I would like for us to turn to Colossians again tonight and look at some of the verses that surround our theme verse. So, if you turn to Colossians, let us begin in Chapter 1, Verse 28, right at the end of Chapter 1.
Paul has already taken these Colossian saints up into the universe—the cosmos—and displayed how Christ is there throughout the whole thing. Then he came swooping down to earth and said, “This cosmic Christ is in you, the hope of glory.” That is an amazing, expansive Christ to take in, isn’t it?
But then he goes on in Verse 28 and says:
We proclaim Him, admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom, so that we may present every man perfect in Christ—complete in Christ.
For this purpose I also labor, striving according to His power, which mightily works within me.
For I want you to know how great a struggle I have on your behalf, and for those who are at Laodicea, and for all those who have not personally seen my face, that their hearts may be encouraged, having been knit together in love, and attaining to all the wealth that comes from the full assurance of understanding, resulting in a true knowledge of God’s mystery, that is, Christ Himself, in Whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
I say this so that no one will delude you with persuasive argument.
For even though I am absent in body, nevertheless I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good discipline and the stability of your faith in Christ.
Therefore, as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, having been firmly rooted and now being built up in Him, and established in your faith, just as you were instructed, and overflowing with gratitude.
See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ.
For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form, and in Him you have been made complete, and He is head over all rule and authority.
Then, if we could go to Chapter 3, with that second theme verse in Verse 4, let us read Colossians 3:1-4.
Therefore, if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.
Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth.
For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
When Christ, Who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory.
Our Lord, we come to You tonight, thanking You so much for the revelation of Who You are given to us within Your Word. We thank You for all that was gone through by the apostle Paul and other such men—through difficulties, imprisonments, and other things—as they wrote down these magnificent stories about Christ, our life.
But now we need the Holy Spirit to transplant this life into us and make it real, to help us see some of the vistas and help us see some of the mystery, even as we share in these days. We thank You that we all can say together, “Christ, our life.”
We pray that we might know that not only as a doctrine, and not only as something we believe to be true because of what He has done by grace, but because we know it through experience. Help us, Lord, to enter wonderfully into the greatness of this Christ we serve. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
Well, I do not know where to go, because our brothers have already shared eight different things. And I am sure, knowing them, David is going to come up with another four tomorrow.
We see that this matter of the life of Christ is so large. I mean, Paul, as we will see in a little bit, is there in prison, and he is not held in at all. He does not seem to be restricted. He seems to see greater and greater boundaries of Christ Who dwells in him. It is really quite an amazing, amazing thing.
I want to take this down to a personal level and put it this way. There is so much to take in, but here is my question to you: Is Christ your life?
Now, before you doctrinalize it or theologize it, I am asking a real and personal question. We see in this precious Verse 4 of Chapter 3 this phrase: “Christ, Who is our life.” This is a very precious and consuming thought.
When Christ, Who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory.
This life of Christ is, in some measure certainly, hidden right now. Our life is hidden with Christ in God. We cannot fully express it yet. Of course, we do not have the dimensions of it, even as the Body of Christ. We are still so limited in trying to testify to this life of Christ.
But one day, when Christ is revealed, the most amazing thing is that His bride will be revealed in glory. His bride will have that character of Christ built into her. This is a secret that one day will be out in the open, and you and I have this destiny of being part of this secret. How large is this matter of Christ, our life?
It is so large, you know, it is hard to know where to begin. Our dear brother asked if we would sing this song here tonight, “Life Out of Death,” and that is where I would like to begin.
I would like to take you back to 1983. I was thirty-nine years old. I was serving the Lord and actually going around among six different churches on Long Island with Brother Ernie Hile, causing more trouble than good. But we were going around, ministering, and trying to serve the Lord.
It was in the springtime of 1983, and I was going to speak at a men’s retreat. I was looking in Colossians 1, where it speaks about this Christ Who made everything. In the middle of my study of Colossians 1, I had one of these moments. This is what happens to me; I cannot speak for you.
God opened my eyes to see something of this magnitude: this cosmic Christ. So I went to that brothers’ meeting and spoke on the cosmic Christ. The way the Lord did it was with a simple word to me. I was studying the Bible, and He said, “Dana, move the camera back.”
