Romans 8:13 says:
For if ye live after the flesh, ye must die;
but if by the Spirit ye put to death the deeds of the body,
ye shall live.
To mortify the deeds of the body is to make naught the deeds of the body, to bring to death the deeds of the body. Basically, it is saying that you have to allow God’s Spirit to move to deal with these temptations.
Therefore, what you will experience is that in your body you will no longer be doing the deeds of the flesh. If we live outside of Christ, or live our lives as if we are outside of Christ, then, brothers and sisters, our life will indeed be one of failure: asking forgiveness, going a little while, making it through for a while, and then coming back and failing again.
Another way to say it is: you need to stay in the car. Now, did you follow me? You need to stay in Christ.
We have this great opportunity. Think about it. I talked about the illustration of being in the car. What if you are in a jet airplane? Wow, I can make it to California in four hours.
If I had to walk in the old flesh, I do not know—probably three or four months, maybe a year for me, the way I walk. I will tell you, I am pretty slow when it comes to that.
But this is the way the sin nature in us is overcome: by taking your place in Christ, in the death that you experienced in Christ on the cross with Him.
Now, I said that there are two elements of the flesh. One is the sin nature in us that stirs, and the way that is taken care of is truly by faith laying hold of the truth in Christ that you have been crucified with Him. That is the foundation.
I will probably say it a thousand times, because this is the point at which we, as Christians, often miss. We have the theological knowledge, but we do not have the reality.
All I can tell you is that in my own life, after struggling for years and years and many years, I finally said, “Lord, I really do not have the faith, do I? I really am not believing what Your Word tells me.”
That is the bottom line. I have sinned because I do not believe Your Word. Lord, forgive me and help my unbelief.
Thank God, the Lord began to move and open my eyes. It takes spiritual revelation—the Spirit moving on God’s Word—to make it alive to you and real to you. Otherwise, our co-crucifixion with Christ on the cross remains a doctrine in our minds that does not help us at all.
But it has to be in life and by faith.
There are two elements to the flesh. One is that sin nature, but the other one is me: the self-life.
What is the self-life? Once again, it is that life outside of Christ. It is a life that can live on its own. It is the life that was in Adam that says, “Okay, boy, if I eat of this fruit, I can be like God, knowing good and evil.”
“I can then do it on my own. I can kind of be a god for myself. I can live life the way I want to, and I can live by the strength of that life. I can reason with that life. I can make decisions with that life. I can walk with that life.”
“I can go through life making my own decisions and, in my strength, be able to make it through.” Which works fine until many of us crash, and we find out that indeed this whole life will not make it through.
This matter of the self-life: it is the life of your soul. You have mind, will, and emotions, but there is a life behind that, and it is a life you are born with.
God deals with the self-life differently, and yet it is still by the cross. It is through the cross.
Matthew 16:24 and Luke 9:23 say:
If any man would come after Me,
let him deny himself,
and take up his cross daily,
and follow Me.
And:
Whosoever would save his life shall lose it;
and whosoever shall lose his life for My sake,
the same shall save it.
For what is a man profited,
if he shall gain the whole world,
and lose or forfeit his own self?
Brothers and sisters, that is what is at stake. Thank God, by the mercies of God, our spirit has been made alive to God in Jesus Christ. But our soul has to go through a transforming work so that it no longer expresses the old self-life, but the new life of Christ in you.
I have to say, in my own experience, how little truly of the life of Christ is expressed, and how much I find that I live in the old life most of the time.
So, in Luke, it says, “Daily take up your cross.” The emphasis there is on daily, because it is a daily transformation that has to take place.
We, as Christians, can live by two different lives. There are two lives within you. One is the life of Christ, and the other is the old self-life—the life that animates your soul, the life of your soul.
That life does not want to die. It wants to live, and yet it is a life that is outside of Christ.
That is why Paul said:
I have been crucified with Christ;
and it is no longer I that live,
but Christ liveth in me:
and that life which I now live in the flesh
I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God.
So how is this self dealt with? It says, “Deny yourself, take up the cross, and follow the Lord.” This is the way of transformation.
The reason for our lack of power to live the Christian life is, frankly, that we are living out of the old life. We are living as if we are not in Christ. We are living by that self-life, by the power that is in that self-life.
In that way, you feel more in charge of your life because you are doing it, and that self-life likes it that way.
Let me put it another way: the self-life really is never willing to die. That is why the work of the cross has to be done upon it, and you yourself have to say no to that life.
Denying self does not mean that you deny yourself of things. It means that you are actually denying that old life. When you begin to see that you are operating in that old life—and the Spirit will show you that—then you have to say, “No, that is not me. I am a new creation in Christ, and that is the life I now live by.”
But the old life is never willing to die.
When you first accept Christ, you are just full of the life of the Lord. You love the Word. You love fellowship with other Christians. Things are just great in your life, and you are able to learn the Word. The Word becomes alive to you, and you are going along.
Then, as you go on, it seems as though this begins to dissipate, and things become a struggle. You find that reading the Word does not seem to do much for you anymore. Coming and having the Lord’s table seems like a routine to you.
