Christian, How Do You See Yourself And Others? As New In Christ?

“. . . if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” (2 Cor 5:17)

My friend, if you have been a Christian for any length of time, you are likely familiar with this verse. In my experience, it is used to emphasize a position that through Jesus Christ, God has changed “your” life, and that His work to bring forward the newness of this life in “you” is ongoing. As a result, this truth should encourage you, and you should become more Christ-like over time. I have heard this verse applied as a reason for giving Christians some sense of hope that the condition of their lives will not stay as currently known—short on affection for God; characterized by unholy thoughts, attitudes and actions; hostage to mixed and tumultuous emotions; shallow faith; uncertainty; doubt; unfulfilled expectations—and it is used to direct Christians to believe that at some point they will eventually reach a level of Christian development or a form of discernable Christian maturity matching a notion of godly design and Christ-likeness. But, I ask you, step back from this customary interpretation (whether valid or not) and consider something different. Perhaps the apostle Paul is driving at something apart from the typical explanation, something where “you” or where “self” is not the primary object. To explore an alternate meaning, let us add the preceding verse.

“. . . from now on, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” (2 Cor 5:16-17)

I find it interesting, first off, that when we join verse 16 to 17 the focus immediately comes off “us” or “self.” We are, in turn, actually told to see “others” and to see “Christ,” not ourselves; although, by extension, we could see ourselves, but we would only be permitted to see ourselves as “not according to the flesh.” What does this mean? It means that as Christians our life (its nature) and our relationships have fundamentally changed. It also means our method of knowing, interpreting and understanding life, has fundamentally changed. We now have a foundational and fixed contrast between “according to the flesh” and “in Christ.” We also see a second contrast which is between (a) Knowing according to the Flesh and (b) Knowing thus No Longer (which permits a new or a replacement Knowing, a (c) Knowing according to Christ, or a (d) Knowing according to the New Creation—the New Life).

The essence of the contrasts which we are here designating and discussing are the two categories of Being and of Knowing. We do this and make these divisions within a biblical framework. A person is either in Christ or not. One is either a new creation or not. We are addressing here the nature of one’s existence, one’s being. Similarly, either someone understands and interprets life according to the flesh or not. One knows and understands according to the new creation, according to new things or not. So, if one is in Christ, and is therefore a new creation, this person (we would expect) knows, understands and interprets not according to the flesh but according to Christ, according to the new creation. As Christians, it seems reasonable that someone should have an awareness of their being in Christ. It seems there should also be an understanding of their knowing about life according to Christ. Jesus Christ is both the ground of our existence and the basis for our understanding that existence or life; the life of our existence in Him, and the lives all others who also anchor their existence in Him. Our life is rooted in Christ. The understanding of our life is also rooted in Him.

If we carry the notions implied in verse 16 into verse 17, we may understand Paul as saying: “Now that I am (and, as all Christians are) truly living, and only living, in Christ, I should not regard any Christian I think of or encounter (including myself) through a lens that is primarily defined by or framed according to the characteristics of the flesh (a), just as I do not relate to or accurately understand Jesus Christ according to the flesh; that is, only from the perspective of his earthly existence. Jesus was resurrected. He is the firstborn from the dead. He redeemed. He is of Heaven. He is the God-Man. As Christians, we should relate to ourselves and any other Christian from our foundational identity in Christ Jesus and according to their identity in Christ Jesus; from the characteristics and principles of the new nature, and according to our mutual participation in that new nature (b-d). We should understand, first, that any true Christian is a new creation, and that any individual Christian, or any group of Christians, continually experiences old things passing away and things of the new creation emerging in their heart, mind, and relationships. (Do you, dear Christian, ever wonder if this could really be true and possible?) I should, as a Christian, realize that this new identity for me and others continues its presence and manifestation in every Christian’s life for the remainder of their life. (But, what if at times I am unable to discern this? Would it still be true?) Regardless of what age or stage of life we as Christians encounter, if we are Christians, we are in Christ, we are of the new creation, and we continue not knowing according to the flesh but knowing according to Christ.” Be advised, though, not all have this understanding.

Friend, much more could be said, but I leave further contemplation of seeing and relating to yourself and other Christians from “in Christ” and the “new creation,” and not “according to the flesh,” to your personal initiative. I must make a second point. It concerns Christian liberty in relationships.

