Tag: kingdom of god

MARK #4. REPENTANCE AND GRACE

On By Pastor TomIn Mark, Podcast, Religion, Sermon, UncategorizedLeave a comment
Driver shifting from anger to regret

What if you’d spent your whole life expecting God’s kingdom to arrive “any day now”? Jesus’ first listeners did, thanks to a prophecy in Daniel. In this sermon on Mark 1:14-15, pastor Tom Hilpert unpacks why “The kingdom of God has come near” was electrifying news, and why Jesus paired it with “Repent and believe.” Lifelong repentance and unearned grace belong together. Read the full notes!

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Mark #4. Mark 1:14-15

14 After John was arrested, Jesus went to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God: 15 “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news! ” Mark 1:14-15

Have you ever wondered about how often Jesus talks about kingdom of God? What does he mean? What does he mean when says (as in verse 15) “the time is fulfilled?”

To really get at Jesus’ teaching about the kingdom of God, we need to understand something that most Jews at that time believed. To do that, let’s go back to the book of Daniel. Daniel was very young when the Babylonian empire crushed the kingdom of Judah, and destroyed Jerusalem and the temple. He was taken to Babylon to be raised up as a Babylonian nobleman. Even so, he kept his faith in the Lord, the one true God. One night, the emperor of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar, had a dream, and that dream was interpreted by Daniel.

31 “Your Majesty, as you were watching, suddenly a colossal statue appeared. That statue, tall and dazzling, was standing in front of you, and its appearance was terrifying. 32 The head of the statue was pure gold, its chest and arms were silver, its stomach and thighs were bronze, 33 its legs were iron, and its feet were partly iron and partly fired clay. 34 As you were watching, a stone broke off without a hand touching it, struck the statue on its feet of iron and fired clay, and crushed them. 35 Then the iron, the fired clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold were shattered and became like chaff from the summer threshing floors. The wind carried them away, and not a trace of them could be found. But the stone that struck the statue became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.
36 “This was the dream; now we will tell the king its interpretation. 37 Your Majesty, you are king of kings. The God of the heavens has given you sovereignty, power, strength, and glory. 38 Wherever people live ​— ​or wild animals, or birds of the sky ​— ​he has handed them over to you and made you ruler over them all. You are the head of gold.
39 “After you, there will arise another kingdom, inferior to yours, and then another, a third kingdom, of bronze, which will rule the whole earth. 40 A fourth kingdom will be as strong as iron; for iron crushes and shatters everything, and like iron that smashes, it will crush and smash all the others. 41 You saw the feet and toes, partly of a potter’s fired clay and partly of iron ​— ​it will be a divided kingdom, though some of the strength of iron will be in it. You saw the iron mixed with clay, 42 and that the toes of the feet were partly iron and partly fired clay ​— ​part of the kingdom will be strong, and part will be brittle. 43 You saw the iron mixed with clay ​— ​the peoples will mix with one another but will not hold together, just as iron does not mix with fired clay.
44 “In the days of those kings, the God of the heavens will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, and this kingdom will not be left to another people. It will crush all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, but will itself endure forever. 45 You saw a stone break off from the mountain without a hand touching it, and it crushed the iron, bronze, fired clay, silver, and gold. The great God has told the king what will happen in the future. The dream is certain, and its interpretation reliable.” (Daniel 2:31-45, CSB)

 Just to make sure you get it, let me put it simply. The dream said that after the empire of Babylon would come another empire. That one would be succeeded by a third empire. Following that would be a fourth empire that would be particularly strong and brutal: “A fourth kingdom will be as strong as iron; for iron crushes and shatters everything, and like iron that smashes, it will crush and smash all the others.” That fourth empire would be not just one people, but made up of “mixed” peoples. Then, during the time of the fourth empire, God will begin to set up a kingdom that will never end. The other empires will pass away and be lost forever, but the kingdom of God, starting small, like a stone, will grow to fill the whole world.

Now, let’s think about actual world history. After the Babylonian empire came the Medo-Persian empire. That empire was defeated and conquered by Alexander the Great, and for a time the known world was dominated by the empire that he founded, the third after Babylon. Finally came a fourth empire, a brutal one that crushed all in its path: the Roman Empire.

