Every person is challenged to decide who Jesus Christ is to him or her. Non-believers may see Jesus as a perfect man, a good teacher, a prophet, a good example, or the Son of God (but not God); or they may see Him as a liar or lunatic!
Scripture teaches two important doctrines: justification and sanctification. Justification is demonstrated in this: our faith in Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection has reconciled us to God forever and, thereby, allows us to live eternally with Him. Sanctification is the process by which we become what our name, “Christian”, means: “little Christ”.
As children of God, we believe that Jesus was the perfect God-man, the Son of God, and our Savior; who saves us from the eternal penalty of our sin and gives us eternal life. We believe that too many Christians stop at that point. They fail to involve Jesus in their daily lives. We need to reconsider who Jesus is in relation to the way that we live out our daily lives.
We assert that Jesus Christ wants to be nothing less than our life. Just as dependence on the power and love of the Risen Lord justifies us before God, we believe that that same dependence allows Jesus to manifest his life through us now…daily…moment by moment. This life of faith is the key to experiencing the abundant life that Jesus promised us—a life in which the fruit of the Holy Spirit is abundant.
Often, God uses our overwhelming problems and difficulties to reveal to us our need for Him. These trials can move us to brokenness—to prepare our hearts to accept the good news of Jesus as our life source. God often uses our spiritual failures, doubts, and disappointments to demonstrate that we can’t live the Christian life by our own strength. Sometimes, this can take years to understand! God’s goal is to drive us to Jesus as the source of an abundant life. Hopefully, we will be encouraged in an age of over-advertisement to realize that God is much better than we ever imagined and offers us abundant life, which is His life to be lived through ours.
Bible verses to think about:
A. Read 1 Corinthians 1:23-24, Colossians 3:3-4, and John 6:63. These verses all point to the fact that Jesus, through the power of the Holy Spirit, is the source of a life of godliness and holy living. Jesus said (in John 6:63) , “The Spirit gives life, but the flesh [self-life] profits nothing.” Our attempt, as Christians, to live a godly life in our own strength doesn’t work!
B. After becoming a child of God (by justification, i.e., being declared innocent by God because of Jesus’s death on the cross for our sins and resurrection from the dead), we are then set apart for a life of holiness (i.e., the process of sanctification, which is: learning to live the abundant life). 1 Corinthians 1:30 implies that our sanctification and righteousness is complete. This is because Jesus lives in us, and we are one with Him. (See 1 Corinthians 6:17). Yet, there is a lifelong process of learning to better appropriate the resurrection life of Jesus to more consistently overcome our natural bent toward evil, which is called our “flesh” (self-life).
C. Colossians 2:6 invites us, as we have received Jesus, to walk in Him. Since we received Him with childlike faith, so let us live our lives in the same way—now that we are His children. Jesus reminds us (in Luke 18:2-4) to enter the kingdom of God as a child and that the greatest in the kingdom are like children. Jesus is reminding us that a life of childlike trust is foundational and fundamental—no matter how long we have been Christians.
D. Jesus—at the height of His maturity and ministry—lived in total dependence on the Father. He allowed His Father to work through Him. (See John 14:10, John 5:30, and John 5:17.) In 1 Corinthians 15:10, the apostle Paul described how he lived in dependence on the grace of God to work with and through him. Jesus and the Apostle Paul modeled the way that we are to live—dependent on God’s grace to carry out God’s will.
E. In 2 Corinthians 1:8-10, the Apostle Paul explained that the reason for his overwhelming trials was that he might not trust in himself but in God, who would deliver him. Our overwhelming trials can be the catalyst for us to trust Jesus as our life source. In Philippians 1:21, Paul stated, “to me to live is Christ…”, reflecting his desire to practice living in total dependence in Jesus as his life source.