While we are waiting, I prepared a little outline today for the message. I only got fifty copies because I thought everybody would go away this weekend—I mean, be out of town.
Ben, would you do this side? Every other one, maybe. Every other one—not too many. Don’t waste the outlines. Kenny, you’re supposed to do every other one. This side over here doesn’t have any. The guys on the front row don’t have any over here now.
I do not want you to be distracted. This is not the topic of my message, but you will get it. It will help you when you go home and think about it—if you go home and think about it. This is the kind of outline I need: What is the point?
The title, for the transcriber over there, is “Christ Our Life.”
Lord, we thank You for a wonderful time of remembering You this morning. We remember You as we consider Your Word here, and pray that You would speak to us. In Jesus’ name.
Well, I have been thinking lately how these are particularly difficult times—particularly difficult for the Lord’s people. We have all kinds of situations going on in the world. There seem to be an increasing number of despots becoming increasingly despotic: wars, rumors of wars, military strength, clandestine things. It can make you crazy, you know?
We have this coronavirus that will not leave us alone. And I think the hardest thing for believers is the moral decline in our country. Right is called wrong. Wrong is called right. There is this moral decline from the highest levels in our country. It can be really depressing.
But the question is not to look at all the circumstances. The question we would ask is, how do we react to those circumstances? It has occurred to me numerous times lately that the way we react is really important.
Paul tells us, particularly in Ephesians, that these are days to be strengthened with power in the inner man. These are days not to waste our sorrows, as Paul Billheimer wrote. As Paul said again, these are days in which we can say:
That I may know Him,
and the power of His resurrection,
and the fellowship of His sufferings.
Brother Sparks has a little tract called Christ Our Life. I am going to hand out copies of this at the end. It is not a pretty one, but it is Christ Our Life.
The reason I want to use this phrase, “gift versus shift,” is that we often think of the gospel—of our salvation—as a gift. A. W. Tozer used this term in The Pursuit of God. He says the gospel is often preached as a gift and ignores the shift.
The gift is what we often hear: believe in Jesus, get saved, go to heaven, and stay out of hell. Haven’t we heard that? No offense to Southern Baptists—that is a really important emphasis, and it is a good emphasis. It is not a bad emphasis at all. But it is meant to be a start. There is to be a shift in our lives through the gospel.
We are to come to the end of our natural capacity and enter into the life of divine capacity—spiritual life, newness of life. In the very source of our life, even the capacity to get out of bed in the morning, Christ is to be our life. You know, in these evil days, we might not want to get out of bed, but Christ is our life—Christ, Who is our life.
Tozer says, “The essential interiority of true religion.” What I want to say is that there is nothing new here. We have heard it all before. In 2 Peter, Peter says that as long as he is in this earthly dwelling, he considers it right to stir us up by way of reminder. So, this is a reminder.
Tozer also says in his book that if you hear anything new here, you are duty-bound to ignore it. I have no new revelation, nothing special—only Christ our life.
There are three points. First is the nature of man: What is man’s constitution? Second, we will look at John’s Gospel and consider his perspective on life in the Spirit—the objective truth. Then we will look at Paul’s experience, his subjective experience of life in the Spirit.
Let us read 1 Thessalonians 5:23:
Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely;
and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete,
without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
This is an excellent verse. We talk about the tripartite nature of man. We are constituted spirit, soul, and body. Of course, we have been taught this, and even psychiatrists or psychologists have begun to see that man is tripartite: spirit, soul, and body. We pray that the spirit would have preeminence in our lives.
God saved us. He caused us to be born again. His will is for us to be strong in spirit and to live out our lives in the strength of the spirit within. That will please the Lord, and it will definitely bring us into maturity—to sonship.
When I talk about the spirit having preeminence, we have all got a personality. We are not talking about the annihilation of our personality. We are talking about coming into the place where the spirit has preeminence in our lives.
