GRACE at work IN YOU
It’s impossible to fully understand all that grace entails when you first come to Jesus. “Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ” (Jn 1:17). Grace replaced the law. But we can begin to grasp the whole concept, the same as a child TRUSTS in the love of a parent.
In other words, when you FULLY accept the price that was paid at the cross for you, it makes it easy to understand grace. For as long as you think you must do something to receive His goodness, you step out of grace; because grace is free. It’s a gift. It’s an exchange of your sin-nature for the greatest inheritance ever given to man. He took the punishment that you deserve and gave you the inheritance that He deserves. That’s HUGE…
But once you receive it and accept that Christ lives in you, you can let Him live through you. Paul got it right. He said “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal 2:20).
It is Christ living through us that is the secret of Christianity. Jesus explained in John 15 that unless we abide in Him and He in us, we can’t bear any fruit. It is not us living for Jesus, but Jesus living through us.
If we don’t get that right, we’ll easily fall into “performance” Christianity. –trying to please God through our service. I’ve been guilty of that for many years as a Christian. You end up working so hard for Christ that you neglect Him and your time with Him.
And there are so many side effects to that law-based mentality; you’re constantly comparing yourself with others, You’re slowed down by your failures and mistakes of the past, because they become part of your performance, or lack thereof. And worst, you live in pride, constantly trying to make yourself look good before the Lord and before others.
It becomes a form of paying Jesus back for what He’s done for us; as if what He paid for on the Cross was not enough. That’s WRONG. It becomes worship through works. It focuses on what we must do, and that puts us under law; trying to be good (enough) to win God’s favor.
Living in Grace is focusing on what Christ has done, accepting that it is all done. It’s fully trusting; entering into that rest. Only then can we avail ourselves of the supernatural strength of His grace. It’s a total switch in identity. You’re dead, and He lives.
The only way to do this is to die to ourselves. Jesus said, “if any man will come after me, let him first deny himself”. He’s basically saying “you can’t live out my teachings unless you die to yourself.
You have to let Jesus live through you. He must be the one. You can’t do it in your own effort or in your human strength. The only way to be empowered enough to be like Jesus and do the works of Jesus is to let Jesus live through us. “And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness” (Rom 8:10).
“But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing POWER is from God and not from us” (2 Cor 4:7)
“God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27).
By Paul Joseph