Classic Christianity – A Closer Look at The Finality of The Cross P12 (09-01-21)
The Effect of Christ Alive Living in You
Has the grace of God reached your heart? Have you understood that He not only loves you unconditionally but He accepts you unconditionally? If you were destitute and homeless, living out of a dumpster, strung out on drugs, have you ever seen someone look at you with pure love in their eyes toward you and just said nothing. Maybe that was your mother, who was just longing for you to come home. Her eyes just drew you in. She just accepts me. She is not looking down at me with disgust. You knew she was going somewhere, so you asked her where she was going? She was going to a bible conference to hear someone speak. Knowing his mother loved him, and knowing it was dangerous to go out alone at night, he asked to go with her. So he sat on the front row and he heard a message of God’s forgiveness and love. Upon hearing that message, the truth of who God is, His total forgiveness and complete love for him, just melted his heart that he received the life of God in Christ Jesus.
Therefore, we are not ashamed of the gospel, the message of good news, that changes hearts and lives, for it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes. There is a need in the life of every human being for forgiveness. That need is put there by God, this longing and thought of eternity in the heart of every man, that can only be met in Christ Jesus. Man is made in such a way that God in the man is indispensable to the proper functioning of the man. It is like an oil lamp without oil or a car without gas. Without oil in it, a lamp cannot give off light. Without gas in a car, the car will not run. So too a man without the Spirit of God in him just cannot function as God intended man to function. That is why God came to bring new life to mankind, to make him into a new creation, putting His Holy Spirit in him, so he can walk in the new way of the Spirit.
What is the new way of the Spirit? Is it not the ability to participate in the divine nature, to draw from the Spirit of God who lives in you, for love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control to be produced in you and through you by the Spirit who lives in you. That Spirit is what is at work in the mother who loves her son so unconditionally, with a glow on her face and a joy in her heart and a tenderness to her son. That kind of life draws the lost unto God. One man waters, another man sows, but God causes the growth. It is marvelous to see the transformation of a life from darkness into light.
So listen as Bob George explains this application of God giving His life for you, as God in Christ went to a cross, while we were yet sinners, and died for us, and in so doing, took our sins away, forgave us in order to rise again to offer new life to us, and that while we were not even seeking Him. But in His seeking out us, we were drawn by His overwhelming grace and kindness to us, an undeserving sinner like me, and while pondering how God could love a sinner like me, we so wanted the same life that is in Christ Jesus, so we could be like Him, that we asked God to come in live in us and make us into a new person like Him.