You know, I go to a couple of young people’s meetings every year. There are always a hundred-and-something kids, and there is always some poor guy trying to get a picture of everybody. I see my Singaporean friends here. Every year they do it too—two hundred or three hundred people—and they all have to go outside, be squished in, and take a picture.
They always give me a picture, and I cannot recognize even myself. The faces are so small. The poor guy taking the picture has to keep going back. “Move the camera back, Joe,” they say. He moves back and says, “I still cannot get all of you. Move in, move in.” It is that kind of thing.
The Lord said to me, “Dana, move the camera back. The Christ you have known is greater than you have ever known before.” I was caught up in seeing something I cannot even explain, but it was a revelation that expanded something in me.
I had been to seminary, and in seminary I actually had a theological course on creation. I read Emil Brunner’s whole theological tome on Deus Creator—God the Creator. But, you see, in seminary we had doctrinal boxes, and we put Scriptures into them.
But I was reading this thing, and I saw Christ in the Scripture, and it blew my doctrines apart. In the midst of it, I saw some vistas. It was so wonderful. I was caught in that revelation, I am going to say, for three or four months. That is all I could preach from. It is all I could see.
Christ: all things were made in Him, all things were made through Him, all things were made for Him, and in Him all things hold together. Whoa. Boy, that was four good sermons right there.
It was a good thing I saw that vision, because at the end of the summer of 1983, my son died in a car crash—nineteen years old, my oldest son, named Dana.
Of course, when something like that happens, your soul is crushed. You are just crushed. Any sort of external ministerial ability was just broken away, because my soul was numb—sometimes full of anger, sometimes full of guilt, and sometimes with the devil saying, “You see, you were not a good servant of God, and therefore God could not protect your son.”
All kinds of guilt came: “It was my fault. If I had just taken care of…” All of this stuff was going on, devastating my life.
In the middle of that devastation, I was like I had fallen off a cliff and was hanging, like one of those mountain climbers who has missed his step and is hanging by a rope that seems to be getting shaved off every day. I was hanging by this rope. My soul—my emotions—was devastated.
Then the Lord spoke to me and said, “I have got you. In Me all things hold together.” And in death, I met Christ, my life.
Now, we want to meet Christ, our life, in wonderful victories, and we do. We meet Him in many ways. But Paul met Him as well in weakness. In that thorn in the flesh, he met the Lord in weakness as his life.
For me, hanging there, I found that I could not fall. The Lord had hold of me. It was a silent cord. He did not argue with me, did not try to convince me, did not give me theological answers, and did not say it was all in God’s plan. If I ranted and raved, the cord still held.
And I met Christ, my life.
Now, what happened as a result of that is basically the core of what I want to share tonight.
At that time, of course, God in His providence knew what He was doing. My wife and I had just sold our house and moved to another town out on Long Island. It was like the Lord was a good Samaritan, and He took us to this little fellowship that was an inn, bandaged up my wounds, and poured oil on them.
They let me just be a brother. I did not have to be a minister. I met Christ, our life, corporately, by the family of God. I saw so many things at this time, but the thing I want to get to is this.
Out of this came a non-emotional determination—a resolve. Something entered my heart, and I determined that I was going to search and discover more of this Christ, and nothing was going to stop me.
It was like I was at the gates of hell, and I said, “No, I am going to follow the Lord.” Emotions could be scrapped, but I was going to follow. It was bare-bones, raw faith, with no emotions involved. I did not say, “Oh, Lord, it is because I love You so much.” No. I determined that I was going to discover more of the greatness of this Christ, even that I met through this devastation.
I had this resolve, and I knew it would mean the cross. I knew it would mean the Lord would have to deal with me. I knew He would have to deal with the stubbornness of my flesh, and I voluntarily decided to live a simple life. We did not have finances, but there was a determination that nothing could stop.
I discovered that life of Christ, though I did not know exactly what it was at the time. So I learned through this lesson something I want to share tonight. This is the basis of my burden:
If we really desire to know Christ, our life, we will be immediately thrust into spiritual battle.
We will find resistance, rebellion, stubbornness, loneliness, attacks from former friends. I experienced all of that, as well as my old friends: the world, the flesh, and the devil. Everything will stop you.
I do not want to take sides on this thing, but you saw what happened when Kavanaugh went up for nomination. It was as if everything came out against it. If you determine, “Christ is going to be my life in greater fullness,” you will find a resistance you cannot imagine, and you will wonder where it ever came from.
