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
----------
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.
------------
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)
-----------
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.
------------
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.
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
----------
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.
------------
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)
-----------
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.
------------
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment