For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. Or as the NKJV puts Colossians 3:3 – For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
Hi everyone, welcome to Learning God’s Precepts, my name is Josephine and I consider the above scripture one of the cornerstone verses of my journey with Jesus. Along with 2nd Corinthians 5:17 which says - Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. And Galatians 2:20 – 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. Or as NKJV puts it – I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.
What was so striking to me about these verses? They were all in the past tense – died, crucified, passed. These are facts that have happened. As long as I was born again, this has happened.
You see, when I became born again, I believed that I had been saved or rather that I had received Salvation. A few months after that, I came to realize that I didn’t just receive salvation and the Holy Spirit who was teaching me to pray, study the Word, and leading me, I had also received the name of Jesus, which was all the empowerment I needed to deal with Satan and I was on a mission to deal with him thoroughly in and around my life! I could not believe the authority I had and yet I had been cowering away!
Anyways, add another year to that, and I was having a conversation with someone I had just met, and over the course of our conversation, we realized that I knew his cousin, we’d gone to university together. I remember that as I walked away from that conversation, I said to myself that the person the cousin knew, and the person I am now were not the same person at all.
Then I began to ask myself why.
Was it the things I did? I concluded that it wasn’t. Sure, the things I used to do, I did them no more, and the things I do now I didn’t use to do before. But it wasn’t about what I did or didn’t do.
Was it the way I thought? No, it wasn’t that either. Sure, my thought process had changed greatly, and the beliefs I held as sacrosanct I had thrown out. In fact, I remember when I first discovered that God is really real, and that He is who He says He is in the Bible. The first question I asked myself was that if God is real, and the Bible is the truth, then what in this world is real? Is everything a lie? If all was not a lie then what is true and what isn’t?
Anyway, to answer the question, no it wasn’t about the way I thought. And no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t quite pinpoint what it was that made me know I wasn’t the same person I was just a miserly 3 years ago.
Fast forward to the weekend, I came across these verses and couldn’t believe it – I had been crucified – with Christ! You see John 12:24 says – that except a corn of wheat falls into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. And for the longest time I thought I had to crucify my flesh, but this Jesus said before His crucifixion. And now that Jesus has been crucified, and according to Galatians 5:24 which said that – those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. I realized that the flesh – the old me – had been crucified with Christ; not just the passions and desires of the old me – but the entirety of the old man, all of it. The entire old me has been crucified and has passed away. And in its place, a new man has replaced him, and this new man had a different kind of life, the God Kind of life. The life of Christ Jesus, that He said he came to give us in abundance. I was an entirely new person! It wasn’t just things about me that changed, it was the whole of me, and this change was manifesting in my thoughts and actions.
I was ecstatic.
Have you given your life to Christ? Are you filled with the Holy Spirit? Has the Holy Spirit transformed your life?
I have good news for you! The old you is dead! And you have received new life – Zoe, AKA the God kind of life – Christ's own Life. And receiving this new life means that we can be like our master Jesus!
We can walk in His righteousness and love like Him! We have the same access to the Father He has. We can do the things He did, both spiritually and physically!! That means I can enter the throne room continuously and also manifest his life to people on earth. I can be as kind as He is, as compassionate as He is. I can thirst after God’s kingdom like Him, and do God’s work like He did. I can know God!
This means that when I read the sermon on the mount, I am no longer scared, or confused, wondering who can be all of those things – because I can. Because the life that I received is meek, therefore I too can be meek, I can be poor in Spirit, I can hunger and thirst for righteousness and so on – because my Lord Jesus is all these things and more!
I realized that being like Jesus encompassed more than just doing His miracles but living out His life in all ramifications – and few things have given me as much joy as knowing that I actually can.
