The In-Christ Doctrine: Part 4

We have looked at the present positional truth of a new believer in Christ.  What about the future position?

Drawing on the context of the 1st two chapters in Ephesians, we see that Christ loved us in spite of our sinful nature, and he came to rescue us from the grave which consisted of these 4 aspects:

1.  Being physically, mentally, and emotionally alive, but spiritually dead.
2.  Being controlled by the spirit of Satan.
3.  Being controlled by the desires of the flesh and the world.
4.  Being children of disobedience, subject to God's wrath

The Bible clearly teaches that Jesus Christ came to this earth, he died, he was buried, and he rose again on the third day.  This death, burial, and resurrection has profound implications for the new Christian's life here on earth, as well as the future life when Jesus comes again.

We already saw that spiritually, this is what has taken place in the life of new Christians

1.  Jesus died on the cross, and by his blood, we have redemption and forgiveness of sins.
2.  Jesus was buried, and thus our sins were carried away as far as the east is from the west.
3.  Jesus rose from the grave, and thus we have been resurrected spiritually from the past grave, and he breathed life into us through the Holy Spirit to all believers who are born again.

The resurrection also have future implications for when all believers will one day be resurrected with a resurrection body like Jesus, and will live eternally.  Actually, eternal life begins right now here on earth in the spiritual sense.  With the Holy Spirit as a seal, we have that promised hope that one day we will be resurrected like Christ.

When will this happen?  At the rapture of the church, or the "last trump".  There are three places in the Bible that talk about this, so I'm not just making this stuff up.  The Bible doesn't use the word "rapture" directly which means to be "caught up", and such a word has somehow gotten its way into the church.  However, the concept of the rapture is Biblical, and it makes sense to use that word which I will do.

The Bible describes such an event in three distinct places, that is a time when all believers will be changed to receive resurrection bodies, and it will happen in a twinkling of an eye.  Aside from these direct references, there are multiple other passages that talk about the doctrine of imminency, where Christ could come back at any time at a day or an hour we don't know of.

Acts 1:11  "Why do you stand there looking at the sky?  This same Jesus who has been taken from you into heaven will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven."

The key here is in Acts 1:9 where after Jesus ascended into heaven, a cloud hid him from the disciples' sight.

Then in 1 Thessalonians 4:16, Paul writes, "For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ shall be raised first.  After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.  And so will we be with the Lord forever."

Also in 1 Corinthians 15:51, Paul writes about this same event after describing the promised future resurrection body.

"We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed.  In a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.  For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed."

More posts on this blog will elaborate on this topic in greater detail and the implications for how the rapture of the church motivates us to live our lives for Christ right now, here on earth, in these last days.  But I just wanted to whet your appetite.  For now, let's focus on the present positional truth of believers together, in the body of Christ as it exists right now on earth in its not-yet-raptured state.

The In-Christ Doctrine Part 3

This post will look at what it means to be in Christ, namely the spiritual blessings that Christians have received as outlined in Ephesians 1.  In a general sense, it means we have been set free from the domain of sin and Satan.  Since conception we have inherited a sinful nature that cannot please God nor submit to His will, and the only way to escape that sinful nature is by the power of Christ to set us free.

That having taken place by his grace, then the believer experiences a spiritual rebirth, i.e. he is born again.  The positional truth of his salvation is in Christ, in particular, is found in these blessings:

1.  We have been raised to the heavenly realms with Christ (verse 3).  This one is hard to grasp, as right now I don't see myself as living in the heavenly realms.  I see myself living a life here on earth.  When I die, then I go to heaven.  We have the assurance that we go to heaven and not hell when we die.   But since God is eternally past, present, and future, then our physical body lives here on earth, and our spirit lives with Christ in the heavenly realms.  As such, we enjoy the blessings, resources, and power of the Holy Spirit if we choose to live in this spirit realm.  Thus, eternal life starts the minute a believer accepts Christ on earth, not just when they die and go to heaven.

2.  We were chosen before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless (verse 4).  This verse is profound, as God knew who would be his children before he created the world.  Both Genesis 1:1 and 2 Corinthians 5:17 underscore the creative work of God, and they emphasize that a born-again Christian is truly a new creation.  From this, we can only conclude that God values the creation of new Christians more than the creation of the world.  This is an amazing verse, actually.  It also underscores how salvation is the work of God.  We respond to his love, where God first loved us.

3.  We were predestined to be adopted sons of God  (verse 5).   The verse goes on to say this pleases God.  While living in the domain of the sinful nature and Satan, before knowing Christ, we were orphans, and cut off from God.  He rescued us and adopted us as sons.