What happened to man? He was created for the spirit to have preeminence, and at the Fall there was a real breach—a separation from God—but also a loss of our life in the spirit. Consider Genesis 3:22-24:
Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil;
and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”—
therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken.
So He drove the man out;
and at the east of the garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword which turned every direction to guard the way to the tree of life.
At the Fall, Adam chose to live in his own capacity, in his own strength. He ignored the tree of life. Since that was so, the Lord cut him off from the tree of life. He lost communion with God and the life in the spirit by which to live. We often talk about that breach with God, but his spirit was also cut off and did not have that life.
Lance says this about what happened at the Fall. This is from a little transcript called Thou Art Mine, from a 1986 conference. I think that was the year the roof was left open at the University of Richmond and it rained on Lance. Who remembers that? Being Lance, he got an umbrella to stop the rain and got a flashlight, and he continued right on.
Trees in the Bible are always symbolic of men. The tree of life was symbolic of one kind of man, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was symbolic of another kind of man. In that garden of Eden, Adam and Eve made a choice.
What happened? In that day when man fell, his spirit died, but it was not annihilated. Some people think that when a man’s spirit is dead, it is no longer there. That is nonsense.
What it means is this: If I took one of these electric light bulbs out of its socket and put it here on this little rostrum and said to you, “Is there an electric light bulb there?” you would say, “Yes.” I would say, “It is the same as those electric light bulbs up there.” And you would say, “As far as we know, yes.”
Is it the same? Then why does it not give light? If it is still an electric light bulb, how come it does not give light, and those do? You say, “Because it is not screwed into the socket.” It is as simple as that.
The bulb is still a light bulb, but it is divorced and alienated from the current. When Adam and Eve fell, they were alienated from God. They were divorced from eternal life. They were divorced from the Person and life of God. It does not mean they no longer had a spirit. It means their spirit was not functioning.
Today, we know that our relationship with God has been restored. We are able to persevere in these evil days because of that life, that Spirit of life. We are to rise above and overcome because we have been born again, and what was cut off from the tree of life has been restored.
The Lord has called us to choose life—to choose to live by the life of Christ within us. We have been saved from hell, but we have also been born again to a living hope: Christ our life.
What does John have to say about this need for spiritual life—for resurrection life? John was probably the apostle closest to the Lord. He was the one who leaned on His breast, and he lived the longest of the apostles.
It was about A.D. 85 or 90 when his Gospel was written. We often speak of this Gospel as outreach, but it is also very much inreach. Brother Sparks said that the Gospel of John was a book uniquely for the church.
What is the message to the church out of John’s Gospel? That you might have life, and have it abundantly. At the end of John, in John 20:30-31, John tells us why he wrote this Gospel. Think about the time: it was the end of the first century. The churches had begun to dissipate, as churches are so prone to do. What word did John have for them? He wanted to bring them back to the very ground and fundamentals of Christ our life.
Many other signs therefore did Jesus also in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book;
but these are written that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God;
and that believing ye may have life in His name.
That is a two-step verse. Wuest says:
Accordingly, many other attesting miracles did Jesus also perform in the sight of the disciples, which have not been written in this book. But these have been written and are on record in order that you may be believing that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and in order that, believing, you may be having life in His name.
We are meant to be His people, His church, His testimony that has His life. Vine says that life is life in the absolute sense—life as God has it, that which the Father has in Himself and which He gave to the incarnate Son to have in Himself, and which the Son manifested in the world.
From this life man has become alienated in consequence of the Fall. Of this life men become partakers through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, Who becomes its Author to all such as are in Him and trust in Him, and Who is therefore said to be the life of the believer. The life that He gives, He maintains. Eternal life is the present, actual possession of the believer because of his relationship with Christ. He says, “I am the resurrection and the life.”
We are meant to have life in the spirit and live out from that. We often hear of the exchanged life from Hudson Taylor, but this is the gift and the shift. This is the shift of life that God has called us to.
