Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above,
where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.
Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth.
For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
When Christ, who is our Life, is revealed,
then you also will be revealed with Him in glory.
Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality,
impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry.
Colossians 3:3-5
As incredible as these truths are…they ARE the Truth! God said so! So, if God says, “You have been raised up with Christ; keep seeking the things above…” then that is what we must do! And we must remember that this IS possible! This is <now> the real y.o.u. (and me, too)!
We have been working for awhile now on changing the images we hold in our hearts and our minds. No longer always thinking of ourselves with the negative connotations and names that we did before, but confessing, “I AM who God says I am!” And so I am:
- dead to sin
- alive to God
- righteous
- no longer a slave to sin
- risen to God
- resurrected with a new life
Mrs. Myers writes, “This new, Christ-centered view of who we are (which is unquestionably true, for God cannot lie) provides the basis for living a righteous, obedient life. The more we see who we are in Christ, the more the idea of flirting with sin becomes inconceivable…” (page 90). Consider this in a practical way:
Since I am alive with Christ in me, I can live as righteously as He and be obedient to God the Father. How ludicrous then is any consideration of sin (or “flirting with sin, as Mrs. Myers puts it). Would Jesus have? No; He never sinned.
Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens,
Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession.
For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses,
but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin.
Hebrews 4:14 and 15
He is always available to help us, to encourage us. We have to remember that we are dead to sin…and ourselves, like our Lord, not give in to the temptation. We CAN do this; God says so. Remember “I AM who God says I am”—I AM dead to sin. This means we don’t have to live with “sexual vice, impurity, sensual appetites, unholy desires, greed, covetousness (or any other sinful desire that you might struggle with—depression, addictions, self-pity, selfishness, ________, ________ (fill in the blank!). Philippians 4:13 (AMP) says we have strength for all things in Christ, we’re ready for anything, and we are self-sufficient in His sufficiency.
And you He made alive, when you were dead through the trespasses and sins
in which you once walked, following the course of this world,
following the prince of the power of the air,
the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience.
Among these we all once lived in the passions of our flesh,
following the desires of body and mind,
and so we were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses,
made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved),
Ephesians 2:1-5
The Amplified Bible translates verses 4 and 5 like this, listen:
But God—so rich is He in His mercy!
Because of and in order to satisfy the great and wonderful and intense love
with which He loved us, Even when we were dead (slain) by [our own] shortcomings
and trespasses, He made us alive together in fellowship and in union with Christ;
[He gave us the very life of Christ Himself,
the same new life with which He quickened Him, for] it is by grace
(His favor and mercy which you did not deserve) that you are saved
(delivered from judgment and made partakers of Christ’s salvation).
Isn’t that beautiful?!!
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
Let’s pray the words of this anointed prayer together:
Ephesians 3:14-21
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of His glory He may grant you to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fulness of God. Now to Him who by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, for ever and ever. Amen.
