Is Christ Living in You?

Again, I'm going to ask for two volunteers. One for you. You'll find another volunteer.

How's that? My wife and I want to thank you again for this privilege of being here with you again.

It's always refreshing and encouraging to be a part of a worship service, to sing

God's praises together, to be able to hear the prayers and partake of the fellowship here, just seeing one another, greeting one another, spending time with one another.

So we do enjoy this opportunity to be here again today. I want to begin with a word of prayer, and then you can look at that bulletin insert and kind of see where I'm headed and that kind of thing.

Let's begin with a word of prayer. Our Lord and God, we thank you for who you are. We thank you that you're the

God of this universe. We thank you for Jesus Christ. We thank you for your spirit. We pray that you'd teach us more about yourself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Lord, be a work in our lives. We pray for a special working of your spirit in each of our lives, and that you'd be honored and glorified.

We give you this day, this time, we worship you in it. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.

So the primary passage of scripture that I'm going to begin with, at least, is 2 Corinthians 13 .5.

You can see it. It's printed there in the bulletin. You can look it up in your Bible for yourself. This is the way it's phrased.

Examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves.

Do you not know that Jesus Christ is in you? Unless indeed you are disqualified.

Today's message grows out of my own personal study of reading and studying scripture. Some time ago,

I was reading 2 Corinthians and came across this verse here in chapter 13, verse 5, especially the part about Christ being in us.

And I've read this book of the Bible more times than I can quickly count, but somehow this verse stood out in a new way as I was reading it.

My impression is that even if we were to live to be 100 years old, we still should be seeing new things in God's word.

God should still be ministering to us through his word. At least this has been my experience.

I don't necessarily see something new and fresh every time I read God's word, but I do as often as not.

But then perhaps I'm simply a slow learner. It takes me extra time to kind of learn the lessons

I should. God is patient with me, continues to give me fresh opportunities to read and study his word.

One of you, when you were praying, was praying for humility. I think that's another area where God's teaching me and, you know,

God continues to be a work, hopefully in each of our lives. Anyway, this verse and this particular thought about Christ being in us led me to think more broadly about the

Christian life. What is the Christian life all about? What does it look like?

How do we become a Christian? How do we continue to live as a Christian? Once we've become a

Christian. Only here these questions become more specific when we're talking about this amazing reality of Christ coming to live within us.

Thus the question about how do we become a child of God becomes, how does Christ come to live within us?

And what does that look like and feel like for Christ to be present in us? And the question about living the

Christian life becomes, how do we nurture and deepen this relationship with Christ being present in our lives?

If he comes to live within us, how do we nurture and develop and deepen that relationship? These questions become more startling when we consider the majesty and greatness and glory of Christ.

Jesus during his earthly life lived a life that was largely veiled. He veiled his glory so that his human beings who saw him when he was here on earth, that they would not be so overwhelmed by his glory that they would just keel over dead or something.

Think with me of Jesus' own family, especially his brothers and sisters.

Matthew 13, 55 lists at least four brothers, James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas.

None of his sisters are mentioned by name in Scripture, but the next verse in Matthew 13 tells us that Jesus had sisters in the plural in his family of origin when he was growing up.

As far as we can tell from Scripture, none of them came to saving faith during his earthly life prior to his resurrection.

John 7, verse 5 tells us at least by that time, time of John 7, during Jesus' earthly life, even his brothers did not believe in him.

So imagine this, growing up with the glory of Christ, living day by day with you in your own home.

Perhaps some of you have had the sad experience of being compared to an older brother or sister and you always seem to do everything perfect and try as you would, you never seem to quite measure up.

Imagine if your older brother was Jesus Christ himself living there in your home with you.

So we're left feeling a little puzzled as to what it would have been like to have seen Jesus in the flesh, that Jesus by and large restrained his glory so that he did not overpower or overawe even those in his own immediate family.

Think also of Jesus' own disciples. Certainly if there were ever a group of people who knew

Jesus during his earthly life, this was that group. They were with Jesus not quite 24 -7, but still close to that, for something like three years of time.

And within this group, there were several individuals who had even closer intimacy with the

Lord. Jesus also singled out in a special way Peter, James, and John.

And one of these, John developed a nickname, the beloved disciple, that he was loved in a unique way by Jesus.

