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Pocket Paper ______________________ Message by Robert J. Morgan, Senior Pastor The Donelson Fellowship 3210 McGavock Pike 615/871-4769 www.donelson.org If you
could have one verse of Scripture engraved onto your tombstone, what would it
be? Or if you could have one verse
and only one scripted and framed to hang in your living room or kitchen,
which verse would you choose? Or,
to put it a little differently, if someone were to write a biography of your
life and put one verse on the title page, what verse would best summarize
your aspirations and experiences as a Christian? I’d like to suggest that out of
the 31,102 verses in the Bible, you’d have a hard time coming up with a
better choice than the verse I’d like to use as a text
today—Galatians 2:20. It says: 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 (KJV). This is a verse I memorized during my
college days; I’ve been mulling over it for twenty-five years, but I
have yet to plumb its depths. In
simplest fashion, it seems to present three configurations to the Christian
life. The
Relinquished Life First, Galatians 2:20 tells us the
Christian life is a relinquished life:
I am crucified with Christ.
What exactly does that mean?
It means that we have come to the old rugged cross and have gazed upon
the dying form of one who suffered there for us. We see his hands nailed fast to the
wood. We see the spike in his
ankles. We see the blood flowing
in streaks down his body, and, deeply moved, we turn aside from the kind of
life we once lived and take our stand beneath the cross of Jesus. We die to our old selves, we die to
our sin, we die to the world, the flesh, and the devil, and we identify with
the cross of Christ. When James Calvert went out as a
missionary to the cannibals of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German
Christian who died in Nazi hands, once said: When God calls a man, he bids him
come and die. Someone once asked the German Christian
George Mueller, the secret of his victorious Christian life. He replied: There came a day when George
Mueller died, utterly died! No
longer did his own desires, preferences, and tastes come first. He knew that from then on Christ must
be all in all. My pastor during my college years in Someone once saw this sign in the window
of a dry-cleaning and dyeing business:
We dye to live, we live to dye; the more we dye, the more we live;
and the more we live, the more we dye. That’s the slogan for the
Christian. One of the best phrases in the Bible on
this subject comes upon us unexpectedly in the book of Acts. In Acts 20, the Apostle Paul was on
his way to Against that backdrop, we come to
chapter 21: After we had torn
ourselves away from them (the Ephesian elders) we put out to sea and sailed
straight to They finally reached the coast of When we heard this, we and the people
there pleaded with Paul not to go to Now look at verse 14: When he would not be dissuaded, we
gave up and said, “The Lord’s will be done.” Paul knew it was God’s will for
him to go to That is the operative phrase: We must give up our own rights and
desires and say, “The Lord’s will be done.” As Jesus put it in the Garden,
“Nevertheless, not my will but Thine be done.” There comes a time when we must decide
to stop living for money and pleasure and power and for our own plans and
ambitions in life. We give up our
rights, and say, “The Lord’s will be done.” We give up the ownership of our own
lives, we give up control of our own life’s agenda, and we say,
“The Lord’s will be done.” Sometimes we call this a decision of
“Full Surrender,” but whatever we call it, it is an
identification with the cross of Jesus Christ. We are crucified with Christ. The
Exchanged Life But let’s read on, for this text
not only talks about the Crucified Life, but about the Exchanged Life: I
am crucified with Christ:
nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me…. It was Hudson Taylor who
first called this the Exchanged Life.
The idea is this: None of
us can ever live the Christian life in our own strength and power. None of us can resist temptation by
our own will-power and determination.
None of us can live as we should just by our own efforts. Only Jesus Christ can successfully
live the genuine victorious Christian life—it is, after all, His
life—but when we come to Him in full surrender, He invades us by His
Holy Spirit and He begins living His life through us. So the Christian life is not something
that we try to accomplish in ourselves for Christ, it is something He
accomplishes through us by the power of his indwelling Holy Spirit. What does this mean? It means that, in a very real sense,
I’m not preaching today, but Jesus Christ is preaching through me. We don’t have to parent our
children in the sense of our doing it in our own wisdom and ability. Jesus Christ wants to parent them
through us. We don’t have to withstand
temptation through sheer, solitary will-power. Jesus Christ resists the temptation
through us. Do you see what a
different way this is of looking at it?
Now there are two levels to this indwelling/outflowing
life—the first being the Christian experience itself. Galatians The great teaching of the Exchanged
Life—of Galatians 2:20—is that we die to ourselves every day and
Christ lives through us every day, and his very personality is being
reproduced in our lives by the indwelling of his Spirit, which is called in
Romans 8:9, “The Spirit of Christ.” One of the best illustrations of this
comes from the book The Christ Life For Your Life by F. B. Meyer. Dr. Meyer was traveling one day by
train and he saw a man in his compartment reading the famous devotional book,
Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis. Dr. Meyer said, “That’s a
grand book.” “Yes, it
is,” replied the fellow passenger. “But I have found something better,”
said Meyer. “Better?” “Yes.” “How?” Dr. Meyer then proceeded to use the
illustration of painting a picture.
He said, in effect, “What if I saw a beautiful masterpiece in
the museum and I wanted a copy for myself? I could try to imitate it, to copy it
onto a canvas using my own abilities of imitation. But how different the picture would
look if the spirit of the great artist himself could somehow flow into my
heart, into my mind, into my body, into my fingers and paint the picture
through me.” It isn’t a matter of trying to
imitate the Lord Jesus. Why not
let him come into your life and fill you with his Spirit and begin to live
his wonderful life through you?