Remember, it was during the time of the fourth empire that the kingdom of God was supposed to arrive. The Jews in the first century—the time of Jesus—understood that they were living during the time of the fourth empire (as indeed they were). They believed that sometime while the Romans ruled, the kingdom of God would come and eclipse all empires. Therefore, they were expecting the kingdom of God, at any moment.

There’s more from the book of Daniel. Daniel had a visit from an angel, later on. For now, don’t get too lost in the details. I’ll clarify things in just a moment. The angel said this (among other things):

24 “A period of seventy sets of seven has been decreed for your people and your holy city to finish their rebellion, to put an end to their sin, to atone for their guilt, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to confirm the prophetic vision, and to anoint the Most Holy Place. 25 Now listen and understand! Seven sets of seven plus sixty-two sets of seven will pass from the time the command is given to rebuild Jerusalem until a ruler—the Anointed One—comes. Jerusalem will be rebuilt with streets and strong defenses, despite the perilous times.
26 “After this period of sixty-two sets of seven, the Anointed One will be killed, appearing to have accomplished nothing, and a ruler will arise whose armies will destroy the city and the Temple. The end will come with a flood, and war and its miseries are decreed from that time to the very end. 27 The ruler will make a treaty with the people for a period of one set of seven, but after half this time, he will put an end to the sacrifices and offerings. And as a climax to all his terrible deeds, he will set up a sacrilegious object that causes desecration, until the fate decreed for this defiler is finally poured out on him.” (Daniel 9:24-27, NLT)

During the first century A.D. (that is, the century of Jesus) Jews believed about this text that “seventy sets of seven” meant “seventy sets of seven years.” In other words, 490 years. And get this: Daniel received this prophecy approximately 490 years before thirty A.D..

One of the amazing things to me is that these prophecies describe things that appear to have been fulfilled. Take the first prophecy, about the kingdom of God. It was supposed to start small, like a stone that came out of nowhere. Eventually it was to spread throughout the whole world, while the four empires were to pass away into nothing. Well, Christianity has indeed spread throughout the entire world. Meanwhile, even the Roman empire crumbled to nothing more than a thousand years ago.

The second one prophesies that the messiah will be killed, “appearing to have accomplished nothing,”(Daniel 9:26) and that, not long after that, Jerusalem and the temple will be utterly destroyed. Of course, at first it appeared that Jesus had accomplished nothing by his death. And, thirty seven years after the death of Jesus, Jerusalem was indeed destroyed in very much the way described by the prophecy.

Now, you can quibble about the math, or the meaning of “sets of seven” if you want to, but the fact remains that the Jews who lived during the time of Jesus were expecting to see the coming of the kingdom of God, and the anointed one (in Hebrew, “anointed one” is messiah) basically “any day now,” when Jesus himself came. The ministry of John the Baptist would have only increased and intensified the expectation that soon, the kingdom of God was going to come, led by God’s messiah.

All this is to explain how people would have understood it when Jesus started saying, “the kingdom of God is at hand.” This was an incredibly exciting message. It would be very much as if we Christians had a prophecy from 500 years ago telling us that in 500 years, Jesus is coming back. On top of that the prophecy described America unmistakably, and said that it would happen while America was a dominant world power. We would be pretty darn excited by now. Of course, the Jews of Jesus’ time thought the kingdom of God was going to be an actual empire like the Romans. They didn’t understand that it would spread throughout the world in a different way, and become a kingdom within the hearts of people all over the world.

But Jesus began with that point of connection, because after all, he was there to begin the kingdom of God, and fulfill the prophecies, even if the Jewish people didn’t quite understand how that was going to happen. So, he says, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near.”

Jesus didn’t just say that, however. He added something else: “Repent and believe the good news! ” Since this was the message Jesus preached, let’s dive into it now.

Repentance means earnestly turning away from our sins, and from our rebellion against God’s kingship over us. We must do this when we come to faith in the Lord. But the Christian life involves ongoing repentance. Jesus still wants to show up in our lives in greater and more profound ways. He wants to give us even more grace, more joy, more peace, a more abundant life in Him. To receive these things from him, our path is the same: repent! That is, live a life of ongoing repentance.

In many ways it is like the path that Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) encourages members to take. An alcoholic recognizes that not only alcohol, but also the reasons that drive people to abuse it, will be lifelong problems. So, alcoholics who have absorbed the twelve steps say that they are “in recovery.” A person may have not had a drink in thirty years, but they will still describe themselves as a “recovering alcoholic.”