John was one during his last supper when they were together, he was so close to Jesus he was virtually leaning on him.

Who can imagine what it would have been like to have been that close to the God of glory, the

Jesus who as the God -man was involved in the creation of the world. He's that great, that majestic, and here is people close to him.

And same time we know Jesus' disciples are not known for special spiritual insight, especially prior to Jesus' death and resurrection.

They often does not seem pretty slow in understanding who he was. So, Jesus' glory and greatness were at least partly hidden during his earthly life.

We can see that again in Jesus' disciples as we read through the Gospels. But all that changed after the resurrection, and especially after his ascension to the right hand of the

Father in glory. Revelation 1 -17 describes a time some decades later when the apostle

John, the so -called beloved disciple, saw the risen and glorified Christ. And this is the way

John described it in Revelation 1, verses 17 and 18. When I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead.

He laid his right hand on me, saying, Do not be afraid, I am the first and the last. I am he who lives and was dead, and behold,

I am alive forevermore. Amen. John was so overwhelmed by Jesus' appearance and glory that he almost passed out on the floor as if he were dead.

That would be how each of us would respond if Jesus were to come and reveal his glory to us here today.

All this is background for my question. What does it mean for the risen and glorified Christ to come and live inside us as believers?

Sometimes we think that Christian life is believing and doing certain things. And certainly there are various truths we need to believe about both

God in general and about Christ in particular in order to become a child of God. So when we share the gospel message, there is content to it, content about God, content about the person of Jesus Christ, certain principles, there's certain things that need to be believed in order to become a believer.

But there's more to it than simply believing certain facts. James reminds us this in James 2 .19,

even the demons believe in shudder or tremble, depending on what translation you're using and whether you think shuddering or trembling is a better response to what the demons are doing.

Think with me about someone truly famous. Perhaps you can think of a sports figure or famous singer.

I suppose for me it'd be someone like John Piper or R .C. Sproul who is now deceased or Johnny Erickson -Todd or perhaps someone from a different period of time,

John Calvin, Martin Luther, John Bunyan, or even a biblical character, King David or the

Apostle Paul. We could wonder what would it be like to know them? Certainly we can begin by trying to learn all we can about that other person.

We can learn many details about their family life, their family background, hobbies, all kinds of other details about their lives.

But my point is knowing about someone is always very different from actually being introduced to them and knowing them personally, where we can talk back and forth with each other.

Tragedy is that many people approach knowing Jesus Christ this way. They've read their

Bibles, they know certain truths about Jesus Christ, his earthly life, including how he died and some of the details of how he rose from the dead three days later, but they never have actually personally come to know him.

Knowing about Jesus is always very different from knowing him personally. Jesus warned about this danger of assuming we know him when we really don't in Matthew 7, verses 21 and following.

Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my

Father in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name and cast out demons in your name and done many wonders in your name?

And then I will declare to them, I never knew you. Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness.

Apparently, Jesus was thinking about specific people that he had seen during his earthly life, certain people who had followed him, at least to some outward extent.

They've even done all kinds of amazing miracles and ministry in Jesus' name, prophesying, casting out demons, even doing many mighty works.

Yet Jesus warns us that we can deceive ourselves, we can deceive others, and the day will come when at least some people will hear the tragic words that Jesus declares to them,

I never knew you. Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness. Believing is good, believing is important, but believing isn't enough.

Believing in Christ can sometimes mean nothing more than believing certain truths about him and not really knowing him as a person.

The key question is always, is Christ living in us? That's the key question.

Doing various good deeds isn't enough either. Good work should always be associated with living the

Christian life, but we can deceive ourselves, deceive other people here as well. In Ephesians 2, 8 through 10, the

Apostle Paul warns us that although we can never be saved by our good works, our good works should still reveal a changed life.

Let me read these verses to you, Ephesians 2, 8 and following, for by grace you've been saved through faith, this is not of yourselves, it's a gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.

Talk about salvations by faith. But then it talks about works as well, verse 10, for we are as workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which

God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. Why has God created you? One answer according to this verse is for good works.

God's plan is that our lives should demonstrate good works, but at the same time we all know that simply doing good works by themselves can never save us.

Becoming a Christian and living as a Christian both involve coming into a right relationship with God, specifically a right relationship with Christ.

