Who Is Your Life?

I’ve spent many seasons of defeat, demoralization and aguish in my Christian life. There were a lot of reasons for that. But they could all be boiled down to one area of ignorance: I thought that I could live the Christian life!

What I found, however, is that only Christ can live the Christian life. Once I really got that truth down in my spirit, my life started to change.

We do a grave disservice to new disciples when we tell them to go out and try to live the Christian life. We express this to them in many ways. We say things like, “Now that you’ve accepted Christ as your Lord and Savior, get busy cleaning up your act.” Or, “Now that you’ve been baptized, go read your Bible each day and try to apply it.” Or, “You’ve been a believer for a while now—it’s time you start manifesting some fruit.” There are a thousand different variations on this theme. But each variation has a similar thing in common: Each rests on a belief that you can live the Christian life.

But the truth is: you can’t. And neither can I. There was only One who could live a life pleasing to God—the man, Jesus Christ. God cannot trust you to obey Him. If centuries of ever-increasing wickedness depicted in the Old Testament as the Jews tried keeping God’s commandments didn’t make that clear to you, go back and read the OT again.

Now, that’s the bad news. But here’s the good news: You’re already righteous.

Yep, that’s right.

The moment you confessed the Lord Jesus with your mouth and believed in your heart God raised Him from the dead, God became your Father and declared you righteous. It’s a done deal. Finished. Accomplished.

But if that’s the case, why do we spend so much time as Christians trying to become what we already are?

In short, it’s because of a misunderstanding of the full gospel of grace. And because we don’t have revelation of this truth. See, when you don’t have Spirit-revelation of a truth, you live as if it isn’t true, and then that is what your life manifests. It’s God’s economy. It’s just the way He set up things to operate in His kingdom.

Not Believing Right

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 31 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, who’s 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.

This is how the New Covenant differs so radically from the Old Covenant. There’s no more “you” who is separate from God, down here trying to keep moral rules and laws, and failing miserably. You and God are one, in Christ Jesus. You were swallowed up in Christ. A divine exchanged took place where He became you and you became Him, so that your life is now hidden with Christ in the heavenly realm:

“For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3).

See the paradigm shift? It’s radical, isn’t it? Nothing about this is intuitive. Nothing about this makes all that much sense to our rational, natural minds. That is why I keep saying: brain understanding is not spiritual understanding. In fact, often spiritual understanding seems totally backwards and foreign to brain understanding.

Once I realized that I died already, and that Christ is the One doing the living inside me, life changed. I began to see things in a way I couldn’t before. For example, an accompanying idea of this revelation is that Christ is the one always obeying God the Father through me. I’m no longer a liability, because I’m not a factor in the equation anymore. This, in fact, is the only way God could declare us righteous in the first place, when you really think about it. The Father declares us righteous because it is His Son who’s doing the obeying!

And look what else! If it is God’s Son doing the obeying—then do I have any more need of a sin-consciousness? Do I have any more need to constantly grovel before God, confessing this or that sin? Sin has been dealt with already, hasn’t it? It either has or it hasn’t. Which are you going to believe? I think we do a disservice to disciples when we tell them they always need to be confessing and repenting of sin. First of all, “to repent” really means “to re-think or re-consider,” so we’ve already gotten off track there. But second, and perhaps more importantly: Why would you need to keep confessing something you already died to?

I get that the Apostle James says, “Confess your sins to one another, that you may be healed.” And I also get that the Apostle John says, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive our sins and cleanse of us all unrighteousness.” But I believe that the “plain text” interpretation of these Scriptures is more a product of biblicism, bibliolatry, and literalism and not of the Holy Spirit.

Self As A Point of Reference

See, the rut we fall into in the Christian faith is this: Self as a point of reference. When I put my focus on my self—my effort, my performance, my obedience—I’m already done for. But listen to what St. Paul says in Romans 6:6-8:

“We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.”

My old self was crucified. A real death took place. I didn’t see it or feel it, but it took place nonetheless. When the Holy Spirit revealed that my self was crucified, I could stop looking at my self as a point of reference for anything God says or does! That’s real freedom.

And just in case you think there is nothing practical about this, let me tell you: The moment I stopped looking at my self as a point of reference for holiness, righteousness, or obedience, guess what happened? The Spirit began to manifest Her fruits in my life, without my even trying! As Pastor Mike likes to say, “You start to get holy on accident!”

Jesus Christ is our Life. He is the only One who has life. When you see that, you stop striving to “live the life.” You begin to rest in the truth that “It is finished.” (John 19:30). St. Peter reminds us that God’s “ … divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue," (2 Peter 1:3). In other words, everything you need to live a holy Christian life has actually already been accomplished by Christ and granted to you!

Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live.” (John 11:25). Paul echoes this sentiment when he says, “For me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” (Philippians 1:21). Paul wasn’t just referring to when he physically died and the reward of heaven he would get. He was also talking about right here and now. We know this from his letter to the Romans, where Paul enjoins us to, “… reckon yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 6:11). Death, for a Christian, is not just something that happens after our biophysical machine stops working. Death already happened when you were baptized into the name of Christ Jesus.

“Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” (Romans 6:3-11)

The Narrow Gate

When we think that something or someone other than Christ is our life, we cannot get through the narrow gate Jesus talked about in Matthew 7:13. The gate that leads to life is narrow; you can’t get through it if you’re carrying a bunch of external stuff that isn’t life. Remember, the rich young ruler Jesus told about in Luke 18? The rich man came to Jesus and asked Him, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” He was asking Jesus the same question we often ask: Where is this abundant life you promised? How do I get it? Scripture records the following conversation between Jesus and the rich young man:

18 A certain ruler asked him, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone. 20 You know the commandments: ‘You shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, honor your father and mother.’” 21 “All these I have kept since I was a boy,” he said. 22 When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” 23 When he heard this, he became very sad, because he was very wealthy. 24 Jesus looked at him and said, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! 25 Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” 26 Those who heard this asked, “Who then can be saved?” 27 Jesus replied, “What is impossible with man is possible with God.” (Luke 18:18-27)

What did Jesus tell the rich young ruler? "This one thing you lack." What was the one thing? Christ. Asking the ruler to sell his possessions was just another way of saying, "get rid of every external thing that you go to for life and come to Me for life. For only I am the Resurrection and the Life."

Whatever I went to for life in my Christian life outside Christ became an idol to me that actually hindered me from finding life. And it took me many seasons of frustration and defeat for God to work this truth down into my spirit. over the years of my Christian life I’ve gone to many things that are not life, seeking life: my intellect, my education, my artistic abilities, my spouse, my financial stability, and so on. God always brings me to a place where those things no longer satisfy, to show me that “I am your life.”

The gate is narrow because we can't get through it with anything as our point of reference besides Christ in us, the hope of glory.