If there are brothers and sisters who talk to you, you are willing to talk. But even in sharing and fellowship, it does not seem to touch your life like it used to. What has happened?
What has happened is that, slowly—and often very subtly—you have begun to go back to living outside of Christ, so to speak, living the Christian life by your old life.
It says very clearly in Corinthians that the carnal man, or the fleshly man, cannot understand the things of God. Often we think that means unbelievers. Well, unbelievers cannot either, because they do not have the Spirit.
But a carnal Christian, living in the flesh, living by the old man, has very little understanding too. The Word no longer becomes alive to you, and it is because we are beginning to walk in the old life.
What does the old life do? It reads this Word and understands it. It tries to get a grasp of it, but somehow there is nothing living there.
We live the Christian life by our determination, by the determination that is in our will. Brothers and sisters, that varies widely among us. Some are very strong-willed, and some of our wills are not quite so strong.
But in either instance, that old life—the life of your will, your emotions, and your mind—does not want to give up. It does not want to take that place of death. It says, “No, I can do it.”
In other words, this old life has now been substituted for the life of Christ in you. The old life, and the power and abilities of that old soul-life, now begin to take over. It becomes a substitute for the life of Christ in you and the power that is in that life to overcome.
We find ourselves in a much weakened condition.
Maybe one of the best examples is Christ Himself, brothers and sisters, concerning our attitude toward our walk and our living in the old life.
The Lord Jesus said:
I do nothing of Myself,
but what I see the Father doing,
these things I do.
The Lord had a sinless self-life. There was no sin there, but He never used it. He never used the power that was in that self-life to do anything, to live His life on this earth, or even to do the works of God.
He never used it. It was always the power that came directly from God in His Spirit that operated. He refused His soul-life throughout His entire life.
I think one of the best examples was when the enemy came to the Lord and tempted Him. He said, “Okay, You have been in the desert for forty days and forty nights without any food. Now You need to consider Yourself and the fact that You are hungry.”
“What You should do is turn this stone into bread so that You can have nourishment and eat.”
Brothers and sisters, to us that is very blatant because we know it is the enemy and we know the story. But in our lives personally, it is very, very subtle. How often are we trying to turn stones into bread with our old life?
But the Lord refused. He said:
My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me.
Turning the stone into bread was not the will of His Father. It was a good thing. The Lord needed nourishment. But He chose not to use His soul-life. He said, “The will of My Father is My real food. That is what gives Me strength.”
In speaking of this matter of the soul-life, the self-life, and the power that is in that life, I indicate that it is weak. It is weak in doing God’s will. But, on the other hand, it is very powerful in doing what the flesh wants. It can be very powerful.
If you try to live in that life, you give a lot of strength to it. As a matter of fact, it can do a lot of good things. But God has said no to the self-life.
Because Christ took His self-life to the cross on your behalf, He wants you to be willing to let your self-life go to the cross as well. In fact, by His accomplishing that on the cross for you, you are now able to do that. That is why it says, “Deny yourself and take up the cross.”
But it can be very powerful. Remember Matthew 7:22:
Many will say to Me in that day,
Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy by Thy name,
and by Thy name cast out demons,
and by Thy name do many mighty works?
And the Lord will say, “I do not even know who you are.”
You say you have done these things in My name, but I do not know you. I do not recognize you. Why? It is because it is the old life doing it. It was the power that was in the self-life that accomplished these miracles, that accomplished these works.
There were many wonderful things, it says. Wonderful. It does not say dreadful; it says wonderful things. But they were accomplished in the power and strength of the self-life, of the old life.
The first thing the Lord addresses, I think, is kind of very interesting. He did not say, “These are bad works.” He just said, “I do not recognize you. Who are you?”
“I do not recognize the life of My Father here. I do not recognize My life in you. I see these works, but they are not related to Me. They were not even in My Father’s will.”
So, brothers and sisters, the self-life and the power in it can actually be very dangerous.
Actually, there is a television program that is going to be coming on, and I would not recommend that you watch it. But I saw it advertised, and it is going to be about a woman who is able to talk with the dead and, I guess, help the family or help whoever they are trying to get the word across to.
This can actually be done. We see it in the Old Testament. When Saul was trying to find out the Lord’s will, he went to the witch of Endor, and he asked her to raise up Samuel the prophet so he could talk to him. And she did.
She was able to raise up his spirit from the dead. There is power—a lot of power—in the self-life. But it really never does the will of God.
I guess what I am saying is that we have to be careful with this matter of the self-life. Its real danger is that it is a substitute for the life of Christ in you, and yet we live it because we are so used to it.
It says that when Christ went to the cross, He threw off the principalities and powers. He stripped them all. He made an open show of them. How did He do that?
He did it because He did not exercise some great power from within Himself to throw them off.
He was able to do it because, when the enemy came to Him on the cross, he could find nothing in our Lord Jesus by which he could attack Him.
Let me say it a little differently. When the enemy wants to get to you, before he can attack you, he has to find something in you: some sin that you are into, some thought that is not correct, or even some work that you are doing for the Lord which is being done out of your own soul-life and soul-power.