This is what this text in 2 Corinthians 13, 5 tells us. Examine yourselves as to whether you're in the faith.

Test yourselves. Do you not know yourselves that Jesus Christ is in you?

Unless indeed you're disqualified. Bottom line of today's message is that we enter the

Christian life by having Christ come to live within us, and we continue to live the

Christian life for the rest of our lives by having Christ continue to live within us. Next question is, what does it mean for Christ to live inside us?

How do we experience it? What does it look like? What does it feel like? Perhaps we should begin by reminding ourselves of the context of the book of 2

Corinthians in order to learn more about this experience of having Christ living inside us. Virtually every church we find described in the

New Testament has its own share of problems. If you're here today looking for the perfect church, you're not going to find a perfect group of Christians inside of glory.

The church there in Corinth, which incidentally is located on that Greek peninsula, it's about halfway down.

The peninsula kind of begins, tapers down, and then there's this isthmus, and then it bumps out again.

The Peloponnese is the southern part of Greece. So it's there in that center part, and it is a group of...

It's a church that was a fairly young church. I think we could say that most of the churches we read about in the scripture are immature churches.

They're just... They don't have access to a lot of the Bible. We can think about that church in Corinth.

Here's Paul writing maybe mid -50s, something like that. And we can ask, well, how much of the

New Testament is written by then? Maybe a couple books. We know, obviously, 1 Corinthians was written to the church there at Corinth before 2

Corinthians. That's the book we're thinking about just for a moment. So that if all you had to build your theology on from the

New Testament is 1 Corinthians, I'm not sure that you would have as accurate understanding of Christ as you might hope.

In any event, two chapters earlier in 2 Corinthians 11, Paul had warned them how they were apt to go spiritually astray.

Listen to what he says, 2 Corinthians 11 .4. Paul's talking about just in general.

For he who comes preaches another Jesus whom we've not preached, or if you receive a different spirit which you have not received, or a different gospel that you've not accepted, you may well put up with it.

In other words, he's saying as a church, they're susceptible to false gospels, false

Christ, all kinds of spiritual confusion. It's an adolescent church, and some of you in this room,

I assume, are still adolescents, and even those of us who are older still remember what we said and did in our earlier years.

Adolescence is hopefully a time when we discover where we are, who we are, and begin to make our way through life.

Some of our study Bibles have subtitles inserted at various points in the text.

I think these are a mixed blessing. Sometimes they're helpful, they're not. One study Bible I was looking at, listed for this final section in 2

Corinthians 13, final warnings, and 2 Corinthians 13 is the last chapter in that book, and here

Paul is clearly wrapping up his thoughts in this chapter, chapter 13. 2

Corinthians was a difficult book for Paul to write, because he had to deal with a number of different difficult topics, number of misunderstandings.

I'm sure you all know what it's like to bring up a difficult topic with somebody else, maybe an employee, family member, friend, whatever it is, share something difficult with them.

This is what Paul's doing here in this epistle. All this is foundation for understanding this verse, 2

Corinthians 13, 5, examine yourselves as to whether you're in the faith, test yourselves.

Do you not know this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you? Unless indeed you are disqualified.

Paul's asking them, where are they spiritually? He's challenging them to examine themselves, to test themselves, to see whether they are in the faith.

Really, two questions here, or maybe one question phrased in two different ways. First question is, first part of verse 5, examine yourselves as to whether you're in the faith.

Well, the second is, test yourselves. Do you not know yourselves that Jesus Christ is in you? And we can observe here from these two questions that being in the faith is defined as the same as having

Jesus Christ in you. Paul concludes this verse by assuming that they are in the faith.

This is why he says, unless indeed you're disqualified, or unless you fail to meet the test as some other translations take it, he's assuming they will meet the test.

He's assuming that Jesus Christ is present in their lives, but still he's asking these questions to spur them on.

He knows there's always a possibility in any church there may be unsaved people present. Even unsaved church members, sometimes even unsaved church leaders.

Either they pass the test and are in the faith, or worst case scenario, they realize for perhaps the first time they're not in the faith, and that they need to look and see what's happening in their lives spiritually.

So I want us to think more about what does it mean for Christ to live in us? Here we can think of perhaps the clearest illustration of Christ living in us anywhere in scripture, the story,

Jesus' story, the vine and the branches, John 15. And this is why I had this read as our scripture reading.