“So then each of us shall give account of himself to God. Therefore let us not judge one another anymore, but rather resolve this, not to put a stumbling block or a cause to fall in our brother’s way . . . for the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. For he who serves Christ in these things is acceptable to God and approved by men. Therefore, let us pursue the things which make for peace and the things by which one may edify another.” (Ro 14:12-13, 17-19)

Do you sense the high road of heavenly relationships described by these verses? If these verses were a map of Christian relationship, where would you spot yourself? If we join the relational frame and understanding of 2 Corinthians 5:16-17 to the instruction of these passages, a larger relational picture for the Body of Christ develops. It is one of Christian liberty: the environment and the principle by which Christians relate to one another. It assumes that each Christian stands (knowingly) as an individual before God at all times, and that God alone is our judge. If true, you are not my judge, in the sense that you ultimately define and rule my life. I am not your judge. You are not, foundationally, accountable to me. There is Another. We both live before and unto God. He is our Creator and our Redeemer. This high and divine notion of “living in God’s presence continually” ought to be something we acknowledge and resign ourselves to at this moment and going forward. Instead of an atmosphere of dread, it is a position of comfort. But, not all have this understanding.

What you and I, my friend, are to be toward one another, as those in Christ and according to the new creation, are people who demonstrate godly wisdom accompanied by liberty and the fruitful manifestation of the Holy Spirit in our relationships. We are to live and express the new life in Christ, which we each should have evidence of and know ourselves, toward one another. You may notice that if I relate to you according to what I see you doing or not doing—eating and drinking, etc.—I am judging your life. This would be my lens for understanding you; but, if we are both in Christ, would I not, in fact, be misunderstanding you? If I relate to you according to what God by His Spirit is doing in me—righteousness, peace, Holy Spirit joy, liberty—I am excluding fleshly judgment and bringing His life to your life. By extension, you, as a Christian, would be doing the same toward me. Life into life; liberty and, I say, love. The new life and heavenly realities are the foundation for our lives here and also the basis for our understanding our lives now. This, I believe, is the kingdom way. Not judging according to the flesh. Both living and judging, or interpreting relationships, by the flesh, have been done away with by Jesus Christ. We no longer know, understand or experience, Him that way. Why would we ever persist in relating to those “in Christ” with us that way? Again, I say, not all have this understanding.

Imagine, if you will, what your closest Christian relationships would look like if sketched by the understanding above which stems from being “in Christ” and living according to the “new creation.” Christ: our Ground for life and our Basis for understanding our life. What could your Christian small group relationships look like and those of your church congregation? What would you see, envision, hear? What would people be doing, saying in private conversations before or after church? How would they look at each other? What would people’s goals, desires and passions be toward and what would they be doing with their time? How would you see others, and who would you be to others? What sort of relational dynamics would follow? Would you edify and be edified?

May God by His Spirit and word, by His people, instruct us and lead us.

Carl

Crisis of Faith and Christian Despair—Pathway to Life.

“This is a faithful saying” (2 Timothy 2:11-13)

“For if we died with Him, we shall also live with Him.
If we endure, we shall also reign with Him.
If we deny Him, He also will deny us.
If we are faithless, He remains faithful; He cannot deny Himself.”

Greetings friend.

Reading the verses above feels to me like I am descending the ladder of faith, traveling from the heights of assurance and Christian victory into the hellish pits of despair. If this view is permissible, what happens when I arrive there? Go with me, and see.

I wonder how often we truly ponder our relationship with God, with Jesus Christ? Frequently? Rarely? I find value in such questioning, but do you? How about others you know? Is such enterprise a waste of time and the strain on one’s soul unwarranted? Such an effort may lead one to despair! Well, perhaps it should. But, doing so may also lead one to a greater understanding of what those relationships actually mean. We may learn things about our life with God and Jesus Christ that we’ve not understood before; things which strangely strengthen and encourage us, even though the venture costs us dearly. Perfect love casts out fear.

Read again those few verses above and locate the part that best describes your current relationship with Jesus. Circle it, or write it down. Read them again and now identify the part that you least want to have describe your relationship with Him. Note it. For some, perhaps they are the same.