Christ, our life—what a wonderful thought. What an aspiration for every Christian. We all love the Lord. We want Christ to be our life. I do not want to extinguish anybody’s heartfelt emotions about Christ being your life, but I want to say that I believe, at least in my experience, every inch of ground you gain will be through a denial of self, through raw faith, and through belief in your Lord Jesus.
It is all by grace, but the ground gained comes from gut-level faith.
You know that saying in the world: if there is anything worthwhile, it is worth fighting for. Many of you know, in a secular way, what it is to work at a job sacrificially—doing overtime, staying up at night, facing pressures, deadlines, and difficulties. Sometimes through that you achieve the goal and get a promotion. Something good comes out of what you had to fight for.
Have we known this principle of Christ, our life? Have we frankly seen that anything worthwhile is worth fighting for? That is what I want to talk about.
Let us begin in a strange place: Paul’s understanding of Christ, our life. Do any of us compare with what Paul saw of Christ, our life? It is amazing, is it not?
Here he is in prison. He is restrained, not able to minister, and yet he is seeing Christ larger and larger and larger.
For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.
That is Christ, our life. Paul says, “I see it now. I see that God is planning to sum up all things in Christ, my life.” He sees that in Ephesians. In Colossians, as we already said, it is the Father’s good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him. What a large Christ—His life in me, as well as in this cosmos.
Paul was captured by the life of Christ. Sometimes I put it like this: if you take those three prison epistles, there he is in jail, and he takes us on a tour. That is unbelievable.
In Colossians, Paul is an astronomer. He shows us the heavens, the heavens of heavens, the earth, and the whole cosmos. He says, “You see, it is Christ. He created the whole thing. It was all created for Him. It was all created through Him. He holds it all together.”
The astronomer shows us the vast expanse as he reveals Christ in that dimension.
Then, if we look in Ephesians, he is no longer an astronomer; he is a miner. He says, “Let me take you down—down into the breadth and length and height and depth of the love of God in Christ Jesus.”
Do you know how much God loves you? Let us go down this mine shaft and see how deep it is. Let us go up this shaft and see how high it is. Let us see how deep it is and how long it is. “Put your helmet on, put that light on, and let us go in there and dig. Let us discover the size of this love of Christ.”
But we have to discover it together, he says. You remember that in Ephesians, right?
In Philippians, Paul is an explorer on a mountain expedition. He is up there in the Himalayas. He says, “I have seen Christ, and now I am pressing onward for the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. I am pressing up to see more of Him.”
“I have seen a bit, and now I want to go and conquer the depths and the height. Will you join me?” He has us all going up, like some kind of mountain explorer, into the rare atmosphere of the book of Philippians. Wow, Paul is not restricted at all, is he?
But notice that this largeness Paul has come into has come through great conflict in his own life. As we have already mentioned, he knew Jewish enemies of the cross, church leaders opposing his ministry, and physical thorns. He was stripped away of a lot of things, and yet here he is, still on this higher road, pursuing the life of Christ.
He wants to know Christ and be known in Christ. It is hard to believe the joy he has in the book of Philippians, since he is in jail.
None of us can say we have come by way of the cross as Paul came into these dimensions of the life of Christ. But one thing I think we can see is a principle in gaining Christ: there will be a cross. There will be a cost. Can we frankly face that?
The basic problem is pretty simple. There is a full measure that we are able to contain, but as long as we have stuff in our lives that distracts us, He cannot fill us.
This work of discipline, this work of the cross, this work that the Lord sovereignly does in our lives, is an emptying of stuff—worthless stuff, stuff we thought was important. I like the way David said it: what would gold amount to on Saturn? Nothing. But if there is life, that is what is important.
The only way we are going to come to full stature is by an emptying of ourselves.
That is why I wanted to read some of the verses surrounding this wonderful theme verse in Colossians 2.
Therefore, as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him.
That is such a simple thing. But we know that the Colossians were being restricted from entering into the fullness.
In Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and in Him you have been made complete.
But they were distracted by two things, as best as we can tell. One was intellectual theories. The other was religious business. It was preventing them from knowing the fullness of Christ.
Paul says those religious things they were doing were mere shadows. Christ is the substance. Why are you fasting? Why are you doing severe things to your body? Why are you believing mystical visions? What is all this stuff? Why are you observing certain feasts and new moons? Where did all that come from?
