How Do I Change? Part 2: Understand the Benefits of Being “In Christ”

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The message of Christianity is that salvation is found in Christ alone, and any who reject

Christ therefore forfeit any hope of salvation, any hope of heaven.

The issue is that humanity is in sin, and the wrath of almighty

God is hanging over our heads.

They will hear his words, they will not act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment, when the fires of wrath come, they will be consumed and they will perish.

God wrapped himself in flesh, condescended and became a man, died on the cross for sin, was resurrected on the third day, has ascended to the right hand of the

Father where he sits now to make intercession for us. Jesus is saying there is a group of people who will hear his words, they will act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment come in that final day, their house will stand.

Welcome to Bible Bash, where we aim to equip the saints for the works of ministry by answering the questions you're not allowed to ask.

Listen and enjoy this latest episode as Pastor Tim answers your sincere questions. Here's Pastor Tim.

On this episode of Bible Bash, we'll be continuing our discussion, How Do I Change? And in order to answer this question, we're going to be going through a variety of fundamental principles to sanctification.

And on this episode, we're going to be talking about the principle, Understand the Benefits of Being in Christ.

Now you can imagine yourself talking to a married couple who is essentially having conflict and they don't know how to resolve it.

And typically the way this works, if this couple is a couple that has spent any significant amount of time in biblically -minded churches, the husband is basically going to look at the wife and he's going to say, the wife needs to basically submit to me and our marriage would just be perfect and fine if my wife could fundamentally resolve her submission problem.

And then, you know, not to be outdone, the wife would look at her husband or look at you and basically say, you know, most of our problems in our relationship revolve around the fact that, you know, my husband is failing to love me like Christ loves the church.

And, you know, what woman wouldn't want to submit to a man who loves her like Christ loves the church? And if he could just get his act together and love me well, then it would be easy to submit to him.

Now, you know, if the problem that individuals have is related to their children, then, you know, essentially you're going to have a similar kind of discussion to where, you know, the kid's going to look at you and say, hey, my parents could have provoked me to wrath and I would obey them.

And the parents are going to look at their child and basically say, you know, my child has an obedience problem. The Bible says children obey their parents and the

Lord for this is right. So it's the first commandment with promise. So just get your act together and learn to obey.

Everything will go well with you. And so, you know, as you think about this kind of thing, one of the things that you'll realize is that most people, you know, as they go to the

Bible and they're trying to apply specific passages that involve change of some sort, we do exceedingly well at pointing out the areas that other people are failing to obey to the neglect of our own.

But one thing to realize is that the Bible does come to us in a specific sort of way.

And it comes to us in a way that, you know, we're not meant to just open our Bible up to Ephesians 5 and talk about marriage issues or Ephesians 6 and talk about parenting issues.

There's a lot that came before Ephesians 5 and there's a lot that came before Ephesians 6 that we might need if we're going to actually understand what we're reading in Ephesians 5 and what we're reading in Ephesians 6.

And really, there's no book in the Bible where this kind of dynamic is more true than the book of Ephesians in general.

Now, when you think about what's actually happening in the book of Ephesians, one of the things that you're going to have in the book of Ephesians is you're going to have three chapters.

And so the total book of Ephesians is six chapters, but the first three chapters are basically telling

Christians who they are in Christ. And then from chapter 4 onward, what you have essentially is the so what.

You have the application. So Ephesians 4, 1 starts this way. Paul says, And, you know, if you've been a

Bible study student for any length of time, one of the things you might have been taught is that whenever you see a therefore, you're supposed to ask, what is it therefore?

And, you know, when it comes to Ephesians 4, he says, What is that therefore therefore?

Well, the therefore is on the basis of everything you have in the first three chapters. So you basically have a book that's pretty neatly divided up into three chapter segments.

The first three chapters are devoted to who we are in Christ, and then the second three chapters, or from four to six, essentially are going to be devoted to telling us how do we walk worthy of the calling with which we've been called.

So if you go to the beginning of Ephesians, what you'll find is it starts out in this way. Ephesians 1, 3,

And then, you know, as you read through the opening chapter of Ephesians, what you'll find is he's going to elaborate on what those blessings actually are.

So verse 4, So, like, as you go through the opening chapters of Ephesians, one of the things you're going to find is you're going to find all the benefits that Christians have of being in Christ.

And it's these benefits which motivate the application at the end. So what you can't do, the point here is just to say you can't do, you know, if you want to pursue biblical change, is just focus on the application to the neglect of the doctrine which undergirds that application.

So our behavior is motivated by who we actually are in Christ. Our behavior is motivated, and it's enacted on the basis of what

Christ did for us, who we have now become in Christ, you know, the blessings that come from our union with Christ.

And so there's a way, essentially, to approach the Christian life that you might describe as, you know, behavior modification where you just stop doing bad behaviors and, you know, quit doing them.

But what's short -sighted about that is that the Bible doesn't just give us behaviors to avoid or behaviors to pursue.

The Bible gives us a whole rationale, a whole new identity, a whole new set of resources to help us to pursue the kind of change that God wants us to pursue.

And, you know, for many people, one of the things we talked about in the last episode is for many people, change is very rare.