The first line, “For if we died with Him, we shall also live with Him,” might describe the entry way into life with God through Christ, and so it conveys to us a great hope! Here are found the basics of the gospel, and many a Christian lives secure in themselves and Christ right here and advances no farther in Christian understanding or the fullness and substance of the Christian life. Forgiveness through Christ and everlasting life with God because of Christ are the extent of it. Really? Must there not be more? What if the living with Him actually describes that which is the reminder of our earthly lives after conversion but before Heaven? “Having died with Him, I live with Him.” If this second view is a possibility, then a Christian would by necessity move on to the second line. People defined by the first interpretation will be motivated to stay secure on line one. Their Christianity has no depth. Therefore, they cannot descend.

“If we endure, we shall also reign with Him.” If this verse pertains to the Christian life (and this seems the correct view, given how Paul describes his situation in chapter 1), the word “endure” is appropriately chosen. Do you and I have what it takes to successfully and triumphantly live the Christian life all the way to the end? Must we not honestly evaluate our lives with God, with Christ, so that we know? Or, is guessing and assuming sufficient? Friend, how does it go with you? Tell me, by what rule do you gage your life? Life is hard. The Christian life is hard. To live it, one must press into it continually or it will cease and darkness may return as one’s way. If you do not endure, then would you (by default) live as a non-Christian? Or, is failing to endure simply part of the Christian journey? Troubling, is it?

The secret to living the life with endurance stems from what is positioned at the end of the previous line: living with Him. “Having died,” if you do not “live with Him,” you cannot endure. If you do not live with Him, you have no life; for “you died” (or so you claim). Your life now can only be “in Him.” The two states (dead, but alive) are different sides of a single reality. He endured. You can endure. He reigns. You too can reign. But first, you must endure. Do not try this by your own strength. Abandon any thought of it. For you will not succeed. Having died with Him, to live, you can now only live through His life. Because He lives, you live. How often we forget that we have died with Him. Imagine, in those times, how difficult it would be to resurrect that which died, to try and have what we believe and remember was life to us return. This cannot be done. Jesus is also the resurrection. He is the life. We must live with and by Him. Only then will we endure. Only then will we reign.

Dear reader, we have taken some downward steps. Do you see yourself somewhere along the way thus far described? Do you live with Him? Do you endure? Come. We must quickly press on while thoughtfully engaged.

Next, we enter the treacherous waters of Christian hardship where the rocks of denial abound: denial of Jesus Christ. Why would that come now? We just spoke of enduring and the glory of reigning with Him! Far be it from any of us to ever deny our Lord! “I am a Christian!” Perhaps, but, my friend, do we not all in some way deny our Lord? Did He not stand alone at trial? Was it not Jesus, and then set against Him was all the world? Perhaps, when reading on, the more challenging issue is “How does Christ deny us upon our denying Him?”

It would seem at this point torrents of fear wash us away and dash us upon the rocks! The One I trust for my salvation; the One I call my Lord . . . is this truly His way toward me? Could I carry the weight of such awareness, if true!? Questions and insecurities would overwhelm me like high flood waters washing away everything in its path! Is this denial for eternity? Is there any repentance and forgiveness to bring repair!? Even if only affecting temporary fellowship! Could I but have some hints to discern some break in intimacy with God (such as are contained in the warnings to the churches in Revelation 1-3), then I might understand the dangers and repent!

My friend, I have difficulty enough engaging this challenge for myself, and while I may never fully understand the correct meaning of the conditional “IF I deny, THEN He denies,” it provides an excess of opportunity for me to prayerfully examine my life with God and for God to lead me and guide me into truth, repentance and further into life with Him. Perhaps the inquiry itself is what God desires most, because through the inquiry He’ll reveal answers to us individually. But, we are not done yet. The raging torrents have captured us in their swift, rocks we meet, but down we must go. There is an answer, an end, and it is down.

If denial is not the bottom, to where must we descend? The floor which we seek is Faithlessness. Oh, the shunned description for any Christian! Faithlessness! It awaits us further down; down in the darkened dregs and depths of crisis and despair. Can you ever see yourself, dear Christian, as faithless!? Are you above that!? Who would lay the charge? Early on in your Christian venture, bold in faith, triumphing over Satan, sin and the world, could you have ever imagined yourself sometime later identified as “faithless?” Living with joy the glories of the Christian life, and secure in the articulation of transcendent platitudes, unhindered, beyond enduring! “Sure, I’ll reign with Christ! Never could I deny Him!”

