LEARNING TO LIVE IN CHRIST

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   Jack is a missionary in the Philippines. He shared with me how his life had been transformed the summer before his final year in theological seminary.

   He described his Christian life up until that time as a struggle. He disciplined himself to live the life he thought of as being a successful Christian life. But his spiritual exercises were not working! His strict regime of Bible reading and prayer, his days of fasting, his list of books by spiritual giants to be read each month, left him cold and empty inside. In moments of facing the stark truth about himself, he knew that on the surface, he had the appearance of spirituality: but just below the surface, he knew he was a million miles from the New Testament demanded. He kept a strict time of prayer but knew he could not begin to keep the command of Jesus to love others as He had loved them. He could get an A+ in his examinations in theology, but if ever anyone tested his true walk with God, he would get an F.

   When summer vacation rolled around, he took a job at a builders’ yard assisting customers. One of his rules for his idea of a successful Christian was to listen to Christian radio, and so at lunch time he went into a nearby park and listened while munching on a sandwich. The first day he tuned in to my daily program. He tells what happened to him:

   “I don’t believe I was a know-it-all, but I was head of my class in theology and believed I had a good grasp of the Gospel and the various theories of the Atonement and did not think anyone could teach me something I didn’t know in that area. That day in the park, I heard that the death and resurrection of Jesus, His ascension, and His sending of the Holy Spirit, were the making of a covenant on my behalf. I had never heard it before and was stopped in my tracks. For the next six weeks, I planned my day to be in the park every day to listen and take notes.

   I was forced to confront what Jesus did on the cross in terms of what He was doing for me. In my head I knew how to describe what He did to pass an exam, but this was utterly different- my heart was getting involved. If asked, I would have told you that Jesus died and rose again to save me from eternal death; I had make Him Lord of my life and was doing my best to obey and serve Him.

   As the days passed, I was confronted with a totally new concept: that He was my representative making a covenant with the Father as and for me. His obedience to the Father in His going to death, His rising out from death, and His return to the Father was as me: I was included in His action. I had thought that I was to produce the perfect obedience and to somehow die to my selfishness. Now I was confronted with the Gospel that said He had obeyed as me, He had died as me, and in His resurrection I had risen from the dead. It was not a matter of my trying to obey and failing, but of trusting His obedience and trusting His death for me; no longer my trying to keep a regime of spiritual exercises, but believing that He had carried me to the Father in His ascension and that I lived in the heavenly realms in the Fathers’ presence.

    I realized that I thought of the fullness of my Christian life as being experienced in some act of obedience I would do some day or some experience of God that I would achieve by hitting on the right set of spiritual exercises. I believed and worked toward that “something” that would happen to me so that I would feel and act dead. It was always in the future, and I was always striving to do whatever it would take to make me dead with Him.

   Now I saw that I had been working backwards – trying to achieve what had already been done instead of moving from it as the starting point of life. I had been looking for the experience that would catapult me into an experience of God instead of realizing His resurrections and ascension had carried me into the covenant friendship of God.

   My baptism came alive to me. Prior to this, it had meant very little in my life. Now I understood that it was the physical expression of my faith in His action for and as me as the Spirit joined me to Him.

   One day it was so plain to me that I had died and risen again in my representative. It was accomplished history never to be reversed. I was dead! I had risen from the dead. I was a man who had returned from his own funeral alive in the power of an endless life. And it had all happened in my representative. I wanted to run back to tell my customers I was resurrected person, but I restrained my self!

   Now my whole existence depended on Jesus. Apart from Him, I have nothing and can do nothing. Apart from Him, I have no history with God and no hope of living the Christian life in the here and now. Looking back, I realize that my Christian life was a struggle to try and fit the image of what I thought a Christian should be. Jesus was the One I tried to imitate. Now, for the fist time, I understood what Paul meant when he wrote, “For me to live is Christ.”

   As my return to seminary drew closer, I realized that a great load had been lifted from me, a load I had not realized I had until it was taken away. I had never thought of myself as a candidate for Jesus’’ invitation for the laboring and heavy laden to come to Him for rest; but in that six weeks I found He was talking about me, and I cam to Him and I rested. I felt like laughing with relief.

   Since that time, I have learned and still am learning to stand in the truth in the daily situations of life, to face life as a man who has passed through death and now lives in the life of Jesus.”                                
                                      Malcolm Smith

 

This excerpt is from the book “The Lost Secret of the New Covenant” by Malcolm Smith    To purchase this book click the link -  UNCONDITIONAL LOVE MINISTRIES