The substance is Christ, but these things are distracting you. These things have to be stripped away in order for us to come into Christ, our life.
That was Colossians, but I ask the question: what are those little things that fill our lives today, preventing the fullness of Christ from really coming in? There is actually a tremendous battle over these things.
I will mention a few. I think the first battle in our experiencing more of Christ is that the enemy has us believing there is no battle—that the Christian life is some kind of blissful rest of blessings, but there is nothing of service in the kingdom or doing violence to self.
That has been jettisoned somehow, and we have a kind of Christianity that says, “Do you want peace, joy, blessing, and even prosperity? Just come to Christ.” People are so taken with these things that they do not even realize there is a great battle—a battle for your soul, a battle over what is filling your life.
If we are just passive, how are we going to get anywhere?
In Revelation 3, there are three churches on the Protestant side that supposedly are in existence today, in these last days. When we look at the problems they are having, we can see why they are not coming into the fullness of Christ.
Jesus speaks to each of these seven churches. Regarding Sardis, the Lord says, “What is this sleepiness that has fallen upon you? You say you are alive, but you are dead. Why are you asleep?”
Do you not realize that gaining Christ is of such great value that it involves some kind of warfare in your life, some kind of competitive understanding that you need to press forward? Sleepiness and partial obedience—these are things that afflict the church in the end days.
In Philadelphia, they were a blessed little group, but they had two problems. First, they were fearful because they knew they were little, and a big door had opened before them. Their test was, “Are you willing to go through that door by faith—not being fearful, but being faithful?”
They were also in danger of perhaps devaluing their reward. Jesus reminded them, “Do not lose that crown. Do not just take for granted your reward.” That seems to be a problem in these last days.
Of course, there was Laodicea. We know of their blindness because of affluence. Affluence can fill our lives, let us face it. Pride and nakedness speak of being devoid of holiness. The church seems to be satisfied with this kind of condition today.
But our testimony is to be: Christ is our life.
Can we say that Christ is our life in our experience? I think it is easier, especially for young people—and I suppose for all of us—to confess that iPhone is our life.
In terms of hours and minutes, that is where it is at. iPhone is our life. We get all our information there, shallow as it may be. We multitask and do all kinds of things poorly. Busy, busy, busy—all kinds of things like that in our lives.
All the stuff, all the stuff of today’s life. Our American church is suffering with too much stuff. Christ is standing outside the door, knocking and saying, “How about Me? Do you want Me? Do you want to eat Me? Do you want fellowship with Me? Do you want to grow in Me?”
And we say, “Ah, well, we do not have time. I just run out of time.” Well, what happens is this: commitment to a job can become worship of the idols behind that job.
Every job you take has an idol behind it. If the Lord says, “Take that job,” your commitment to that job does not involve worshiping or being loyal to an idol. There is a demarcation line that you come to in that matter.
In the matter of study, whatever your major is, there is a spirit behind that major in school. If you are studying something academically, well and good, but can you be in that major and not of that major?
Before I was saved, I was majoring in philosophy, so I had to get myself a houndstooth jacket and smoke a pipe, because that is what all the professors did in philosophy. You can almost go into a department and not even know what it is, yet tell what it is by how people dress, act, live, and work. There is a spirit behind every major, whatever it is.
The Lord may send us to study there, but there is warfare there. All I am trying to say is, keep yourself clean, like Daniel did. He had to study in order to be a prime minister. You can imagine what he went through in that. But he determined in his heart that he was not going to be taken in by the idols of it, and yet he learned the wisdom he needed for his life.
Sometimes we get prudent in our finances, and it ends up worshiping Mammon. When that happens, our lives are full of unrighteous things. Whether it is travel, recreation, restaurant hopping, art, or whatever it might be, there is a spiritual atmosphere behind it—things that grab hold of us and enslave us.
Behind everything, there is a battle.
I just want to spend a few moments showing this little battle. If you look at Colossians 2:6-7, Paul is basically saying, “If you want to be filled with the life of Christ, you are going to have to keep it simple.”
Therefore, as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him.
That is so, so simple, is it not? But behind it, we find Paul struggling for the Colossians. Do you remember the end of Chapter 1 and the beginning of Chapter 2? “I am wrestling. I am laboring to try to bring you into perfection. I will not rest because I am wrestling for you.”