There is great wisdom in AA, mainly because its 12 steps capture the basics of Christianity. I think that we should think of ourselves as “repenting sinners.” In other words, just as alcoholics live in recovery, so we all should live in repentance.

To repent means to turn back, to go a completely different way. To repent is to fully own the fact that you have been wrong at the heart-level, with no excuses, and then to turn away from it, for all intents, forever. You may not succeed in never again committing a particular sin. But true repentance fully intends to go a different direction.

Some people admit their sins, but do not really repent of them. They may feel, in the heat of a moment, that they want to do better next time, and even resolve to do so, but they do not fundamentally commit to going a different way forever. They don’t admit that the problem is deep within them, and they are incapable of fixing it. If you are a Christian, and have struggled with the same thing over and over again, and you don’t seem to make any progress, ask the Lord to show you if you have truly repented in that area of your life. If the Bible says you need to repent, or if the Holy Spirit shows you that you need to repent, then make a decision to turn back from that (action, habit, attitude) forever. Don’t worry about whether you will fail again at times: make the commitment to turn away from it forever, and invite the Holy Spirit to give you the strength to keep that commitment. In fact, I think part of repentance is recognizing that we need God’s help, or we will only fail continually.

And, of course, the reality is, even when we repent, we often fail and sin again. Don’t let that discourage you. The path of repentance may involve some fits, starts and restarts. During the past year, for a time, I gorged myself on sugary snacks late every night. I came to understand that I was committing the sin of gluttony. I repented of it, but I seemed powerless to stop myself. Eventually, I recognized that the problem was in my heart, and I was indeed helpless to do anything about it. I could manage to hold off for a night or two, but I kept going back to it. However, I really was repentant: I didn’t want to do that anymore, and my intention was to stop it. Even while I failed most nights, I never thought that it was OK, and I did not make excuses for myself. Then one day in May, the Lord just stepped in and suddenly I was able to stop (really, it was the Lord who stopped it). The point is, you may not see a big change at first, but if you really are repentant, eventually, whether slowly, or all at once, you see that there is a change happening.

Here’s another one: I have a sinful habit of condemning other drivers when I drive. I think they are stupid, foolish, dangerous, morally deficient morons. I expect other people to drive responsibly; much like I do. I generally go the speed limit, except when passing, then I accelerate quickly and get the pass over with, as all drivers should. I signal my turns and lane changes. I don’t drive too close to the car in front of me.

About now, you probably see the problem: I am fundamentally self-righteous about my driving. From what I believe is my place of righteousness, I feel justified in judging the jerks who are unrighteous.

I am in repentance over this. My family knows that my repentance is very much a process. They may not notice, but I do think there has been some progress. My first step was to admit that I couldn’t change myself or my immediate gut-reactions to the stupid idiots who… you get the idea. But I finally realized that I truly need help from the Holy Spirit to be better. I have repented of my sin, and of my own efforts to fix it. I truly do not want to, or intend to, be that way any more.

As a matter of fact, I do still get angry and judgmental, and self righteous when I drive. But I’m quicker to realize it, and I do think this happens a little bit less often than before. I am trying to walk a different path. Before, I probably grew angry at drivers five or six times for every trip of 20 minutes. Now, I still do get frustrated, but it’s probably only two or three times in a 20 minute trip. I am not perfect, but I am on the road of repentance. I expect that as the Lord continues to work on me, it will happen less and less.

 When I do fail, I don’t give up and say, “I guess that’s just who I am.” No, I receive grace from the Lord, and continue on a path away from this kind of sin.

Now, I mentioned receiving grace from the Lord. That is the second part of Jesus’ message. “Repent, and trust the good news.” Repenting does not help us unless there is good news for us to rest upon. The good news is that God himself has come near to us. We couldn’t reach him through our own attempts at being good. Instead, he reached us, and it is an act of grace. Here’s the good news in just a few verses:

8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. (Ephesians 2:8-10, ESV)

God offers us grace. It is not based upon our performance. When we repent, he takes us from there. He does have things he wants us to do, but that is because he literally created us to do certain things, not because we have to do anything to earn his love.

