Christ is
All, and … In All
Arthur
Licursi
“And
have put on (“put
on” in Greek is “enduo”, “to sink into, as sinking into a
garment”)
the new man, which is renewed in knowledge (knowledge,
Gk. epignosis, full experiential knowledge)
after
the image of him that created him: 11Where
there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision,
Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all
(“all”,
Gk. pas, meaning “in all things, all places, by all means, at all
times”).
Col. 3:10-11
At
one time, several years ago, I honestly confessed to a friend that I had
no problem with trusting Christ regarding my salvation from perdition, but
frankly I, at that time, could not yet somehow see Him, to trust Him, in
my practical daily secular life – and the load was heavy. I’ve since
come to see that there’s no difference between my spiritual and secular
life, as a born-again child of God.
My Old Way of Living
In
past years I’ve always been a worker and control person, to make things
happen, in business and all spheres of my life, including my spiritual
life. After all, didn’t religion tell us we had to – have enough
faith, pray, give, go to as many church meetings as possible, support the
church program, etc.?
That
kind of “doing”, for me, was rooted in self-dependence, which I now
see as rooted in self-love out of self-concern because I did NOT trust
God. I wanted to control everything around me not so I could measure my
achievements and feel good, but rather so I could feel secure about myself
in every situation. It never worked, because the result was that I was
always anxious and never at rest. This is the state of many, many
Christians who live under the “works based religious concept” and
approach to Christian living. They do not realize that when they attempt
to be good Christians and work for God by their self-directed self-effort,
they at the same time they make void the grace of God. Grace must be 100%
or its not grace.
“And
if by grace, then is it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more
grace. But if it be of works, then is it no more grace: otherwise work is
no more work.” Romans 11:6
Thus,
helping out God is not the answer; we see that in the experience of
Abraham, whose effort to fulfill God’s promise, only served to bring
forth Ishmael.
In
retrospect, this was due to the fact that I knew that I was incapable of
keeping everything in life under control. I always felt uneasy because I
knew deep inside that I was incapable of controlling everything. Lest I
had not yet been convinced of my inability to control everything, the
Father permitted insurmountable sufferings into my life and the lives of
those near to me (heart surgery for myself and 5 grandchildren, law
suits, people and situations in my life that were contrary to me and
beyond my control.) All these insurmountable things were to make me
realize I am not up to the task; I’m not the god of my own life.
This kind of revelation must come to all of us.
A New Way of Living
In
recent years I’ve come to learn a new way of living which takes the
sting out of the hurts of life. Though I’ve not yet arrived, life has
become so much easier – just as Jesus promised, “Take
my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and
ye shall find rest unto your souls.” (Matthew 11:29).
"I have told you these things,
so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will
have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world." (John 16:33) My
good friend Bill Landon and I have come to define successful or overcoming
Christian living as Jesus does in Jn 16:33. Successful Christian living is
a life that is lived with inner rest and peace, that peace
is ours only as He, who is peace, becomes ALL to us.
Jesus of Nazareth did
nothing of Himself, but only as the Father led Him to do, speak, and
evaluate things. He did not live by self-will, but by the Father’s will
for Him. This way of complete and utter dependence upon the Father is the
way of rest and peace.
So now I endure the very same
problems in life; life threatening illnesses, disappointments, concerns,
relationships that hurt, inconveniences and interruptions to what “I”
want to do, … but now I know that it is really not happening to “me”
alone, but Him as “me”, Him who is my rest in the midst of all the
trying things of life on earth in this world. The miracle is that Christ
lives in me as my true and only genuine life (spirit life, at my
core, 1Cor 6:17, Col 3:4). “I” am in Him who is my ALL in my living.
Living in trust and reliance
upon Him not only has made life restful, but also more and enjoyable in
the midst of it ALL.
The Remedy for Unrest
Some time ago my wife, Linda,
and I were recounting how it is that He seems to be effectively working in
our lives. We realized that there are some key and basic understandings He
has brought us to, which permit Him to be seen as all to us. Since Christ
is THE only PEACE, then all who live apart from trusting in Him from
moment to moment have chronic lack of peace, unrest. We now recognize that
the remedy for this unrest is rooted in the following 8 points.
1.)