The Colossians probably were not even wrestling. “We did not even know it was a wrestling match.” They were wrestling over theories of Gnosticism, or over how many Jewish practices they should observe, because they thought, “If I were more Jewish, I would be a better Christian.” They were distracted by all kinds of little stuff.
Paul says, “I am wrestling for you.” Why is Paul wrestling for them? It is for the same reason he mentions in Galatians. When he talks about presenting them perfect, what is he talking about?
Individually, he will not rest until those Colossians are not only saved but have become sons—sons perfected by the cross, by the working of the Spirit, and by the gaining of the life of Christ in them.
He says to the Galatians, “I know you are saved. Praise God. I know you know Galatians 2:20. Praise God. But I am again in labor for you until Christ is fully formed in you.”
There is a battle about that. Is Paul the only one supposed to fight that battle? Are we just supposed to grow into this thing by osmosis? There is something on our part that is necessary there, right?
Paul saw a bigger Christ—the Colossian Christ, the Ephesian Christ, the Philippian Christ. But that also meant he saw a bigger conflict. That is what we see in Paul’s life. Paul sees a big Christ, Paul sees a big goal, and Paul sees a big conflict.
Notice the verses just before Verses 6 and 7 in Chapter 2. Paul once again talks about a skirmish.
I say this so that no one will delude you with persuasive argument.
For even though I am absent in body, nevertheless I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good discipline and the stability of your faith in Christ.
Paul wants them to realize the mystery, which is Christ. But somebody is deluding them with persuasive arguments and getting them off the track.
In Flushing, Queens, we have a problem right now. The Eastern Lightning headquarters has moved from China to Queens. We are having people come in and cause problems all the time with persuasive, delusive, heretical, non-Christian, false doctrines.
Unfortunately, when somebody is newly saved, they are hungry. These people latch on to the new Christians in our fellowship and try to draw them away in Bible study into error. There is a battle going on, even there in Queens, if we realize it.
Paul, in a certain sense, was like a soldier, like a general. He says, “Listen, Verse 5: even though I am absent in body, I cannot be with you, but I rejoice with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good discipline.” The word really is order.
If the church can keep its order, the Holy Spirit can work, even amid persuasive false arguments. But the church has to be in order so that the Holy Spirit can work.
Then Paul speaks of “the stability of your faith in Christ.” He is happy to see the strength and stability of their faith in Christ. That is the key for Paul: when we are attacked by the enemy, faith in Christ.
Right after these verses—“As you received Christ Jesus the Lord, walk in Him”—there is another conflict. Do you see what I am saying? Here is that simple verse, our theme verse, and around it is conflict.
Look at Verse 8:
See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.
I like this. This is the English Standard Version, and instead of “the elementary doctrines” or traditions, it says, “the elemental spirits.” It is hard to translate this Greek word however you want to translate it, but the idea is that the world is producing a certain spirit, a certain attitude, upon the whole world.
Every age brings in some new development of an attitude that causes problems, distracts, and takes us away from the fullness of Christ.
I have been around for a little while now, and as an adult I have watched two generations take on the spirit of the world that has been around us.
In the 1960s and the 1970s, there was a sexual revolution, and the bodies of men and women were unhinged. I grew up in the 1950s, and in the 1950s there was still much more morality. Most men and women who got married were both virgins.
In the 1960s and the 1970s, a sexual revolution broke out, and everybody was sleeping with everybody. There was perversion, and that spirit shaped the whole spirit of a generation.
Now you see all these problems with sexual harassment and other matters. It is said that half of sexually active young people between fifteen and twenty-five have sexually transmitted diseases—half of them today in the United States. That is how rampant sex is, not to mention men and young men who are addicted to pornography.
It came and fell on us like a spirit of the world.
But I have watched a second generation evolve now. This generation is what I am going to call the generation of self-awareness.
There has been created among us a misunderstanding, an overemphasis on ourselves—who we are and our psychology. We are teaching little children psychological things about who they are, their gender identity, and all kinds of things that a five-year-old child should not be learning.
We have become consumed with ourselves and our feelings. You know what has happened? We have a generation of young people now whose emotions are absolutely runaway—runaway emotions. They are not even logical. They are completely taken over and paralyzed by this feelings monster.
It is terrible. People are traumatized. People are afraid to do things. You hear things at college now where they have to protect people from hearing something from another angle, so they do not allow speakers into the university. “No, no, no, we have to protect our kids.”
