Truth That Changes Lives

JP Jones: Paul in Colossians 3 is bridging the context between counterfeit Christianity and really living proactively as a disciple of Jesus.

Guest (Male): Thank you for joining us on Truth That Changes Lives. Pastor JP Jones is the senior pastor of Crossline Community Church in Laguna Hills, California, and a professor of biblical studies at Biola University. Today on Truth That Changes Lives, Pastor JP will be giving us a message from a series entitled All About Jesus. Let's listen in as JP gives us part two of Identified in Christ.

JP Jones: The Bible says that when we give our lives to Jesus Christ, that very moment we become new people. 2 Corinthians 5 says we become new creations; the old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. If you're a believer in Jesus, what is true about you is that you have died and that you've been raised up with Christ.

Paul addresses this in Colossians Chapter 3, and then he says that's what's true from the standpoint of our spiritual past, being rooted in our salvation. What's true right now? Well, Christ is our life because Paul says in Colossians 3:3, "You've died and your life is hidden with Christ in God." When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, you'll be revealed with him in glory. He switches from the past tense to the present tense. In the present, Christ is our life.

Christianity is all about Christ. It's not about this church; it's not about religion. It's not about sacrifice. It's not about spiritual disciplines. Christianity is all about Christ. Life certainly isn't about what this world says it's about. It's not about what zip code you live in. It's not about what neighborhood you live in. It's not about what kind of car you drive. It's not about how much money you make. It's not about what college your kids get accepted in.

Life is about Christ. Christ, who is our life. Paul put it this way in Philippians Chapter 1: "For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain." Paul wrote that letter in the context of his present circumstances. He was in a jail, and he was anticipating, "I could die, which is a lot better, and go to heaven. If I live on, it means I'm living as a servant, and it's certainly going to benefit the people I serve because God's given me a message to give away, the gospel."

Whether I die or whether I live, to live is Christ. Is that true for you if you're a follower of Jesus? Have you come to that place where you've exchanged your life and recognize that Christ isn't just a peripheral part of your life? Christ is your life. In Galatians Chapter 2, Paul put it this way: "I've been crucified with Christ. It's no longer I who live, but Christ lives 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 up for me."

Paul says, "I've been crucified with Christ. I died with Christ. And it's Christ who lives in me." My life is Christ living in me, Christ thinking through my mind, Christ loving through my heart, Christ speaking through my mouth, Christ living his resurrection life in my body. It's Christ who lives in me. I'm the person living it, but the life which I now live, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me.

You can't escape it. All these scriptures are from real experience. This isn't just Paul the theologian telling the rest of us from a classroom how to live life. It's Paul the guy who's really living life. Life is all about Christ. To live is Christ. Christ is our life.

Jesus put it in the simplest terms in John Chapter 15, where he compared the Christian life, living as a disciple, to a branch that has a connection with the vine. Jesus said this in John 15:1-11: "I'm the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away, and every branch that bears fruit, he prunes that it may bear more fruit. You're already clean because of the word which I spoke to you. Abide in me, and I in you."

"As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you're the branches. He who abides in me and I in him, he bears much fruit. For without me, you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered, and they gather them and throw them into the fire and they're burned. If you abide in me and my words abide in you, you will ask what you desire and it shall be done for you."

"By this is my Father glorified, that you bear much fruit, and so you'll be my disciples. As the Father loved me, I have also loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full."

Jesus is speaking here, and in the course of these 11 verses, 24 times Jesus uses "I", "me", or "my". I might not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but even I can say, "Well, this is all about Jesus." Is your Christian life all about Jesus? Is your relationship with God all about Jesus? We so easily can get sidetracked. Probably the subtlest way to get sidetracked is not by evil things, but by good things. It's been said that the good can become the enemy of the best.

Many of us maybe have come to the place in our spiritual growth where we've come to recognize those things that are obviously destructive for our lives and we, by grace through faith, have disciplined ourselves and said no to those things. But the good is the enemy of the best. Anything that we're allowing in our lives that disconnects us from Jesus, that robs us from really just trusting in Jesus, that prevents us from abiding in Jesus, well, that has taken a place in our life that's spiritually destructive.

Jesus says "I", "me", or "my" 24 times, and 10 times in this passage he uses the term "abide". It means to remain in, to stay connected to. Remember the movie *The Matrix*? Neo finally discovers that the life he's living is an illusion. When he takes the right pill and comes to an awareness of what's really going on, he wants to get back into the matrix so he can defeat the matrix. But he has to plug in. They put that thing and connected it right back here.

