Acts 4:12    Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.”

1 Pet 1:9    for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

Consideration:

The word ‘salvation' appears in the NIV New Testament 41 times and for Christians is perhaps such a commonly used word that familiarity has dulled its meaning. It essentially means deliverance from danger into a place of safety and security. Our two verses today make the link between the Lent Meditations about the need and work of the Cross, and the following meditations that are about the outworking of the Cross.

An analogy that is sometimes given is that of a lifeboat coming out from the shore to rescue people from a sinking ship. The lifeboat comes out and pulls in close to the sinking ship. That is the work of Jesus on the Cross that we have been considering previously.   It is there to be taken if the people on the ship of life see their need and will trust themselves to God's provision.

When the people jump from the sinking ship into the lifeboat they ARE saved. They have been delivered from the sinking ship. That is what took place when you repented and turned to God and were, as Jesus described it (Jn 3:3), ‘born again'. Now the lifeboat in our analogy turns round and makes for the shore and the people ARE BEING saved. That is the rest of our life on this earth. When the lifeboat reaches the shore and the people step ashore they are FINALLY SAVED. That is what happens when you finally die and go on to your eternal experience of heaven.

Thus Peter speaking on the day of Pentecost, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, made the audacious claim that there is no other way of receiving God's salvation except through Jesus Christ.  If you are a Christian you will have accepted that and you ARE saved. That was an act of faith on your part, receiving the finished work of Christ that we have seen in the Lent Meditations.   Later on when Peter was writing his first letter, he reminded us that we were receiving an ongoing process and ARE BEING saved now, and that, by faith, we have and are receiving that which was declared by God. 

By faith you came to Christ and by faith you will receive all the good things He has for you. As we look at the verses referring to the outworking of the Cross as shown in the New Testament epistles, our call is to believe what we read and let it impact our lives – that is faith.  So, we are going to see many facets of the salvation that we are receiving in the coming days.  Enjoy, wonder, praise and rejoice.

Prayer:

Lord, thank you for the fact of my salvation. Thank you that as I have come in repentance and believed the news about Jesus I have been saved. Thank you that I am saved and am being saved. Please help me to receive the wonder of all the things you say through your word, that you have given me as a result of Jesus dying for me and of me receiving his work in my life.

2 Cor 5:17    Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation ; the old has gone, the new has come!

Consider:

Yesterday we used the analogy of a lifeboat rescuing people from a sinking ship, and said that when they jumped from the ship into the lifeboat they were saved. The only thing about that picture is that it doesn't in any way convey the change that takes place in the person as they are transferred into the lifeboat. In reality they are completely transformed. In the course of the following meditations we will be seeing a variety of ways that they are transformed – and there are many!  Sometimes people try to make out becoming a Christian is not a big thing – it is!  It is a total life transformation!

The NIV translation we are using here says that this person is a new creation. When you ‘make' something you take existing raw materials and use them to produce something new.  When you ‘create' something you start from nothing. In that sense God is the only ‘creator' (even an artist has a canvas and uses paints and just reforms them).  As we'll see in days to come, one of the critical things that happens when a person truly becomes a Christian is that God puts His Holy Spirit into them.  Before you were just a person, now you are a God-indwelt person, and that means you are something or someone completely different. The old Authorised Version speaks of a new ‘creature'. 

This new creature didn't exist before.  This creature didn't just have a bit of God in before and now has lots of God in.   No, this is an entirely new being.  Yes, the memory is still the same, the body is still the same, the intellect is still the same, but all of them are now permeated by the presence of God. Have we never realised what a transformation there was, or have we, perhaps, just grown casual about what happened?   Perhaps, as you go through these meditations in the next seven weeks, it's time to start seeing afresh the wonder of the being that you now are, you fresh creation of God!

Perhaps you've never had this life transformation, perhaps you've never come to that point of repentance and seeking after God through Jesus Christ.  If that is so, then perhaps you should go back through the Lent Meditations and see the truths there – right from the beginning – to see your need and how God has met it.  Maybe you have been a Christian for a long time and, as we said previously, familiarity has dulled your perception of the truth.  Perhaps these next few weeks could be a life stirring time.  The starting point therefore, is checking what you think and feel about this verse today.  Have you been thrilled by the wonder of what took place in you? Are you still thrilled by it?  Does the wonder of being a new creation really thrill you, or do you find a defensiveness rising in you that says, “I don't know what this is all about. Who cares!”?

Prayer:

Lord, please open my eyes afresh to see my state. Help me to face it if I have never known this transformation, or if I have never realised the wonder of it, or if I have simply grown used to it. Lord please help me, that I may glorify you and praise and thank you for your work.

1 Jn 4:9,10    This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.  This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

Consider:

We look at people and we speak of them as living beings but in God's economy there is a dimension to life that is missing from an unbeliever.  The Bible teaches again and again that before we became a Christian we were ‘dead'.   What does it mean?   Well, when God created us He gave us a spirit (Gen 2:7 – breath = spirit, also 1 Thess 5:23 ).  Now the spirit part of a person is that innermost being that is the channel through which communication with God occurs.  Until that person reaches out seeking God, that spirit remains dormant or ‘dead', that seems to be the teaching of Scripture (e.g. Eph 2:1).