The kids are so self-aware, self-conscious, and self-centered. Now listen: how will we ever decrease so that the Lord can increase when our self and our feelings are number one in our lives?
Our brother spoke this morning about carnality, and he said it is part of our fallen soul. But in this millennial generation, let me say something: if you want to know what carnality is, it is the sinfulness of your feelings, because your feelings are controlling your life.
Our life is a wonderful union of mind, will, and emotions. Most Christians cannot live out of mind or will anymore; it is all emotions. It is partly our fault. We have produced a generation of feel choruses.
The old hymns used to be objective and factual. They spoke to your will—deciding for Christ and letting Him live in you. But now the songs are, “Oh, I’m overwhelmed by Your presence now.” We sing that all the time. Are we really overwhelmed by His presence?
We have a sentimentality that has taken over the church, and young people are afraid. We have one or two brothers who seem to have no fear. They say, “Okay, let’s go out on the street witnessing.” And others say, “Oh, well…”
The Bible says, “Go out witnessing.” It does not say, “Go out on the street,” but it bids us go and witness. They go out on West 28th Street in Manhattan. But our young people are too afraid. Their emotions are too big.
Our emotions are completely unreliable. Can I just say that? Our emotions are completely unreliable. Young people hear things: “You are nothing. You are terrible. Kill yourself.” They hear all these things. They are emotionally so into themselves that they do not know those words mean nothing.
But you live by faith, by the Word of God, and in Christ.
There was an old picture. How many of you know what the Four Spiritual Laws are? It was a little tract that Campus Crusade for Christ made for witnessing.
I think it was on the back page where they had the picture of the choo-choo. I am afraid we would not even understand what a choo-choo is, but basically it had an engine on the front, a coal car in the middle, and a caboose on the back.
It said, “Now, your life as a new Christian—what should you do?” It said this: you live by the engine of the Word of God and the truth, the facts of the gospel. The coal car is faith. You have facts, faith, and feelings.
Facts: the truth of Who Christ is. Faith: you believe in it. You shovel coal into the engine, and it goes down the track. The feelings are the caboose on the back.
Now, the trains I see coming into the station these days have the caboose on the front. In other words, “I will not open my Bible, even though the Lord tells me to. I will not study it to show myself approved unto God, even though I know I should, because I do not feel it.”
Grace has become a feeling. Grace is no feeling. Grace is the ability to obey the Word of God by faith.
Listen to the simple beginning:
By grace you have been saved through faith.
Was there any mention of feelings in there? Some of the people I have seen whose salvations have lasted and been most fruitful did not have much feeling at all when they got saved. They cannot say they wept, cried, or carried on. They just knew it, and they began to walk in obedience to what they knew.
But now, I am sorry, I think this whole feelings monster has got to be faced if we are going to make progress, because it has put the caboose on the wrong end.
Having said all of that, I hope your feelings caboose is on the back. There you go.
Now, I want to be able to say, “Christ, You are my life.” How do you do that? Here is the problem: all the stuff around that we are fighting for is complicated stuff, because here is all you have to do. It is so simple.
As you have received Christ Jesus the Lord.
It is not really talking about how you got saved. It is about how you met Jesus. You know you are connected with Jesus because you are saved. As you received Christ Jesus the Lord—what did that mean in the early church?
They heard the Word of God, the gospel. They believed the gospel. They repented of their sins. They were baptized in obedience.
Four simple things:
As they received Christ Jesus, they came into the community of Christ. They began to sense, “Abba, Father,” in their spirit, and they received Christ.
Some people were telling them, “Now you have to walk in some kind of complicated way—intellectual, religious, circumcision, all this kind of thing.” Paul says, “No.”
As you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him.
It is grace that enables Christ, our life, to function within daily. We come to the Lord by faith.
Let me make a statement, and I will touch on it a few more times before we finish: faith is not a very emotional thing. Faith believes.
It is so important that you believe whether you feel anything or not. It is not feelings that are going to get you through; it is faith in God and faith in God’s Word.
As soon as I start making percentages, I know I go crazy, but nine days out of ten you may wake up without any feeling at all. I want you to claim Christ as yours. Consecrate your life, open the Word, get some message from Him, and obey Him during the day. Give your life over to Him.
Did you feel anything? Did you have to feel anything? No. If you do that day by day by day, I promise you, the caboose comes on the back.