On that basis, he forms a beachhead, so to speak, in you and is able to do his work, get you to sin, and get you away from Christ.
Well, he could not find any ground in the Lord. First of all, the Lord Jesus never sinned. He never committed one sin.
Number two, He had no sin nature, which we have. Number three, He never used His old soul-life. Even though it was sinless, He never used it.
Therefore, when the enemy came to our Lord, he could not find anything in Him. The Lord was able to cast him and death off.
I kind of picture it like water pouring over a rock. It just rolls off. It has no way to get in, and therefore it is cast off.
Our Lord Jesus was able to cast off the principalities and powers because the enemy could find nothing in Him. He lived a spiritual life all of His life. The enemy had no ground.
The self-life and its power is far more damaging to your personal life and walk than the sins that you commit.
The self-life is far more dangerous to your life as a Christian than even the sins you commit, because it is a substitute life. It is replacing Christ. What you are saying is, “Christ is not enough. I need myself to do it.”
It is a substitute. Unwillingly, we find our lives lived that way.
I will tell you what, let me end here, because there is a good thirty minutes left, and I will end at this point. But the next time I share, which should probably be two weeks from now, I will go more into this matter.
I want to get more practical with it, particularly in this area of love and some other things that we have to deal with in our Christian life.
But just take away from today this, brothers and sisters: thank God, He has put us in Christ. He has done this.
I pray that if you have held this as just a theological doctrine all your life, God will open your eyes and you will really see that you are in Christ. Faith will rise up in your heart, and you will be able to take that place.
Otherwise, you are going to be walking to fellowship instead of riding in your car. Okay, I think I got the point.
The other thing you need to see is that not only are you in Christ, but Christ is in you. The life of Christ is in you, and that life needs to replace that self-life which is with you even today.
That self-life, unfortunately, as we walk through our Christian life, we substitute for Christ’s life and continue to walk in the old life, and we will fulfil the lust of the flesh.
The self-life can be very righteous. It can be self-righteous, of course, but it is a righteousness that is not of God. The Lord will look and say, “I do not recognize you.”
You say, “But Lord, I have not smoked, have not drunk, have not gone to parties, I do not watch television. What are all these other ‘don’ts’ we have? I do not know what they are. No dope. I have never been unruly as a child to my parents. I have never disobeyed.”
I do not think there is anybody in that category. But the Lord will look and say, “I do not recognize you. You want to enter My kingdom, but I do not recognize the life here.”
Your life is uncharacteristic of My own, incapable of entering the kingdom of God.
Brothers and sisters, when you read the Bible, is it with the old mind? Are you reading it in the life of Christ?
When you study the Word, how are you approaching the Word? When you get ready for Friday night, are you just reading it and trying to get some facts out of it and saying, “Yeah, well, this is a good point. I can make this point with the brothers and sisters we get together with”?
That is the old man. That is a self-life trying to study the Bible, read the Bible.
No, you say, “Lord, I could read this thing a thousand times and not get anything out of it unless You, by Your life and Spirit in me, reveal it to me and it becomes life in me.”
Otherwise, it becomes the letter, and it becomes death, and I become proud of all my knowledge. I end up with a life of knowledge and a life without any spiritual power.
Every aspect of our life, we should be saying, “Lord, I cannot do it. Lord, I cannot be a father. Lord, I cannot be a mother.”
Let me tell you what, mothers: you have natural instincts in you that are unbelievable as mothers, and God knows that.
But when we have children, we can read all the rule books, and they may have some very good things to learn and to go by. But ultimately, the real way to learn to be a parent is to say, “Lord, I cannot be a parent. I need You to be the parent in me.”
“I need Your life to show me, to give me the discernment, to give me the understanding, how to raise my child and how to raise each one, because they are all different.”
That is the life that we learn to live by. Even your studies, students—science, technology, whatever you are studying—sure, you can grasp it with your mind. I am amazed at what we have been able to do.
When I was born, they had a few prop airplanes flying around. Now we have people going to the moon. The mind is amazing, and the abilities that it has.
But if that knowledge is ever going to be of any value, you need to go to the Lord and say, “Lord, I need You to show me how this knowledge is to be used in my life. Otherwise, I will use it to make bombs.”
Do you see what I am trying to drive at? We need to learn to live a life in the Spirit and not out of the old life. It is so subtle, brothers and sisters. It is so subtle.
In Christ. Christ in you. The great secret.
Lord, we just come to Thee today. I really pray that, as we consider Your Word this morning, Lord, You will do that work deep in our hearts; that the Holy Spirit will open our eyes, that we can see we are truly in Christ, new creations.
Lord, do not allow us—but give us that spiritual discernment—when we begin to walk in the old man, when we begin to walk by the flesh.
Lord, in all aspects of our lives, whether it is as children, or parents, or friends, or whatever it may be, Lord, we need Your life.
Oh Lord, we do not want to substitute our life for Yours any longer. We want it to be Your life. In Jesus’ name I pray.