Abiding in Christ is daily experiencing the presence of Christ and allowing him to live his life in and through us Christ lives the Christian life in us because by our efforts alone, we cannot produce righteousness, bear fruit, or convince the lost… To get light from an oil lamp, filling it first with oil is entirely reasonable. To get a car to provide you with transportation, filling the tank with gas is completely logical. In the same way, a divine logic affirms that obtaining righteousness from a man or woman happens only when that person is filled with God. Oil in the lamp, gas in the car . . . and Christ in the Christian. It takes God to be a man, and that is why it takes Christ to be a Christian, because Christ puts God back into man, the only way we can again become functional.
~ Ian Thomas
…when they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel to the circumcised (for He who worked through Peter for his apostolic ministry to the circumcised worked also through me for mine to the Gentiles),…
~ Paul, the Least of the Apostles in Galatians 2
Oh beloved, it is true. We simply cannot live the Christian life on our own. Jesus so rightly said it when He spoke that apart from Him, we can do nothing.
But what is this being “not apart” from Him?
Death.
No, not the falling asleep of the body we will almost all surely experience one day. No, it is the death given by grace to those who will surrender their entire being to the One Being able to fulfill the true purpose of our existence – in us and through us.
Later in the same passage, Paul repeats the epic statement said in so many ways throughout the Gospel, “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.”
So, perhaps it is better said that this death is simply a death to that part of us that can have no part in the Kingdom of G_d anyway. That, perhaps it is best said that the death of the old man is the only way for the new man to be made Alive in Him.
Other religious and spiritual traditions have actually hijacked this concept, and leveraged improperly on the truth that human beings were actually designed to channel spirit. However, the prime design is that a human being be filled with and channel the Spirit of the One in whom the very fullness of the Godhead dwells.
Sorry dear skeptic, any attempt to rationalize or balance this concept with the interests of one’s self-identity infects the process with the spoilage brought by the flesh. That flesh will scream at the impropriety of its own death, even as it breeds its own death and disease in the being it inhabits.
And, to those who have not gone over the edge, the talk of a Gospel message like this is utter foolishness. Only those who have jumped off the cliff into the abyss of faith have found that they land – seemingly mid-air – on the most Solid Rock upon which they have ever stood.
However, someone is reading this tonight, and is standing right on the edge; there is but one iota of a decision to be made before chucking the last defense aside and surrendering to the call that a seed must die before it bears fruit…
Jump beloved. A great cloud of witnesses surrounds you at this moment. And the One calling you to jump will by no means let you fall. He is far too kind to be cruel – and ever too wise to ever make a mistake…
Just jump.