This is actually the first message I ever preached was John 15, so it certainly has a long history in my own walk with God and helpful to me to see, you know, what does it mean for me to relate to God, to relate to Jesus Christ?

John 15 is part of Jesus' final instructions to his original disciples that last night of his earthly life.

He had already celebrated the last supper with his disciples. This took place in John 13.

Judas had already departed to betray him. Jesus was alone with his remaining 11 disciples.

In these final instructions of Jesus, as they're recorded in John's gospel, they're often called the upper room discourse, because Jesus begins in the upper room there with his disciples.

He's looking ahead to the time just hours away when he will no longer be present with them.

Jesus warned them in John 14 .30, I will not talk much with you, because he knew that his time was limited, and he needed to prepare his disciples with what remaining time that he had.

Imagine with me that you knew that you were going to die within a matter of hours. What would you say to your family, friends, loved ones?

This was Jesus' situation. Only Jesus knew that he needed to prepare his disciples for the time that he would no longer be with them.

Some of the highlights of this section are the work of the Holy Spirit in their lives as believers.

Jesus also shares this illustration of the vine and the branches. In verse 1 of John 15,

Jesus compares himself to a vine. In the very last thought of the previous chapter, the previous verse to John 15 .1,

Jesus tells us, arise, let us go from here. So apparently John 15, 16, and 17 do not take place in the upper room where the discussion had begun.

Instead, Jesus and his disciples are walking on their way to the

Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus would pray three times that this cup might be taken from him, where Judas and the soldiers would come to arrest him, where all the events of Jesus' final hours would begin to unfold.

Some people have speculated that perhaps as Jesus and his disciples were walking, they saw some vineyards in the semi -darkness of the night, and this thought triggered

Jesus' story of the vine and the branches. In any event, Jesus tells us,

I'm the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. This imagery of a vine comes from the

Old Testament, where it's often used to describe God's Old Testament people, the people of Israel.

We see references like this in Psalms, Isaiah, Jeremiah, elsewhere. We all know the sad story that God's Old Testament people, by and large, failed to bear fruit as they should have.

So God's Old Testament people are often described as a vine, and Jesus begins this,

John 15, I am the true vine. He is the true Israelite. He's the true

Son of the Father. Continues on in verse 2, every branch of me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that bears fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.

I've had some very unsuccessful grapevine experiences. We used to have three grapevines, we're down to two, we're phasing them out entirely, we'll be down to zero.

But pruning grapevines is an ongoing task, and part of the success of producing grapes is proper pruning.

And guess what, if we were to be, if we were to imagine that we were the grapevine, do you think that we would enjoy the pruning?

Do you think we enjoy God's pruning and chastening in our lives? This verse here reminds us of God's spiritual discipline.

He prunes us. His goal is different from ours. Our goal is to be comfortable.

His goal is that we bear fruit. Continues, verse 3, tells us these promises are for believers only.

You're already clean because of the word that I've spoken to you. How did Jesus make his disciples clean and pure?

He spoke to them, it is by God's word, it's by Jesus' word, that, you know, we can, like I was a psychology major for a while in college, and, you know, in psychology there's always this thought, you know, with the right technique we can change our lives.

But how do we really change our lives? Jesus tells us it is by his word, it's by the spoken word, it's by the revealed word, it's by the message of Jesus Christ.

The message of Jesus Christ can change our lives in ways that nothing else can. You're already clean because of the word that I've spoken to you.

Part of this story of the vine and the branches, in my mind at least, comes in verses 4 and 5.

Jesus says, abide in me and I in you. As a branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.

I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me and I in him bears much fruit, for without me you can do nothing.

Think about this imagery of abiding just for a moment. Here's Jesus looking ahead, knowing full well that within a matter of hours he's going to be dead.

How is a dead person going to abide in them and they abide in him?

There's more to this idea of abiding than just a friendship, we have a personal friendship, somebody's our close friend, we relate with them, that kind of thing.

And Jesus is talking about something more than that. He's talking about coming to live inside us and for us to live in him.

Some people have claimed that perhaps the most important spiritual principle here in these verses is this last thought, apart from me you can do nothing.