However when we speak of a person being dead there is also a future dimension to this. In films the angry criminal may say to someone, “You're dead!” meaning you have no future.  Similarly for the unbeliever there is no eternal future with God, just the experience of hell after death.  So that was our state – we were dead to God in experience and we were dead in that we had not future.

Now, through Christ we have been made alive! Because, as we've seen in the Lent Meditations, we were reconciled to God through Jesus' death, He then put His Holy Spirit within us and we were brought into a new dimension, we are new creations, who are alive to God (Rom 6:11), which means today we have Life and that Life goes on and on and will never end.  The apostle John must have caught something of this when he wrote about Jesus, “In him was life” (Jn 1:4) and then later on in his first letter, “The life appeared” (1 Jn 1:2).   He also described Jesus as “full of grace and truth” (Jn 1:14 ) or, we might say, he was full of loving kindness and utterly real. And he now lives in us!

So, the life we now have is one that is to be filled with loving kindness and utterly real.  That is Life.  What would happen if we rigorously applied those two standards to all we are and all we do?  What does a person who is ‘alive' do?  They communicate, they relate, they enjoy.  How can we say that?   Because that's what being a human being is all about.  We're made to communicate, to relate to God and to others, and to enjoy all of God's wonderful provision.  They do say that people never appreciate life until they have been under the threat of it being removed by, say, an accident, or a life threatening illness.  Do we have to wait for such a thing before we will appreciate the Life that God has given us, both the life of the material body with its tremendous potential (a whole area to think about) and the spiritual life He's opened up to us when we received the wonder of all that Jesus has done for us on the Cross?

Prayer:

Lord, please help me to appreciate the wonder of life that you have given me and the wonder of The Life that you have given me.

Gal 5:24   Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires.

Consider:

Yesterday as we were considering ‘life', we said that before we came to Christ we were ‘dead'.  Remember that these are just word descriptions trying to describe reality. Now we consider a description that exactly reverses the language: we were alive but now we are dead.   What this refers to, of course, is our old life, the life that we lived before we came to Christ.  This verse speaks about our old “sinful nature”, while older versions used to refer to “the flesh”, both meaning the old godless, self-centred, unrighteous life-style we used to live before we came to God.

Paul further describes that lifestyle in Eph 2:1-4 that is characterised by transgressions (careless wrongs) and sins (wilful wrongs), following Satan into disobedience, and being motivated by sensual desires and self-centred thoughts.  That sounds pretty awful doesn't it?   But that's the truth of the old lives we lived.

But then we heard the truth that Jesus had died to take our punishment for all that and we repented and turned to God.   So, says Paul, using the language of Calvary , it's like we have crucified or put to death that old life and so it is completely gone.  The verses before and after this one are all about life being led by the Holy Spirit.  So what is Paul saying to us? Our lives should be characterised now by the fruit or characteristics of the Holy Spirit (v.22,23) and we should be led by the Holy Spirit, instead of being led by our self-centred desires that used to drive us. This is the life that the work of Jesus on the Cross has opened up for us.

Instead of being pushed around by selfishness and desire, we can now be gently led by the quiet prompting of God through His Spirit, which is a far less stressful way of life. In that old life we used to get stressed and upset with people and circumstances, when they didn't conform to our self-centred desires.  We used to find ourselves getting angry with people because they clashed with our wants. We became impatient with people who weren't moving fast enough for us. It was a life that was pressed in all directions by our own inner unmet needs and the conflicting needs of other people. It was a life of continual struggle and battle.  It was tiring, wearing and exhausting.  But we were in control!   What a mess.

But we've put that all to death.   Have we?    Or has Satan been trying to resurrect that old life in you?   Are you still doing those ‘old' things?   If you are it means that somewhere along the line you have taken back that surrender you made when you first came to Christ, when you totally surrendered all the past, your failures, your struggles and so on.    At that point you died to your old life.   Have you allowed Satan to resurrect some of those things in you again?    If so, it's time to come back to Him in total surrender.   There's a Life to be lived, but you can't live it if the past is still rearing its ugly head!

Prayer:

       Lord, I surrender!

Col 2:11,12   In him you were also circumcised, in the putting off of the sinful nature, not with a circumcision done by the hands of men but with the circumcision done by Christ, having been buried with him in baptism and raised with him through your faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead.

Consider:

Previously we considered Paul's comment to the Galatians, about us putting to death our old sinful nature.  We observed that that ‘old nature' was self-centred and godless but that when we came to Christ we died to that life.   Now that is the negative expression of what happened to us when we came to Christ: we walked away from that old life.  Now today we consider the positive aspect of that same thing.   We died to the old life but we were also raised to a new life.

Paul is talking about this same thing to the Colossians now, and instead of characterising that putting away of the old life as ‘crucifying' it, he speaks about ‘circumcising' it.   It's the same concept, just a different picture.  The reason he does that, is that he has been warning against those who demanded circumcision, who demanded ongoing human rituals as part of salvation.    Oh no, he says, you don't have to worry about cutting bits off you, you've had the whole of your old life cut away.  You pictured that by going down in the death-picture of baptism but the positive side of that was when you came up out of the water that pictured you being raised up to a new life.  Just as God raised Christ from the dead, so He now raised you up and gives you a completely new life.  Jesus' body, in the tomb was utterly dead.  It had no means of movement, there was no life in it.  Then God came and raised it up, so it was the very power and presence of God that was now energising it.  This, says Paul, is how you are to see your lives now, raised up by and energised by God.