Sometimes we trivialize this word, life. We say, “Well, it is just the life,” and we have had so much teaching on life that we say, “Well, we need more life.” It has to be life. The answer is life. Let us be careful that we do not trivialize it, because it is a wonderful thing.
I think we are in trying times because the Lord is calling us to live by His resurrection life and not our own. Life as God has it—the life the Son manifested to the world, the life of which we are partakers—is to be actively lived. It is to be a way of life, not a point in time, but a way of everyday life: walking in newness of life.
Not merely initial salvation, but walking in newness of life. There are a couple of verses in John that show the importance of this matter of life.
John 10:10:
The thief cometh not, but that he may steal, and kill, and destroy:
I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly.
They may be having life and having it abundantly. Again, this is present, subjective, active. The enemy came to rob, kill, and destroy, but He came that we might have life and have it abundantly. I thought that was wonderful.
Now, there is the story of Lazarus in John 11. It is a pretty long story, but it is a really powerful story. The Lord says, “I am the resurrection, and the life.”
Jesus was very close to Lazarus and his sisters. That was His family; that was His Bethany. So, this is quite something—that He would allow Lazarus to die. John 11:1-6 says:
Now a certain man was sick, Lazarus of Bethany, of the village of Mary and her sister Martha.
And it was that Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment, and wiped His feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick.
The sisters therefore sent unto Him, saying, “Lord, behold, he whom Thou lovest is sick.”But when Jesus heard it, He said, “This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified thereby.”
Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus.
When therefore He heard that he was sick, He abode at that time two days in the place where He was.
He stayed where He was two more days. That is pretty drastic. John the apostle chose this story so that people might understand the nature of resurrection life.
There is something here in this Gospel, in the Lord’s appearing to us, that is totally different. It is no longer the world. From John 11 onward, the Lord begins to prepare the saints—the disciples—for His leaving. He is no longer going to be with them face to face, taking care of them in person. He is going to take care of them in spirit after He has risen on high. This is a big transition, and it is important.
Further on in John 11, the disciples say, “If he has fallen asleep, he will recover.” But in John 11:14, Jesus said plainly, “Lazarus is dead.” We were dead.
In John 11:21, Martha said, “Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.” The Lord went to great lengths to show that He meant us to live by another life—by an uncreated life, a life beyond this earth and beyond our natural capacity.
Further in the story, in John 11:43, the Lord says, “Lazarus, come forth.” In John 11:44, He says, “Loose him, and let him go.” I think the Lord would say the same thing to us today: “Loose him, and let him go.”
This is a real demonstration not only of the gift of salvation, but of the shift to a new way of living. Lazarus, come forth. Loose him, and let him go.
Finally, the big principle throughout this book implies a new birth. Let us look at John 3:3-7. This was at night. Nicodemus was a seeker. Who thinks Nicodemus got saved through all this? Jim does—he is not raising his hand. It is too quiet.
Nicodemus came to the Lord, and the Lord told him, “Nicodemus, forget all this other stuff. You must be born again.”
Jesus answered and said unto him, “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except one be born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
Nicodemus saith unto Him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb, and be born?”Jesus answered, “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except one be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.
That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born anew.”
I do not want to offend anyone today, but let us all ask ourselves: Have you been born again? Have you been born again? Do you know that you have been born again?
Sometimes we say to children, “Ask Jesus into your heart.” But we need to know that we have been born again. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 13:5:
Try your own selves, whether ye are in the faith; prove your own selves.
Or know ye not as to your own selves, that Jesus Christ is in you?
Unless indeed ye be reprobate.
You must be born again. It is good to remember that and to know that we have a new life in Christ, a new place to live out from. We need to know that our nonfunctioning spirits have been quickened—that comatose spirit, as Brother Kong has told us over the years.