God first is Our Father, who happens also to be Almighty God, the
“I Am”
2.)
We are The Father’s literal
birthed offspring by virtue of a spiritual conception by His Seed
(Christ) in our spirit. (Gal 3:16, 1Peter 1:23, John
3:5-6; John 3:8; John 8:41; 1 John 2:29; John 20:17, 1 John 3:9; 1 John
4:7; 1 John 5:1; 1 John 5:4; 1 John 5:18) Thus we have the literal life
(Col 1:27) and nature (2Pet 1:4) of God our Father, by the indwelling of
His Seeded Son (1Peter 1:23, Gal 3:16), as the Spirit of life (Rom 8:2),
indwelling our spirit (1John 4:13) as our new life (Gal 2:20).
3.)
He loves us unconditionally (Rom 5:6), with the Father’s love, a
love that goes beyond benign unconditionality; He actively loves us by
involvement in ALL the things that touch our lives (Rom 8:28).
4.)
Christ
is always and irrevocably living and abiding in us (1Jn 4:13, Col 1:27),
as our life (Col. 3:4a,), with all the power of His resurrected life (Eph
3:20). Christ
in my spirit is my life, and also Christ is my faith, so it’s not my
faith that must be pumped up to make life work in rest and peace. It’s
my trusting in Christ’s life in me that makes it work.
He is the victorious Christian in me.
A
key for my seeing “all things are
of God” is to know and believe that I am both dead and alive by Him
in me, in place of the old me (Rom. 6:2-5). So now I only have one life to
live and live by - His.
I’m
saved by, and also live by, Christ and His faith in the Father. “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 (“faith
of”, in Greek is. “Christo pistis“, "The living,
divinely implanted faith of Christ)
the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20)
5.)
We must have a revelatory knowledge that we are incapable of making
life work to the extent of living with an abiding peace and rest, on our
own or by our own effort. This is a key that only God may supply –
revelation, thus Paul prayed. “The eyes of
your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the
hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance
in the saints, 19And
what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe,
according to the working of his mighty power,” (Ephes. 1:18-19)
6.)
Suffering was needed and must be embraced as blessing in our life.
He in His time has blessed us and brought us through much suffering to a
place where we now are learning to trust Him, to know He is in ALL.
By
this understanding, I know that nothing can touch my life unless it is
from His hand and that He is in ALL and ALL is for my good (Rom. 8:28,
2Cor 5:18). I now know that the Devil is God’s Devil, who cannot touch
me in my true rebirthed and eternal person (1John. 5:18) or in body and
soul, except as He permits (see Job). Paul recognized that Nero’s prison
was God’s prison for Paul “I
Paul, a prisoner of the Lord” (Eph. 4:1a), (Eph. 4:1a) and the cup
of suffering our Lord drank was the “cup
of my Father” (John 18:11). We know that Joseph’s dilemma was of
God who meant “it for good”.
It is plain to see that everything is from His hand – whether pleasant
or not. The unpleasant seems to present the greatest opportunity for us to
see our illusionary “self-love” in its all of its vileness; as the
expression of our foster father (Satan), who usurped the container (me)
who was intended to contain and bear the very seed (Christ) and life of
Father God.
7.)
He is in ALL. He is in ALL the people situations and
circumstances (large and small),
at ALL times and by ALL means in our lives, working thereby for our
eternal good. For the Christian “All
things are of God” 2Cor
5:18 (“of”
Greek, “ek”, meaning “out from and with the sender”).
All things in my life (the good and bad) have Christ in them for me, if I
have eyes to see through them, to Him in it. If Christ is ALL and in
ALL (omnipresent) – this includes Him being in every aspect of my
living experience.
8.)
My work is reduced to one thing only – to simply to trust the
Christ who lives in me, trusting Him to live through me spontaneously as
He wills (Philip 2:13), as the apple tree spontaneously produces apples
via the branch, in due season. This is a sort of a “passive work”.
Trust in Him is a work of not working, or not relying upon our
self, but rather relying upon Him.
We
can see this by an example most of us can relate to. This “Trust in
Him is a work of not working” may be likened floating on water - the
only work for us to float on water is to let go, to trust the water to
hold us.