THIS is what makes the Christian life so dynamic.  It's not a matter of following new rules or being religious.  No, that's what Paul was denouncing to the Colossians.  It's actually all about God coming and energising you with His powerful presence.   It's not about being nice, it's about being godly because we are God-energised!  We didn't have the capability of being good or nice, or of keeping the rules.  We proved that in our old life, characterised by failure and guilt, so God came and did what we weren't capable of doing, He raised us up by His power and energised us to live new God-focused, God-directed lives.  Every real Christian is a “resurrection-person”, a person walking and living after they have first died.  This is an amazing concept that the Scriptures give us – of being bodies that are resurrected, living by the energising power of God.  It's not that we are ‘trying harder' or ‘turning over a new leaf'; it's that we are simply new people, raised up people, God-energised people!

Prayer:

Lord, please help me grasp the wonder of this, that I am a person who is now living as energised by you, empowered by you, enabled by you to live a life I was previously incapable of living.

Eph 2:4,5    But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions

Consider:

We continue to pursue these same ideas that keep coming over in the Scriptures, this same picture of us who are Christians having died and being raised by God to live new lives.   We need to keep on considering this because it is so easy to misunderstand what BEING a Christian is all about.  In a nutshell, it is God providing the means whereby we can receive His forgiveness and cleansing and be reconciled to Him, so that He can then empower us to live new lives, lives that we were incapable of living before.

Here in Ephesians, in our verse today, Paul is commenting on how remarkable it is that God raised us up to new life, even while we were still stuck in this old spiritually dead life characterised by wrongs.  God didn't say, try a bit harder and then I might come alongside you and help you achieve it.  No, He took us while we were still complete failures and transformed us by energising us.    All you did in the whole thing, was confess your state of failure, your inability to be righteous or godly, and ask for His forgiveness and His help.  That was repentance.  You were still in your old state when you uttered those words.  You hadn't changed, you couldn't change.  You had probably tried to change but any change had been cosmetic, purely on the surface.  You were stuck like that.  You couldn't get out of it.

Imagine this picture if you will.  You know, probably, that iron filings are attracted to a magnet.  You perhaps experimented with them at school.  It's a strong magnet and the force of the magnet draws you, the iron filing to it.  There is nothing you can do to escape its draw.  It's a scientific, physical characteristic.   If you were a living iron filing you might scream and struggle to get away from the tremendous attraction power of the magnet.  Now, that magnet is Sin.  You may scream and shout about trying to be free from it but nothing you can do can break you free from it.  Now along comes God and puts in you a stronger, opposite power to the power of the magnet.  Suddenly you are free.  Suddenly the magnet no longer has any power over you.

This is what God has done by putting His own life-energising Holy Spirit in you when you came to Him. Previously you were spiritually dead, attracted by Sin and totally unable to break free from it (that IS the truth!).  God came to you while you were still in that state and in that state put His power into you.  Instantly you were set free, instantly it was like you were made spiritually alive, instantly the power of Sin over you was broken.  Just like Christ was re-energised when God raised him up from the dead (Acts 2:24 ), so He has now re-energised you from your old dead life. You didn't deserve it, God just did it.  That is the mercy Paul was talking about.  Mercy is not deserved, mercy is not justice.  Mercy is God giving you a new life for no other reason that He decided to give it to you.

Prayer:

Lord, you came to me while I was locked into my old state of godless unrighteousness and gave me forgiveness, cleansing and your life power, and transformed me out of it.  Thank you so much for your mercy.

Gal 1:3,4    Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father

Consider:

We considered yesterday the apostle Paul saying that before we came to Christ we had been stuck in a spiritually deal life, a life that was self-centred, godless and unrighteous, and there was nothing we could do to get ourselves out of it.  We thought about iron filings and a magnet and saw how it was impossible without an opposing, opposite, stronger force for those iron filings to be set free from the attraction of the magnet. The picture that we have in today's verses comes with the same idea but, perhaps, expands on it.

Paul, here, says we were trapped in “ the present evil age ” and we needed rescuing from it.  Again the implication is that we were incapable of getting out of it on our own. But what was he saying when he said we were trapped in the present evil age? He was actually saying that we were trapped as part of this age that is godless and unrighteous.  Paul is referring to the fallen world when he speaks about this “age”. Since the Fall (see Gen 3) every human being has been born with this tendency to be self-centred and godless, and so subsequently live unrighteous lives; it's in our genes!

So there we were, one hundred per cent part of the fallen world, unable to escape the tendency to sin – and guilty!  Deep down we knew we were guilty.  We may have tried to deal with our guilt in a variety of ways.  Perhaps we justified why it was all right to do what we did, perhaps we said, well everyone does it (as if that makes it all right!), or perhaps we did what many people do and denied there is any right or wrong and say anything goes (but we didn't actually believe that either!).  So there we were struggling with our guilt, caught up in this self-centred, godless lifestyle that we couldn't break free from.  Helpless and hopeless!