First of all, Lance said your spirit is not dead; it is not annihilated. Our spirit was asleep, cut off from the life of God. Not only has man’s spirit been quickened, but the Spirit of God has come to live in us. Christ is living in us. Our life is hidden above.
The third thing we want to talk about is Paul’s experience of this spiritual life—life in the Spirit.
The first thing we want to know is: Was Paul born again? You say, “Yeah.” So let us look at his conversion. Acts 9 is a story familiar to many of us. The New American Standard calls it “The Conversion of Saul.”
Acts 9:3-6 says:
And as he journeyed, it came to pass that he drew nigh unto Damascus:
and suddenly there shone round about him a light out of heaven:
and he fell upon the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?”And he said, “Who art Thou, Lord?”
And He said, “I am Jesus Whom thou persecutest:
but rise, and enter into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do.”
Evidence of Paul’s conversion was that he did get up and go to the city. He went to meet with the saints. The Lord just arrested him. God has arrested us. Has the Lord arrested you?
Further on in Acts 9:17-18, Ananias prayed for Paul, and Paul was filled with the Holy Spirit. The scales fell from his eyes, and he was baptized. Immediately, he began to proclaim Jesus Christ. Paul was soundly saved. But that was Paul’s beginning, not the end.
Getting saved, getting born again, is just the beginning. We are not to live our lives waiting to go to heaven. We are called to live our lives in the Spirit, strong in spirit.
The second point in Paul’s experience was that he had a crisis of faith. He came to the end of himself—probably through many experiences. There is evidence that he had come to walk in the Spirit in the way he prayed for the church: that they might walk in newness of life and be strengthened with power in the inner man. He could not pray those things for them unless he really knew something.
He must have known something of the power of the Spirit. But the release of that Spirit in Paul required crisis—a crisis, and repeated crises—so that Paul might come to the place where the Lord had preeminence in his life.
Romans 7:15 says:
For that which I do I know not:
for not what I would, that do I practise;
but what I hate, that I do.
Then Romans 7:24-25 says:
Wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me out of the body of this death?
I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
So then I of myself with the mind, indeed, serve the law of God;
but with the flesh the law of sin.
Paul came to this point: “Wretched man that I am.” He knew that he could not live the life of Christ. He could not live the life he should be living. He could not make it without Christ.
Then in Romans 8:1-2:
There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.
For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and of death.
Praise God. We come to the end of ourselves, and we come to the beginning of Christ our life. The shift is underway: from merely a saving faith to a living faith. Christ our life.
Paul realized through all this process that he could not have two masters in his life. There could only be one Master. In Galatians 2:20, he explained the circumstance:
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, Who loved me, and gave Himself up for me.
Paul realized that he was done with his natural strength. He could not live, but he could live. We could talk for days about crucifixion and so forth, but he realized that he had been crucified with Christ. Praise the Lord: it was no longer he who lived, but Christ Who lived in him.
No longer was he a wretched man, because he could say, “The life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, Who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” He was delivered from this wretchedness.
It is good to look for a minute at Paul’s experience in Philippians. His process of living a life of faith in the Spirit needed to be a daily thing. It was a lifelong process.
It was not a once-and-done thing. There needs to be a time when we decide that this is what is happening—that we are going to live for the Lord and by the Spirit—but it is also a lifelong process. The Lord Jesus said in Luke 9:23:
If any man would come after Me,
let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me.
That certainly happened in this Philippian letter. If you or I were in prison, we would probably be whining and complaining, “Get me out of here.” But Paul used it for practical growth and drawing near to the Lord.
The fact that Paul was at the end of his life and came to this situation in Philippians should be an encouragement to all of us who are a little older now: do not give up the race, do not quit and throw in the towel, but pursue the Lord.
Paul said in Philippians 1:21:
For to me to live is Christ,
and to die is gain.
Paul always pursued the Lord through many dealings. At the end of that letter, he could say in Philippians 4:13:
I can do all things in Him that strengtheneth me.
