ALIVE WITH CHRIST!

"When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ."

 Col. 2:13

Yes! As a believer, God has made you alive with Christ! Because you are in Christ, you are alive with Christ! This reality means everything in living your Christian life!

Understanding that you have a new identity in Jesus Christ is vital to living a victorious grace life. This life is found ONLY IN CHRIST.

"Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life." (Rom. 6:3-4)

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!" (2 Cor. 5:17) 

"I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." (Gal. 2:20)

"For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God." (Col. 3:3)

When you trusted in Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, God radically changed you. You didn't feel it and you may not have even known it. The fact is, the Bible says you received a new identity in Christ. Because you're in Christ, you died with Him at the cross, you were buried with Him, and you've been raised to new life with Him!

Just as we know and proclaim that Christ died for us, we must also understand and proclaim that we also died with Him!

"For Christ's love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died." (2 Cor. 5:14)

Since we died with Christ at the cross and are now alive with Him, the life we now live is Christ's life living in us and through us in the details of our lives. We experience victory in our lives as our faith rests in the knowledge of who we are in Christ because of what He has accomplished for us by His death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and being seated in heaven. This is God's way for us to grow spiritually day by day. This is the grace life God has provided for us through His Son, Jesus Christ!

The Apostle Paul's teaching on spiritual growth always centered on Christ in the believer. We see this as he argued against legalism in his letter to the Galatians, describing it as "those weak and miserable principles" (Gal. 4:9), and expressed his longing that they be established in Christ. 

"My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you..." (Gal. 4:19)

God's will for us is that the life of His Son live out more and more in our lives. As we understand from God's word that this is His will for every believer, that the Holy Spirit is working in us to accomplish this, and as we trust in it and rest in it, we give the Holy Spirit the freedom to transform us to become more and more like Christ!

It cannot be overemphasized how important it is that believers understand what God is doing today in His children as He forms the church, the Body of Christ! He wants us to know all that Christ has done for us -- our new identity in Christ and what the Spirit of Christ is doing in us and through us. These are the true riches of his grace!

Our union with Christ means that we are alive with Him in heaven and His Spirit is in us as we live on earth. This is how God sees us in our wonderful union with Christ!

"And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus."(Eph. 2:6-7)

By faith we are to rest in the facts that we are no longer in the old Adam. We died to that old man at the cross (separated from him). We died to all that the old man produces, which is sin. We are now united and in oneness with the last Adam, the risen Christ (1 Cor. 15:45). We are now alive with Him! We are to walk by faith and trust in the Holy Spirit in us to produce the fruits of righteousness through us.

"Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him." (Rom. 6:8)

When our old sin nature rises up in us, we must remember what God has accomplished for us at the cross. As we see ourselves as having died with Christ and rest in that spiritual reality, the Holy Spirit is free to manifest the life of Christ in us.  His death is also our death. His life is our life!

"For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body." (2 Cor. 4:11)

When Christ becomes your life, you have absolutely EVERYTHING you need to live a victorious Christian life. You don't have to ask for more spiritual blessings or experiences from God. You already possess them by being in Christ! You are complete in Him!

"For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and you have been given fullness in Christ, who is the head over every power and authority." (Col. 2:9-10)

"Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ." (Eph. 1:3)

We are alive with Christ! Know it, trust in it, and rest in it.

​Stephen J. Moll

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"For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory."

​Col. 3:3-4