Morpheus! That's my Keanu Reeves impersonation. Morpheus! He had to get plugged in to be able to be into the matrix. If you're not plugged in to Christ, you're not living the Christian life. You're living something, but it's counterfeit Christianity. It's when we abide in Christ, remain in Christ, when we're connected to Christ. That's when we experience the real deal. Paul says in Colossians 3, "Christ is our life."

By the way, this reality of Christ being our life is the only way to transformation. It's the only way to fruitfulness. Yesterday when I was speaking to these men after I had spoken at the men's breakfast, all the guys packed up and left. A group of pastors from the community there in Visalia wanted to talk about how to have a successful men's ministry. They had a thousand guys coming to their breakfast, and they're asking me how to have a successful men's ministry.

I said, "Do whatever you're doing." They asked me and I just had a couple of ideas. It's not rocket science, but I said there's one thing that is the most important thing above everything else about how to have a successful men's ministry. It is this: you, as a spiritual leader, abide in Christ. Pastors are really interesting people. I'm one of them. I've been a pastor for 30 years, so I can speak to this. We are some of the most fragile and insecure people on the planet.

We've got all the stuff that everybody else has, and we cover it up with spiritual language and make it seem like it's okay. That's why I don't like to go to pastors' conferences. Really! I'd rather hang out with a group of pagans than be at a pastors' conference. When you go to a pastors' conference and you meet people that you've never met before, one of the first questions they ask you is, "How many people go to your church?"

It's measured: these are the successful guys and here's the peons, and we all want to be like the successful guys. Pastors are really vulnerable like that, and that's true at every level. I was talking to guys yesterday that are pastors, men's pastors, and key lay leaders, but they all want a successful men's ministry. I said the most important thing you could do is for you, as a spiritual leader, to abide in Christ. In John Chapter 15, Jesus says if you abide in me, you will bear fruit.

I asked, "How many you guys want to bear fruit?" They all raised their hand. It's not about reading this book or going to this church or following this pattern or teaching this curriculum. It's about abiding in Christ. If we abide in Christ, he produces fruit. If we don't abide in Christ, we're trying all that we can do to produce fruit, and we don't do it very well. But Jesus will produce fruit if we abide in Christ. That's true for husbands. You want a fruitful marriage? Abide in Christ.

That's true for wives and parents. You want a fruitful family? Abide in Christ. That's true for all of us. Do we want a fruitful church? We need to abide in Christ because it's all about Christ. As Paul says in Colossians Chapter 3, "Christ is our life." When we came to Christ for salvation, we died and we were raised up with Christ. Now as we live our lives, we're to stay focused on Christ because Christ is our life.

What we have before us is the hope of glory because we're going to appear with Christ. Colossians 3:4 says that Christ is our life, and when he appears, we're going to appear with him in glory. That word "appear" is the Greek word *phaneroo*. It means to appear, reveal, or make manifest. There's coming a day in the future when all history's going to be summed up because Jesus Christ is going to return.

Jesus is going to be revealed and made manifest, and the hope of every follower of Jesus is that we're going to appear with him. God has a glorious future for us as followers of Jesus. If you're here wondering what this whole Christian thing is, here's the deal: when you give your life to Jesus, you will receive the hope of glory. You will receive the absolute certainty of heaven.

1 John 3:2 says: "Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not yet appeared as yet what we will be, but we know that when he appears, we will be like him because we will see him just as he is." When Jesus Christ appears, we're going to be like him. Paul wrote about this in Romans Chapter 8, starting at verse 18: "For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us."

"For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. Not only that, but we who have the firstfruits of the Holy Spirit, even we groan within ourselves because we are eagerly awaiting our full adoption, the redemption of our body." What we have is the hope of glory. The sufferings of this life are not even worthy to be compared with the glory we're going to receive in the future because we are waiting the transformation of our bodies.

Jesus is coming back and we're going to appear with him and be transformed to be like him. That's glorious! He says something similar in 2 Corinthians Chapter 4: "Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inner man is being renewed day by day. For light and temporary affliction is working for us a more exciting and eternal weight of glory."

We don't look at the things which are seen, but the things which are not seen because the things which are seen are temporary, but the things that are not seen are eternal. The glory that we're going to receive in Jesus Christ is eternal. We're going to appear with Jesus Christ in glory. Paul wrote in Philippians Chapter 3: "Our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly bodies that they may be conformed into his glorious body."