4.  God freely gave us his glorious grace through Jesus (verse 6).  As mentioned in the previous post, this shows how grace is a free gift of God, and we can do nothing to earn it.  This verse alone should put to death any legalistic thinking or works-based salvation mentality.  Grace may be free, but it isn't cheap, as it cost Jesus the cross.

5.  We have forgiveness of sins and redemption through the blood of Jesus  (verse 7).  Redemption means for an owner to buy back what originally was rightfully his, but had earlier been sold off.  From the context of these verses, it is clear that God originally created us when he created the world in Genesis, but we were sold off to the domain of sin and Satan.  When Jesus came to die on the cross as a substitute for our sinful nature, and we accepted Christ by faith and receive his Holy Spirit to live in us, then we essentially became born-again believers.  This is what redemption means.  God made us, we were lost to sin, but he purchased us back through the blood of Jesus.

6.  We have access to God's wisdom and understanding through his grace (verse 8).  Before I was saved I thought I was pretty wise for a person in my early 20s, but human wisdom has nothing to do with God's wisdom.  No matter how "wise" a person may be, we all need God's wisdom.  There is another verse in Corinthians somewhere that talks about the wisdom from above and the wisdom from below.

7.  The seal of the Holy Spirit.  The following verses go on to show how God's Holy Spirit indwelling in believers is a down payment of what is to come when the "times have reached their fulfillment", which is something that of course I will be discussing in more detail on this blog.  The context here is that Christ promised us the Holy Spirit living in us until that time, so that while we live on earth, we know that God lives in us wherever we are.

Paul's letter outlines some of the most profound blessings that a believer can experience if they put their trust in Christ.  This sets the tone for the rest of the book of Ephesians.

You can see how absolutely critical it is for a believer to understand these blessings, and to appropriate them, as what it means to be in Christ.  This is the foundation of the Christian identity, for the person to say these things with confidence:

-- "I know I am a child of God"
-- "I know that God loves me since before the creation of the world"
-- "I know I am raised in the heavenly realms with Christ"
-- "I know I am forgiven by the blood of Jesus."
-- "I know I am adopted into God's family."
-- "I know that the Holy Spirit lives in me and guides me in all truth."
-- "I know I have direct access to the throne of grace"

When I was younger, my family often chastised me for not knowing my earthly identity, or a clear sense of who I was in terms of personality traits.  The so-called solution was to "know thyself" or to become familiar with my identity.

Self-knowledge by itself is futile, because we can't ever know ourselves if we are lost without Christ.  The last few posts have indicated how lost we are without Christ, being controlled by the sinful nature and by Satan, enslaved to sin, and subject to God's wrath.  Living under the power of sin, we are unable to recognize this, nor escape from this bondage.  Making claims that "I am a good person, I'm not a sinner, I'm not as bad as Hitler," etc. etc. is also a sin because the Bible clearly says that if we claim we have no sin, then we make God out to be a liar.

The only identity is the identity in Christ, as outlined by the above blessings in this post.

The next post I want to move away from individualism, and focus more on our corporate identity, that of the body of believers in Christ.

The In-Christ Doctrine: Part 2

Recall that a person living without Christ is physically alive, he experiences conscious emotions, an active mind, and a will, but that person is DEAD because his spirit is dead.

It is just like in The Matrix where the person is really sitting in a pod and wasting away, even though he is living in a pseudo-reality where he walks around, eats, breathes,interacts with people,  and experiences an assortment of emotions and mental tasks.  He needs to be rescued from the pod and re-awakened, learning to use muscles that he never knew existed, and get used to an entirely new way of living.

Continuing with the analogy, when we are born again by the Spirit of God, our spirit is re-awakened, and we learn to relate to God and walk in ways we weren't aware of before.  This is why it is absolutely crucial to have a personal relationship with Christ, and that is done through His Spirit communicating with our own spirit.

Continuing with the quotes from my BSF notes, let's look at the last two points that describe the past grave which a person living without Christ is under

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3.  They all follow the desires of self (the flesh) when controlled by the sinful nature.  This includes religious thinking, personal opinions, judgments, recreation, educational pursuits, ambitions, search for marriage partners, and ideals for children, to name just a few.  None of what nonbelievers want or think they want is based upon God's will.

