The New Life

Last Sunday I began this lesson, which is very difficult to capture. I believe that the Lord has much more to say about our New Life in Him than what is contained here but would like to share this much with you. I pray that you are blessed today, and in the coming Easter week. Helen

We are given a new life after we come to Christ. We are freed from our body of death to walk a new way on this earth (Rm 6:7). After being buried with Christ in His death through baptism, we are resurrected with Him and can live a life of power; Jesus’ power (Rm 6:5, Phil 3:10). Though most of us would recognize that these sentences embrace God’s plan for our lives, we struggle with the “power” part. It is not that we don’t want to walk in power . . . but it seems to elude us because we look at our natural life, or what is seen. Today’s lesson is about the new life, the life of resurrection power residing inside of us. As we establish His new Life for us, we are setting up His Kingdom within us. Jesus said once that His Kingdom was within us (Lk 17:21,22), and we would not find it by “careful observation.” If we look for outward manifestations of God’s power without letting His Kingdom be set up within us we might get discouraged. But if we let His power first take hold in our lives, then we will see that it is working its way outward to touch the lives around us.

The One who has set us free from sin paid an enormous price for us on the cross. We know that Jesus fulfilled the legal requirements to absolve us from our sins. That price also infers that, once we shed our body of death, there would be great value in us. This is the wisdom of God, then, to not only redeem us from a useless, sin-filled life, but to place us into a useful, powerful life in Christ, and to begin establishing His Kingdom within us. It is with a powerful conversion that we begin this new life. We read that the cross was God’s wisdom and, in fact, all our boasting in human wisdom robs God of the power of the Cross (1 Cor 1:17-18). Clearly it is the power of both the Spirit and the Word of God that begins the transformation which changes our lives, taking us from the kingdom of darkness and putting us into the kingdom of light.

After conversion we see the power of God stirring in us, wanting to spread outward to other people. The power that is at work in us wants to work through us by words and actions conceived in the mind of God. We can choose to display God’s transforming power outwardly. But at times it is in speaking about God that we fail to display the power that began our new life. In leaving behind our body of death and putting sin behind us, there is still our own nature that is alive in us, wanting to maintain a life lesser that that new Life we’ve been given. While we maintain that God has marvelously changed us by His power, still a kingdom of “self” remains to be dealt with within us. We might think that surely King Jesus was put in our hearts to rule there, not realizing that it is a battle just beginning within, for we are very much still on the throne of our own hearts. And so the power that should be manifested in our lives will ultimately depend on how much Christ’s kingdom is reigning within us.

If we remain on the throne of our personal kingdom within, our words will reflect a mixture of godly wisdom and earthly wisdom. Remember that it was God’s wisdom to save us through the cross, and then He allowed His power to change us within. But until His lordship reigns in our hearts there is the possibility of other words coming out of our mouths; boasting, adding worth to ourselves by using knowledge and worldly wisdom. Paul tells us that God removed Man’s right to boast in his own wisdom (1 Cor 1:28-29). Paul chose to speak in the words that the Holy Spirit taught (1 Cor 2:13). He understood that the Kingdom of God was not a matter of talk, but of power (1 Cor 4:20). In fact, Paul desired that men’s faith should rest on God’s power. When we speak about God we should lay aside our own wisdom, speaking the words taught by the Holy Spirit. If we speak God’s Words to Man, then God Himself will imbue those words with His power, working in the hearts of the hearers to bring His Life there. We see then that our words have the capacity to bring God’s power, or to quench it.