Think with me how our lives today would be different, our churches would be different if we believed this truth, apart from Christ we can do nothing.

We need him in our lives, we need him in our churches, we need him in our relationships with each other.

Even though Jesus would no longer be present physically with them, in the same way they had enjoyed his presence for the past three plus years, they could still enjoy his spiritual presence.

They were to abide in him and he promised he would abide in them. Even after his physical death and throughout the rest of their earthly lives, and as we talked about last week, even through the experience of death and for all eternity,

Jesus would be present with them. Over the years this illustration of the vine and the branches in John 15 has helped me understand

Christ's presence in my life as much as any passage of scripture. But I think another verse of scripture, it's going to be

Galatians 2 .20, has helped me understand how this relationship actually functions.

And I shared this verse with you last week and want to focus on it again. I'm going to read this verse to you,

Galatians 2 .20, maybe you can quote it from memory, but here it is. I've been crucified with Christ.

It's no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. In the life which

I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. I've been crucified with Christ.

It's no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. In the life which I now live in the flesh,

I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. Here in this verse,

Paul is telling us about himself. He uses the pronoun I several times, a number of times here in this verse, but he's describing a truth that applies to all believers as well.

So we can take this verse, apply it to our lives, and apply these same truths to our lives as believers.

Paul begins, I've been crucified with Christ. When Paul wrote these words to a number of churches in North Central Asia Minor, the general area of Galatia, this is the audience of the book of Galatians, Jesus had died on the cross perhaps 15 years prior.

We don't know whether Paul or Saul, as he's originally called, had ever seen or heard

Jesus during his earthly life and ministry. Their lives clearly overlapped.

As faithful Jews, we'd expect that both Jesus and Paul would have traveled to Jerusalem many times for the three annual feasts required by Old Testament law.

First one is the Passover, or the Feast of Unleavened Bread. This comes in the early spring of the year.

Remember Jesus was put to death during the Passover season. So we can think of Passover as corresponding to the early springtime, the time we associate with Good Friday and Jesus' resurrection on Easter.

Second annual feast is Pentecost, or the Feast of Weeks, which comes 50 days after Passover.

So by the time of Pentecost, we're in late spring on our calendar. Third one was the

Feast of Ingathering, or the Feast of Booths, or the Feast of Tabernacles, depending on your translation.

It comes in early fall, September, October, along in there, after the crops are gathered in and celebrates the wilderness wanderings of the people of Israel.

It's a little hard to imagine how Jesus and Paul would regularly go up to at least many of these feasts, year after year, and not see each other.

But there's no clue that Jesus ever saw Paul or Paul ever saw

Jesus during Jesus' earthly life. The only encounter we read about between Jesus and Paul is on the road to Damascus, and this takes place after Jesus' death and resurrection when

Paul becomes a Christian. But still Paul tells us, I've been crucified with Christ.

What does that mean, I've been crucified with Christ? Paul knew that somehow he had entered into the blessings associated with Jesus' death on the cross.

The experience of Jesus' death on the cross was partly Paul's experience as well, that he had died with Christ, that he'd come alive in a new way with Christ.

This is a mystery. We have to stop and wonder for a moment, what does it mean for Paul to be crucified with Christ, as Galatians 2 .20

tells us? And it's even more of a mystery for those of us who lived 2 ,000 years ago.

How could we have been crucified with Christ? Christ died on the cross some 2 ,000 years ago, before our lives even began.

So if we're crucified with him, we must have been crucified 2 ,000 years ago, because that's the only time

Christ was ever crucified. The principle here is that there's a sense in which we too, if we're a believer, entered into the blessings and benefits of Christ's death.

Next line in Galatians 2 .20 can help us puzzle this out a little more. It's no longer, I who live, but Christ lives in me.

Here's a phrase, Christ lives in me. This parallels the text in 2 Corinthians 13 .5, how

Jesus Christ is in you. But how does it take place? It takes place only as we first die to ourselves.

This is why Paul tells us, it's no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.

In a nutshell, the first part of what it means for us to become a Christian is to die to ourselves, our old way of life.

This is why the Bible often talks about repentance, talks about a change in life.

Christ needs to come in and live within us and give us new life. Principle of dying to ourselves, coming alive in a new way in Christ is a truth we find in any number of passages of Scripture.

