I have good news for you this morning. If you are trying to live the Christian life and are failing at it, it could be that you are trying but not trusting. The flesh profits nothing, and it is not by our self effort or will power that we will overcome the world, the flesh, and the devil.

We need to realize that Jesus Christ has already done all that is needed through His death and resurrection that will enable us to overcome. We also must know that Christ is living in us, and that He is the overcomer that gives us the victory. What is impossible for us to accomplish in ourselves is possible in Christ because "Greater is He that is in us than He that is in the world."

"I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life that I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me."
(Galatians 2:20)

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Mike

Quote: I have good news for you this morning. If you are trying to live the Christian life and are failing at it, it could be that you are trying but not trusting. The flesh profits nothing, and it is not by our self-effort or will power that we will overcome the world, the flesh, and the devil.

I have been giving this much thought over the past week – as I believe God is going to raise up an end time army of overcomers.

Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne. Rev 3:20-21.
Is it enough to know that Christ lives in me - What is union with God?

We can say “Christ lives in me” personally I think all believers can say Jesus lives in my heart. But it a whole different matter to say “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me”
What do I mean - one is a believer who does things for God, the other being someone who has come to such a place of union with the Lord through the cross, that He can do His will through you, to the point that you cannot tell where you end and God begins?

I think about Job’s statement - I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.”

Something changed in Job – scripture says “blessed are the pure in heart for the shall see God” – in my understanding is that Job heart was purified – He could see God.

Job came to the place in Union with God that his heart was purified so that he could see God.

It is the difference between saying: “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you”

It is --- the self-life; it obscures and it blinds us – it the self-life, it is deeper that we can know, the self goes down into the deepest part of our being, it is what we are, it is who we are and out of it come the issues of life, but it is also entwinned with sin, self and sin are one at the very deepest core of our being.

When Job’s eye were opened and he saw God and then looked at himself he cried out – “therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes”

What are we to do -

We must confess, forsake, the self-life, and reckon it crucified, but we must be careful to distinguish lazy acceptance from the real work of God. Something real must take place, and merely talking about it does not mean that it has been secured.

Jesus said if we open the door to him “I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me”

Thayer's Greek Lexicon
Sup - STRONGS G1172: δειπνέω, -ῶ: [future δειπνήσω]; 1 aorist ἐδείπνησα; (δεῖπνον); to sup: Luke 17:8; Luke 22:20 [WH reject the whole passage, see their Appendix]; 1 Corinthians 11:25; in an allegory, δειπνήσω μετ’ αὐτοῦ, I will make him to share in my most intimate and blissful intercourse: Revelation 3:20.

Christ is offering intimate and blissful relationship; but it’s more, these words are not enough to describe the depth of the work done.

It is no longer I and sin who live, but Christ. At the very core of being we no longer find self and sin, we find Christ, our sin ravaged self is crucified and through the way of cross this child of God has flourished to become a son of God, one whose heart has been made pure, one who is in complete Union with God and is led by the Spirit, and the life that they will live in the flesh will be lived by faith in the Son of God.

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Colin Murray

Thank you for sharing that excellent post brother Colin. I am amazed at how little the crucified life of the Christian is taught in churches today and no wonder there is such a sin problem in the church

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Mike

My biggest issue with attempting to live like Christ, was I thought I was separated from Christ and had to do something to be one with Him. I wanted to please God and thought I could obey the law but found out like Paul did, I could not. The harder I tried the worse it got.

It is by grace that God is pleased to reveal his Son IN US. Now this revelation TAKES TIME because we are so used to lie that we are an independent self that is separated from God.

It was God in Christ who MADE US ONE with Him. We had no part in this at all. It was all of God’s doing - He infused us with HIMSELF giving us His VERY LIFE!

"It is because of God that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God--that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption." 1 Corinthians 1:30

When I read this – my eyes were opened

“At the beginning of our Christian life, we saw how the Lord Jesus bore our sins on the cross so that by His death we were delivered from death, our sins were forgiven, and we were condemned no more. Today Paul tells me that because Christ lives in me, I am delivered from living. The meaning here is simple: since He lives in me, I no longer need to live. As He died on the cross for me, so now He lives in me in my place. This is the secret of victory. This is Paul's secret. He does not say, "I hope I will not need to live," or, "I hope I can let Him live." He just says, "No longer live I, for I have let Him live. Now it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me."

“Today Paul tells me that because Christ lives in me, I am delivered from living. The gospel delivered to you today is that you do not need to live. God has exempted you from living. This, indeed, is a great gospel.”

“As it is good news that we need not die, so it is good news that we need not live. For a person to strive to live as a Christian is really an exhausting, impossible task. To ask an impatient, ill-tempered, proud person to live humbly will soon wear him out; he will be worn out by trying to be humble. No wonder the man in Romans 7 was tired! "For to will is present with me, but to do that which is good is not." To daily will to do good, yet daily be unable to do it-how very tiring this is. Then one day the gospel is preached to him, telling him that the Lord does not expect him to do good. Oh, this is a great gospel. The Lord does not require you to do good, neither does He want you to will to do good. He wants to come and live in you. The issue is not whether there is any good, but who does the good.”

Nee

Quote: He wants to come and live in you.


