The Key to the Christian Life - Part 2

Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Monday, August fifth. It takes more than personal effort to live the Christian life. Let's find out about the key to the Christian life as the Life Principles series continues. So, I want you to turn, if you will, to Colossians chapter three. Colossians chapter three, and I want us to read these first seven verses of this chapter. And Paul begins by saying, Therefore, if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory. Therefore, consider the members of your earthly body as dead to what? Immorality, impurity, passion, evil desires, and greed, which amounts to idolatry. For it is because of these things that the wrath of God will come upon the sons of disobedience.

And in them you also once walked when you were living in them. Now, I want you to look at this particular verse. Verse four, listen to this. When Christ who is our life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory.

Now, what in the world does He mean by that? Here is the key to the whole Christian life. The key to living the Christian life is to recognize this.

Watch this carefully. When you trusted Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, He came into your life to dwell and to live in you and through you the life that He's provided and planned for each and every one of us. And if you'll look in Galatians chapter two for a moment, and if you'll notice what Paul says here, and there are many verses, but I just want you to get a few of these down in your thinking. In the second chapter and the twentieth verse, Paul says, I have been crucified with Christ. And he says, And it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. Listen, Christ lives in me.

And 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. What makes you and me different from the unbelieving world is that we have Christ within us, because is it not true that sometimes we act like them? Christians sometimes act like the world. But what makes us different is not how we act, though we should live a godly life, and we can. What makes us different is we possess the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now watch this. Paul says, Jesus is in God, and God is in Jesus. And we are in Jesus, and Jesus is in God. That makes us in God. And God who is in Jesus and Jesus who is in us and God who is in Jesus, you know what?

It's this one awesome relationship. And when a person will think about that and think about it soberly, you, listen, you have God, the Son Jesus, living within you. You remember what he said? He says, When you've seen me, you've seen the Father. I and the Father are one. So that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, but He's also deity. Now remember this. What makes the difference between us and the rest of the world is that Jesus, God, in the person of His Son through the Holy Spirit is living His life in us.

That's what makes us different. Go back to John chapter seventeen for a moment because I want to just show you something else here. John chapter seventeen. This is Jesus' prayer to the Father before He is crucified. And look, if you will, in this twenty-third verse of the prayer. Jesus is praying.

Let's start with twenty-two. The glory which you have given Me, I've given to them, that they may be one, just as we are one. Watch this. I in them and you in Me.

Listen to that. I in them, that is Jesus in us, and He says, God in Christ, you and Me. Verse twenty-six, And I've made your name known to them, and will make it known, so that the love with which you love Me may be in them and I in them. What I want you to see because you say, why do you keep repeating this?

Because here's the key. If I understand that Jesus Christ is living within me moment by moment, every single day of my saved life, that He's living within me, and that the Christian life is in essence Christ Jesus living in me and through me His life. That's what the Christian life's all about. So, what does that say? It says, you know, it's not so much my trying and my this and my that and my effort. It all amounts to allowing the Son of God to live and express His life through us.

If I wake up in the morning, I could do one of two things. I could say, well, what a lot of people say, well, you know, I'm just a sinner saved by grace. And what you're doing is you, by your statement, you are allowing yourself and preparing yourself to live in sin or to at least sin against God. I'm just a sinner saved by grace. What you're saying is, you know, I'm not what I ought to be, but thank God I'm going to be saved.

No, that's not what it's about. You know what you can say? You can wake up in the morning and say, thank God I'm a saint. I'm indwelt by the Son of God. And everything I need for this day is fully prepared because He is in control of my life.

That's what you have the right to say. If I get up in the morning thinking, look, I've got to do this today and I've got to do that, and I have to catch myself once in a while. When I think about it's a very loaded day, I think, oh my goodness, I've got, then I'd say, forgive me, Father. Today, here's what you are going to deal with through me. Here's what you and I have to deal with.

And Lord, it's your life. And because I've surrendered it all to You and given it to You, then it's up to You. Somebody says, well now, that doesn't even sound reasonable. Well, tell me what's reasonable.

Here's what's reasonable. Well, I really, boy, I've got this to do and I've got that to do. And you know, I've said those things, and I'd ask God to forgive me. The Christian life is not about what I have to do. The Christian life, Paul said it's about Christ doing it in us. He came to live His life in and through us.

