TO BE IN CHRIST (PART ONE)

TO BE IN CHRIST

(PART ONE)

To be in Christ is redemption; but for Christ to be in you – that is sanctification! To be in Christ - that makes you fit for heaven; but for Christ to be in you - that makes you fit for Earth! To be in Christ – that changes your destination; but for Christ to be in you - that changes your destiny! The one makes heaven your home and the other makes this world his workshop.

I have been bound to this earth by a law that I have never been able to break. That is the law of gravity. By Faith I step into the new law of God. I sit back in the rest of faith and new mighty anointing roars into my life. I discover that the new law of the spirit, of life in Christ Jesus, has me free from the law of sin and death.

As long as I maintain (by faith) that position of total dependence I do not have to try to be free from the law of sin and death. I am being set free by the operation of a new law, the operation of the Holy Spirit.

III John 2

² Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.

Of course if I am stupid enough (while in the world) to decide that holiness is too stuffy and I step out through some emergency window, I will then discard my position of faith in the new and higher law that is setting me free. I will discover the same old down that is fully in operation and I am caught again by the law of sin and plunged into the dirt. I must maintain my attitude of dependence if I am to remain in faith.

So you too are called upon by God to walk by faith, to walk in the spirit, and to test the weight of your personality upon the living Christ who is in you. By faith you walk in the spirit. God declares that you will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. You will be liberated, emancipated, set free from the down-pull of that inbred wickedness, which Christ alone can overcome.

You will be made more than a conqueror through Christ who is our life. Col. 3:4

I wonder how it is with you. Have you ever put your trust in the Lord Jesus as your savior? Have you been reconciled to God by the death of his son? I wonder if reconciled whether you are at this moment being saved by his life? Have you learned to step out of every situation and relate it wholly to what he is in you and by faith say thank you?

We are discovering new principles. We have begun to see that victorious Christian living is not a method or technique which so many of you like so well.  It is an entirely different revolutionary principle of life. It is the principle of an exchanged life, not I but Christ lives in me. Gal. 2:20

This is all part of our word of God. It is not the gospel plus! We must not get our terminology wrong. To divorce the behavior of the Christian from the gospel is entirely false and is not true to the word of God. All too often such is the characteristic of gospel preaching (teaching).

Most people don’t reject Christ because they have carefully looked in his claims or promises. Most reject Christ because they let others do their thinking for them.

I would like to explore with you what is the true spiritual content of our gospel not just heaven one day, but Christ right now! Christ in you, on the grounds of redemption, this is the gospel! To preach and teach anything less than this must inevitably produce spineless wonders, folk with no spiritual vertebrae whose faith does not behave!

Do you remember what James says in his epistle? The body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also (James 2:26).  The spirit there means breath and a body without breath is dead. Stop breathing and folk will bury you! In other words a living body breathes, a living faith breathes and a living faith breaths with divine action. A living faith breathes with the activity of Jesus Christ. That is why the Lord Jesus in John 6:29 said this is the work of God, that you believe on him whom he has sent.

That is the work of God. It is your living faith in the adequacy of the one who is in you which releases his divine action through you. It is the kind of activity that the bible calls good works as opposed to dead works.

“Good works” are those works that have their origin in Jesus Christ. The activity is released through your body, presented to him as a living sacrifice by a faith that expresses total dependence as opposed to adamic independence (Romans 12:1-2).

The meaning of course, is obvious for there had come a day when Adam fell into sin, and how dark, deep and bitter the waters became within the soul of man! All the tears and all the anguish and all the sorrow and all the death and all the crying and all the dying – this has been the consequence of that first Adamic repudiation of man’s true relationship to God, of which you and I today are still the heirs, in this poor, sin-sick world!

The waters indeed are dark, deep and bitter within the soul of man, but the spirit of God moves upon the face of the waters, and they are stirred and the soul is awakened and at last the soul convicted of its sin cries out to God and he says behold the lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world (John 1:29).

Pastor James P. Norman Jr.