In looking at our human tendencies to be wise I can see three areas where we might stray from the power of our new life: In our attempt to know ourselves; in our attempt to judge our own progress; and in our striving to improve ourselves. Our “old” self is used to comparing ourselves against others in order to judge how we are doing. This is judging by a human standard (Jn 8:15). The alternative would seem to be to find Someone more worthy to compare ourselves against, however, if we compare ourselves against Jesus we all fall short of what He is. Rather than use comparison as a way to know who we are and how we are doing Paul writes to know no man after the flesh, or from a worldly point of view (2 Cor 5;16), neither to compare ourselves against each other (2 Cor 10:12). These instructions indicate that it is another source that will let us know how who we are; the Holy Spirit. Because Paul let the Holy Spirit search his heart, he did not evaluate or judge himself (1 Cor 3b, 4). The use of the word “judge” in these verses is to investigate, determine, examine. In the past we may have come to conclusions about ourselves by using this form of judgment. But now we are counseled to let the Holy Spirit disclose who we are to ourselves. It is He who searches our hearts and shares His findings with our own spirits , and He judges with true judgment (1 Cor 2:10,11). Though comparisons against other people may seem to be wise, they are from our old way of thinking and not from our walk of power.

In our attempt to judge our progress we must set a standard to compare against. Our old way of thinking tells us that seeing an outward standard of conduct and matching it in our lives will show us progress towards the goal of being like Jesus. Paul addresses this way of thinking when he writes to Christians who see rules and regulations as agents that bring righteousness, or Christ-likeness. However, the rules and regulations can only establish self-righteousness (Col 2:18-23). Even our attempts to conform to humility can backfire, producing a false humility in us. Our own standards can encompass past accomplishments which make a good outward impression and cause us to glory in that part we call the “flesh” (Gal 6:12-13). The glory of the flesh is what Paul calls a “righteousness of my own” (Phil 3:7-9). He states “I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.” If who we see ourselves as, and what we see we’ve accomplished are not as valuable to us as knowing Jesus, then we can have His righteousness, and are joined with Him in His resurrection. So we see that the power that comes with our walk in Jesus comes at that point where we see Him as more important than our self-image. There is no standard high enough that, should we meet it, God would imbue us with His power from on high . . . it comes from dying a death to our own attempts to impress ourselves and others. Our hidden man of the heart contains the progress of God’s kingdom, which should make us more proud than anything that is visibly seen (2 Cor 5:12).

The third area that would cause us to stray from the power of our new Life is found in seeking to improve ourselves. Sometimes we gain confidence in this pursuit by meeting the same standard the world uses. This type of self-improvement is also part of our “flesh” and causes us to boast, or take pride in what we have, and in what we are currently doing (1 Jn 2:16-17). There are basic principles of this world (Col 2:8) that seem to be sound and worth following, yet will not lead us towards knowing Christ. One example is being prosperous. Many have fallen into the trap of thinking that prosperity will be a tool in God’s hand, and through our lives can cause a sinner to take note that God’s child (us) is being blessed. By deductive reasoning, then, the sinner can pursue God to be blessed. Instead of giving the sinner a “taste” of God’s kingdom, the prosperous Christian is giving him a “taste” of the world . . . the very world which the sinner is already a part of. A Christian does not need to be prosperous to show that God is kind to His children. Though prosperity may impress people, we should not strive for riches. Another example is wanting to be established in the community. This is another worldly standard that may cause a Christian to feel confident in himself. To those in the world it would seem that the longer you are living and working in a community, the more stable a person you are. Yet God asks us to consider ourselves as sojourners in this life, considering that our citizenship is in heaven (Phil 3:20). Our establishment in the heavenly kingdom is far more important than how long we’ve lived in a particular community on this earth. If we live and work where the Lords asks us to live and work, we can do not greater thing with our lives. It is by emptying ourselves of all earthly pride that we walk in our New life; the resurrected life found in Jesus.

After freeing ourselves from sin, the love of looking righteous, and the pride of meeting the world’s standards to improve ourselves, we find that the walk of our faith takes on the power of Jesus’ resurrection. Our words are not cloaked with our own wisdom but with the power of God. Our progress in knowing Christ and becoming like Him is a treasure hidden within our hearts, ready for God’s use at any time, for it shows His transcending power. And in seeing the world not as a standard to emulate, but to contrast by our walk in the kingdom, we join the many saints before us who walked powerful lives of faith and are now in the cloud of witnesses. Is not the resurrection power that same power which transforms us, having brought us into the image of Jesus? It is exciting to have this power within, for then we can expect to see it move outward from our lives. Amen.