And you can go verse after verse, and there are many other verses that we could come to. But the question is, just ask the question, why did He come? That is, we know that He came to save us, but He came to do more than that. He came to live His life in and through us because He knew we couldn't do it. So, when we ask the question, why does Jesus, why did He come to live His life in us?

Well, the first one is simply this. He came to live His life in us because He knew we couldn't. That's why He said to His disciples, now look, He said, I'm coming back. He's not talking about His resurrection at that particular moment.

He said, I'm coming back. That is, I'm going to be crucified, I'm going to die, but I'm going to be with you. And here's why He said to them, don't you dare go preaching and teaching and trying to heal anybody until Pentecost. He said, sit down and wait till Pentecost because that's when He came. He came to live His life in us because He knew we couldn't do it. He came to live His life in us because He knew we couldn't do it. He came to live His life in us because He knew we couldn't do it. And so, He came at that time to begin to dwell in the church that is every single believer from that point on who receives Christ as Savior is indwelt by the Holy Spirit because the Spirit of God came, listen, to begin to work in the life of the followers of Jesus in a supernatural way. They weren't ready till then.

They didn't do it. And every one of us, if we are honest, we'd have to admit that since we've been saved, we've blown it, as we would say. We've sinned against Him. We tried. We promised Him. We begged. We said this.

We said that. In spite of that weak moments, we did it again. You promise and I promise you, God, just forgive me one more time. I promise you Jesus is what I'm going to do. And you know what?

What does He do? He forgives and knowing that we're going to do it again. I think about how gracious God is to recognize how ignorant most people are of the truth.

And they struggle and they struggle and they struggle. It isn't God's judgment. It's God's patience and love for us and forgiveness because He wants us to know the truth. That what the Christian life is all about, it's not all about me. And when people usually talk about, say, I this and I that and I, I, I, it's all about Jesus and wants to understand that it's about Him and that it's His life. Once I can just grasp, it is Jesus Christ living His life in and through me. That's what it's about.

Now, why? Number one, simply because He knows we can't live without Him. Number two, this is the way He gets His work done.

Jesus gets His work done on earth by living in and through people like yourself and myself. We're not perfect. We'll never be perfect. We'll make mistakes. We'll sin at times in our life. We ask Him to forgive us and to cleanse us and we keep going and what happens?

Paul never claimed to be perfect. He just says, Look, I have fought the fight. I've finished the course and now the reward's coming. We all have to say that. We all have to say we've fought the fight at times in life and there have been difficulties and hardships, but the key is who's doing the fighting? If we do the fighting and we struggle with life in our own effort and abilities and talents and skills and wisdom and knowledge and understanding and ignorance, what happens?

No wonder people got high blood pressure and this, that and the other and can hardly make it in life. What I want you to see is, and I've said it again and again and again, He is your life. Because before you were born again, you didn't have any life.

You were a walking dead man, a walking dead woman, spiritually disconnected from God. No relationship whatsoever. One of the reasons Jesus Christ came to live His life in us is not only to do the things we've just said, but also, listen, to do what He desires above everything else, to have an intimate, personal relationship with us. The Christian life is not about doing things. The Christian life is about a personal, intimate relationship. For example, what is marriage about? Is marriage about having a house together, sleeping together? What's marriage about? It's about a relationship. And now listen, and the more intimate and loving that relationship, the more satisfying everything is about those two people's lives. Why do you get married?

Why should you marry someone? Because you love them and because you want to have an intimate relationship with them. I'm not talking about sex, that's part of it. But genuine intimacy does not stop with flesh.

It stops in the innermost being of a person's heart. What is it that Jesus wants? He wants a relationship. And remember this, He doesn't need us. He didn't have to create us. Why did He create us? We could think of a thousand things, but the primary reason that God created you and me is because He wanted an intimate relationship with His created beings. Upon whom He could just lavish His love and goodness and kindness and forgiveness.

And at the same time, from whom He could receive love and obedience and loyalty and faithfulness. It's all about that relationship. It is the most important thing in anybody's life in the world. It's the most important thing. A personal, intimate relationship with God through His Son Jesus. And in order for that to be true, Jesus must be living within us so that we can have a relationship with God. Remember, God is in Christ, Christ is in God, they're in us. That's what it's all about. The things that we do are something else. It's all about relationship. You can't live the Christian life in your own energy and strength and wisdom and power.

You can't do it. Listen, He equips us by coming to live His life in us every single day of our life. And all the awesome, wonderful things that happen as a result. It equips us for difficult times, hard times.