4.  Nonbelievers are effectively children of wrath, being children of a fallen race, and children of disobedience.
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Based on the power of sin, a person trapped in the sinful nature has no way of saving himself from that nature.  It is through amazing grace that Jesus Christ came to rescue ourselves from this fallen nature, through his death on the cross. He knew no sin, but he became sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God  (2 Corinthians 5:21)

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This underscores God's love for us, because he chose to save us from sin.  We were originally created in the image of God, and he pitied our helplessness in sin so much that he chose to sacrifice his one and only son Jesus Christ.  Jesus then came to the grave where we were dead in sin and made us alive.  We experienced a resurrection to become spiritually alive unto God, godliness, and righteousness.  We live by his life, and enjoy his presence.
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God now sees us seated with Christ in the heavenly realms.  Even though we continue to live on this earth, the present reality is that we draw on the resources of Christ to live this life through walking in faith by the power of the Holy Spirit.

This is the essential POSITIONAL TRUTH of what it means for a person to be in Christ.  The position is simple, yet profound, because it all centers on what Christ has done for us, and nothing we can do on our own to earn salvation.  So many churches get caught up in the false teaching of legalism, that we have to earn God's love.  This leads a person to misunderstand their position in Christ, and to doubt that God really loves them unconditionally.

The church I attend in Shanghai has been hammering home the in-Christ doctrine for weeks on end now.  The pastor keeps preaching passionately about this topic until he is blue in the face, because he knows how so many people just don't get it, and how rampant the legalistic thinking is in today's modern evangelical church.  Legalism, as he mentions, leads to spiritual barrenness and emptiness.

Ultimately, legalistic thinking renders the church dead, divided, ineffective, and useless, which is exactly the situation we have today.  Far too many people simply don't know their position in Christ and they haven't appropriated the riches available to them as mentioned in the first chapter of Ephesians.

That is precisely why the next post will go into those riches.

The In-Christ Doctrine: Part 1

Recently I've been studying Ephesians through the local BSF chapter (Bible Study Fellowship)

This book is one of the most encouraging books of the entire Bible, and this book essentially spells out what it means to be in Christ.  I've found a reading of these chapters to be extremely edifying, and also frightening, in that I'm becoming more fully aware of what Christ indeed saved me from.

It dawned on me that in terms of evangelism, this book is my preferred launching off point, as it goes in detail what it means to be living without Christ, how Christ loved us in spite of our sins, and what it means to be in Christ.

I'm basically going to quote my BSF notes on the commentary of Ephesians 2.  Christ has saved believers from 4 aspects of the past life, and the past grave from which they have been raised.  I want to focus on the first two aspects, and will do the rest in another post.

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1.  The past status before God.  Every person outside of Christ has no spiritual life, no spiritual response, and no spiritual accomplishments.  God sees that person as dead.  There can be no spiritual communion between the living and the dead.  As Jesus said in John 5:5, "Apart from me, you can do nothing."  Such a life is eternally and spiritually meaningless, however humanitarian it may be.

-- The soul who sins will die.  Ezekiel 18:4, 20
-- The wages of sin is death.  Romans 6:23
-- When you eat of it, you will surely die.  Genesis 2:17
-- Death came to all men, because all sinned.  Romans 5:12
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What really got me here was the fact that growing up I considered myself a "good person" having been raised in a Catholic home and was taught that infant baptism cleansed me from what they call "original sin".  However, the reasoning that I was somehow "innocent" because I had a calm nature and never did anything "really bad" like killing people was false reasoning.   This "good person" lie is perhaps the number one objection that people have to Christianity, in that that they already think they are fine, or they are spiritual, or they haven't committed things like murder.

If we go on what the Bible says in terms of man having a sinful nature from birth, then the only way to experience spiritual life is to be born again by the Holy Spirit.  No infant baptism or sacramental program will  cleanse our sinful nature.  The only way is to trust Jesus Christ personally as Lord and Savior, to be forgiven from a sinful nature, and to be given a new nature, in terms of 2 Corinthians 5:17

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2.  The former controlling spirit.  Every person who has not yet crossed over from spiritual death into spiritual life by faith in Christ lives according to the world.  Behind this world system and all atheistic or agnostic education, cultures, values, or philosophies exists an invisible but powerful spirit -- Satan.  The Lord  Jesus Christ called him the prince of this world (John 14:30).  Jesus taught that although invisible, he is a real person, posessing traits such as mind, desires, volition, and activities.   Paul called this same invisible being, the "ruler of the kingdom of the air", the being whose influence permeates the moral, intellectual, and emotional atmosphere of the world.  Our minds were blinded by the god of this world.  This spirit united himself with our spirit to live in disobedience to God."
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If someone told me that I was living under the control of Satan during my teenage years, I would have thought they were crazy.  Yet based on Ephesians 2, that is exactly what was going on, before having been born again when I was 21, through the grace of God.  In terms of outward appearances, everything was great, and I certainly didn't feel like I was dead in sin.

