Christian Fellowship Community Group
A safe place for Christians who Love Jesus Christ to meet and ask for prayer and share scriptures from the bible. We value the posting of Christian music, poems, stories and also personal testimonies. Please let us know your needs, concerns and have some fun getting to know each other. We treat each other with respect.
The wisdom of the fathers
CHRIST OUR LIFE
“I thank God through Jesus Christ”! That exclamation of Paul’s is fundamentally the same as his other words in Galatians 2:20 which we have taken as the key to our study: “I live; and yet no longer I, but Christ“. We saw how prominent is the word ‘I’ throughout his argument in Romans 7, culminating in the agonized cry: “O wretched man that I am!” Then follows the shout of deliverance: “Thank God... Jesus Christ”! and it is clear that the discovery Paul has made is this, that the life we live is the life of Christ alone. We think of the Christian life as a ‘changed life’, a ‘substituted life’, and Christ is our Substitute within. “I live; and yet no longer I, but Christ liveth in me.” This life is not something which we ourselves have to produce. It is Christ’s own life reproduced in us.
How many Christians believe in ‘reproduction’ in this sense, as something more than regeneration? Regeneration means that the life of Christ is planted in us by the Holy Spirit at our new birth. ‘Reproduction’ goes further: it means that new life grows and becomes manifest progressively in us, until the very likeness of Christ begins to be reproduced in our lives. That is what Paul means when he speaks of his travail for the Galatians “until Christ be formed in you” (Gal. 4:19).
God will not give me humility or patience or holiness or love as separate gifts of His grace. He is not a retailer dispensing grace to us in doses, measuring out some patience to the impatient, some love to the unloving, some meekness to the proud, in quantities that we take and work on as kind of capital. He has given only one gift to meet all our need—His Son Christ Jesus, and as I look to Him to live out His life in me, He will be humble and patient and loving and everything else I need—in my stead. Remember the word in the first Epistle of John: “God gave unto us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath the life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not the life” (1 John 5:11, 12). The life of God is not given us as a separate item; the life of God is given us in the Son. It is “eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 6:23). Our relationship to the Son is our relationship to the life.
It is a blessed thing to discover the difference between Christian graces and Christ: to know the difference between meekness and Christ, between patience and Christ, between love and Christ. Remember again what is said in 1 Corinthians 1:30: “Christ Jesus... was made unto us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption.”
TO BE CONTINUED (by Watchman Nee)
CHRIST OUR LIFE
“I thank God through Jesus Christ”! That exclamation of Paul’s is fundamentally the same as his other words in Galatians 2:20 which we have taken as the key to our study: “I live; and yet no longer I, but Christ“. We saw how prominent is the word ‘I’ throughout his argument in Romans 7, culminating in the agonized cry: “O wretched man that I am!” Then follows the shout of deliverance: “Thank God... Jesus Christ”! and it is clear that the discovery Paul has made is this, that the life we live is the life of Christ alone. We think of the Christian life as a ‘changed life’, a ‘substituted life’, and Christ is our Substitute within. “I live; and yet no longer I, but Christ liveth in me.” This life is not something which we ourselves have to produce. It is Christ’s own life reproduced in us.
How many Christians believe in ‘reproduction’ in this sense, as something more than regeneration? Regeneration means that the life of Christ is planted in us by the Holy Spirit at our new birth. ‘Reproduction’ goes further: it means that new life grows and becomes manifest progressively in us, until the very likeness of Christ begins to be reproduced in our lives. That is what Paul means when he speaks of his travail for the Galatians “until Christ be formed in you” (Gal. 4:19).
God will not give me humility or patience or holiness or love as separate gifts of His grace. He is not a retailer dispensing grace to us in doses, measuring out some patience to the impatient, some love to the unloving, some meekness to the proud, in quantities that we take and work on as kind of capital. He has given only one gift to meet all our need—His Son Christ Jesus, and as I look to Him to live out His life in me, He will be humble and patient and loving and everything else I need—in my stead. Remember the word in the first Epistle of John: “God gave unto us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath the life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not the life” (1 John 5:11, 12). The life of God is not given us as a separate item; the life of God is given us in the Son. It is “eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 6:23). Our relationship to the Son is our relationship to the life.
It is a blessed thing to discover the difference between Christian graces and Christ: to know the difference between meekness and Christ, between patience and Christ, between love and Christ. Remember again what is said in 1 Corinthians 1:30: “Christ Jesus... was made unto us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption.”
TO BE CONTINUED (by Watchman Nee)
Here, today, gone tomorrow. But the Word of the Lord stands forever. His Words a Life and Spirit. "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have Words of eternal Life!"