And then Jesus stepped in and dealt with our guilt by paying the punishment for all our wrongs by his death on the Cross.   If you accept this, said God, I will not hold your sin against you.  Jesus will have taken it.  It seemed too good to be true, but we accepted it for we were desperate.  But that wasn't enough!  It was wonderful that we were told we were forgiven and cleansed but we were still the old, powerless people we'd been before.  So, at the moment of true repentance, God put His own power, part of Himself, His own Holy Spirit, into you and suddenly you felt different, suddenly you were different!  There was a channel within you flowing with goodness from heaven. You were still in this world but now different.  You had a different motivation and a new power that enabled you to live out that new motivation.   You had been rescued from the old evil world that you were part of. The past has been dealt with.  The present is empowered.   The future is in God's hands.  How wonderful!

Prayer:

Father, thank you that you sent Jesus to rescue me by dealing with my sins.  Thank you that you have given me your Holy Spirit to empower me so that I AM different and no longer have to live that old lifestyle.  You have truly rescued me! Thank you so much!

Gal 5:1   It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again

Consider:

All this last week we have been considering the basics of what God has done for us through the work of Jesus on the Cross.   Let's recap. 

And the end result? We're free! I suspect we hear it preached, or even sung about, so much that we've actually become blasé about this freedom.

So what is freedom? It is the absence of restraint or limitation. We've been considering in these recent meditations how we were locked into the sinful lifestyle (remember the iron filings and the magnet?).   We were in fact prisoners.  

A number of years ago, TV in the UK had a series called “The Prisoner” and the hero was kept at a particular seaside location. While he remained contented with being there he was not interfered with, he almost seemed free, but the moment he tried to escape that location, steps were taken to restrain him and ensure he remained there. That's what we were like. We felt we were free but the moment we became conscious of our sinfulness and tried to do something about it, we found we were restrained, locked into it and unable to break free.  And then we encountered Jesus!

The literal interpretation of the first part of our verse today is “ With freedom did Christ set us free. ”   In other words, Jesus brought freedom to us and that released us. Never seen it like that before?  Think about it.  In the previous chapter Paul had been speaking about two covenants.  One was all about the Law, and trying to “keep the rules” which simply made us slaves to failure and guilt.  The new covenant is simply believing God's promise of freedom through believing in Jesus.  As soon as we do, it's like the new agreement is instantly in operation, one that declares “You are now free!” We've been certified free!

But more than that, as we've been emphasising in the recent meditations, God's given us His Holy Spirit and He (God by His Spirit) IS free.  He is not fettered, He is not limited by sin or Satan or our past or other people's expectations.  No, HE is free and because He's now in us and energising us, we ARE free as well.  As He leads we follow, and sin and Satan and the past and other people's expectations no longer limit us.  It's like He declared it as fact, and then clothed us with it, and so we've been made free.  We're no longer self-sin-Satan orientated, no longer dominated by them, no longer limited by them because we are “in Him”, and because He's free, we're free!

Prayer:

Lord, I understand that when I turned to you, you declared me free from my past guilt and shame, and then you put your own Spirit in me, who is free, and I became free.  Lord, please help me understand it and take the wonder of it in, that I may see it and experience it.  Thank you that you have made me free!

Gal 3:26     You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus

Consider:

So, we said, we have been rescued from our old spiritually dead lives by Jesus taking our punishment on the Cross and then God putting His Holy Spirit into us.  We are new creations!  Now here in today's verse we have a further dimension of what has happened to us – we've been declared to be God's sons.  Let's consider what that means.

From a legal standpoint it means we have been legally adopted into God's family and so all the rights of heaven, the rights of the family of God, are now ours.  In the next chapter Paul says “God sent his Son…that we might receive the full rights of sons” (4:5) and then “and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir” (4:7).   In other words we are now receivers of all of God's goodness that He wants to pour on His sons.

It means we are now directly related to God and He is our Father. Do you remember when Jesus was giving his ‘Sermon on the Mount' and was speaking about prayer, when he gave us what we some times call the Lord's Prayer?  In that passage on the devotional life (Mt 6:1-18) Jesus refers to God being our Father no less than 10 times!  Remember this ‘sermon' was directed to Jesus' disciples, or those who are believers (Mt 5:1).

For some of us who have had bad family experiences, talk of a father is not good, but God IS Love (1 Jn 4:8) and so everything that comes from our heavenly Father IS GOOD.  ‘Father' speaks about intimate relationship.  The closest of relationships are between husband and wife and then between parent and child.  It's not child and master or child and employer, but child and Father.  

Indeed, in the midst of the verses we were just referring to in Galatians 4, we read these amazing words: “God sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out ‘Abba, Father'” (4:6).   Do you see, it's not merely the Holy Spirit, he's the Spirit of Jesus, the Son, so automatically we have something of the nature of the Son in us because it is part of Jesus the Son.  The use of Abba, possibly meaning ‘daddy' adds further to the sense of intimacy.

Now there's yet another facet of this.   John in his first letter (1 Jn 3:1,2) says we are “children of God” which is wonderful enough in itself, but when Paul speaks of us as being “sons' there is yet another dimension here.  Sons in the Jewish context were particularly important – they carried on the family name and the family business.  That was their responsibility.    So when Paul says we are 'sons' he is making a sharp contrast with slaves and also with ‘children'.   Sons, he is saying in Galatians 4, are those who have FULLY entered into the relationship with the Father, who are FULLY taken into the Father's heart and business!   That is what we now are today, we who are Christians!

Prayer: 

Father, thank you that I can call you that.   Thank you that you have brought me into this level of intimacy with you.   Thank you that you have declared me to be your son and made me your son in practical reality by Jesus' presence in me.

