Galatians 2:20: "I have been crucified with Christ, it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me."
When reading this verse, my thought is: "What if I haven't been crucified by Christ?" The truth is, in order for Christ to live in me, as this verse asserts, I must be brought into His crucifixion. Unless I take part in Christ's death, I can have no business in His life. It is by way of His death that we are given His life eternal. In the eternal sense, you cannot have life without death.
This is the depth of the second part of this verse. It is by faith in the Son of God that life is imparted to the believer. But this faith is not faith in some abstract sense and it is certainly not a faith spiritualizes, as in, a faith that spiritualizes Christ without considering the historicity of His life, death, and resurrection. No.
Faith of the right sort is a faith in the crucified Messiah, the risen Lord. This faith forms the foundation for a life lived by faith, one that is dependent on the reliability of the Word of God and the historicity of Jesus of Nazarene. The risen, living self is thus founded on the risen, living Lord just as the sin flesh is put to death in the crucifixion of Christ Jesus. Amen to God that He has orchestrated such an amazing wonder as this!
Showing posts with label alive. Show all posts
Showing posts with label alive. Show all posts
Sunday, April 7, 2013
Thursday, March 21, 2013
A Statement About the Necessity of Rebirth
The Christian life should seem an outright oddity to any bystander examining it. The oddity of the Christian life, the source of the indescribable to an outsider is that the Christian life is an internal ordeal that expresses itself, as all internal things do, externally. The rub here is to misconstrue the good and necessary externals as the thing of Christianity itself and not merely the perceivable effects of the internal processes that are being undertaken.
For the most part, Christians seem to be the same as any other human person. Yet for those who are actually living the Christian life we would have to assert that the Christian is something altogether other than the average. However, the diference in the Christian, as has been already noted, is an internal one. More concisely, the mark of the Christian is a constitutional one; the difference is foundational, in the very nature of the person.
This may seem all fine and good unless we begin to consider the external alterations that a Christian will incur as the change occurring. It is not enough to say that the Christian lives right or has good morals or is virtuous. Apart from the internal transformation, these external evidences are worthless. It is the internal change that prompts and precedes everything. To think otherwise would be to betray the very heart of the Christian message and thus forms the core of Christian life.
This would be akin to going to a funeral, walking to the coffin, and asking the dead man to try to live. As preposterous as this sounds, this is exactly what I mean by focusing on the externals while disregarding the necessary internal transformation. A dead man cannot do anything. More than that, the dead man is not capable of coming alive–he needs a rebirth, a new life to be able to do anything other than being dead.
At this point, we run into the challenging reality that must be confronted: apart from direct relationship to He who is life, we are dead. Sin relegates us to death because it separates us from the One who is life. By virtue of that death, the human is by all rights dead only pretending to live. Once we overcome this fact, then we are able to assess the process of rebirth, that by a renewed and reconciled relationship to God through Christ, we are made alive. Recognizing this, we can begin to understand that Jesus is not spiritualizing when He tells Nicodemus that a man must be reborn. Surely, we can now see that the Christian life is, at its core, a matter of a new nature that pours forth in new life style, new morality, and new virtues.
For the most part, Christians seem to be the same as any other human person. Yet for those who are actually living the Christian life we would have to assert that the Christian is something altogether other than the average. However, the diference in the Christian, as has been already noted, is an internal one. More concisely, the mark of the Christian is a constitutional one; the difference is foundational, in the very nature of the person.
This may seem all fine and good unless we begin to consider the external alterations that a Christian will incur as the change occurring. It is not enough to say that the Christian lives right or has good morals or is virtuous. Apart from the internal transformation, these external evidences are worthless. It is the internal change that prompts and precedes everything. To think otherwise would be to betray the very heart of the Christian message and thus forms the core of Christian life.
This would be akin to going to a funeral, walking to the coffin, and asking the dead man to try to live. As preposterous as this sounds, this is exactly what I mean by focusing on the externals while disregarding the necessary internal transformation. A dead man cannot do anything. More than that, the dead man is not capable of coming alive–he needs a rebirth, a new life to be able to do anything other than being dead.
At this point, we run into the challenging reality that must be confronted: apart from direct relationship to He who is life, we are dead. Sin relegates us to death because it separates us from the One who is life. By virtue of that death, the human is by all rights dead only pretending to live. Once we overcome this fact, then we are able to assess the process of rebirth, that by a renewed and reconciled relationship to God through Christ, we are made alive. Recognizing this, we can begin to understand that Jesus is not spiritualizing when He tells Nicodemus that a man must be reborn. Surely, we can now see that the Christian life is, at its core, a matter of a new nature that pours forth in new life style, new morality, and new virtues.
