Fresh, But Finished
Just about every problem you’ll face in your Christian life is due to not believing right. That’s it. Now, I get it: believing right isn’t always easy. In fact, often it’s downright impossible. Why? Because you cannot even believe right unless the Holy Spirit empowers and enables it. When I think back on my 32 years as a disciple of Christ, the times when I was transformed—where I was truly catapulted into a newer, better way of life—all had one thing in common: They were all times where I uttered, “I was blind, but now I see.” That’s just the way it is in this Christian life.
When you “see” the truth, the truth changes you. Jesus said in the Gospel of John, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” (John 8:32). That word know in the Greek is gnosis, from ginosko. Biblical knowing is not the same as our contemporary, Western, scientific knowing. It isn’t a collection of facts one mentally assents to. Biblical knowing is knowing by relationship. It’s knowing by acquaintance. It is the same Greek word that is related to the Hebrew word in Genesis when the writer says, “Adam knew his wife.” Biblical knowing is an intimate union between knower and known. It is this kind of knowing that unlocks the power of Christ within us and enables us to believe and do what we could not before.
When I thought I had to try hard to live the Christian life, I was ignorant of the revelation of Romans 6. I didn’t know that I actually died already. So I thought I had to conform my life and get my act together to look like Christ. That led to defeat after defeat, even plunging me into despair and atheism.
But I died already. I was buried with Christ in baptism. The old self was crucified with Christ. This became real for me when I realized that there was no longer any life in me except my spirit in union with Christ’s Spirit. I’m a non-issue. My old self died. He suffered a real death. This can only be revealed to you by the Holy Spirit because you don’t look dead or feel dead. You didn’t experience a death in the seen and temporal realm. But remember, the seen, temporal facts are not the highest authority. They aren’t the primary truths. These seen and temporal facts are always overruled by the unseen, eternal truths of God.
You Died Already
The answer is not in fighting against sin. The answer is in reckoning yourself dead to sin.
This is why Paul could say, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20). I no longer live. If you have believed in the name of Jesus and been baptized into His death and resurrection, you no longer live either. You died already, too.
The above reading of Galatians 2:20 above is found in less literal translations, like the English Standard Version and the New International Version. They aren’t wrong, but they sometimes miss important shades of meaning from the original language. Look how it reads in a more literal translation, like the King James Version:
“I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.”
Did you catch the difference? It is so subtle that if we read on autopilot, we might miss it. In case you missed it, check out the Berean Literal Bible translation:
“I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. And that which I now live in the flesh, I live through faith from the Son of God, the One having loved me and having given up Himself for me.”
So, whose faith is it? Yours, or Christ’s? Read it again. Slowly. The very faith you need to live this Christian life is not even yours! It comes from Christ. You live, not by your faith, but by Christ’s— “by the faith of the Son of God.” The more literal translations try to bring this out.
You died already. There is no more “you” involved. Yes, we now live by faith in the Son of God. But even more powerfully, we live by the faith of the Son of God. It’s not my faith, it’s Christ’s. I died already. Only Christ actually lives in me. So, if I died already, who’s doing the living? Christ! If I died already, who’s doing the believing and acting and doing in me? Jesus Christ! I don’t even keep myself in the faith, because it is not my faith. It’s Christ’s faith.
When you really get revelation of this down in your spirit, you begin to see that the whole Christian life is simply one of reckoning—of catching up with the Spirit’s revelation that your old self died and all that is left is Christ in your dead vessel, enlivening it and living His life unto the Father, as if it were you. You have exited the building. You’ve been removed from the equation. Oh, there’s still a “you,” but there’s also not. It’s a paradox. “…nevertheless I live; yet, not I,” says the King James version. My spirit has been melded, immersed into Christ’s Spirit; a union took place. The two have become one. One can no longer tell where Christ ends and I begin. That is one of the profound mysteries of the gospel.
Listen to Pastor Mike teach us how this process of reckoning — or recognizing — is the way we put our faith in Jesus, our Living Hope.