Then what happens? Life changes. You change. Things are different. You are not who you thought yourself to be, and you now inescapably know this to be fact. The shell of your Christian life has cracked and it falls away. Your light seems to turn to darkness. Your joy turns to sadness. Your victory turns to defeat and ruin. Have you denied Him? Worse yet, has He denied you!? And is what you are now experiencing the effect of that denial: life separated from God, alone, left to see and to live with yourself? Is that how you would describe what you feel? Is God gone? You stand exposed in fear and humility, unsure of which way to step, for all is darkness. Motionless, truly exposed for what you are: broken and needy for that which only Jesus Christ can provide. What now? You are with yourself, and you begin to think, and you wonder, “Is there some relationship between denial and faithlessness (unbelief) that I must see and must understand that will explain, that will show, that will direct?”

My friend, at this point of examination, self-reflection, and self-exhaustion, you must go the final step. It is required. God has ordained it. You, as a Christian, must know—understand with the mind, but also sense or experience in the fullness of what makes you human; thoughts, feelings, emotions, etc.—that you are and will be faithless, but that Jesus Christ will not be faithless! It is at this point when one can see something a bit differently. “Jesus is truly Savior.” He remains faithful, and you and I (from our state of self-exhaustion) must see Him as such to appreciate and value Him as our Savior! If you do not go to and stand at this point of crisis of faith and Christian despair, you will—or, you may very well—secretly rely upon your own strength to save, your own merit, your own glory, and Jesus will not be all to you that He in reality is for you. You have not yet hit bottom. You will not know His life, because you choose to cling to yours.

There one stands, hushed in the horror of a holy silence. Upon confession of such things, the door of life opens and you are greeted by a question: “Why does Jesus remain faithful with regards to me when I am unfaithful toward Him; or, does He actually remain faithful to something other than me?” You must, dear Christian, not merely see this question as something before you, but you must hear yourself ask it to yourself! It will be nourishment to your soul and your faith, as light is essential for your sight. Then, sensing a new type of movement from within, you begin to ascend the ladder from the floor of faithlessness (unbelief) and the depths of darkness and despair. You go upward to where you assume will be the spot from which the descent began; only, you are now enlightened and strengthened. Thus, the world you know and live in is different for you because you are different. Christ is the same. Only you know Him more fully, as He truly is. And, whereas one would normally consider a question’s answer to be something that concludes, satisfies, and quiets the quest, this forthcoming answer works to pull you and me as individual Christians forward, deeper, and further into the mysteries of God and fellowship with Him and Jesus Christ; yet, we are always strengthened, even through further and assured crisis. This is because the answer as to why Jesus remains faithful to you and me when we are faithless toward Him drives us into seeing that He is committed (faithful) to a larger divine work, of which we are a part, and He cannot deny Himself, nor will He fail to keep the commitment He made to His God and Father. We are secure in Him! The glory and honor, and all else, go to Him. He is before His Father and our Father, His God and our God, as the Beloved Son in whom the Father is well pleased. Jesus cannot, will not, deny Himself, nor can He be unfaithful with respect to all He has committed to with His God and Father. As a Christian, you are secure in Him. Self-security is an illusion. Do you understand this? He is faithful. He is our Savior. Trust not in yourself. You cannot save yourself. The saving required is that which is only accomplished by Jesus Christ Himself.

You have journeyed back to the top of the ladder. You arrive back at line one. Renewed and resting secure in Christ, you ascend from the floor, the foundation—Christ. Now you understand what living with Him entails. You are more aware that you could deny Him, but why would you ever do that? Given Who He is and what He’s done, what He does, why would you ever deny Him? Instead, you press into the Christian life. You continue. You endure. You want to reign with Him. You live! He defines you. And you know that the old self who died, so Christ could live in and through you, that old self, it remains dead and contributes nothing to what God now calls your life. The descent to despair, although it felt to have pulled your life apart, actually revived you, connected you with the life, and now you can live more secure in Christ, more joyful in Him and in the life lived with and for Him. He remains faithful, dear friend, because He cannot deny Himself. Ponder that often. Go where those thoughts lead you. Then, having thought and questioned, live from what God reveals to you.

To the reader: You may wonder if the preceding is an appropriate interpretation of what the apostle Paul intends from 2 Timothy 2:11-13. I can only encourage you to take the major thoughts from the above description, write them down, then slowly and thoughtfully work through 2 Timothy. I am confident you will be both surprised and encouraged.

God’s best to you.

Carl
6-11-11