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
Made Alive from Death in Christ
Humanity is a creature fraught with contradiction. We exhaust our lives' resource asserting our dominance of will and strength of personhood while we exert the majority of our expertise and skill to create lives of comfort in food and security, all the time devoting the majority of our intellect to the overwhelming task of defeating death. It is a strange phenomena inherent to the human condition: always bettering life to never face death.
In truth, it is death itself that causes the distraction of this world; that creeping villain that lurks behind every human, awaiting his victory over the strings of our life. Humanity exalts the latest advancements in science and medicine as far as those advancements make life longer or, at least, more pleasurable for the duration. It is a funny business to spend life concerned with death. This explains our utter fascination with temporal distraction.
However, despite our best efforts at delusion by distraction, we cannot escape the reality of the situation, what's really going on. The truth, the heart-wrenching truth, is that we recognize the preciousness of life. In our hearts, down to our depths we understand that life itself is miraculous. It is not accidental nor is it flippant. On the contrary, life is a true treasure.
Think of an infant. As absurd as generalities may be, there may be no human being alive, that does not realize their worth. To feel the newness of every moment that an infant experiences is one of the true joys of human life. Even as the infant cries for her mother does she, unconsciously to be sure, defend her own vital and inherent worth. And this preciousness is not lost on the imbecile either, I assure you.
It would appear that with all this marvel at life there runs a parallel fascination with the ever-present prospect of death. There is perhaps no greater irony than to live a life in diversion to death, but yet no more accurate diagnosis of the human climate and condition. Now think of how this reality runs square into the seemingly preposterous claims of Jesus the Christ, the One who claims to be the way, the truth, the life, and the the sole manner of obtaining eternal life by His grace received through faith.
Now in Christ the human's morbid fascination with death that overtakes our lives with distraction is transformed from a life lived dead to a reborn life made alive in Christ. In Christ we are made new by His will and in His Word through faith in His work. Thus the human is freed to live because of their death in Christ. No longer are we obligated to the pall of life spent dealing with death, and we are now free in Christ to actually live for apart from His life-giving presence we are merely walking dead. While there is much more to say about this dense topic, suffice to say the work of Christ has overcome what man could not: make alive what is by nature dead!
In truth, it is death itself that causes the distraction of this world; that creeping villain that lurks behind every human, awaiting his victory over the strings of our life. Humanity exalts the latest advancements in science and medicine as far as those advancements make life longer or, at least, more pleasurable for the duration. It is a funny business to spend life concerned with death. This explains our utter fascination with temporal distraction.
However, despite our best efforts at delusion by distraction, we cannot escape the reality of the situation, what's really going on. The truth, the heart-wrenching truth, is that we recognize the preciousness of life. In our hearts, down to our depths we understand that life itself is miraculous. It is not accidental nor is it flippant. On the contrary, life is a true treasure.
Think of an infant. As absurd as generalities may be, there may be no human being alive, that does not realize their worth. To feel the newness of every moment that an infant experiences is one of the true joys of human life. Even as the infant cries for her mother does she, unconsciously to be sure, defend her own vital and inherent worth. And this preciousness is not lost on the imbecile either, I assure you.
It would appear that with all this marvel at life there runs a parallel fascination with the ever-present prospect of death. There is perhaps no greater irony than to live a life in diversion to death, but yet no more accurate diagnosis of the human climate and condition. Now think of how this reality runs square into the seemingly preposterous claims of Jesus the Christ, the One who claims to be the way, the truth, the life, and the the sole manner of obtaining eternal life by His grace received through faith.
Now in Christ the human's morbid fascination with death that overtakes our lives with distraction is transformed from a life lived dead to a reborn life made alive in Christ. In Christ we are made new by His will and in His Word through faith in His work. Thus the human is freed to live because of their death in Christ. No longer are we obligated to the pall of life spent dealing with death, and we are now free in Christ to actually live for apart from His life-giving presence we are merely walking dead. While there is much more to say about this dense topic, suffice to say the work of Christ has overcome what man could not: make alive what is by nature dead!
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Made Alive in Christ: 1 John 4:9
"In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent His only Son into the world, so that we might live through Him." (1 John 4:9).