Repent and trust the good news is the heart of Jesus’ message. It should be the heart of the message of every church and preacher as well, but for some reason, we Christians tend to emphasize either “repent” or “good news,” and we have a hard time holding on to both at the same time.

Many churches and individuals emphasize that God loves us with an incredible, everlasting love. Sometimes they emphasize it so much that they sort of skip, or ignore the need for repentance. In such churches, sin becomes no big deal, and they fail to teach the whole truth of God. God’s earth shaking love and forgiveness bought at the price of the suffering of Jesus Christ slowly becomes something like, “Oh, God’s cool with that sort of sin, don’t worry about it.”

On the other hand, some churches and individuals do the opposite. They emphasize sin so much that, to listen to them, you might not realize that Jesus Christ has decisively dealt with our sin. Their message becomes one of legalism, where you need to perform, and check how you measure up against other people. The message of forgiveness and unconditional grace is lost.

Jesus’ message included both “repent,” and “trust the good news.” If we don’t believe we need to repent, there is actually not much point in the good news, nor any real need for it. On the other hand, repentance is pointless unless there is, in fact, forgiveness and love available to us.

What is jumping out at you today from the text? Does your faith need to be strengthened by learning that ancient prophecies, which long predated Jesus, were fulfilled by him, and by the spreading of his gospel to all the world?

Perhaps you need to hear the message of repentance. Maybe you needed to hear that it is a lifelong process and we ought to be serious about turning away from sin. If you continue to commit the same sin, don’t settle for getting comfortable with it. Don’t make peace with it. Turn away again and again. Trust that in his time, the Lord will use your repentance, and set you free from it.

And we all need to hear the good news over and over again. We can’t repent well enough. We can’t perform to the level we ought to. God’s love for us is so great that when we were helpless in our sin, Jesus died for us anyway. He saved us, not because of any good deed we had done, or were going to do. God has not waited for us to come near to him. Instead, he himself has come near to us.

LIVING CRUCIFIED #8: BORN AGAIN

On By Pastor TomIn Bible, Bible Teaching, Living Crucified, Podcast, Religion, SermonLeave a comment
Photo by Spencer Davis on Pexels.com

Our identity, our place of citizenship, and our rights and privileges are determined not by how we act, not by how we feel, but by our birth. The scripture tells us that when we receive Jesus, we have been born again, as citizens of the Kingdom of God. This is true even when don’t feel like it, and even when we don’t act like it.

To listen to the sermon, click the play button: To download, right click on the link (or do whatever you do on a Mac) and save it to your computer: Download Living Crucified Part 8

LIVING CRUCIFIED #8: BORN AGAIN

Galatians 3:2-5; John 3:3-6; 1 Peter 1:3; 2 Corinthians 5:16-21; Romans 8:28-39

You might want to listen to this one, even if you normally just read. I preached this in an Australian accent to make a point; to illustrate the sermon. It could be entertaining. On the other hand, it could be excruciating.

This series is called “Living Crucified.” I am trying to flesh out something Paul wrote to the Galatians:

20 I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life 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, ESV)

You see, many Christians get the basic message of salvation, but they are confused about how to live the Christian life. We understand that our actions are of no value in getting salvation for ourselves. Salvation is a free a gift of God, and it cannot be earned through good deeds (Ephesians 2:8-9). It is appropriated through faith. In other words, we get it when we believe that we need it, and that God has really done this for us. God did it all for us. Now, (we think, wrongly) it is up to us to live as good followers of Jesus, out of thankfulness to God. Classic devotional writer Andrew Murray puts it like this:

“The idea they have of grace is this – that their conversion and pardon are God's work, but that now, in gratitude to God, it is their work to live as Christians, and follow Jesus.  There is always the thought of a work to be done, and even though they pray for help, still the work is theirs.  They fail continually, and become hopeless; and the despondency only increases the helplessness.” (Abide in Christ)

We tend of think of it like this: ultimate failure, and the power of death and hell, are defeated through Jesus. Now, once we trust in Jesus we can play the game “safely” so to speak. So we can try and fail and try and fail as much as we need to, without being in danger of going to hell. But does that really sound like “good news?” We are “free” to pursue a cycle of failure? Andrew Murray adds this:

“Dear souls!  How little they know that the abiding in Christ is just meant for the weak, and so beautifully suited to their feebleness.  It is not the doing of some great thing, and does not demand that we first lead a very holy and devoted life.  No, it is simply weakness entrusting itself to a Mighty One to be kept – the unfaithful one casting self on One who is altogether trustworthy and true.  Abiding in him [living the Christian life] is not a work that we have to do as the condition for enjoying his salvation, but a consenting to let Him do all for us, and in us, and through us.  It is a work he does for us – the fruit and the power of His redeeming love.  Our part is simply to yield, to trust and to wait for what He has engaged to perform.”  (Abide in Christ).

