Do You "Look" Like a Christian?

A friend recently asked, “Why is it many non-Christians seem to have more of the fruit of the Spirit than many Christians do?”

Of course, tremendous change has been wrought in countless lives through the gospel. How many have been brought back from the brink of suicide because they heard the good news of forgiveness and peace with God through Christ? Who can number the ailing marriages which have been saved from total breakdown?

What about the hardened criminals whose lives have been turned into productive channels? Or the prostitutes and drug addicts who have found a new lease on life?

And yet, it is true that millions of Christians do not know the fulfilled life that Jesus promised – the “abundant life which He said we could experience right here and now.

In my own life, I have found myself many times being forced to face the inescapable conclusion that I am nothing but a weak individual when it comes to living up to the standard of Christ. I have been in situations over and over again in which God has absolutely nailed down my weakness, demonstrating beyond a shadow of doubt that I am no stronger today than when I first believed!

“But surely I’ve changed over many years as a Christian?” you ask. No, you haven’t changed. What you DO might have changed, but you are the same clay pot that first came to the foot of the cross to be cleansed. You are just as weak, just as incapable of living up to the life of Christ as you ever were.

Of course, if you don’t yet know that, then you will have to keep struggling and falling down until you finally see that you are able to do precisely nothing toward living the life of Christ. If Jesus Christ Himself was so weak in His own power that He could do precisely nothing in His own strength (see John 5:30), where does that leave you? Some see it through the ordinary failures of daily life. Others, especially those with strong natural talents, have to be broken in pieces before they will confess that they can’t do anything to help themselves be like Christ.

In my own case, I went through years of dedicated living before I came to the end of myself. I faithfully attended church, I gave generously of my assets, I studied the Word of God praying and meditating about it.

And don’t tell me that I did it out of fear or a sense of duty. I did it because of a sincere desire to really know God’s power in my life, as have many of you reading this article. I sought to draw near to God so that He might draw near to me.

But at the end of it all, I finally had to admit that I was just as weak and unable to do the will of God as when I began! I was frankly no better! I had only learned to act a little differently.

Jesus talked about a man drinking from Him and NEVER thirsting again. Again, Jesus described Himself as the “bread of life” and assured the disciples that if they would once eat of this bread, they would NEVER hunger again. Jesus was clearly saying that no daily routine of drawing additional spiritual water from the wells or additional spiritual food from the pantry would be necessary.

This sounds so opposite to what we have all been taught and practiced for years – work harder to improve yourself.

Here then is an enigma. Jesus confessed that He could do nothing. He was unable to contribute a single thing toward the fulfillment of God’s will in His life. Yet at the same time, He manifested the life of God totally.

Further, He said that we would be able to do even greater works than He did, and that we too could know the totally fulfilled, abundant life which He knew.

How can we do NOTHING and yet do EVERYTHING?

It all has to do with our composition just as it all had to do with Jesus’ composition. Jesus was a man with a human spirit, soul and body just as we have. He had the intellect, emotions and will of the soul-mind and the temptations of the body just the same as we have. So far, Jesus and us are exactly alike.

But our actions are a far cry from what Jesus of Nazareth accomplished. Where is the difference? It is in the human spirit and its function.

Jesus was born as the first New Man or new species of man with God the Father joined to His human spirit in an eternal living union. And since your human spirit is WHO you really are and what your real nature is, Jesus said that when they had seen Him, they had seen the Father. He had the “divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4).

Jesus was born this way because He was the Perfect First New Man. And as a demonstration of perfection, He always joined His soul-mind to the will of the Father joined to His human spirit. Jesus knew all about the weakness of the human soul and body – “of My own self I can do nothing!” But in spite of this weakness, He lived a perfect life of submission to the Father.

Now what about your composition and my composition? As I said, soul-mind and body exactly the same as Jesus of Nazareth.

But we are born into the world with an entirely different human spirit. Our human spirit does not have the eternal union with the Father as did Jesus. Far from it. Our human spirit at birth contains the independent nature of Satan (John 8:44) symbolized by the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil”.

Paul speaks of us continually as an “inner man” and an “outer man.” The inner man of spirit manifests himself through an outer soul and body. What we ARE is the inner man of spirit. Yet it is the outer man that is visible to the world, and so we think of people in terms of what they look like and what they say and do. The Scripture tells us, however, to look through the outer man and judge rightly, instead of by external appearances.

At conversion and new birth, Satan’s nature is ejected and can no longer be joined to our spirit. The union of our spirit with his is broken. This union is called in biblical parlance “the old man.”

God now places within us the resurrected Christ in a new Spirit to spirit union. We are now children of God instead of children of the wicked one. We have become “partakers of the divine nature,” because He now indwells us and expresses His nature through us.

OK – what have we here. Jesus of Nazareth had the Father indwelling Him, and we have the resurrected Christ indwelling us. Jesus was the model perfect man and always mirrored in His soul and body what was in His spirit.

BUT WE DON’T! The purpose of this life on earth for a born again Christian is to grow in understanding of who we are in union with Christ, and learn to more and more each day mirror the nature of Christ within our human spirit out through our soul and body.

This begins to answer the question we started with, as to why we don’t see more of the fruit of the Spirit in our lives, and why it is that many unconverted people can appear more loving, more fulfilled, more at peace with one another.

