In Colossians 3:4, Paul helps us understand that for believers, Jesus is our life. Paul says, Colossians 3:4-When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. Paul said that Christ is the life for and of His followers.
Being a Christian means the life of Christ gets deposited into your life. His sinless, perfect, righteous life is what qualified Him to pay the price for the sins of the world, and when I accepted what He did for me when He died on the cross and take Him to be my Savior, His sinless, perfect and righteous life is translated to me and when God looks at me, He doesn’t see me or my sin. He only sees the sinless, perfect, righteous One who satisfied the debt I owed. I have life with God because Jesus lives in me. This is the only way to get to God, the only way to get to Heaven.
But wait, there’s more. God wants more for you than the removal of your sins and a ticket to Heaven. God wants you to have life and life more abundant here on earth (John 10:10). When you get Jesus, you get eternal life in Heaven, and you also get to experience abundant life now.
Jesus gave His life for us so that He could give His life to us. Jesus didn’t just want to die for us, but He wants to live in and through us! God wants you to have the kind of life that was intended for Adam and Eve to have when God created them and placed them in the Garden of Eden.
I want to share three aspects of the life of Christ with you.
The life of Christ is unbroken fellowship with God.
When God created Adam and Eve, they walked in close connection with God. It was awesome. Their lives were incredible! They had everything they needed. It was amazing. For however long that lasted, they were living their best life, but when they sinned against God, their close fellowship was broken. Sin separates us from God (Isaiah 59:2). If that is tough to understand, just bring it down to your own personal experience. When people offend you and violate the sacredness of your relationship with them, it creates distance between you and them, right? It changes things. How much more difficulty is there between sinful man and a righteous God? It was more than awkward for Adam and Eve. There was shame and embarrassment. Intimacy was gone. They tried to hide from God. All they enjoyed from that relationship was gone. How could that close relationship be recovered?
God took the necessary steps toward Adam and Eve to help them reconnect with Him. He made atonement for their sin through the sacrificial blood of an animal. God called Adam and Eve out of hiding, not to reprimand them but to repair them. They had tried to cover their shame through their own physical efforts, but it did nothing to change their condition. God covered them completely with coverings He made for them and enabled them to reconnect with Him.
The life of Christ is a power-filled life.
The empty tomb is yet another proof that our God is a God of miracles. Life with Christ is an adventure in the realm of faith where anything is possible. The physical realm is the realm where some things are possible. The spiritual realm is the place where with God all things are possible (Matthew 19:26).
In Christ, we do not have to live as victims of people’s selfish decisions and bad physical circumstances that have sought to take life from us. God will give us the power to overcome and overcome and overcome. The Christian life is a series of overcoming episodes. The key word there is OVER! God gives us power over things in this earthly life in and through our relationship with Jesus. In the strength and power of Christ, we are always rising! Oh, my friends, when we walk with Jesus, we may get knocked down, but we will never be knocked out. God will always enable us to get back up again and to overcome. (II Corinthians 4:7-11)
Read Paul’s prayer for the church at Ephesus; it’s a prayer for you and me today. Ephesians 1:18-20 18 I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, 19 and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength 20 he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms,
The same power that caused an earthquake to manifest, which caused a stone weighing between two and four thousand pounds to move from the entrance to Jesus’ tomb, the power which caused breath and life to be put back into the body of a dead Jesus, which caused His heart to start beating again…that’s the same power that lives in us, believers. Jesus is the life and that life is power to overcome.
The power of God is so unbelievably real that in and through it, life comes even from death. Again, the Resurrection is proof.
The life of Christ is a victorious life.
We live with a sense of victory. We live with our peace intact. We live with a can-do spirit. Believers, we don’t have to live in fear of the devil or anything he can do. The Bible tells us in Colossians 2:15 that Jesus triumphed over the devil on the cross. Jesus disarmed Satan, and the Resurrected life, deposited into our lives, keeps us from having to live in any fear of Satan.
We don’t have to fear death because Jesus has also removed the “sting” of death (I Cor. 15:55). We will not die, but we will live forever with our Lord in perfection. To leave this life, if you have life with Christ, is to receive a promotion. Heaven is by far better than your best day on earth. Our Savior, and not any sickness, will have the final say in our lives.
We don’t have to fear other people. Psalm 27:1-The Lord is my light and my salvation—whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life—of whom shall I be afraid? God will be your defender. God will right every wrong. God shut the mouths of lions, surely, He can shut up your enemy and expose lies when they are being perpetrated.
Listen, We do not have to live in fear. God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind (II Timothy 1:7). No one can do anything to me or against me that won’t turn out for my benefit and God’s glory. Nothing can take down the life of Jesus, and He lives in me! You don’t have to fear anything. Not a pandemic. Not a political party. Not a person. Not a plight or a position you are placed in. You don’t have to fear anything!
Believers, we have the life of Jesus, and He wasn’t afraid of anything! Not the devil. Not the religious leaders. Not the Romans. Not His family. Not public opinion. Not even His betrayer. Jesus was never afraid. Why? Because God was with Him, and as God was with Jesus, God is with us because our lives are hidden away with His life (Col. 3:3).
Because Christ is my life, I have unbroken fellowship with God.
Because Christ is my life, I have unbelievable power to overcome life’s trials.
Because Christ is my life, I have unstoppable victory over anything Satan or this world could throw at me.
Christ is my Life. He is my Everything. He is my All in All. He is my Sufficiency, my Source, my Healer, my Provider, my Protector, my Deliverer, my Refuge, my Counselor, my very best Friend. For like Paul said in Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, BUT CHRIST LIVES IN ME. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
God has done a new thing in my life by forgiving me of my sin and by placing the life of Christ inside of me and reserving my space in Heaven. But, it’s not only a new-thing, but it is a now-thing. God and I are connected in Christ and because of that, I live fearlessly by faith always looking for the next moment Jesus will make a Resurrection appearance in my life to give me power and victory to continue to overcome all things.