Acts 2:38   Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Consider:

In the light of all that we have been saying in past days about God putting His Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus, into us, you may think it unnecessary to consider again this aspect of God's work in us as an outworking of the Cross.   However, so vital is it, and perhaps so much we take it for granted, that we are going to look at further aspects of this for the next few days.

Peter, here preaching on the day of Pentecost under the anointing of the Holy Spirit, says that us being given the Holy Spirit will be an immediate follow-on to receiving forgiveness.   We need to keep on making this point because it is made again and again in Scripture: we weren't merely forgiven, as wonderful as that was, we were also declared to be sons of God (as we saw yesterday) AND we were given the Spirit of Jesus, the Holy Spirit, to enable us to live Jesus-type lives, lives characterised by the character of Jesus and doing the work of Jesus.

Observe those TWO things again: having the character of Jesus being worked out in us, and doing the work of Jesus.  Now we could do neither of those things on our own. The character of Jesus starts being revealed in us as Jesus himself is more and more revealed in us.  It is Jesus' character, the character revealed by his Spirit, the Holy Spirit, that is seen in and through us.  Paul called us ‘jars of clay' (2 Cor 4:7) who contained this treasure, this glory of the Lord.  It is His glory that shines through us.

When the fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5:22 ,23) are seen in us, it is simply HIM who is being seen expressing Himself through us.  When it comes to us continuing his work (Jn 14:12) with the gifts of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 12:7-) it is simply Jesus doing these things through us.   It is not us struggling to achieve the works of God, but Jesus doing them through us.    And how can he do that?   Because his Spirit indwells us and He came into us when we were born again of the Spirit (Jn 3:5-8).

Again and again in the New Testament we have references to us being “in Christ” (and we'll consider that in days to come) but it is the work of the Holy Spirit who makes that happen.  To the Corinthians (1 Cor 12:13) Paul said, “we were all baptised by one Spirit into one body” and to the Galatians (Gal 3:27) he said “all of you who were baptised into Christ.” i.e. the coming of the Holy Spirit upon and into us, as the free gift from God, made us one with Christ.   Jesus speaking of the creation of the church, before Pentecost, said, “you will be baptised with (immersed in) the Holy Spirit” (Acts 1:5). When the Spirit came on them (Acts 2:3) they were filled with the Holy Spirit (v.4). Just like a cup, when you immerse it in liquid, so it is filled.  A Christian?   One who is a receiver of the Holy Spirit!

Prayer:

Father, thank you that when I turned to you, you didn't just say I was new, but you made me new by putting your Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus, within me, and I became one with you.   Thank you so much.

Gal 2:20    I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.

1 Thess 5:10   He died for us so that, whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with him.

1 Cor 1:9   God, who has called you into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ

Consider:

We continue to reflect on this amazing truth that God puts the Spirit of His Son, Jesus Christ, into every believer who turns to Him.  Those who say that all religions of the world are really the same, actually don't understand much about the claims of Christianity that mark it out as unique:

Our cluster of verses today all point to this same truth: that because Jesus now lives in me, I live now in the closest possible relationship with him, i.e. I fellowship with him. Fellowship really means communion or intimate sharing.  That's an incredible thought isn't it – that the Spirit of the same Jesus who walked the earth two thousand years ago now lives in me and fellowships with me.

Let's think some more about this whole idea of fellowship. Have you known the experience of fellowship?  It's more than just talking one to one.  It is actually a heart sharing one to one.  It requires an openness, a willingness to share hearts, to go beyond the surface.  When we say that there is communion between two people, we mean there is a meeting of minds or meeting of spirit.  There is a sharing at the deepest level – and that is what Scripture says is our position now.  We've been called into fellowship with Jesus.

Now, there are two possibilities.  There is where we've been called into a place where we can fellowship with Jesus.  Paul told the Ephesians that, “God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus” (Eph 2:6). Now whatever else that means, it gives us a picture of closeness and intimacy whereby in spiritual reality we are close to Christ.

The second is where we learn to fellowship with Christ.  We said fellowship involves open-heart sharing, but that is something to be learned.  It means we learn to share honestly from our hearts with Christ, and we learn to listen to him so that we hear what he has to share with us, and neither of these things come naturally and easily. The provision of the Holy Spirit is there in us, but we have to learn to do these things, and that takes time.

Prayer:

 Lord thank you for the wonder of the potential of being able to fellowship with you. Please help me, please teach me how to.

2 Cor 13:5     Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you

Consider :

You may be forgiven for thinking, “oh no, not again!” but the truth we are meditating upon is so important that it is vital for us to consider it and consider it again. It affects us in so many ways. It challenges us to rise up to the greatness of children of God, vessels for the very presence of God.  It challenges us when we are being tempted to do things that are not worthy of such vessels. In so many ways this truth, this staggering truth, needs to be spoken out again and again.  As we said yesterday it is one of the things that make the claims of Christianity unique.  In today's verse it is put in its stark simplicity – Christ Jesus is in you.

In the context Paul is asking this of his Corinthian readers because he is saying that they should be leading lives that are sin-free, even though they feel weak.  And the reason they should be sin-free?  Because Jesus lives in them!  The apostle John said the same thing in his first letter: “ Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did. ” (1 Jn 2:6).   Do you see the importance of this?  Because the holy Son of God lives in us, say the apostolic writers, you are to be living godly, righteous lives, led by him, inspired by him, energised by him, as he continues to work out His Father's will in and through you (Phil 2:13).   Don't do anything, is what is implied, that will grieve him (Eph 4:30 ).