It is by God's love for us that He has shown through Christ Jesus that we are made alive. In this, we are made alive to grace, to faith, to obedience, and to covenant relationship that is the Church. Christ Jesus has brought us to life, He has caused us to be reborn by His grace in baptism and we who were once far off have been brought near by the shedding of His blood. For this reason, we should always remember the goodness of His grace and the awesomeness of the gift that His Son has given as the substitutionary atonement for the sin of mankind. Today, on this day, praise God for being made alive in Christ Jesus.
It is by God's love for us that He has shown through Christ Jesus that we are made alive. In this, we are made alive to grace, to faith, to obedience, and to covenant relationship that is the Church. Christ Jesus has brought us to life, He has caused us to be reborn by His grace in baptism and we who were once far off have been brought near by the shedding of His blood. For this reason, we should always remember the goodness of His grace and the awesomeness of the gift that His Son has given as the substitutionary atonement for the sin of mankind. Today, on this day, praise God for being made alive in Christ Jesus.
Friday, June 8, 2012
Dead to Sin like a Tree in Winter
Towards the end of summer into fall, trees take on an interesting character. Green chlorophyll production ceases and the process of photosynthesis closes down, as the leaves change color in preparations for the dead of winter. As a result, by the time the snow hits the bark, the tree is void of any photosynthetic leaves and the tree goes through seemingly no energy production or cellular respiration throughout the winter months, only to begin the process of growing green, photosynthetic leaves in the spring. In a sense, the tree is dead for the winter, unable to feel or to utilize the sun because it does not have the necessary receptors in place to do so.
Humans are much like a tree in the winter of this world, dead to the warmth of God and unable to feel His presence or receive His grace because our leaves have long blown away, leaving us cold, calloused, and dorment to the Lord. As Paul says clearly, that before we have accessed God's grace in Christ through faith, we are "dead in our sin and trespass (Eph. 2:1-3).
This death, like a supreme dullness to God, is pervasively holistic in that it has permeated to the very depths of our beings, preventing us from receiving God or the things of God due to the fact that we have become dorment in our minds, in our hearts, and in our souls (Eph. 4:18). And because the things of God are spiritually discerned, the fleshly, darkened, hibernating-to-death man is unable to access God (1 Cor. 2:14).
Fortunately, God has made a way for us to shed the dullness of our winter hibernations in order that we may experience the warmth of the Holy Lord. It is by His grace that, though we were dead to Him in our sin and trespasses, He died for us in order that we may be made alive to Him (Eph. 2:4-7). It is as if God has taken our barren limbs and caused them to grow new leaves so that we may be alive in and to Him.
In truth, we all are snow-laden trees, hibernating in the winter of this world, unable to feel the warmth of God's grace and love because our photosynthetic cells are not working. Only through the work of the Holy Spirit, who causes us to receive God's grace, will we be able to bask in the light of the Lord and take part in the work of His Son. Our part in this is repentance. We recognize our state and we seek out the warmth to change it from death to life, from wintered inaction to summer blooming. Let us then take part in the awesomeness of God in repentance and faith and, like a spring tree, shed ourselves of the snow in order to bud in Him!
Humans are much like a tree in the winter of this world, dead to the warmth of God and unable to feel His presence or receive His grace because our leaves have long blown away, leaving us cold, calloused, and dorment to the Lord. As Paul says clearly, that before we have accessed God's grace in Christ through faith, we are "dead in our sin and trespass (Eph. 2:1-3).
This death, like a supreme dullness to God, is pervasively holistic in that it has permeated to the very depths of our beings, preventing us from receiving God or the things of God due to the fact that we have become dorment in our minds, in our hearts, and in our souls (Eph. 4:18). And because the things of God are spiritually discerned, the fleshly, darkened, hibernating-to-death man is unable to access God (1 Cor. 2:14).
Fortunately, God has made a way for us to shed the dullness of our winter hibernations in order that we may experience the warmth of the Holy Lord. It is by His grace that, though we were dead to Him in our sin and trespasses, He died for us in order that we may be made alive to Him (Eph. 2:4-7). It is as if God has taken our barren limbs and caused them to grow new leaves so that we may be alive in and to Him.
In truth, we all are snow-laden trees, hibernating in the winter of this world, unable to feel the warmth of God's grace and love because our photosynthetic cells are not working. Only through the work of the Holy Spirit, who causes us to receive God's grace, will we be able to bask in the light of the Lord and take part in the work of His Son. Our part in this is repentance. We recognize our state and we seek out the warmth to change it from death to life, from wintered inaction to summer blooming. Let us then take part in the awesomeness of God in repentance and faith and, like a spring tree, shed ourselves of the snow in order to bud in Him!
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