He's, what did He say? I will never leave you nor forsake you. Well, listen, think about this. You see, if you think about it, all of a sudden it gets clear.

We quote that verse, I will never leave you nor forsake you. Well, where is He? Well, you see the Father's right hand. Well, now, wait a minute.

Hold it. How is He with me if He's up there? Because He is living within us. Listen, the reason He's never going to leave you, because listen, He set up housekeeping in your life and mine the moment we trusted Him as our Savior, so to speak. He's there for keeps.

He's there forever. And the reason you cannot be saved and be lost is because, listen, let me ask you a question. If He's living inside of us, who can take Him out? If God is on the inside of you, who can pull Him out?

Nobody. If you are truly saved, your life, you have a new life. And that life is in Christ. And once you have Him, you have everything. Because everything worthwhile comes in that intimate relationship.

The key to living the Christian life is allowing Jesus to live His life in and through you. You say, well, okay now, wait a minute, I think I got that. But so, what do I do? What steps do I take? Well, I think steps are always important because if I just left you there, you'd say, well, now what?

To make it very simple, several things. I've got to admit my failure. I've tried and tried and tried, tried and tried to live a Christian life. Can't do it very well. So, admit my failure.

That's number one. Number two, I confess my inadequacy. Not only have I failed at it, but Lord, I've tried and tried so I don't know what to do at this point.

I don't know how to do this. And number three, I've got to believe that Jesus will not only live His life in and through me, but that He is sufficient, being God, to meet every need I have, give me wisdom in every decision, give me guidance, give me strength. In other words, He is the sum total of everything I need in life because He is. Then I must be willing to abandon my life to Him. If I want Jesus Christ to live His life in me, then I've got to let Him do it. And that means I have to say to Him, Lord Jesus, I tried, I failed, but beginning today, Lord, I want You to live Your life in me. And I'm just washing my hands. Now watch this before you sit there and think, yeah, you can't do that.

And watch this. I'm washing my hands of depending on my efforts and my power and my strength and my knowledge and my this and my that and my the other. And I'm just saying, Lord Jesus, because You are living Your life in me, beginning right now, I confess it to be true. And I surrender to Your will. I want You to have Your way in my life. And I yield myself at this moment for You to live through me Your life. Now you say, well, is that just a one-time thing?

Nope. Because you see, remember what we said? We had two problems. We live in a world full of rebellion and the devil and all the rest. Secondly, we have this tug in us. It's in every single person. It's the flesh. Some people call it the old sin nature, but it's there. Whatever you want to call it. And so there are times when we may yield.

What do we do? We confess it, repent of it right there and say, Lord Jesus, forgive me. I want You to live Your life through me. It is a continuous reminder of who's on the inside. And who is willing and able to live through us the most awesome life imaginable. It all boils down to this. Who's going to run your life? You or Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit who lives within you.

Who's going to run your life? If you're wise, you will let the Son of God who indwells you in the person of the Holy Spirit, you will allow Him to make your decisions, direct your life. All the things that you face in life, let Him give you guidance and direction, because that will be life at its very, very best. I'll say again, it doesn't mean you're not going to have any problems, heartaches, and burdens. But listen, it's one thing to struggle through life on your own, it's something else to walk through life in the power of the living God who lives within you.

And that is His promise. When Christ who is our life appears, we live here with Him. If you're not a Christian, let me just say this to you. You may not have liked what I said about where you are in your relationship to Him, but I just told you the truth.

I'm telling you the truth because I want to see your life changed, because I want the best for you. And I know that He is the very best. And it is my prayer at this very moment, whether you're seated here or whether you're seated somewhere else, that you would be willing to confess your sins to the Lord Jesus Christ, asking Him to forgive you and to cleanse you. And tell Him that today, right now, wherever you are, I'm accepting Jesus Christ's death at Calvary as payment for my sin.

I'm confessing, I repent of it. I receive you as my personal Savior, Lord and Master. And Lord Jesus, I want you truly to live your life through me. And I'm going to trust You to enable me to do it.

And He will. Most of all, the important thing this morning is this, that you heard the truth. Jesus is your life. It isn't your struggle.

Here's what it is. It's your bowing before Him, trusting in Him, resting in Him, relying upon Him, and watching Him do His awesome work in your life. Amen. Father, how grateful we are. Now would You do Your work in all of us in Jesus's name. Amen. Thank you for listening to The Key to the Christian Life. If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or In Touch Ministries, stop by intouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.