One of the many things I appreciated about our brother Hosea was that he was like a Sunday school child: when you asked him something, he would always say, “Christ.”
He was the fastest gun in the West. He would pull that out all the time. “What should we do about this?” “Christ.”
The other thing I liked about him was that he had a will and a resolve to serve God. He was not outwardly that emotional. He was, of course, but outwardly he was a strong man.
I watched him over the years, as many of my brothers and sisters did. He seemed very dogmatic, you know—sort of like a soldier. No feelings about it: “This is right. We do it.”
I spent three weeks, or perhaps a month, with him in the Philippines many years ago. That was when I first noticed that every prayer of his started from victory. I had never heard somebody praying from victory all the time. They always prayed for victory, even when we were in a situation that did not look very victorious.
But he knew where to begin. Christ had the victory. He was like a soldier: “Okay, the Word says this. Let us do it.” He stepped out by faith.
I noticed in his later years that something happened to him. He was wonderfully filled with the Holy Spirit. I do not know why, but I remember night and day. Yet he was always faithful, by faith, to obey the Word of God and serve the Lord.
I think this is the way to spiritual progress. Listen:
As you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him.
Believe His Word. Confess your sins. In faith, obey Him when you read something that He wants you to do. Every morning, walk in Him.
So I ask a question: is Christ your life? You say, “Well, yes, He is my life.” Okay. Did you take Him this morning as your life, or did you just assume it?
Is this now osmosis? “Lord, You are automatically in my life. I do not have to do anything about it.” Or by faith do you say, “Lord, this morning I come into Christ because I have been saved by His precious blood. I commit myself to You.”
“I open Your Word, and I ask You, dear Lord, speak to me. I need Your help today.” That is somebody who can say, “Christ is my life today,” because it is today.
It is not something that happened twelve years ago or something you are going to do tomorrow. I am asking you today: did you take Christ as your possession today by faith?
“I live in Christ by faith today. I live by His Word today.” I hope you have a Word that is all rumpled up, with a lot of notes, questions, and doodles on it. Do you want to know Christ, your life? This is the way you know Him: through the Word of God.
These things are so simple. Having received Christ, walk in Him. That is all you have to do.
Listen to what the Holy Spirit does. If you do your simple part, the Holy Spirit does His part:
Having been firmly rooted and now being built up in Him, and established in your faith, just as you were instructed, and overflowing with gratitude.
Rooted down in the love of God, and now being built up—edified—in Him. There is a corporate sense to that. Then established in your faith, strengthened in your faith, just as you were instructed. You are believing; you are going by the Word of God; and you are overflowing with gratitude.
That is a very simple life. Do not let it get complicated by a whole lot of complicated stuff. Do not let your life get filled up with a whole lot of stuff that will take Christ away from your life.
We walk in this daily life knowing Christ as our life: “Christ is my life.”
We have some brothers and sisters here from India. I remember how blessed I was the second time I went to India. I spent time in the Hebron compound in Hyderabad and spoke many times there.
Here is what I discovered: many of those Indians were very simple people. When they got saved, they were given a Bible. They did not know how to read, so they learned how to read as they studied the Bible.
Their lives were very simple. Some were businessmen, and it was quite a mixed crowd economically. But one thing was real to them—real to them. I do not find many congregations here in the United States where this is so real, but here is something they knew:
Christ is my life.
They knew that. “Christ is my life.” Can you imagine that? They actually knew that. They lived out of that. They had come to understand it.
They heard the doctrines, but I touched some reality there, and there was a simplicity that defied some of our head knowledge. We are not living Christ, our life; we are living out of something else.
This thing is simple. We receive Christ Jesus through confession, repentance, faith, and His Word. Then He roots us, builds us, grounds us, and we overflow with gratitude. This is the Christ-life, pure and simple.
Let me summarize a few things I want to say. God is at work mightily to bring us into the reality of Christ, our life—not just that we say it, but that we know, “Christ is my life today.”
But we are going to have to be serious and deliberate about our walk.
Could I ask you to consider straining your feelings out of your whole Christian life for a while? Just throw them out. They are untrustworthy. They are always getting in your way.
You can tell if a feeling is holding you in bondage. If it is strong enough in you, and somebody tries to talk to you about it, you refuse to listen. That means it is a stronghold. You have an emotional stronghold.
There are people going around with broken lives because they have made too much of themselves, their feelings, their thoughts, and their imaginings. They are out of control.