The continuity and lifelong nature of his pursuit of Christ comes in Philippians 3:10. In prison, I would have wanted to get out of there—“Let me out”—but Paul said:
That I may know Him,
and the power of His resurrection,
and the fellowship of His sufferings,
becoming conformed unto His death.
Paul made a very conscious decision to choose Christ in difficult circumstances. I do not know what circumstances we are in, but I think the Lord allows many difficult circumstances so that we might say, “Christ is our life,” and that we might say, “That I may know Him.”
He even said, “the fellowship of His sufferings,” that we might be conformed to His death. This is such an unpopular thing: the cross, coming to the end of our natural life. But it is our salvation, saints. It is our salvation no longer to trust in our own strength, that we too could say, “I have been crucified with Christ,” and, “That I may know Him in the power of His resurrection, in the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death.”
Whoever is fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty, or one hundred six, may we know Him and the power of His resurrection, being conformed to His death.
The last thought on Paul’s experience is 2 Corinthians 12:8-9. He had many opportunities to deny himself, and he could have thrown in the towel: “I am not doing this anymore. This is too much. Forget it.” Unfortunately, those kinds of circumstances may get a little stronger as we get older.
Concerning this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me.
And He hath said unto me, “My grace is sufficient for thee: for My power is made perfect in weakness.”
Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my weaknesses,
that the power of Christ may rest upon me.
Paul, all his days, chose to lay hold of the life of Christ. “No longer I who live, but Christ Who lives in me.”
If we come to the end of ourselves, if we come into inexplicable circumstances, we can deny ourselves and choose Christ. Choose to believe Him. Choose to take Him as our life, actively and daily. Say, “Christ, Lord, You have got to live in me. I cannot do it. I have had it. It is no longer I that live, but Christ that lives in me.”
“I cannot stand to see this lawlessness and this craziness that is going on in our country. It is no longer I that live, but Christ that lives in me. I cannot face my health issues anymore. I am done. I cannot face my family issues. I cannot face this stupid virus. It is no longer I that live, but Christ lives in me.” What an opportunity.
We started today noting that these are days of terrific pressure upon us, particularly for Christians. The question is not to analyze our distressing circumstances, but how do we react to them?
May we react:
That I may know Him,
and the power of His resurrection,
and the fellowship of His sufferings,
becoming conformed unto His death.
These are not new things that we have talked about, but they are things to remember, rely on, and trust in.
Tozer said that our salvation is not only a gift—not only does it have a gift element—but it also has a shift element. That is our testimony: Jesus Christ in us, Christ with us. Kenny is going to talk about Christ in us later. They need to get him to do that message pretty soon.
It is a gift element, and it is a shift element. At the Fall, we were cut off from the life of God. We were lost and without hope in this world. But in our new birth, we have been given that new life. Our spirit has been renewed, and we have been given the Holy Spirit. Our spirits have been quickened.
We have been chosen to live our lives in the power of the Spirit within us. Choose life daily. We have to come to the end of ourselves and choose that life daily.
I am going to leave you with this little handout. Bob, would you hold your book up? Bob carries this in his Bible, right? I am sorry; I did not mean to upset you.
That is going to be over on the credenza. Mine is a little more worn out than Bob’s. But it has written in it, “It is better to trust God than to enjoy life.” What do you think about that?
These books came from Mary Ann Mice. Often there are quiet ones in our midst, and you do not know that they are doing a lot. Mary Ann was very faithful to keep a very good inventory of Austin-Sparks books and tracts out here. This is one that Mary Ann always had out there: Christ Our Life.
Lord, we thank You for saving us, delivering us from pure death. But we also thank You for delivering us into Christ, our life.
Lord, when we come to the end of our natural strength and our inability and capacity to deal with this world in our personal circumstances, grant us grace to say with Paul:
That I may know Him,
and the power of His resurrection.
Deliver us from our own self-life, and deliver us into the Christ-life. Praise Your name, Lord.