Although the unconverted person’s spirit is “deceitful above all things and desperately wicked,” so that out of it can flow all kinds of evil such as “fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries”, and so on, the external man does not manifest the whole of what is in his spirit.

Back to that tree of “the knowledge of good and evil” – not just evil but also good! Jesus Himself said that we “being evil, know how to give good gifts.”

The nature of Satan expressed through the human vehicle is principally SELF. When it benefits us to do good, we will do good; when evil is to our advantage, we do evil. As long as the kingdom of SELF is advanced, Satan is delighted. So evil manifestations predominate in some, and good manifestations predominate in others, according to the circumstances of upbringing, environment, etc., and whatever is going to help SELF in those circumstances.

But the new man is also veiled in flesh. We have been made totally new within (2 Cor. 5:17). The union of old man nature ended at conversion, when we became identified with the crucified body of Christ. The old man is crucified, dead and buried, as pictured in baptism, and “old things are passed away.”

Yet it takes time for this new man to burst forth into manifestation at the level of soul and body. So we may appear the same externally, even though the new life is actual and not just “positional” as some falsely assert. There has been a real permanent change of nature.

This brings us to the experience of Paul in Romans 7. With our mind, we no longer really want to sin. We may be temporarily diverted through fleshly pulls, but at our core we now seek to fulfill the will of God.

And this is the paradox that most Christians eventually find themselves in. They desire to live the Christian life, but they find that they can’t do it! And it is meant to be this way. Rather than all pretending, we would do far better to be open and honest about these things. God wants us to be real. But that’s very difficult around super-spiritual brothers and sisters who would be shocked if we really “let it all hang out.” Instead, we go about trying to do what we are supposed to do, and the process of really coming to grips with the problem is delayed.

God wants us to cry out as Paul did, “Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?” He is waiting for that moment of honesty when finally we face up to the fact that we can’t live the Christian life.

Are we bound to continue in this frustrated situation for the rest of our time on earth? Thank God, no! When we see that we can’t, God reveals that CHRIST CAN. When we finally quit trying to keep His law and to do His will in our own strength, we discover that His purpose is “that the requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.”

It has to be this way, or we would have room to boast of our own contribution to our spiritual growth (1 Cor. 1:30-31).

Christ in us is our only hope of glory (Colossians 1:27), a glory that Jesus said He gives us NOW, in this life (John 17:22).

But the first rung of the ladder is to understand the reality of your union with Christ and to refuse to take any condemnation from yourself or from others for that weak soul and body. You quit fussing and worrying about the spiritual condition of your soul and trust that your real life (Christ in union with your spirit) will in God’s due time burst out into manifestation.

I never need to thirst, never need to feel dry, never need to hunger, again. The supply is endless because it is not some “thing” – not love, or joy, or peace as commodities that I ask Him to give Me – but it is He living through me as I trust and appropriate Him to do it.

From experience, I have seen that God rarely rushes the manifestation of righteousness in our lives. He does His work thoroughly. He makes sure we are “settled” in each step of the way. He rubs our noses in our failure before He shows us that there is another way. Then He allows the temporary diversions of the flesh to continue so that we can really become established in refusing condemnation.

Perhaps this thing of not taking condemnation is what roots us in the faith life above all else. In the face of great foolishness, we have to instantly refuse to feel condemned! We are bold in going right on, with only that simple recognition God asks of us, admitting that we acted foolishly.

Remember that God isn’t as interested in preventing us from committing individual sins as He is in seeing us fixed in the faith life once and for all. The flesh has not been redeemed, and Satan can still get at us there. We may temporarily falsely see ourselves as separate selves and forget that we are in union, thereby being caught out by temptation. But as we function in faith, seeing ourselves as the new man and not regarding the flesh as of any consequence, the life of Christ will even deliver us from the foolish diversion we take into this false separation thinking.

When God’s children don’t manifest the fruit of the Spirit, it isn’t that they are deliberately disobedient. They want to, but they can’t. So preaching obedience, and then preaching repentance because they fail, will never produce fruit. It is the deadlock of Romans 7. Seeing the standard isn’t the problem. We don’t need to be continually reminded that we are to live a certain way. It’s being able to do it that is the problem. And that’s the way God intends it to be, because it will never be us but Him!

There is an obedience in the new covenant. But it is not of works. It is “the obedience of faith.” It means that we affirm that what God says of us is true, against all feelings. And that will call forth the manifestation as “fruit.” We will desire to do right, be inclined to do right – and Christ in us will CAUSE us to walk quite naturally.

Do you know the difference between “fruit’ and “works”? Fruit is produced because of what a tree IS. It is the natural product of the tree. Works are like hanging apples on an oak tree. It may for a while look like an apple tree, but the fruit will soon rot and there will be no lasting crop. It may look as though the tree is producing fruit for a time, but in the final analysis it will be shown for what it is.

On the other hand, a young apple tree may have no apples on it. But because it doesn’t have apples, you don’t say that it isn’t an apple tree. You say that it IS an apple tree, despite the fact that there is no fruit. You affirm that it is what it claims to be, and you know that in due season that fruit will appear.

For a while, the one who walks by faith may look bad, even worse than many in the world. But as we are real, the true life within will manifest itself without our stewing over it and trying to make it happen in our own strength. And it is the only lasting, safe way for fruit to be produced in us. It puts Christ where He belongs – AS THE PRODUCER.

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