Romans 6 is one of these passages that illustrates this theme. Romans 6 picks up the language of baptism and applies it to how we have died with Christ and come alive in a new way with Christ.

Read some of these verses to you. I'll read Romans 6, verses 3 and following. Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?

Therefore, we were buried with him through baptism into death. And just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the

Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been united together in the likeness of his death, certainly we also should be in the likeness of his resurrection.

Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin.

For he who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him.

Our ordinance of baptism, especially as we practice it in Baptist churches, adult believers, baptism by immersion, pictures death in the sense of going down under the water.

And it pictures resurrection and new life in terms of coming up out of the water. Let's make sure we're clear and don't go astray in our thinking.

Baptism doesn't save us, but it does picture for us what takes place when we are saved.

We died to ourselves. We came alive in a new way in Christ, and Christ comes to live within us.

Believers, baptism, in a sense, reenacts what's already taken place spiritually in our lives as we first began our walk with Christ.

One other thought we need to notice in Galatians 2 .20, and this is the second half of the verse, want to remind us of the first part, how we become a

Christian, namely by having been crucified with Christ in such a way that we've died to ourselves and come alive in a new way with Christ, so it's no longer

I who live, but Christ lives in me. Incidentally, earlier in Galatians 2, verse 16 of chapter 2 of Galatians 2,

Paul is zeroed in on saving faith when he said, a man is not justified by works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ.

Even we have believed in Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law.

For the works of the law, no flesh shall be justified. Christian life always begins with faith, but then we continue to live the

Christian life by faith. This is the second half of Galatians 2 .20, how we continue to live the

Christian life. That's what Paul says. In the life which I now live in the flesh, so even though he's died, he's still alive, he's still living a life in the flesh,

I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. We begin the

Christian life by faith, we continue to live the Christian life by faith. Or looking at these truths in another way, we become a

Christian when Christ comes to live inside us, and we continue to live the

Christian life through the power of Christ continuing to live inside us. So as you go about your daily life, remember it's not just you by yourself, if you're a believer,

Christ is living inside of you. There's a distinction that's sometimes made in theology that can help us at this point as we seek to apply these truths to our own lives.

There's a distinction between union with Christ and communion with Christ. Union and communion, these words are partly related to each other, partly different.

Union with Christ involves an objective truth, while communion with Christ involves our subjective experience of that reality.

Let me try to explain. Union with Christ is ultimately something that God does in bringing us into a right relationship with himself.

Here we can think of new birth as Jesus explains it to Nicodemus in John 3 about our need to be born again.

If you're born again, is this something you did? Your first birth, was that something you did? No, it's something that just kind of took place.

How does new birth, rebirth take place? Again, it's something that God does and we experience the best blessings and benefits of it.

Or think with me of the language often found in the Bible, especially in New Testament, about being in Christ or simply in him, where the word him refers clearly to Christ.

This is a phrase that seems to be particularly related to the Apostle Paul. And we find it 40 -some times in the

Apostle Paul, either the phrase in Christ, Greek it's en Christo, a seminary

I was teaching at, one time wondered about trying to do a newsletter or something and titling it en

Christo. This is a way of summing up, what's the Christian life all about? It's about being in Christ, en

Christo. And we find this language, here's just one illustration, 2 Corinthians 5 .17,

therefore if anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation, all things have passed away, behold all things have become new.

If we're in Christ, we're a new creation, talking about objective reality.

This being in Christ is the same kind of reality we saw described in our text in 2

Corinthians 13 .5, examine yourselves, see whether you're in the faith, test yourselves, do you not know that Jesus Christ is in you, objective reality, unless indeed you're disqualified.

Or it's the same as what Paul's described in Galatians 2 .20, where he tells us he's been crucified with Christ, it's no longer

I who live, but Christ who lives in me, objective reality. If we're a believer, these truths are true for us, whether we see them or feel them or anything else, it's true in God's eyes, and it should be true for us as well, that we have died with Christ, we've been crucified with him,

Christ has come to live inside of us. How do we know we're saved?

How do we know that these truths are true for us? Here we're dealing with a difficult topic of assurance of our salvation, we can't say everything here today, but we can say at least a few things.

We can ask, was there ever a time when we recognized our spiritual need before God? One way of seeing this is to recognize that we're, with the

Bible, causal sinner, we're under God's just wrath. We can also ask, was there ever a time when we cried out to God for his mercy and forgiveness?