In this series, I am trying to explain this in several different ways. So, we’ve learned to put what God says after the “but…” – to agree with Him, and to let our dominant reality be determined by God’s Word and God’s actions. We’ve learned to draw life from the Spirit, not from our outward circumstances – not even the good ones. We’ve learned that when we are in Christ, our old self has been crucified, and we are dead to sin, and to the law. We’ve begun to learn how to fight the ongoing temptations that would try remove us from all these truths we’ve been talking about.

Perhaps some of you may have been trying to put some of this into practice recently. Maybe you’ve been facing temptation and saying, “I’m dead to sin, I don’t want to do that anymore,” but it hasn’t always worked for you. Maybe you’ve been trying to believe desperately, who you really are in Christ, but you still have doubts. And because you don’t fully believe, your actions still don’t look like someone who is dead to sin. If sin is still a struggle, I want to preach the good news to you again today. We’ve discussed why and how it can be problem. We’ve talked about how to fight it. But remember, we are dead to it. Now I want to start talking about our new life. We died to sin, but what are we alive to?

This is important because we are often deceived into thinking that our actions determine who we are. If we act sinful, we think we are fundamentally sinners. If we act righteous, we feel good about ourselves and we think we are, by our own efforts, incorporating the righteousness of Christ into our lives. It is to people acting like this that Paul writes:

 I only want to learn this from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now going to be made complete by the flesh? Did you suffer so much for nothing — if in fact it was for nothing? So then, does God supply you with the Spirit and work miracles among you by the works of the law or by hearing with faith?  (Gal 3:2-5, HCSB)

No. We didn’t become Christians by behaving rightly, but trusting ourselves entirely to Jesus. That is exactly how we should continue. You see, your actions do not determine who you are. Instead, your identity is determined by your birth. I was born in the United States of America. But when I was very young, my family went overseas to be missionaries. The majority of my childhood was spent in other countries.

Taim mi stap liklik pikini, mama, na papa, na susa, na mi save silip sampela taim ‘lo’ ol ples. Na taim mipela stap ‘lo’ ples, mipela save tok Tok Pisin tasol; i no gat Inglis. Tasol, mipela i no kamap manmeri b’long PNG, bilong wanem, mipela tok long Tok Pisin. Nogat. Mipela stap manmeri b’lo’ Amerika yet.

I spoke above in a language of Papua New Guinea to illustrate a point. Let me explain the point I was making in that language. Sometimes, we would live in small, remote villages, and when we did, we spoke that language – called Tok Pisin. But the fact that we spoke the language and lived in the village did not make us citizens of Papua New Guinea. Though we were not behaving like most Americans, we did not, for that reason, cease to be Americans.

By the time I was sixteen I did not sound like an American, even when I spoke English. I actually had an Australian accent, since when people there spoke English, that’s how it sounded. I didn’t really know American culture. My first few years in the US, I didn’t get most of the jokes and wise-cracks, because humor is one of the most culture-specific things there is. I didn’t dress in American fashion.

My memories were not of America. In fact my memories and experiences were in a place that was radically different in very fundamental ways from the United States. In short, America had a very limited role in shaping my thoughts, actions, personality, memory or experience. I did not feel like an American at all.

For that reason, did I cease to be an American? Not at all. My citizenship was determined by the country I was born into – not by my feelings, not even by actions. The key was my birth.

Even though I didn’t feel American, I recognized that America offered me more opportunity than anywhere else in the world. I saw my citizenship here as a gift that I could use. I believed what my parents told me, that I was an American citizen. I believed my American passport was valid. You might say, I believed the words that were written about me, and also those that were spoken to me by people I trusted. So I came to America, and now, because I believed that my birth determined my citizenship, I have received many benefits from being American.

Spiritually speaking we need to recognize that it is our birth, not our actions, which determines our identity.

