Where Is The Life?

Most people’s understanding of Christianity is comprised of trusting Christ as their Savior, having their sins forgiven, and then dying and going to heaven. But in between, it gets pretty desperate. They have lots of questions which boil down to one: Where is the life, the abundant life Jesus promised?

Yes, I think we have all asked this same question, “Where is the life?” Yes, I received Christ, but isn’t there more than what I am experiencing? Where is true Christian life?

I believe that I truly accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior and Lord very early in life. My life completely changed from the inside, a new person now lived in me. I didn’t know it yet, but I just knew that I was a “Christian”.

As a new Christian, I began to investigate what I believed, what I stood for and how to conduct my life properly. It was exciting at first knowing that my sins were forgiven, but I tended to rely on externals for the basis of my life – my family, my friends, my church, my performance within the church. The truth is that having our sins forgiven doesn’t tell us a thing about how to live the life. It is almost as if we were told: “Now you are saved through the cross of Christ. Now go to work and do the things that will keep that salvation secure, and GOOD LUCK! Jesus will see you when you die, and it will be wonderful over there. Go out there and try as hard as you can!”

I found that I had become like the rich young man who spoke to Jesus in the Bible; I did the best I could to keep the Golden Rule, the Commandments and the church rules. Now, where is the Life? There has to be something else, something more!

Then something wonderful happened; I discovered that I was never meant to live the Christian life. This was never God’s intention for me. I received the understanding that Christ IS the life and He will live His Life through me.

After all the years of trying on my own, I had become convinced that I couldn’t live the Christian life, not the way the Bible described it. But now I had a revelation that Christ lived in me from the moment that I accepted Him (Galatians 2:20) and that I was going to let Him do His thing in me – not perfectly because I have a weak humanity, but growing daily in trusting Him to live the Life. I was like Paul when he said, “But when it pleased God, to reveal His Son in me…” (Gal. 1:15-16).

For the first time at about forty years of age, I came to know that He had already made me the righteousness of God in Christ (2 Cor. 5:21). Because of Christ within, I was truly righteousness. He had made me holy (Col. 3:12). He had made me complete (Col. 2:10). I was blameless in God’s sight (Col. 1:22). I was loved and accepted forever because I was joined in a living union with the Son of God.

Galatians 2:20 had told me that I died to myself, as my point of reference. Now He, living in me, was my point of reference. Has He revealed that to you? If He hasn’t, He wants to because that is the real good news of the gospel!

1 John 4:15 states, “Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God…” There is a comma, then the verse continues, “…God dwells in him and he in God.” Well, I experienced the first half of that verse in the late 1930’s, but I didn’t EXPERIENCE the second half until 1975. Christ was forever within me but I hadn’t had the revelation of it yet. All along, the life of Jesus had been resident in me, and I did not know it.

The New Testament truth of Christ in the believer is foreshadowed in the Old Testament. In Exodus 12, God told the Hebrews to set apart a lamb from the flock, kill it and smear the blood on the doorposts of their dwellings. Then the household would be spared the death of the firstborn inside. Claiming and using the blood was all it took.

The lamb died for the household. In the New Testament, this is Christ dying for us. When, by faith, we apply Christ’s blood (His death) to our lives, we are spared the wrath of God upon us.

The second half of the sacrifice of the lamb was that God instructed the Hebrews to roast the sacrificial lamb, and EAT IT as nourishment for their upcoming journey. They were to take the lamb into their very being as life. In other words, everything necessary for the journey, living the life, comes from the lamb. It isn’t that the lamb dies for you and then you’re sent out to do the rest of your own. The lamb is the total answer. The lamb gave its blood for them, and also gave its LIFE to them. They took the meat into them, and that became their nourishment, strength and vitality for the journey. They lived their life’s journey out of the lamb’s life. They killed the lamb for two purposes: for the Passover and for the journey.

Unless they put the lamb’s life in them, they would be operating out of their own strength, out of whatever strength they had gained in captivity.

This whole ritual was a foreshadowing of God saying to us, “Only I can live My Life. But I will impart the Life to you. I will give you the Life of Christ the Son and He will live it in you and through you.”

We are saved and recreated not only by Christ’s death, but there is an ongoing daily process of nourishment for the journey by His Life.

The Blood of the Lamb saved us when we accepted Him, an instantaneous event.

The Life of the Lamb in us is our WHOLE strength for our journey of life. It is as the human Jesus said, “For as the Father has Life in Himself, so He has given to the Son to have Life in Himself…I can of my own self do nothing…because I don’t seek my own will but the will of the Father…” John 5:26,30).

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