The Christian life, lived as the Bible teaches to live it, is the most complete and exciting life this side of heaven!
That may come as a surprise to those who view Christianity as just another of the world’s many religions kept afloat by the sweat and zeal of their followers. It may even come as a surprise to millions of people who wear the Christian label but are familiar only with the outward shell of a dead religion.
The truth is that the resurrected Christ is the beating heart and soul of a relationship between God and man. He is more than the founder of a religion, more than a figurehead, more than an inspiration or a leader or a teacher or a prophet – He is literally an indwelling life!
The Bible unequivocally declares that the riches of the glory of the mystery of Christianity is Christ in you! That statement appears in Colossians 1:27. If you search further, you will discover that God first entered the world He created, in the form of a man named Jesus; then He entered any man, woman, boy or girl who would submit to Him.
The Creator’s close association with the human race following the disaster in Eden, unfolded in four extraordinary steps. Scripture heralds the first step: Wherefore when He cometh into the world, He saith…a body hast thou prepared me (Hebrews 10:5).
This mystery is both awe-inspiring and incomprehensible in its essentials: a single human body was prepared to contain and reveal the Creator God to His Creation. Jesus said, he who has seen me has seen the Father (John 14:9).
And yet, glorious as was the incarnation of God, it was only the beginning of His personal revelation on earth.
The full scope of it is simply too great for human minds to grasp all at once. Thus, in His incarnation Jesus did not explain Himself: He simply presented Himself to an uncomprehending audience, declaring: Ye are from beneath, I am from above: ye are of this world, I am not of this world […] before Abraham was, I Am […] I and my Father are one. Thesestatements appear in the Gospel of John in chapters 8:23,58; and 10:30.
The purpose of His incarnation was Redemption that led inevitably to the Cross, where He became a perfect sacrifice to pay for the consequences of rebellion and sin in those whom He had created. But glorious as Redemption was, it was only the second step of God’s complete revelation to us.
Next came the Resurrection. Redemption made Christ’s atonement for sin available to all who would receive it; Resurrection made His life available to the redeemed!
This was the third step, and it has implications every bit as great and incomprehensible as the incarnation and redemption. It was left to the Apostles whose words are recorded in the New Testament, to explain resurrection life as they explained Jesus Christ – who He is, why He died for us, why He was resurrected for us, and why we must live in Him and He in us if we are to experience personal liberation from this present evil world.
That liberation includes both triumph over our inner corruption and over God’s adversary—named Lucifer, or Satan, or the devil—who inherited the throne as god of this world when the two first humans made the unwise choice to obey him and not their Creator.
The Apostles John and Paul went on to explain how the living Jesus Christ, made incarnate in our flesh through our voluntary submission to Him, would be revealed to the world.
This fourth step entails a partial revelation of Christ in every true Christian and a complete revelation in His church, not a man-made building but the living Body of Christ gathered anywhere as a local assembly.
Christ recorded in Psalm 22:22 declared: In the midst of the congregation will I praise thee.
Matthew 18:20 quotes Jesus saying: Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.
His work on earth will not be complete until this revelation is complete, and He comes fully to life in His worshipping congregation, when He shall come to be glorified in His saints, and to be admired in all them that believe (2 Thessalonians 1:10).