Imagine having a member of royalty or a most senior political figure, or a most senior religious leader staying in your house.  In the presence of such a person you are going to be careful what you say and how you behave.  How much more when the Son of God who is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords (Rev 19:16) is in the house?   Even more than that he lives IN you so he sees every thought you have.  In the way you look out on the world, and the way you think about people, is the Son of God who is living in you by his Spirit, blessed or saddened?  If he finds us looking on the world with thankfulness to God (Rom 1:21), and finds us looking on people with love and compassion, he will be blessed by our lives.   If he finds us constantly fault finding and complaining, and if he finds us looking at other people critically, judgmentally and harshly or uncaringly, he will be grieved and saddened.

If (honestly) this latter description fits us, then it shows we have not appreciated the wonder of what has happened to us, we have failed to appreciate the wonder of what Christ did on the Cross for us, and we have failed to appreciate the wonder of the lives that can follow from that work on the Cross.  How tragic is that!

Prayer:

Father, please help me to really comprehend the wonder of these truths that we are considering.  Please help me to assess my life truthfully.  Please help me face the thoughts, words and deeds that come from me that grieve you.  Help me to see it and help me to change.  Thank you, Lord Jesus, that you live within me.  Lord may you not be grieved by what you find.  Lord please work in me so that at all times you will be blessed by this life.

Col 2:9,10   For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, 10 and you have been given fullness in Christ, who is the head over every power and authority.

Consider:

In the light of the truth that we have been considering in these meditations, that Christ lives in us, these two verses come as an antidote to possible negative thinking that may follow. As we have been thinking about this truth, have you had an underlying thought, “Yes, but it's only a little bit of Christ that lives in me. It's only a shadow of the real him.”  When we think like that we tend to excuse ourselves for living in ways that are not worthy of vessels of the living Son of God.

These two verses counter that thinking in a most dynamic way. Twice the word fullness is used, once about Christ and once about us.  Let's look at Christ first. Paul says everything of God lives in the person we know of as Christ.  Commentators have two views about this.  One group say that the reference to ‘bodily form' means God was complete in the body Christ had, and another group say that it simply means that the entire essence and glory of God is concentrated in the being that is Christ.  Both indicate the amazing truth that Jesus Christ is God incarnate, God expressed in human form, and God fully expressed in Christ.  So Christ is God fully.

Now let's go on to see what he says about us.  We, he says, have been given “fullness in Christ” or, if you like, we have been made complete and entire by being given Christ in completeness.  But, we just saw, Christ is completely God, so we have been given God completely!  This conforms to what Paul says to the Ephesians, “that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God ” (Eph 3:19).  Does this make you ‘a god' as New Agers believe?   No, it simply means that you are an earthen vessel (2 Cor 4:7) in whom deity dwells.  We aren't God, He is!  Does it means God in His entirety dwells in you?  No, not if you are referring to quantity, so to speak.  But if you were referring to quality, it does mean perfect God dwells in you. Imagine you had a small bottle of sea water and a large bottle of sea water.  In both bottles you have perfectly, sea water.

What is the practical outworking of this?  It means that all of the resources of the One who is God are there in you.  There is no limitation in Him.  He knows all things, sees all things, understands all things.  Does He want you to have all those things? Probably not, because you would probably have a major problem with pride if you did – unless at the same time His holy and perfect character was being worked out in you as well.  Then perhaps, you could cope with that.  This then, starts to give us a glimpse of some realities.  He who is God lives in you, with all of His resources which He will use to work out His purposes in you.  The Message Version puts it well here, “Entering into this fullness is not something you figure out or achieve... No, you're already in.” Dare to believe it?

Prayer:

      Father, thank you that your perfection dwells in me.

1 Cor 6:15    Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself?

Consider:

For the last four days in these meditations, we have been considering the wonder of us, as a result of Christ's work on the Cross, becoming habitations of God by the Spirit. This has been expressed in Scripture a number of ways.  Now the picture is turned around to state the same truth but with a different application. So far, recently, the emphasis has been on the Spirit of God coming into us.  Now Paul speaks about us coming into him.  Previously we might have been thinking about how the Spirit's presence in us changes us, helps us, and energises us, but now the picture turns right round to remind us that when all that happens, it actually makes us part of Him!  How does that change the emphasis?  It takes it away from us initially and places it on him.

Elsewhere in Scripture this same truth is repeated again and again, that we are now part of the ‘body of Christ' and individually members of it (e.g. 1 Cor 12:27).  We were immersed into this ‘body' by the Holy Spirit's work (1 Cor 12:13) and are now part of it.  The head of the body is Christ (Eph 4:15) and he directs and energises the body to grow and develop (Eph 4:16).  The change of emphasis, therefore, is to us becoming part of something, and that something is Christ-directed.  It is a body that is formed of all the Christians who have been made a part of it by the Holy Spirit coming into them.  He is one so they are one.  We have been made one with the millions of others who are Christians.

Now the first consequence of this truth is that we perhaps need a change of outlook. The church, over the centuries, has formed itself into hundreds of divisions.  This may make it difficult for the enemy to pick off the church but it also means that so often we see ourselves different from the Christians in other denominations, streams or groups. Because they have different emphasises or different ways of operating we see them as different.  The truth is that they are not.  We are all sinners who have been saved by the work of Christ on the Cross and God's work by His Holy Spirit in us.