Ezek 2:1-2 And he said unto me, Son of man, stand upon thy feet, and I will speak unto thee. And the spirit entered into me when he spake unto me, and set me upon my feet, that I heard him that spake unto me.

I listened to a David Wilkerson sermon - The Indwelling Spirit.

In the sermon you'll here the key - God has made a promise and he doesn't lie.

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Colin Murray

Amen to the original post by Mike and all the other comments. It's not something that's talked about a lot because when Christians are in a state of carnality and living still as a baby in Christ or they haven't grown up and matured much, the belief in the heart is that no one can be wholly like Christ, and that it is normal for Christians to have sin in there life, and so many don't believe in holiness. So as we develop that becomes a stronghold and can open the doorway up to a particular spirit of unbelief which keeps us in a state of unbelief which technically is a deadly sin on our walk to maturity and Christlikeness. So that sin of unbelief needs to be recognised through conviction of the holy spirit and dealt with to release us and enable the cross to do its perfect work in us. It is impossible to develop the fruits of the spirit which is technically Christ living in US and having that fruit mature to its full ripened state which is equivalent to the old man dying or appropriating the death of the Cross and having that death become our own life. We all have the fruit of the spirit in some form in us but the challenge is growing that fruit and then taking it through the ripening stages, and unbelief in this context is the worst possible sin to be living in and has its roots deep within the pride of the old nature. Not only do we have to learn to deal with unbelief which must be done through allowing the Holy Spirit to produce conviction and the word of God through meditation to produce the truth of what holiness really is and what the new creation the new man really is , which is connected to the reality of the co crucifixion of us with Christ, we have the second deadly sin which is nearly deadly as the first one unbelief, and is possibly worse, and that is the sin of judgement, which many of us have gone through or are still literally living in a state of perpetual false judgement, meaning that as a partly developed Christian with the fruit of the spirit only partly developed our carnal nature has not been put to death fully. And us, or many of us Christians have lived in this state or are moving through these stages must ,if we want to develop in holiness and produce the fruits of the spirit in its fullness, never ever look upon the sins of our brothers and sisters and judge them for their sin while we still have not been made perfect it our own life through the fullness of the blood and sacrifice of Christ. Jesus taught about this type of judgement and Paul was deeply concerned about Christians pointing the finger and recognising the Sin in our brothers and sisters, at the same time justifying our own sin or ignoring it. It is impossible to live a crucified life and appropriate the full effects of the forgiveness of sin and the freedom that comes with that through the death of the old man while we look upon our brothers and sisters in this way. Because without really knowing it, we are experiencing the lack of freedom for ourselves when we measure out this type of judgement towards our brothers and sisters, the judgement is being measured back to us and keeping us in the same state in which we look upon or look down upon our brothers and sisters, and we can never grow beyond the state that we are in until we stop planting the seeds of judgement. We will always reap what we sow in this context and never escape the cycle until we recognise the sin in the context of the power that it has over our lives and how important is to deal with, sadly enough many beloved preachers and teachers still have false judgement and unbelief in their heart and so they teach only what they've experienced and tasted in their own life and so they never teach the fully crucified life because their life is still in a state of unbelief and haven't dealt with truly not judging their brothers and sisters. And when it comes down to the reality of the state that we remain in, it is a true state of not being able to love God with all our mind heart soul and strength and never to be able to love our neighbour as our self and our precious brothers and sisters in Christ as our own selves. The two greatest commandments can't even get close to being fulfilled in our own lives until we deal with the two sacred darling sins of the church. When we add Pride which is what these 2 sins are bound together with, we have the trinity of the fundamental sin of man, that's when it is dealt with, or we attempt to begin to deal with them, we then start to understand that all other sins can be put off and dealt with, unbelief being technically the original sin of man in the stronghold of the old nature.

And then we have the other important subject it doesn't get talked about much and that's the partaking of the sufferings of Christ which is connected to the atonement and appropriating The Power of the Cross and the sufferings involved in the lead up to the crucifixion. In the letter to the Hebrews it's clearly taught that the suffering produces a partaking in holiness. It causes a stripping away of trusting in oneself and trusting in the world for provision and security and this is a stronghold of the old nature that has to be dealt with in it seems that can be dealt with in no other way, because the Bible says that even Christ learned
a form of obedience through the things that he suffered and so true obedience can't be practiced in its fullness and maturity while we are still trusting or hoping in anything of the fallen world whether it be in ourselves or in any other part of our old life.

Indeed that is the portion that most often gets avoided, it’s a crossless practice of faith.
The passage you quoted from Hebrews 5:8- had a profound impact on me as it shattered my understanding of Jesus, in that it had never occurred to me that He had to “learn obedience” -

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Fletcher

Amen, isn't it a ironic situation that Christ himself had to learn obedience through the sufferings of Christ yet many ministers try to milk the obedience out of the congregation by telling them they should be obedient, and some even deliberately try to create guilt to motivate, rather than the purpose and the power of the blood and the cross, and the process of partaking of the sufferings in the cross to create a deeper development of the new man. <Using the law which can even excite the flesh to rebellion>.

Overcoming - Lance Lambert

https://lancelambert.org/overcoming/

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Mike