Another way of stating this same issue is, have we ever recognized that Christ's obedient life, his death on the cross, his resurrection from the dead, all of these are directly related to my standing before God today?

That what Jesus Christ did in his earthly life, his death, his resurrection, all of these impact me directly, that the reason for my salvation today is because of what

Christ did 2 ,000 years ago. If you're under any illusion, you can make it on your own, through your own human efforts, you're clearly not there yet.

We need to see that Christ is the perfect answer to all our needs, we need to want him and see him as for who he is.

Third thing we can think about is to look for fruit in our lives. None of us are perfect, certainly when we first accept the

Lord, but there should be evidences of new life. We should expect to see changes in our lives.

If we claim to be born again and not show any evidences of new life, we shouldn't automatically assume that we're a child of God.

Imagine with me, you're in a delivery room where a mother is giving birth, once a baby is born, one of the first things they look for is signs of life, is this baby alive?

Assurance of salvation is built at least partly on evidences of new life in us.

God gives us glimpses of his grace in our lives, he shows that, you know, we're not the same as we used to be.

We've already talked about our union with Christ as an objective reality, this is how God sees us.

This is what Paul is talking about in our text in 2 Corinthians 13, 5, examine yourselves to see whether you're in the faith, touch yourselves, do you not know this about yourselves that Jesus Christ is in you?

Paul is asking his audience in Corinth, stop and think, isn't there something real in your walk with God?

Isn't Christ living within you? This is how he's wrapping up his epistle. Now I want us to shift gears from the subjective union with Christ to the subjective experience of our communion with Christ.

Here the question becomes, how do we experience emotionally and mentally when we become a

Christian or when we continue to live the Christian life year after year, decade after decade?

Things are tricky because Christ never promises us that we will ever see him with our human eyes here in this present life, or that we'll hear him with our human ears in this present life, or that we'll ever feel a tingling sense deep down inside us here in this present life.

Here the answers of how people respond are all across the board. God's made each of us differently, our emotions work differently.

Some of you may be excited and upbeat about almost anything and everything. Others of you may be relatively unemotional like I often am.

Or you may be somewhere in between. I think I've used the illustration of a yo -yo in a message here before.

Sometimes our feelings and emotions are as high as they can go, other times they drop as low as they can go.

Bottom line here is we can't rely on our feelings, we can't rely on our emotions. The one thing we can rely on is the objective truth of our union with Christ.

Regardless of what we might feel at any given moment, we can and should rejoice if Christ is living inside us.

This is Paul, wrote as he did in 2 Corinthians 13 .5, regardless of how you feel, what you may be thinking, stop and think, examine yourselves to see whether you're in the faith, test yourselves.

You do not realize this about yourselves that Jesus Christ is in you. Allow this thought to permeate your life if you're a believer.

If you want an illustration here, we can think about the human institution of marriage. Hopefully all of you know whether you're married or not.

This is objective reality. The subjective part is whether you feel in love, whether you feel attracted to your spouse at that moment or not.

Those of us who are married know our feelings can vary. Times they can go up and down like a yo -yo.

But objective reality always trumps a subjective experience. The key question is not how you feel, but what is your status?

Are you married? Are you in relationship with someone else? And we turn to our

Christian faith, are you in a right relationship with God? Is Christ living inside of you?

The purpose of this message is a call to marvel at the wonder of the gospel and to worship

Christ for all he has done, providing new life for us as believers through his life, death, and resurrection.

At the same time, Jesus' ascension and the gift of the Holy Spirit make it possible for him to come live within each of us, wherever we are.

We can enjoy Christ's presence 24 -7 all around this world in ways that Jesus' original disciples could never imagine during Jesus' earthly life, when his human body only allowed him to be in one place at one time.

Jesus is gearing up after his death and resurrection for the spread of the gospel throughout the entire world.

How many people, as the years would go on, would be able to have a personal relationship with Christ if it depended on being physically able to reach out and touch him, as Jesus' original disciples were able to do?

But through the Spirit, God is able to allow us to come into a right relationship with Christ all around this world, to come into a right relationship with Christ anywhere, everywhere, to enjoy

Christ's presence in the middle of nowhere, to wake up in the middle of the night. Christ can be present with you because of the work of the

Spirit in bringing Christ into communion with us. The key question is, are we in a right relationship with him?