Yes, the truth is that I am now part of something much bigger.  I am no longer just “me and God” but I am part of something much bigger that is energised and presided over by Christ.   My body today is occupied by the Holy Spirit and as such I am part of Christ's body.  In the context of 1 Cor 6 Paul says that because of that we should be careful what we do with our bodies.   This body of Christ, which includes my single human body, is holy, so my behaviour, my actions, should reflect that.  This body is Christ working out the will of God on earth today, and I am part of that.  These things I need to realise and remember.  I am not just a solo Christian!

Prayer:

Lord, thank you that you have saved me through the work of Christ on the Cross and have now put your Spirit within me.  Thank you, Lord Jesus, that I am now part of your body, called to respond to you, my head, and be part of your working in this world today.

Eph 2:18   For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.

Consider:

There are daily readings for Christians that are simply nice homilies. They may paint pictures and they may touch the emotions, but they often don't transform the mind by the truth of the word of God. In these meditations we've sought to focus everything on the word of God, and in that sense they may appear a bit theological. Today there's going to be a difference. Back in Day 9 we talked briefly about God as Father and acknowledged that for some of us, our personal experience in life didn't leave us feeling good about God as “Father”. Now we come to a verse that is all about how Jew and Gentile can both come to God as Father, through the channel that is the Holy Spirit, and so it is possible that you are not thrilled by that idea. Let me start painting an alternative to what you might have experienced.

First of all I have to let you know that my father had been a distant figure and although I'm sure he loved me, he never expressed it emotionally towards me until I was twenty one. Later I got married and we had three children and in a measure I hope my children got from me what I didn't get from my dad.

As a leader, when I was a lot younger, the word filtered back to me that I was a scary person – I still don't really know why – but what I do know is that my kids didn't find me scary. As we sat on the settee reading stories together, as we played on the floor building things, I believe, by God's grace, my kids knew security and love. Yes, there was the game we played where I chased them round the house like an ogre to their screams, but it always ended up with roars of laughter and them secure in my arms. I might have been a scary character to some people, but my kids knew otherwise. Yes, on a bad day I administered discipline which was sometimes painful, but for 99% of the time they knew what few others knew (then), that this guy had a soft and gentle heart.

Now having said all that, I don't rate myself as a wonderful dad, and am very much aware of my own shortcomings, yet as the days go by, my (now grown up) children give me little clues that perhaps I wasn't as bad as I tend to think on a bad day. They come to me and share their concerns. They come to me and, without any prompting, throw their arms round me and hug me. I'm loved! I guess it's because I first loved them (1 Jn 4:19).

Now here's the thing: the New Testament talks about God becoming our Father and it also says “God is love” (1 Jn 4:8,16) – as we've noted before – so if my kids have known human love from an imperfect dad which has helped them grow secure, mustn't our ‘heavenly Dad' be much more wonderful and His love so much more wonderful to experience? If it isn't that in our experience, why not? Could it be that that old sinful nature that Satan seeks to resurrect, is wary, suspicious and defensive, so that we hold God at a distance? Could it be that the human hurts from the past, instead of being used to keep Him away, should perhaps be offered to Him, so His love can heal them today?

Prayer:

Father, I'm scared. Please hold me.

1 Jn 5:13   I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.

Consider:

We move on now to a further outworking or effect of the work of Christ on the Cross, to consider the subject of eternal life. Some people think that eternal life is something that starts once we die. Untrue! In many of the references to us and eternal life it is in the present tense, i.e. we have it now, once we have accepted Christ. Jn 20:31 “But these arte written so that you may believe Jersus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and by believing you may have life in his name."  This life that is promised, that comes with believing, IS eternal life.   In Jn 5:24 where Jesus says, “I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned”, the implication is that you have it immediately you believe.  Now why would this be?   How would it be?

1 Jn 5:20 “We know also that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true. And we are in him who is true–even in his Son Jesus Christ . He is the true God and eternal life.”   There it is: God IS eternal life!  The Bible teaches us that God is eternal, i.e. He has no ending, He goes on for ever and ever.  He is life, indeed He is the only source of “life”. Modern science talks about the energy that created their “Big Bang” and which is behind everything.  The Bible says that ‘energy' is personal and it is God!

Now, if we link this with all that we have been considering over the past days – that God lives in us now that we are Christians – we can see that He who is eternal life is in us and as His Spirit is united with our spirit, so we are made an eternal being, a being that will go on after death.

For many people the concept of eternal life seems to have no practical importance, but once we realise that the life we have here is merely a starter for a life of eternity, it should refocus our whole vision of what we're about, and create a security in us that cannot be shaken. The older you are the more you are faced with questions of “What happens afterwards?” For the Christian there is this assurance, that “after death” life goes on, a new dimension of life that is not restricted, that knows no pain or fear or worry or anxiety or stress.

Although it is not easy piecing together what life after death will be like, from the New Testament, there are nevertheless many illustrations that indicate it will be free of all the things we mentioned above but, more positively, it is life knowing the glorious presence of God for ever. If eternity sounds a long time that is only because we view the concept with finite mortal minds. If we understand only a quarter of what the Bible hints at in respect of life after death through knowing Jesus, then it will be gloriously wonderful beyond even our wildest dreams. This is part of our inheritance. This life on earth is not all there is. Even more, if what we do here influences our future destiny, then it is vital that we look very carefully at our lives here, today. There is yet to be the greatest adventure of all but we must avoid anything that might jeopardise it!