The human being is comprised of body, soul, and spirit.  Prior to knowing Christ as Lord and Savior, the spirit is dead, which is the part of us that relates to God.  The soul consists of mind, consciousness, emotions, and will, which is still alive, along with the body, even though the spirit is dead.  So I can still think, reason, and feel things, and I can be "spiritual" in this sense, but I am really dead if I don't know God.

For a person who refuses to trust Christ as Savior and they die, their soul still lives on eternally.  But they live on in hell, which is conscious and eternal torment, emphasizing the fact that it is a CONSCIOUS experience where the mind is active and emotions are felt.  This is an accurate Biblical portrayal of the 2nd death.

None of this really sounds encouraging, and it's hard to imagine why I'd find it so, but the next post will get into that.  The gist of it is that Christ still loved us in this despicable sinful state that he came to rescue us from sin.  In so trusting him, we become "in Christ" and with that, we need to learn what that really means.

The Doctrine Series

As a cell group (small group) leader at the church here in Shanghai, we have been doing the Doctrine Series which is a DVD lesson

It is put on by Mars Hill Church in Seattle

http://marshill.com/media/doctrine


This series is especially useful for our group as most people are new believers, and about 50% are local Shanghainese. Yeah maybe it will get me in trouble, as the Chinese law says we're not supposed to have locals in our expat church or small groups. But whatever. I ride scooters around the city and they are also technically illegal. I have been surviving for many years on that without a problem, so why not also lead small groups.

Anyhow, the series is excellent because it expands on all the key doctrines of the Christian faith and there is plenty of time for group discussion. They have done a really good job on the details of all the doctrines, and God has been very good at using this series to help understand these for myself as well.

As mentioned in previous posts, it is amazing at just how little we know about the core doctrines of our faith as Christians, for "new" and "mature" believers alike. It would seem fair to keep going on this topic for some time before getting into anything end-times related, although I promise I will start before the end of 2012 :-)

Holy Spirit For Sanctification

Hey everyone, it's been awhile since updating this blog, but I'm still around :-)

A complicated series of interactions have been taking place with a friend, and to make a long story short, I got raked over the coals in terms of verbal criticism and made to feel lousy. This isn't the first time something like this has happened. While the criticism may or may not be uncalled for, the fact is I'm reminded all too clearly of my failings on a daily basis.

I realize that I've been saved though grace, not of my own effort, and am a new creation in Christ (2 Cor 5:17). The doctrine of justification is a familiar one, and it was by the death of Jesus on the cross that I was saved from the power of sin, and not of my own efforts. In other words, the Holy Spirit entered my life after accepting Jesus Christ by faith, and I could not have saved myself.

Preaching in the church today tends to be very clear on this doctrine, and they also make it a point to correctly preach on Philippians 2:12 which says to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. This is all good, but it seems that preachers get so focused on contrasting the phrase "work out" as opposed to "work for" our salvation. My guess as to why preachers spend so much time on these words is because they are shooting down a rabbit hole. Namely, they are debating the view by Roman Catholics and others who say we have to work for our salvation.

The debate on this topic can be brutal, but I obviously take the side that we "work out" our salvation, because the Bible tells us this is the case. Nonetheless I still wish preachers would also talk about verse 13 in the same message which says that "God works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose."

Put together with verse 12 and the justification doctrine, then it is clear that the Holy Spirit who enters a new believer through re-birth and new creation is the same Holy Spirit who works out the sanctification process, because the verse says that *God* works in you to will and to act, not we do it ourselves.

The devil has surely gotten Christians in bondage on this particular point, because he has led us to believe that we have to do the sanctification ourselves. In other words, what Satan seems to have achieved is to have gotten Christians to believe that they can't earn their salvation, but they still have to earn their sanctification.

The consequences of this lie, that we have to earn our sanctification, results in a constant feeling of condemnation, self-pity, or otherwise beating oneself up after experiencing failings as a new believer. This type of worldy sorrow (2 Cor 7:10) can be rightfully rejected as useless in terms of sanctifying a new believer to be more like Jesus.

Even so, we still need to live a godly and holy life, and only with the help of the Holy Spirit can this be possible. This is where the concept of godly sorrow (2 Cor 7:10) comes into play, in that we are convicted of sin in a specific way that leads to joyful repentance and true sanctification.

Godly sorrow, after all, is involved with the initial salvation. So it only seems reasonable that godly sorrow, spurred on by the same Holy Spirit, is experienced in the context of sanctification.