We have to somehow get away from that. So I say, forget about feelings. Forget about it. That is not the way in.
The way in is daily confession to Him: “Oh, Lord, I am so thankful I am saved, and I come into Christ today. I give You my body as a living sacrifice, that You might prove what is right and holy and perfect in me.”
“I take Your Word, and I chew it by faith.” You will not necessarily get a great feeling out of it, but you might learn something that will help you during the day.
The Lord wants you working by your volition—your will—making decisions by faith in your mind, listening to the mind of Christ through the Word of God.
When you sin—and you will—did you confess your sins last night?
He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
He allows us to walk today in the same way we received Him the first day we were saved. Walk by faith. Walk in these simple ways, and the Lord will add to you, add to you.
Let us finish by looking back in Colossians 1 at one of Paul’s famous prayers, so we can see where this simple walk goes. It sounds strange that such an intellectual man as Paul is exhorting Christian believers to get simple, but I think it is an exhortation timely for us today.
Let us look at what Paul is praying for. Back in Chapter 1 and Verse 9, having heard of these Christians, he knows they are believers, and he wants to pray for them.
For this reason also, since the day we heard of it, we have not ceased to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding.
The first thing he speaks about is volitional things. “I pray that you might know His will”—His will becoming your will. His will, not just, “What would Jesus do?” but His will that involves spiritual wisdom, revelation, insight, and understanding.
Why is Paul praying that we might know His deeper will, His fuller will, His sonship will, His eternal purpose? Why does he want us to know these things? The next verse tells us:
So that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, to bear fruit in every good work, and to increase in the knowledge of God.
Now you know His will. Why? So that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, pleasing Him in every way, bearing fruit in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God.
Then listen to Verse 11. Here is what the Holy Spirit does to somebody who finds the will of God and walks worthy of that will.
Strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience.
The Holy Spirit really gets behind you when you are willing to walk this kind of way. Once again, is it not interesting that Paul ends both of these requests with thanksgiving?
Giving thanks to the Father, Who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.
Giving thanks—that is also a good way to walk, right? When we get saved, what do we do? We thank the Lord. I was so thankful when I got saved, for all the sins that were forgiven, and that should be part of our daily walk.
We walk in a simple way, and the Holy Spirit does amazing things in us as He builds Christ, our life. We experience His life as we serve. We experience His life in moments of weakness, even in defeat. We experience His life.
Right now, His life is hidden with Christ in God. But as we go to Him day by day, a life is being built. The Holy Spirit is building that deposit of Christ in our lives, even as we walk simply.
Are you walking simply? Forget the complicated things. Are you walking simply? I hope so. I hope that you are a child who is walking and allowing the Lord to do His wonderful work.
Listen, saints: we live by faith, not by sight. By faith in what God has promised, we see that those things will come to pass.
Let us take a step of simplicity tonight. Just as we received the Lord, let us ask Him to take our lives and build that perfecting life in us.
Whatever the cost, are you willing to do that? Whatever the price, are you willing to pay it?
It is not a feeling thing. It is a knowing thing. “I want to know Christ. I am willing to obey Christ.”
The Lord is happy with such faith, and He will put that caboose of feelings on the back in due time. You will be a well-rounded person, but you place the starters by faith.
As you received Christ Jesus right at the beginning, now walk day by day in that simple way.
Lord, we just come to You tonight, and we pray that You would simplify all of these things in our lives. Lord, I feel so burdened for saints who were raised in that sexual generation and all that they are going through. My, my, my. What a distraction.
What an elemental spirit has prevented them from knowing more of Christ and holiness and love. Then there is a generation consumed with emotions, feelings, psychology, and self-awareness that has gotten to the place where they are paralyzed and fearful, or completely proud and delusional.
Oh, Lord, would You divest us of those emotions that are absolutely holding us in bondage, so that we live by faith and not by feeling. We live by faith in Your Word and faith in Who You are, and do not listen to all of that.
Help us be like David and say:
Why are you cast down, O my soul?
Our soul, wrought with emotions, has no right to be cast down when we can hope in God for the countenance and the hope of His help.
Oh, Lord, we come to You. How we need Your life—not some kind of emotional life, not some kind of religious life, not some kind of intellectual life. We want Christ, our life. Christ, our life. And for this we pray in Jesus’ name.