Excerpts from When Is Christ Being Seen in Us?
For a long time I wondered, “If
Christ is my life, how will
I know if He is being seen in me?” This
is an important question because Scripture says that Jesus Christ desires to
live His life in and through us. (p. 1)
What will Christ living through you look like? When
is Christ being seen in you? Could there
be a way to answer these questions that will be both encouraging and empowering to us and glorifying to God? That’s what this book will answer. (p. 1)
How can I strive to have Christ live His
life in me?
I am not asking
because answering it results in a conundrum, an unsolvable puzzle. For if Christ is to live His life, and if
this is a life of rest, how could it be entered by our striving? So striving and struggling will not produce
this supernatural life. Trying to
imitate Christ’s character qualities, or the fruit of the Spirit, or the
aspects of agapē will only lead to
frustration and unrest. David Needham says it well: “God has not asked us to
exchange one kind of stress – the stress of the world – for another kind – the
stress of holiness.”[1] Someone else has said that if we work to get
out of the work system (being under Law), we will find that it does not
work! This is hardly the easy yoke and
the light burden that Christ promised.
Yet I labored under this yoke and
burden for a long time. After 37 years
of this I saw that I would never be able, even by my most earnest and best
efforts to emulate Christ’s character, the fruit of the Spirit, or the aspects
of agapē love. (p. 4, 5)
The Greek word used in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8
for love (as well as Galatians 5:22 and many other places in the New Testament)
is agapē. Lenski portrays its
meaning:
[Agapē] is the love of intelligent
comprehension united with corresponding blessed purpose. So God loved the world, understood all its
depravity and purposed to remove it. He
could not embrace the foul, stinking world in philia, but He did love it with agapē
and sent his Son to cleanse it. We cannot offer affection to our enemies
who would smite us in the face; Jesus did not love the Pharisees with philia and does not ask us so to love
our enemies. It is agapē that He asks, the love that understands the hatefulness of
the enemy and purposes to remove it.
This distinction comes to full view in John 21:15-17.[2] (p. 8)
[1] David Needham, Birthright (Sisters, OR: Multnomah Publishers, 1995, 1999), p. 189.
[2] R.
C. H. Lenski, The Interpretation of St. Paul’s
Epistles to the Galatians, to the Ephesians, and to the Philippians
(Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1937), p. 291. Lenski has many other
sagacious observations on the Greek text.
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The
Character of Christ (p. 9)
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Fruit of the
Spirit
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Qualities of
Godly love (Agapē)
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The Life of
Christ on Earth
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Galatians 5:22-23
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1 Corinthians 13:4-8
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Examples from
The Gospels and Epistles
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The Holy Spirit is the Spirit
of Christ who reveals and glorifies Him.
The results are His fruit. Gal.
5:22-23 has been called “The Shortest Life of Christ.”
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Since God is Love (1 John 4:8b)
and since Christ is God (John 1:1c), the love described here shows that
Christ is producing it in the trusting believer. It can be paralleled to the fruit of the
Spirit since that also is generated by Christ within.
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These beautiful characteristics
of the Lord Jesus are seen in the life He lived here on earth.
The life of Christ within the
believer will also display these same attributes, an awesome thought to
consider, believe and live.
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The fruit of
the Spirit is
PATIENCE
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Love is patient
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- Christ waited about 30 years before He entered His public
ministry. During His public
ministry He did not do some things that would have promoted Him to more preeminence
because, as He said, “My hour is not come” (John 2:4, 7:6).
- Jesus put up with the fearful, self-seeking and strife ridden
disciples, only chiding them for having “little faith.” He deeply loved them and patiently
taught them in spite of their faults, knowing that the cross,
resurrection and Pentecost would later empower them to follow His
teaching.
- As pointed out before (under “is not provoked”), Jesus’ response to
the needling, accusations and taunting of some of the Jewish leaders and
others was a patient response: factual, gentle, simple and sometimes
silent.
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Christ being seen in
someone’s life is so compelling!
Although I see great
hope in Christ’s power and inward presence to make me one who lets Him shine
through me, I do not think I let Him do this as consistently as I could. So I see myself as one who is in process.
My
Friend Ray
The Lord has been very
good to me in bringing several people into my life who are further along in
this process than I am. I am concluding this study with one of
them. As I have observed this man over
several years, he strikes me as one in whom Christ lives with such freedom that
he actually reminds me of Jesus.
Others have concluded
this as well. One of our Exchanged Life
Ministries Texas staff who spent three weeks with him, day and night, in our Advanced
Training and Teaching in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, told him in our closing
session, “Ray, as I think of what Jesus might be like if He were physically
present with us, I think He would be very much like you: loving and caring in
what He said and did.”
Now I want you to know
something more about Ray’s present and past.
In the present he is not a mealy-mouthed, Casper Milk Toast, wimpy type
of man. Though kind, he is straight
forward and not passive. But in the past Ray was not always a walking personification
of Christ. He told me that when he was in college he was
self-centered, critical inwardly and outwardly, and his tongue was acrimonious
and sarcastic.
What transformed Ray from this to one
who is Jesus to people? I’ll let Ray tell his own story:
After struggling in the real estate market, the Lord
showed me that my identity was rooted in my success in business. When the business declined, my weakness
surfaced. I arrived home one evening in
despair. I threw myself on the floor
before my wife and stated, "If this is all there is to the Christian life
then I have had enough."
At the suggestion of my sweet bride I called my Sunday
school teacher. He asked me a basic
question, "What does the cross of Christ mean to you?" After a short pause, I wondered what
relevance that had to my current situation.
I responded with an explanation of salvation that would have made my
other teachers proud. After another
pause my mentor asked, "What else does the cross mean?" I knew I was about to receive a nugget of
truth at this point. My friend began to
share the "full" result of salvation that included not only the blood
of Christ that granted forgiveness, but also my co-crucifixion and co-resurrection
with Christ. These were truths I had
never seen before. I began to study
Romans, chapters 6, 7, 8 and Galatians, chapter 2. As I studied these passages I saw the
"Hope of Glory" and His touch on my life. (p. 21, 22)
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