When
Paul says we need to “put on the new man” Paul is commending us
to not working. How can I say this? Let’s look at the words “put
on”. “Put on”
is the one Greek word (“enduo”, meaning,
“to sink into, as sinking into a garment”, Strong’s
Exhaustive Concordance.)
The
new man is “renewed in knowledge (full
recognition, as a new consciousness)
after
the image of him that created him:” As we grow in the knowledge of the
“indwelling Christ” we will more and more give up to trust Him. We
will trust only as we let go of self-reliance. Thankfully God is working
ALL things in that direction for each of us.
I
was taught from a child, and so thought that my choices are what governed
my life. Now I see that, as a child of the Father, He governs my life and
makes the choices for me by His “seed,
which is Christ” (Gal 3:16) in me, if I’ll be led (Rom.
8:14), if I will yield (Romans
6:13; Romans 6:16; Romans 6:19).
This
indwelling Seed makes us complete (Col. 2:10). His indwelling life
includes the very mind of the resurrected Christ, appropriated by a
spontaneous intuitive knowing. I’ve learned that if
I wait long enough, ignoring my self-desires, His will is automatically
known to me as a “normal inner knowing”.
We
males usually consider a situation “logically”, but most often end up
“doing” just what we want; and then sometimes making the logic fit
what we “desire”. So desire is the root issue, not our choices.
Formerly I lived according to the desire of a life contrary to me which is
living in my flesh body – the Sinful Spirit – Satan. It was his lusts
(strong desire) we served (John 8:44).
That
Sin spirit within my flesh even now lies to me, saying “You can
handle and fix things”, I can operate independent of Christ in me.
As Christian we will face this temptation so long as we have these fallen,
sin infected, bodies. It is a lie and an illusion – that I could govern
my life. Deep down I know I do not, in myself, have what it takes,
hence, anxiety. As stated before, I never was at ease, most often living
with fear and anxiety. Now I live by trusting Him as my ALL (my very
life), in the situations that He has designed or permitted in order for me
to experience His ALLness, to learn how reliable He is. I’m learning
that if I will wait on Him and
permit Him to lead me, the direction of my life automatically and
spontaneously becomes what He has chosen. I come to know that by a sense
of Him, by an inner knowing. Formerly, I would rush in where angels fear
to tread, to take charge without waiting on Him, for fear that somehow He
would not show up.
Religion
told me God was generally everywhere but never told me that Christ’s
Spirit of Life (Rom 8:2) specifically is literally and irrevocably
dwelling in me as the new me. I knew Him as “The Almighty”, but I did
not really know He was my literal Father and loved me as such, and that He
has ordered my every situation for my good.
Yes,
I made that one irrevocable free will choice the day I received Him. I now
see that even that choice was not of entirely of myself, since the faith
by which I believed was not of myself. “For by grace are ye saved
through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the
gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. (Ephes. 2:8-9).
There
is not much room for self to glory in this kind of relationship with and
in Him. I would guess that this activity of our loving Father God on our
behalf must be why the religious, works based, Christian cannot stand
seeing others enjoy the liberty of 100% grace in Christ – there is no
room for them to “do something” in which their self may
have some glory. Grace is a 100% thing (Rom 1:6). It’s all grace, or
nothing of Christ is effective in our lives. Christ is made of “no
effect” by our good self-efforts, laboring under law, precepts
or otherwise. “Christ is become
of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye
are fallen from grace.” (Galatians 5:4) If we make “Christ
indwelling life of no effect”,
then our Christian life cannot work, as measured by rest and peace.
Peter Ultimately Learned to Let Go
Peter is the one who was once
full of self-zeal, but failed in denying the Lord three times. That
failure, I’m sure, only served to ultimately turn him to the reliable
life of Another, abiding within him as his only life. Jesus told Peter he
too would ultimately come to a place of being borne by Him and not
asserting his own self, as he had been accustomed to doing.
“Verily,
verily, I say unto thee, When thou wast young, thou girdedst thyself, and
walkedst whither thou wouldest: but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt
stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee
whither thou wouldest not.” (John 21:18).
Peter
no doubt ultimately learned to be girded and led in Christ – even to a
cross where Peter also died. Peter then rested in Christ, he “put
on Christ” by letting go, by sinking into Christ (see
Col. 3:10 above) as his life and governor (Isa. 9:6). <END>