Prayer:

Lord, I grasp at understanding eternal life and I'm certain I only understand a tiny bit. Yet that tiny bit suggests that you have an inheritance for me that is wonderfully beyond my comprehension. By faith I say, thank you so much!

1 Cor 1:30    It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God – that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption.

Eph 1:7   In him we have redemption through his blood

1 Pet 1:18,19   For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.

Consider:

We did consider the concept of redemption in the Lent Meditations but it is something so significant that it certainly fits in the bracket of “things achieved through the Cross”.   It's strange that in a time where in many parts of the world, and especially the affluent West, that although debt is very high, the concept of redemption is never heard of.   Redemption is all about buying something back .  It was the language of the pawn shop, the shop where you took an item that you swapped for a sum of money which you needed at that moment more than the item, and then later on when your funds were stronger, you went and ‘redeemed' the article for the sum you received plus a small loan fee.

In spiritual terms redemption applies to what has happened to the human race. Originally we had a relationship with God (at Creation) but then we sold ourselves into Sin which meant we were then the property of the pawnbroker – Satan!  The only way we could be “bought back” was if the punishment for Sin was paid.  The only problem was that we couldn't get free from the power of Sin and so throughout our lives one sin followed another sin. The guilt load builds and builds and the punishment load builds until death is the ultimate punishment (that's one way we might think of it).  So there we were in the slavery of the pawnbroker and death is the only way out, but there was no point in that because we wanted to live – even in slavery. Then along comes someone who says, “I will die in your place, so that you can go free”, that someone being the Son of God, and because he is God he can do that for every person who will avail themselves of his offer.

Thus the death of Christ acted as the thing to ‘buy' our freedom, a freedom from Satan's oppression and a freedom from the power of Sin.  Jesus spoke about giving himself as a ‘ransom' for many (Mt 20:28). The apostle Paul spoke of us being transferred from Satan's dominion into Christ's kingdom (Col 1:13).  It's all the language of redemption.  Why is it significant?  Because it means Christ has done EVERYTHING necessary to bring our freedom and so we need not try to achieve goodness, just receive it.  It says we can be secure in this because it was achieved by Christ, not by us.   It says our past has been completely dealt with; we no longer have to keep trying to make up for it!  It says we are free from our past, free to live new lives from now on, lives bought by the “precious blood of Christ.”

Prayer:

Father, thank you that you so loved me that you sent Jesus to redeem me.  I was lost but you bought me back.  Thank you so much!

1 Cor 6:11   And that is what some of you were. But you were washed , you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

Consider:

Someone who has been sexually abused as a child often feels dirty. Case studies tell of children who grew up constantly trying to scrub themselves clean. The same is sometimes true of rape victims. There is a sense of being polluted by the awful things that happened. Those are awful things, but the truth is that so many people have the same subconscious sense about their sin and are constantly doing things to try and remove the signs of it, or the memory of it, from their lives. We may not scrub ourselves but we do other things to try and remove the sense of guilt or dirtiness.

Some of us blame other people as if their guilt will remove ours.  We blame our parents or brothers or sisters, or teachers, or employers, or even the government. By blaming them, we seek to take away our own guilt.

Others of us DO things to atone for the feelings we have; we try to make up for our failures or our inadequacies.  We may try and be religious, we may adopt a cause, we may sacrifice our lives on behalf of others.  We may simply seek to achieve greatness, to dress ourselves in an image of sucess to counter the inner sense of failure. See politicians or business men or sportmen seeking for greatness and glory through their career, yet in the area of personal family relationships they are bankrupt, in their area of character or ‘moral fibre' they are distinctly lacking.

Yes, in a variety of ways people go through life trying to cover up that inner sense of uncleanness, of failure, of inadequacy or guilt. And the trouble is that they go through life, and keep on going, trying to achieve the impossible, for at the end of it all, they are still left with these inner anguishes that are not being dealt with.

And then Christ comes and says, I have paid the penalty for all your failures, all your guilt, all your shame, all your weakness, all your inadequacies, I've dealt with each and every one of them – if you will only believe that.  We hear the good news and we respond gratefully and joyfully, like a drowning person clutching at a straw we don't really understand, and then, suddenly, we find everything has changed. 

Somehow he's done something in us and we feel different, we feel clean, we feel new, we feel washed! Somehow what he said to us has proved true. Yesterday I was feeling guilt-ridden and unclean. I turned to Christ and received him and his forgiveness and suddenly  I'm clean!  I'm clean!  The picture of Jesus healing the leper (Mt 8:1-3) beautifully captures this.  What he had physically, we have spiritually, and it was only Jesus who could do anything about it!   Jesus did it and we are cleansed.   Yet along the way we find ourselves getting dirty and have to let Jesus come a do his work in us again (see Jn 13:10a), a daily cleansing. He's in the business of cleansing us - both when we first came to him, and every day since.

Prayer:

Lord, I thank you that you have cleansed me when I turned to you. It was something only you could do and you have done it.  Thank you so much.  Cleanse me afresh today; cleanse me of the dirt picked up today.  Thank you so much.