Jesus Christ is coming back. If you're a believer in Jesus, you already get your citizenship in heaven. Jesus is going to come back and transform us, and we're going to experience glory. That's the certain hope that we have. In writing to the church at Thessalonica, Paul wrote this: "For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with him those who sleep in Jesus."

He's not talking about those of you who are sleeping through the sermon right now. Wake up! He's talking about people who've died. It's just a polite way of saying they died. But they're with Jesus. To be absent from the body is to be at home with the Lord for the believer. When they die, they immediately go into the presence of Jesus. When Jesus comes back, he's coming back with all those who have already gone to be with him.

"For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and thus we shall always be with the Lord."

Jesus Christ is coming back. Those who've already died and who are with Jesus in heaven are coming back with him. In that moment when Jesus comes back, some people are going to be alive on earth and they're going to be translated. They're going to be caught up with Jesus. Those who have died already and those who are alive are going to be changed in that moment to receive those glorious resurrection bodies, and all of us will forever be with the Lord in glory. Someone can say Hallelujah!

That's the hope we have as followers of Jesus Christ. The truest thing about us is what God says is true. Paul in Colossians 3 is bridging the context between counterfeit Christianity and really living proactively as a disciple of Jesus. He's saying the truest thing about us is that we died and we rose again, that right now Christ is our life, and we have before us the glorious hope of heaven.

This is life-transformational. This isn't truth like two plus two equals four. George Washington was the first president. When two parallel lines are intersected by a transversal, alternate interior angles are equal. I took high school geometry. Those things are true, but they don't really make a difference. This is the kind of truth that transforms your life. Jesus said you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.

If we don't know the truth, we're believing a lie and we're being held in bondage. Do you know who you are as a new person in Christ? If you're here as a seeker, do you know what you're going to get when you receive Jesus? Today could be the very day that you receive Jesus, and all this becomes true for you. The fact that you've died and rose again with Jesus, the fact that Christ is your life, the fact that heaven is this glorious hope.

C.S. Lewis in 1942 preached a sermon, *The Weight of Glory*, and here's an excerpt from it: "In the end, that face, which is the delight or the terror of the universe, must be turned upon each one of us either with one expression or the other, either conferring glory inexpressible or inflicting shame that can never be cured or disguised. I read in a periodical the other day that the fundamental thing is how we think of God. By God himself, that's not true!"

"How God thinks of us is not only more important, but infinitely more important. Indeed, how we think of him is of no importance except insofar as it is related to how he thinks of us. It is written that we shall stand before him. We shall appear; we shall be inspected before the Lord. The promise of glory is the promise, almost incredible and only possible by the work of Jesus Christ, that some of us, that any of us who really chooses, shall actually survive that examination and we shall find his approval."

"We shall please God. To please God, to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness, to be loved by God, not merely pitied but delighted in, as an artist delights in his work, as a father delights in his son, it seems impossible. This weight of glory, which our thoughts can hardly sustain. But it's so." There's before us as followers of Jesus a weight of glory that's giving us hope and motivation and drive, giving meaning to life because we've died and we've been raised up with Christ. Christ is our life, and when Christ appears, we are going to appear with him in glory.

Guest (Male): What a great message for all of us today. Pastor JP provides us with great insight. That is why we'd like to make it available to you on CD. Just get in touch and mention today's date. We'll send it your way for just $5. Or if you'd like to support this ministry, you can write us at Truth That Changes Lives, 23331 Moulton Parkway, Laguna Hills, California, 92653, or give us a call at 949-916-0250.

For your gift of $25 or more, we will send you a signed copy of JP's new book, *Facing Goliath*. Please join us every Sunday at 9 or 11 AM at Crossline Church in Laguna Hills. The address is 23331 Moulton Parkway, Laguna Hills, California, 92653, or check us out on the web at crosslinechurch.com. We want to help you in your relationship with Christ.

Please get in touch with us at Truth That Changes Lives, 23331 Moulton Parkway, Laguna Hills, California, 92653, or call us at 949-916-0250. On the internet, you will find us at crosslinechurch.com. We hope to see you at one of our services every Sunday at our new campus in Laguna Hills. For more information and directions, please go to crosslinechurch.com. Please join us next time on Truth That Changes Lives.