That is the first level of the Exchanged Life. The second level in which the Exchanged
Life applies is this—not only in Christian living, but in Christian
service. The person who first
helped both me and my wife see the radical nature of this truth was Major Ian
Thomas from But the real defining moment for Ian
Thomas came when he was a young man at the university. He was leader of the InterVarsity
Fellowship group on his campus in “The only thing that alarmed me
was that nobody was converted!
That gets a little discouraging after a bit, doesn’t it? The more I did, the less happened; and
it was not a question of insincerity.
The prospects and the environment were good; there was plenty of ammunition
and plenty of target, but just nothing happened! I became deeply depressed, because I
really loved the Lord Jesus Christ with all my heart; I wanted to be made a
blessing to my fellow men. But I
discovered that forever doubling and redoubling my efforts, rushing here and
dashing there, taking part in this campaign, taking part in that campaign,
preaching in the morning, preaching in the evening, talking to the Bible
class, witnessing to this one, counseling with another, did nothing, nothing
to change the utter barrenness and uselessness of my activity. “Thus by the age of 19, I had been
reduced to a state of complete exhaustion spiritually, until I felt that
there was no point in going on.” But one night in November of that year,
Ian Thomas, about Suddenly a phrase from a Bible verse
flashed into Thomas’ mind: Christ,
who is your life! It hit him
with terrific force and it seemed God was saying this to him: “For seven years with utmost
sincerity, you have been trying to live for Me, on My behalf, the life
that I have been waiting for seven years to live through you. Now supposing I am your
life… I am your
strength… I am your victory
in every area of life.” And Ian Thomas relinquished his own role
in his own life, saying to the Lord:
“If this is true, then I am going to thank Thee for it in sheer
cold-blooded faith, with no evidence to support it, and nothing but a history
of failure behind me. I am going
to thank Thee that if Thou art my life, and this is true, then Thou art my
strength, Thou art my power, Thou art my future. Thou art the One Who is going to go
out now, clothed with me, to do all that I so hopelessly have been trying to
do in the past seven years.” Shortly after, Thomas was to speak to a
boys’ Bible class. On his
way, he said, “Well now, Lord, Thou art going to speak to that
boys’ class, isn’t it wonderful? Yesterday I thought I was going to,
but Thou art going to now!” He arrived to find about 90 boys
gathered for the class. He just
spoke simply about the Lord Jesus, then invited any who wanted to receive Him
as Lord and Savior to see him afterward.
Thirty boys stayed behind.
And that was the beginning of an extraordinary lifetime of fruitful
ministry. Now is this a biblical approach to
Christian living and to the ministry? Listen to what Paul said in Romans 15:18: I will not venture to speak of
anything except what Christ has accomplished through me in leading the
Gentiles to obey God…. Again, in 2 Corinthians 5:20: We are therefore Christ’s
ambassadors as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s
behalf: Be reconciled to God. Again, in 2 Corinthians 13:3, Paul
said: Christ is speaking through
me. He is not weak in dealing
with you, but is powerful among you.
For to be sure, he was crucified in weakness, yet he lives by
God’s power. Likewise we
are weak in him, yet by God’s power we will live with him to serve you. In 2 Timothy 4:17, the apostle
said: But the Lord stood at my
side and gave me strength so that through me the message might be
fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear. I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless
not I, but Christ liveth in me—living his
life and doing his work. So
Galatians The
Trusting Life Look at the last half of the verse: 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 (faith in) the Son of God, who loved
me, and gave himself for me. The Bible says: This is the victory that overcomes
the world, even our faith. Romans
1:17 tells us that the Christian Life is one of faith from first to last, for
it is written the just shall live by faith. Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace,
whose mind is stayed on thee—for he trusteth in Thee. Trust ye in the Lord forever, for in
the Lord, the Lord, there is everlasting strength (see Isaiah 26:3-4). Trust in the Lord with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding (Proverbs 3:5). Let not your heart be
troubled. You believe in God;
believe also in me,” said the Lord in John 14. What time I am afraid, I will trust in
Thee, said the Psalmist. Or as the hymnist put it: In
heavenly love abiding, no change my heart shall fear; And
safe is such confiding, for nothing changes here. The
storm may rage around me, my heart may low be laid; But
God is round about me, and can I be dismayed. Wherever
he may lead me, no want shall turn me back; My
Savior is beside me, and nothing can I lack. His
wisdom ever waketh, his sight is never dim. He
knows the way he taketh, and I will walk with Him. Green
pastures are before me which yet I have not seen; Bright
skies will soon be o’er me where darkest clouds have been; My hope
I cannot measure, my path to life is free; My
Savior has my treasure and I will walk with Him. The Christian Life is nothing less than
the Relinquished Life. It is the
Exchanged Life—both in Christian living and in Christian service. And it is the Trusting Life: 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. And that is the life that wins. Copyright StatementWe grant permission for any edition of The Pocket Paper to be photocopied for use in a local congregation or classroom, provided no more than 1,000 copies are made, the material is distributed free, and the copies include the notice: "Copyright (year) The Donelson Fellowship."For any other use, advance permission must be obtained from The Donelson Fellowship church office.Other messages are available from our website. Just click on the Pocket Papers link on our home page for a list of available messages. |
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