And the reason why change is very rare is because that's what the Bible tells us. Apart from Christ, we can do nothing. But through Him, we can bear much fruit.

But then the way to bear much fruit is going to be found in understanding who Jesus is, how do we now relate to Him, what is it

He's done for us, what are His purposes for us, what are the resources He's given us to pursue that change, you know, what are the blessings that come from our union with Christ.

And if you short -circuit all these things, essentially what you have is you have just, you know, another humanistic, moralistic set of ethics that Christians are told to pursue for some irrational reason, who knows why.

And so it's entirely important, as you pursue biblical change, to understand why you're pursuing it, what are the blessings of pursuing it, what are the resources that God has given you to pursue it, what is the actual method that He's given you to pursue these things.

And so, you know, one of the things we realize is that we are Christ workmanship. So as you read through Ephesians, what you'll find is that God has chosen believers before the foundation of the world, and He's chosen us for a purpose, that we should fundamentally be holy and blameless before Him.

And what that means, to be holy and blameless before Him, is holiness means to be devoted to God. So when we come to Christ, you can't even be a

Christian unless you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and essentially what that means is that's fundamentally a pledge of allegiance to God.

It basically is to say that, God, You're Lord, You call the shots, whatever it is that You say I'm going to do.

And that's very important. So we have to devote ourselves to God's purposes.

And as you think about what the Lord's Prayer actually is, we're basically praying, Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

You are Lord, I'm not. What You say goes. Your plan is the plan that I'm going to seek to carry out by Your grace and for Your glory.

But it's Your purposes, fundamentally, that are going to stand. So You've chosen me before the foundation of the world in order that I might be holy and blameless before You.

As you keep on reading through Ephesians, what you're going to realize is that we were once dead or trespassers of sin, in which we must walk according to the purpose of the world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sense of disobedience.

So God raised us up. Because He was rich in mercy, He made us alive together with Christ.

He's raised us up, seated us in the heavenly places, and then we've been saved by grace through faith, and that faith is not of our own doing, but it's a gift of God, not of works as any man should boast.

We are now His workmanship, which is created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God has prepared beforehand that we should walk in this.

So God has a plan for us. He has a plan to take us as dead sinners who are fundamentally unable to pursue a lifestyle that's pleasing to Him, fundamentally change our nature, unite us together with Him, adopt us into His family, and not only is

He going to declare us not guilty on the basis of the sacrifice of what Jesus did on our behalf, not only is

He going to do that, but He's fundamentally, He has a plan for our life of good works, which He's prepared before the foundation of the world that we should walk in, and these good works are to the praise of His glorious grace, and they are ultimately about glorifying

Him and learning to die to ourselves and love other people more than ourselves. So if you have that couple that's coming in, basically they've come into counseling, they've come to talk to you, they're friends of yours telling you about how hard and difficult marriage actually is.

Part of the problem is the wife, she wants the husband to love her better in order for her to learn how to submit.

The husband, he wants the wife to learn how to submit. Everything would go better if she learned how to submit.

The problem is that you have to think what actually happened in Ephesians 1 -3, what agenda are these people actually trying to pursue?

And for the most part, the agenda they're trying to pursue is a self -centered agenda. So the husband, he wants what he wants when he wants it.

He's looking at his wife as a slave functionally that's just going to do the things he tells her to do, and everything in life would be better for her if she would just devote herself to the advancement of his own self -centered agenda.

The wife is looking at the husband and basically saying, hey, yeah, I'll follow you so long as you advance my own personal self -centered agenda.

So if you devote yourself fundamentally and primarily as your chief purpose in life to my own personal happiness to do the things that I want you to do, then of course

I'll follow you. But both of them are fundamentally in most cases out to advance their own self -centered agenda.

And then they're using the Bible in a distorted way. They're essentially looking to the Bible to validate their own selfish agenda.

But the problem is you have ethics which are given to you on the basis of who we actually are in Christ.

And who we actually are in Christ, we're slaves of Christ. And so the husband fundamentally, he's a slave of Christ.

Christ has set him free from the power of sin in his own life. He has fundamentally changed his nature, put the

Holy Spirit inside of him in order to advance God's kingdom. And so now what you have in marriage in particular is you have a union, which is not about two selfish people coming together, trying to bargain and compromise in order to get their own way.

What you have in marriage is you have two people devoting themselves to the glory of God and advancing God's purposes.

And so how you actually get unity in that relationship is to understand who you are in Christ.

And you're both servants of a greater master who has rules that he has given for you to follow.

And to the extent to which you're going to have a good marriage is going to be found in terms of understanding who you actually are in Christ in that way and devoting yourself to his purposes and understanding the resources that he's actually giving you.

And so if the Son sets you free, the Bible says, you'll be free indeed. So you're set free from the power of sin in your life and now you're able to be made a slave of righteousness and able to live to God's glory and advance his purposes and his agenda.

And so it fundamentally matters. You can't just go to the ethics of the Bible apart from who you are in Christ and your identity in Christ.

And so as you're thinking about pursuing biblical change, one of the things to realize is, first, you have to understand who you actually are in Christ before you get to the ethics that need to change.

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