Remember, action follows belief. And Romans chapter ten tells us that the kind of belief we need for this comes from hearing the word of God. We need to trust what has been written about us, and what has been told to us. So I am going to dwell on some more truth from God’s Word today. If we have trusted in Jesus, the bible is very clear about our birth:

Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”  Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. (John 3:3-6)
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, (1Pet 1:3, ESV)
Since you have been born again — not of perishable seed but of imperishable — through the living and enduring word of God. (1Pet 1:23, HCSB)
Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Messiah has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father also loves the one born of Him. (1John 5:1, HCSB)
For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, (Eph 2:18-19, ESV)
But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, (Phil 3:20, ESV)

We have been crucified with Christ. The old has gone. The new you has been born into a new life. We have been born citizens of heaven, members of God’s household. Regardless of what we know about heaven, regardless of how we sometimes act like we are from someplace else, Heaven is the place of our citizenship. Our birth certificate proclaims it, our passport affirms it. All of the resources of heaven are ours.

Now, one of the problems is that sometimes we don’t know our own birth rights. We are like princes and princesses who have born to inherit a kingdom. But we were kidnapped as babies, and raised in poverty. Now, our Father, the king has found us and brought us back to the palace. But we don’t even know the rights and privileges and tasks that are ours as royal children. We don’t know the vast resources we have now to fulfill our positions as princes and princesses. In the same way, so often Christians don’t even know everything that is ours, in Christ Jesus. So Paul writes to the Ephesians:

 I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, would give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him. I pray that the perception of your mind may be enlightened so you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the glorious riches of His inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of His power to us who believe, according to the working of His vast strength. (Eph 1:17-19, HCSB)

His prayer is that they (and all followers of Jesus) can know these things. He wants us to know our birthrights, now that we have been born again. So I am going to share with you, some of the riches that are yours and mine when we are in Christ. This is what it means to be born again as a citizen of heaven:

In Christ, we are holy, blameless, righteous and above reproach (Eph 5:4; 2 Cor 5:21; Col 3:12; 1 Cor 6:19).

He has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and  above reproach before him, if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation  under heaven,  and of which I, Paul, became a minister. (Col 1:22-23)

The “if you continue” is clearly about continuing in faith and hope. It is not “continue to act righteous” but “continue to hold fast to the faith that this is true, that Christ has done this for you.” A wise pastor named Dan Stone wrote: “It is not your striving that releases Christ’s life through you. It is your trusting.” We are in Christ when we continue to trust Him and rest in Him day by day. And in Christ, we are holy and blameless.

In Christ, we are safe and free. I am free from condemnation. I am free from sin and death. I cannot be separated from the love of God (Romans 8:1-2; also 8:31-39). God works for my good in all circumstances (Romans 8:28). I have been established, anointed and sealed by God. (2 Corinthians 1:21-22). I can approach God with freedom, confidence and boldness (Eph 3;12; Hebrews 4:16). My real life is already hidden away with Christ in God (Colossians 3:1-4). I am born of God and the evil one cannot touch me. (1 John 5:18).

In Christ, we are significant and important. I am a branch of Jesus Christ, the true vine, and a channel of His life (John 15:5). I have been chosen and appointed to bear fruit (John 15:16). I am God’s temple (1 Corinthians 3:16). I am a minister of reconciliation for God (2 Corinthians 5:17-21). I am seated with Jesus Christ in the heavenly realm (Ephesians 2:6). I am God’s workmanship; created by Him to do good works, which he has already prepared for me to do (Ephesians 2:10).

These are just a few of many verses and concepts that describe who we are when we are born into Christ and into citizenship in Heaven. This is the true you, the you that is more real and more powerful than what you see in the flesh or feel in the soul. If you continue in faith (that is, if you continue to believe, to trust Jesus and trust that this is all true in Him) then this you will last forever, and ultimately will be expressed through a transformed soul and a new, eternal body.

You may still act or think like a foreigner, from time to time. But if you trust Jesus, you have been born again as a citizen of heaven. All this is truly yours, even though your actions may not yet reflect it perfectly.

All this is leading toward an ultimate purpose: so that Jesus Christ can express His Life through you. Let me put a different way: The purpose of it here on earth is so that Jesus Christ can live your life. That is what we will explore next week.