How on earth...could we ever live this out and walk like Jesus walked...and love like Jesus loved us...if...we don’t have His nature residing in us? We certainly were not born the first time resembling Him. ( I bet that got the nurses in the delivery room whispering) Maybe that is why we need to be....’born again’?
Otherwise, it would be impossible. We simply cannot be ‘like Him’ unless His nature lives and dwells in us. And as I made the case for yesterday, simply confessing that He is in you does not make it so. The fruit will be evident. It is not uncommon to hear of women who have mental struggles to be convinced they are pregnant and tell everyone that they are with child, when in fact, they sadly are not.
So how are we to live out this walk where we are commanded to ‘be perfect’ and ‘sin no more’ and ‘walk just like Jesus walked’? In short, the only way this can happen is IF...we become a ‘new creation’. (2 Cor. 5:17)
Here’s the good news: We can be.
The bad news? So many of us have lived our lives thinking and believing this was the case simply because we thought it to be so, or said it was so, or even worse, were taught and indoctrinated that it was so...all the while there was insufficient ‘fruit’ to prove it was so.
I know, I know...that sounds so arrogant and judgmental on the surface. Who am I to make such a broad sweeping assessment of so ‘many’. Yet, I merely point to scripture to make the case.
We’ve been led to get caught up in the discussion/debate on whether one is ‘saved’ or not and how does one ‘become saved’. Many have been led to believe that they could Never ‘lose that salvation’ no matter what they might do after making an initial move in the direction of turning to the Lord. Where we have fallen short, I believe, is in this idea of what it means to abide in Christ.
The only reason I cast such a broad net of an observation over so many in the church world today is because most openly accept the idea and confess that we will always continue to be ‘sinners saved by grace’. and because, in their minds, they are sinners, they will continue to sin. Period.
And yet...we are told that whoever abides in Christ will no longer continue to sin. (1 John 3:6)
We have driven that stake of error so deeply in to our spiritual psyche that we have, in effect, been conditioned to reject God’s word flat out. And we have failed to see the grave consequences of this where our hearts, over time, become so hardened that when truth stands before us, we want to do like the Pharisees did...and ‘kill it’.
How do I come to such a conclusion? Well, first of all, there can be no fruit unless we abide in Christ. Apart from Him, we can do nothing. (John 15:4-6) We might produce a lot of thick branches loaded down with leaves. We can sit on a church pew for decades and have a large ‘trunk’ showing how long we’ve been around. But remember, He did not come looking for leaves and branches and trunks in that parable. He came looking for fruit. (Luke 13:6-9)
And as both John the Baptist and Jesus Himself made the case for, every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. (Matt. 3:10; 7:19)
One has to abide in Christ for fruit to be produced in our lives. There is no short cut or way around it. To abide in Christ is to ‘be IN Christ’ and that is how one becomes that new creation. I explained a few days ago that we cannot abide in Him unless we are willing to come to Him with our whole heart. Which means being willing, up front, to forsake all and ‘die to self’. This is not a popular message nor one that gets folks running down an aisle to sign up for.
So it does not take many ‘dots to connect’ before we can easily conclude that while we may be busy doing great things for God, like the ‘many’ in Matt. 7:21-23, or those we read of in 1 Cor. 13:1-3 who demonstrated many spiritual gifts of service, if we don’t have the ‘goods’ of His nature that produces His love in us and through us, then all we are left with is an empty form of godliness. We professed to know Him but by our actions we denied Him. And all those things we did ‘for Him’, profit us nothing. (1 Cor. 13:3). Fruit matters.
You do realize one can have a genuinely wonderful and pleasant ‘personality’ that makes it easy for people to like and be drawn to. And throwing in some ‘Christian lingo’ for seasoning enhances the appeal. But it needs to be said that a pleasant personality is not the same as having the nature of Christ within us.
Instead of truly overcoming sin and walking in the freedom that Christ paid for us to have with His Own life, so many of us have spent most of our Christian walk explaining how, making excuses for, and justifying why...we continue to sin.
Hence, the reason why one can easily conclude that we’ve fallen short of abiding in Him. We are told explicitly that ‘whoever is born of God does not sin, for His seed remains in him; and he cannot sin, because he has been born of God.” (1 John 3:9) What are we doing to do with that one? Cut it out with scissors? You might underline 1 John 5:18 as well.
Maybe that is why Jesus told Nicodemus that if he or any of us were to ever see and experience and enter in to His kingdom, we’d need to be ‘born again’. (John 3:3-8)
In the same way how natural conception that creates a human is nothing short of a miracle, the same can be said about spiritual conception and birth. It is a work of the Holy Spirit of God.
And in the same way that a newborn babe craves its mother’s milk so it can be nourished and grow, so are we as newborn babes exhorted to hunger for nothing less than the pure ‘milk of God’s word that we may grow thereby’. (1 Pet.2:2)
Yes, as ‘babes in Christ’ we have a learning curve as we begin to master this new ‘walk of faith’. In the early stages, there will be stumbles and ‘dirty diapers’ and messes as our flesh nature dies. But to remain in that state as ‘carnal babes in Christ’ is unacceptable, regardless of the ‘spin’ many will put on that passage in 1 Cor. 3:1-4.
Allow me to use another one of God’s created species that He points to regarding this development of growing in His grace and likeness. He used an eagle and how it trains its young.
We have some bald eagles that inhabit our area here that I love to photograph. My last time out there, I saw two young eaglets stick their heads up out of the nest. (I have a really long lens that helps)
I’m told that when those babies begin to grow (after constant feeding from its parents) that at some point in the process, mama eagle will nudge that young one out of the nest to teach it to fly. Yet obviously, we again have a ‘learning curve’. That baby eagle does not look like its parents nor does it begin flying like them either. Those first attempt at solo flights never look good. Hence, the instinctive training where the mother swoops down beneath that baby bird who does not look real proficient at flying yet...and catches them on their wings...and tries again. (No, I’ve never witnessed this in nature but have read about it)
Guess what else I have read? “As an eagle stirs up its nest, oversees its young, spreading out its wings taking them up carrying them on its wing...so the Lord does with us.” (Deut. 32:11)
Now go look what God told His people there in Exodus 19:4-6 – “You saw how I bore you on eagle’s wings and brought you to Myself’. If you keep reading...you’ll see the expectation there if they choose to continue on in this covenant relationship...”IF...you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant...THEN...you shall be a special treasure to Me...”
The people’s response to this? “Oh yeah...sure...we will do all that the Lord has spoken”. (8). And of course, that promise did not last long.
Here’s something to consider: If you had the privilege to live near a tree that had an eagle’s nest and got to personally witness this whole process of birthing and feeding and nurturing and teaching the eaglet to fly on its own...would you not be highly suspicious that something was amiss if three years down the road, Mama eagle was still having to swoop down and try to teach the same baby eagle to fly on its own? Sort of in the same way if your neighbor’s 12 year old son was still wearing ‘pull-ups’ or ‘diapers’?
Yet...we have a different ‘standard’ and totally accept the notion that those who profess to be of Christ...will continue after years...to still be ‘sinners’ and make the excuse they are ‘not perfect, just forgiven’. They’ve been told repeatedly this was so...and that they could never truly be and walk and love like Jesus walked...in this life.
Again...asking the same question God asked Adam and Eve when they were deceived by the serpent to believe something other than what God had declared to be true...
“Adam...Eve...who told you that?” (Gen. 3:11)
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