Is there that foundation of being in union with him? I want to conclude with a list of four ways you can nurture your relationship with Christ.

This list is intended primarily for those of us who know the Lord, but even if you're not a

Christian or aren't sure, you can apply many of these same things to you as well.

First one is learn more about Christ. Ask the

Lord Jesus to help you know him more. Recently, my wife, Helen, and I were reading a book on Christian marriage, and the authors were stressing the importance of getting to know your mate, which

Helen and I are still trying to work on 47 years after we were married. Same thing applies to our relationship with Christ.

Learn all you can about him. Read God's Word, the Bible, as if your life depended on it, because it does.

Listen to God's center preaching with a desire to learn more about Christ. There's both good news and bad news about looking for Christ in Scripture.

Good news, Christ is the main theme of Scripture, so virtually anywhere you look in the

Bible, the focus is on Christ. Old Testament looks ahead to Christ and prophesies and foreshadows

Christ. New Testament Gospels describe his actual coming. The rest of the

New Testament unpacks the significance of his coming. Bad news is sometimes you have to work harder to understand some sections of Scripture and how they apply to Christ than other sections.

Still other bad news is it takes new eyes to see Christ. Think with me again about people who were alive during Jesus' earthly ministry.

Many people living in Israel at that time saw Jesus with their physical eyes, but relatively few saw him for who he really is with their spiritual eyes.

Simply having physical eyes is not enough. And yet the good news, even better news, is that the same

Jesus who opened the eyes of the blind during his earthly ministry can also open our spiritual eyes to see

Christ as the true Savior of the world. So, read your Bibles looking for Christ, but do so prayerfully and expectantly.

Expect to see Christ and pray and ask God to help you see him. Second point, spend time with Christ every day.

Listen to what he says in his Word, talk with him in prayer. If your mind is like mine, it's a sieve.

I think I sometimes forget more things than I remember. This is why whenever I find a verse of Scripture that really ministers to me,

I write it out on a three -by -five card or on a sheet of paper so I can keep track of that verse.

I have more verses at home than I know what to do with at times, but I try to read over these different verses at different times, use them to encourage my own heart.

And this is in addition to continuing to read through the Bible in a regular, systematic way virtually every day of my life.

Spend time with Christ. Third, trust and obey him. As you listen to what he says, believe what he says.

Trust him, obey him, ask for his help. We live in a fallen, broken world with all kinds of pressures coming into our lives every day from the world around us.

Flesh inside us, the devil seeking to devour us. In addition, God often allows things into our lives that we don't understand.

We believe in a sovereign God, but we often don't know what is he doing in our lives.

Why does God allow this trial or this difficulty? Why do things go wrong, at least from our perspective?

We often don't know. This is what faith is all about. To use another 2

Corinthians verse, Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 5, 7, we walk by faith and not by sight.

God calls us to trust him and obey him, and trust and obedience are built on faith.

Final point, number 4, delight in him. And delighting is more than these other points.

It's asking God to help you grow in your love for him. If you genuinely believe that Christ is living inside you, nurture that relationship with him.

Welcome Christ into every area of his life. Know that he's at work for good in his life. Allow him to be

Lord of your life. Savor his presence. And I'm sure that you could add to this list of ways you can nurture your relationship with Christ.

It's a little parallel to those of us who are married, or those of us with children and family, that kind of thing.

How do we nurture our relationship with those close to us? And the correct answer is a whole long list of different things.

A key question is always, where are you spiritually? And in particular, does

Christ live inside of you? That is the key question. If he does, our lives should be different.

And they should continue to grow and become more and more different. Follow me in a word of prayer.

Our Father in heaven, we pray that even today you would give us a fresh glimpse of the beauty of Christ.

Help us see more than we've ever seen before. Continue and complete your work in each of our lives.

You know where we are spiritually in our walk with you today. Help each of us take the next step closer to you, either objectively in terms of inviting you into our lives for the very first time, and becoming one of your children, or subjectively in terms of our experiential relationship with you.

Help us to experience you in new and fresh ways. Give us hope and encouragement. We pray this in Jesus' name, who makes all this possible.