The life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith

[bcool]

“I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live;
yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live
in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God,
who loved me, and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20 KJV).

The failure of the Jews in Paul’s day was to ignore or reject the implications of God's great power demonstration---His work and purposes toward mankind in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. “God with us” in the Person of Jesus Christ (Matthew 1:23 KJV), intervened directly on mankind during a unique period of human history which began with the Virgin Birth and concluded when Christ ascended into Heaven as described in Luke 24:50-51 and Acts 1:9-11.

Christ's initial mission was to offer the Kingdom to His people. The Messiah had come, but was officially rejected as the son of David by Israel. Still, Christ's prime directive on earth was certainly His Salvation mission to Calvary's cross. And for the first time, a member of the human race functioned by the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit to not only fulfill the plan of God as bonafide humanity, but also to become the example to all believers of the right way of faith for living the spirit-filled life.

During our Lord's life on earth, He lived a faith-dependent life dedicated to the Father's will. The spiritual life pioneered by the Lord Jesus Christ during the Incarnation was based on the enabling power of God the Holy Spirit joined with a full complement of Scripture in Jesus' soul. (Faith grows stronger “by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4b KJV; cf. Deuteronomy 8:3). During the course of His earthly stay, the humanity of Jesus Christ was sustained by the indwelling presence and filling of God the Holy Spirit. This was prophesied in the Old Testament (Isaiah 11:2; 42:1; 61:1). Christ's life on earth was the basis for a unique and supremely effective spiritual life that is now available to every born-again Christian for spiritual growth and glorifying Christ (1 Corinthians 1:24; Ephesians 3:9-11).

As demonstrated by the humanity of Christ, spiritual growth from the divine source of strength enables each believer to fulfill his personal destiny in the will and plan of God. The most important discovery you and I make in our day to day life is recognizing that we are totally dependent on the Holy Spirit to live the spiritual life. It is in this spiritual context ONLY that the believer can say my faith overcomes the power of sin in my life so that I have supernatural power to obey God and perform His greater works.

If you love, respect and honor God, you desire to obey Him. Jesus obeyed the will of the Father at all times during His mission here. Our obedience is conceived in the example of Christ's own personal faith and trust in the Father. It is biblically sound to speak of faith as obedience in the Christian way of life (John 3:36; 6:28-29; 1 Peter 1:2, 22; 2:7-8; Acts 5:32;6:7). Yet faith of itself which is common to all men produces nothing, let alone obedience. The faith the Bible talks about is simple faith made efficacious by its object---“My God, in whom I trust.” We are responsible for obeying the will of God, but He never issues an order for which He has not already provided the means of execution. To obey God's command is to tap His resources. Obedience is evident in the believer's life when God's power is in effect in his spiritual life. That means there is a right way to obey God. In this sense, we should describe our spiritual life as obedience of faith just as Jesus demonstrated in His own life.

God has called us to a holy life, to be lived by faith in the power of His Spirit and nurtured by all “means of grace” in prayer, the daily study of God's Word, fellowship, worship, giving, witnessing and much more. The born-from-above believer can know the deep things of God because he has the Spirit of God within him (1 Corinthians 2:10). The Holy Spirit can and does transform the believer into the image of Christ, as long as he will walk by faith in Him. Faith keeps the believer's focus on his first love, Jesus Christ. Faith allows the believer to accumulate from the Word of God the correct wisdom in his soul (1 Corinthians 2:14-16) in order to thrive in the Christian life.

The Christian way of life is a life of faith and Bible content in the soul. ALWAYS REMEMBER though, that the prime directive of every born-again believer in the Body of Christ is to love as Christ loved us (John 13:34). Paul explains in Romans 5:5 that the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us. The believer's response to God’s love, so abundant in the believer’s heart (cf. 1 John 4:8, 16), is to love one another as Christ loved us which can only be accomplished in the power of the Holy Spirit (Galatians 5:22). Anything else is feckless human love.

-Brad









DISCLOSURE: I do not pretend to be a Bible scholar. What you see here are my private and unpublished notes compiled from daily study of the Bible. However, I disclaim originality in these notes since frequently I turn to other conservative Christian authors for expanded commentary based on the original text. And though I don't always cite source material, I owe a great debt of gratitude to these faithful men of God who have dedicated their scholarly works to bring to light the veracity of the biblical record. Indeed, we share a bias concerning the Holy Scriptures. We believe the Bible of Old and New Testaments to be the revelation of God to mankind in a single canon of Scripture consisting of 66 books in all; and that the completed canon is the inspired Word of God, authoritative, inerrant, and God breathed (2 Timothy 3:16, 17; 2 Peter 1:20, 21; Matthew 5:18; John 16:12, 13). Hence, you should know that I always depend on the Word of God as the final arbiter of sound doctrine. Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture is quoted from the New American Standard Bible (NASB), © 1995, The Lockman Foundation. -BAC
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[Keith]

Amen, Brad, good stuff!