Christ in You, the Hope of Glory

Given that you have received the Lord Jesus Christ as your Redeemer who died for you historically 1900 years ago once and for all by this one sacrifice for sins forever to reconcile you to a holy God, would you tell me this, does the knowledge that your sins are forgiven for his dear sake in itself equip you for a life of God-like? Does the knowledge that your sins are forgiven because you have claimed Christ as your Redeemer, you have pleaded his precious blood, you've named his name, you've called upon him and you have been accepted by the Father in the Beloved and your name has been inscribed in the Lamb's Book of Life with this rich assurance of your eternal destiny and security in itself impart to you any new capacity to live a different kind of life from the life that you lived before you were redeemed? I'm going to submit to you tonight that the knowledge that your sins are forgiven adds absolutely nothing to your spiritual capacity to be a different kind of person. The knowledge that he died for you and your sins are forgiven because he died for you in itself does not impart to you any new spiritual caliber of living and if all that Jesus Christ did when he came to this world 1900 years ago was to live that sinless life to qualify him for that redeeming gift and then go straight back to heaven and simply wait till you got there, that wouldn't be much of a salvation. It would be a salvation that made you fit for heaven and left you hopelessly inadequate for that.

Yet all too often this is the gospel that is preached. So we have to add a second statement. The first is the life that he lived qualified him for the death that he died but here is the second.

The death that he died qualifies you to receive the life that he lived. That's the genius of the gospel. The death that he died qualifies you as a forgiven redeemed sinner acquitted on a holy basis to become the recipient again now in the present tense of the life that he lived then 1900 years ago.

So we must cover that the life that he lived then can only condemn but isn't this right? It's the life that he lives now in you that saves you and the christian life is the life that he lived then. Live now by him in you because he's the only person capable of living that kind of life. This is the good news of the gospel.

It is God that worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure Christ in you. The hope of lord the only hope. Now you can see what a wonderfully rich gospel it is we have to preach.

You never invite anybody to come just for it forgiveness. You never invite anybody to come to Jesus just to get to heaven. There's only one valid reason why you and I should ever invite any man woman boy or girl to come to the lord Jesus and that is for the lord Jesus.

That he himself might step into their humanity and fill them with himself so that their bodies might become temples of the living God so that they might literally baptize by the holy spirit into his body they might become living members individually of his corporate body in general for the life has been imparted by the divine spirit but we're quenching and frustrated and grieving the spirit of God busy being ourselves when the one thing that the father wants is for the opportunity for his son to be himself. God redeemed your soul that your body might be inhabited by Jesus Christ himself and for that young man or young woman on the threshold of here tonight I want to tell you this that every horizon thick heavy golden if only you'll be prepared through death to allow his life to be released to find yourself a way for God if reckless abandon become extendable in complete unquestioning availability to Jesus Christ. I cannot promise you what it will involve you because I do not know I know that he knows what he knows the end from the beginning and you and I are created in Christ Jesus unto good works which God hath before ordained that we that we should walk in it may give you a lifetime of suffering it may send you to jail if God wants to reach some poor miserable sinner in some concentration camp he has the right to put you there if God wants an evangelist in a concentration camp he simply takes one member of his body who's lost his eye and become expendable and he puts him there for three days or three years or 30 and I wouldn't invite one man woman boy or girl to walk down any church to come to Christ who wasn't prepared for that quality of Christianity because I want to tell you this the life he lived qualified him for the death he died but the death he died qualifies you exclusively for the life he lived and he demands his Lordship and you not only rob yourself and impoverish yourself beyond all human description but you rob him and you claim your inheritance in Christ fancy robbing Christ that is inheritance this is normal Christianity my invitation to you tonight is that that the latent Lordship of his hidden life Christ living in me may be released from any world this is evangelism