Trusting in Jesus as Lord of one’s life touches one of the innermost yearnings of man. To be able to rely upon someone who will not let us down. Yet despite the assurance of infinite reliability we often fail in this test of faith. The answer to our dilemma is simple, but the consequences far reaching. And the answer?
We ‘simply’ will not take the Bible literally enough to comprehend the power in the resurrected Christ.
All we see are the difficulties of life framed against the commandments and this in turn looks to our eyes like law added to law; then add our own traditions and the attendant problems of doctrinal warfare; and though our need is great, we still turn to ourselves for the solution. But there is no solution from ourselves. It is not till we yield to Christ — first to the Cross, then to his power — that we will ever know peace.
He or she who yields, knows he is Life to them and wisdom and righteousness and sanctification. They know he took them to the Cross with him that they might die, for him to reveal in them the NEW LIFE.
Do we fully appreciate the Life principle that is the risen Lord? Jesus never said, “I will show you the Life or the Way or the Light or the Resurrection”. He said “I AM” all these things – touch me, trust in me, believe in me, I AM these things for you, for without ME you can do nothing.
Paul counted all things as loss that he would be found in him, knowing Christ Jesus his Lord and the power of his resurrection. This was not to Paul a knowledge ABOUT his Lord but the fact that Christ had made him, Paul, his own, and dwelt within him.
Because we as a body generally turn our back on anything that is not clinically observed, we have great difficulty in yielding to the transforming power from the Lord. Our thought is that if we know enough about the Bible and the right doctrines, then this will change us into the image of Christ. But the Word itself teaches that a man must be changed in such a way that the glory must rest upon He who changes not, rather than on our efforts (2 Cor. 4:6-7).
This is the Lord’s work — our ‘work’ is to believe in him who can do this.
We may spend a lifetime striving to be righteous and yet fail because we think we need to add to God’s provision for us in His Son. All we will have in the end is a sad record of frustration and heartache.
His will is that our lives be sacrificed, so that the carnal man — that which is ‘I’ centred — should be crucified, so that it is no longer me or Paul that speaks and acts or works, but God.
Each of us has been granted personal talents; but these of themselves do not show the life of Jesus. Paul saw that nothing of himself must stand in the way. He would even rejoice in infirmity, that his testimony should be Jesus alone — him crucified and him raised from the dead.
Trusting in his work for him and his power to save and keep him unto his heavenly kingdom was more than a theoretical hope based on Paul’s sound understanding of the ‘scriptures’ (which in part he was in the process of writing) but it was the revelation of Jesus himself. Well might Paul have a personal trust, and the awe-inspiring yielding of his whole being to the use of His Lord.
“I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing”. If we have trouble getting this into a personal focus, it is because we are loath to interpret our lives in the context of a totally superintended existence that has no moment undirected. Our trouble is that we yield only that which is convenient or might be deemed as the ‘spiritual’ part.
We all KNOW such Scripture that says `all things work for good to them who love God’ but often ignore or distrust the totality of, the ‘all’. But under the influence of the Lord; life both good and bad can be joyous praise for his part. The obstacles to this sort of dynamic are the ‘things’ we substitute for the living Christ.
What things do you have in your life that are dead things? Some of us take pride in the Bible. But though it is designed to make us `wise unto salvation’, it is ONLY by faith in Christ Jesus. Things, even hallowed things, are but means to touch and be touched by the living God and His Christ.
We are a practical sort of people and we look for practical solutions in our Biblical understanding. We want to ‘do the right thing’. We accept the prescribed doctrines and commandments and declare that we are ‘in the Truth’. Yet in this, are we maintaining a differentiation between ‘true’ things and the source of the Truth?
Take for example the relation between baptism and the ‘resurrection of Jesus Christ’ (1 Pet. 3:21 R.S.V.). Of course we do not claim baptism is anything without the risen Lord; but how easy, Brothers and Sisters, to shift the importance! Baptism tends to become in our preaching an end itself!
Again we meet every Sunday to remember our absent Lord. We break bread and drink wine. Like baptism, the Lord’s Supper is another symbol, but does not exist except for God’s power through His Son.
There are so many things in which a Christian can involve himself which are all part of the religious sphere. But nothing, I repeat, nothing, exists unless it is centred in the Living Christ. Yet we are on earth and the world is full of ‘things’.
Our sights are so low that I fear that the Lord of Life is too unreal.
We have embraced the concept that the word of God is synonymous with God and yet, is not His word His means of communicating to our finite intellects a word picture of His Holiness and His character?
We in turn bow the knee and worship and desire to be at one with the Living God. By His grace we are brought nigh ‘in Christ’, dead with him but now risen with him.
Is he not then our very Life? There is a difference between Christ as our life and as a doctrine. It is the same difference between yielding to him and trusting in a system of religious faith. We are all Nicodemuses at heart, not knowing, or perhaps insensitive to, ‘spirituality. We try, like him, to rationalise being born again. We talk much about change but we do not see the results because we doubt its practicality and cling tenaciously to the delusion of ‘law keeping’.
What Jesus said to Nicodemus (John 3:8) must be said to us: “The wind blows where it wills and you hear the sound of it but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes; so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit”. In simple words we don’t have to know how, only see, by faith the results. This is the rebirth from God.
There is no problem except of our own making. Whether it be disbelief or perverseness on our part it is surely never the ability or intention of the Lord that is in question.
We would be well to read 2 Cor. 3 and 4 again and anew. Verses 17-18 of Chapter 3 tells us, “Now the Lord is the Spirit and where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom. And we all with unveiled face beholding the glory of the Lord are being changed into His likeness from one degree of glory to another for this comes from the Lord who is the spirit”. All that remains is the step of obedient yielding so that when the Lord who is our Life appears he will see his work of transforming us to the image of himself.
Reflections on the Potter and the Clay