What Makes Us Christians?
Is it what we believe?
Is it what we do?
Is is what we do not do?
Is it what we think?
Is it our doctrines?
Is it our faith?
Is it our love?
Is it by effort?
Is it our religion?
Is it our morals?
Is it our values?
No to all of this!!!
It is CHRIST"S LIFE ALONE INSIDE US THAT MAKES US CHRISTIANS!!!
He is the Christian in me - I am dead. - I have HIS LIFE
1 John 5:12, "He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life."
There are only two possibilities; you are either "in Adam" or "in Christ". You are either a Christian or you are not. Either you have Christ's Life or you do not. There is no in between when it comes to being a Christian. No person can ever be partly dead and partly alive. You must be one or the other. Dead men do not have Life and living men are not dead.
Christian living is nothing less than His Divine Life being expressed through our mortal bodies. Many Christians struggle because they fail to understand God's method by which they may experience consistent victory. Why can't they live the Christian life? The reason for this is that God never intended for them to live it. Only one Person has ever been able to live the Christ-life and that Person is Christ Jesus Himself.
Every true believer knows that he did nothing to become a Christian. It was God's gift to him. He simply trusted Christ. Yet many believe that they must now do something to become a victorious Christian. So they substitute trying in the place of trusting. Then they wonder why it won't work. The fact is that it will never work! No matter how honest and sincere they may be, how hard they try, or how much they ask for God's help, they will never be able to live the Christian life. Christianity isn't hard for to live, it's completely impossible!
The fundamental characteristic of the Christian's life is that Jesus has given His Life to us and desires to express it through us at every moment. Christian living is not us trying to live it. It is Christ simply being Christ in us and living through us at every moment.
God expects us to fail when we try to obey the law. The fact is that God never intended us to live by the law at all. We were created to be the dwelling place of God. The purpose of the law is to show us our inability to keep it and bring us to Christ. God uses the law to show us that we can not depend our own efforts and strength and to show us our need for Christ. After we see our true need for Christ we then can turn to Him in utter dependency. Otherwise, we would continue to keep trying to please Him.
Don't be disappointed in yourself if you fail. We should never be disappointed since God is not disappointed in us. To be disappointed is to have an unfulfilled expectation. God knows everything about us. He has no expectation of us in our self and neither should we. God is not disappointed in you because His expectation is that you should give up trying to be a good Christian and make abiding in Christ and obeying His inward speaking as your ONLY objective. Christ is the Christian in you - you are not the Christian. You need to abide in Him for your daily living. Christ knows exactly how to be the perfect Son of God. He is working to turn us from self effort to trust Christ within.
Read this quote by Bill Freeman
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"Christ is the Christian life.
Colossians 3:3-4 "For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory."
The oneness between believers and the practice of the church are both dependent on the centrality of Christ. Christ is the center. Indeed, Christ Himself is the reality of the Christian life and the church life. When Christ is my center, I am free from my self. I am free from self-consciousness. I am free from self-condemnation. I am free from anxiety. I am totally free because I died and my life is now hidden with Christ in God. "It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me" (Gal. 2:20).
Christ is our joy. Christ is our encouragement. Christ is our faith. Christ is our living. We interact with Him in everything in our lives. We interact only with Christ. Our interaction is not with ourselves—with self-reflection and self-condemnation. Christ is our righteousness (1 Cor. 1:30). He is "all and in all" to us (Col. 3:11). Jesus Christ is the Christian life. We need to look away to Him. Look away from yourself. Look away from your failure. Look away from your bad mood. Look away unto Jesus. Christ is the centrality of everything in our Christian life. He is the Christian life itself in every aspect."
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We've always thought that we needed to be delivered from sin, the world, the flesh, etc. But actually, we needed to be "delivered for reliance upon the law and our own efforts," to trust Christ in us.
God wants us to know we're delivered from the demands of the law because Jesus has fulfilled it. We were also redeemed from the curse of the law."
Matthew 5:17, "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil."
Galatians 3:13, "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree."
2 Cor. 5:21, "For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.'
Col. 2:14, "Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross."