April 26, 2020 AS HE IS
1 John 4:16-17 “We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in Him. By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgement; because as He is, so also are we in this world.
1 Peter 1:13-16 “Therefore, gird your minds for action, keep sober in spirit, fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lust which were yours in your ignorance, but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior; because it is written, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy.’”
It seems that as a whole, we have not gotten the full story and we have underestimated just how great and far reaching our salvation really is. When we honestly compare the current view and understanding of what it means to be a Christian with how the New Testament portrays the life of a believer, we have to admit that we, not all but many, have somehow lost something along the way. If some correction is needed in how we view our ‘Christianity’ and if we are to adjust our understanding of what it means that Christ is in us and we are in Him, and what it means that we have been made new creations, there is a hurdle we must overcome. Keeping it brief, we must lay aside our current pre-conceived ideas of how we interpret the scriptures and we must adopt the attitude of reading and studying the scriptures with the mind of a learner with an open mind. Today’s topic is one of those cases where it’s likely most of us find ourselves asking what it means that ‘As He is, so also are we in this world.’ That is an awesome statement that has huge implications for you and I. Can we grasp the fact that we have actually been transferred to His kingdom, that we have been set free from the power of sin, that we can walk by the Spirit and not fulfill the flesh-that we can be like Him? Likely, we all agree in our mind that these things are true, but at the same time it is possible that we are not daily walking in these truths. I’m not talking about ‘sinless perfection’ but about walking and living as new creations. (As we walk in the Spirit, He will convict us if we sin, and will forgive us. 1 John 1:9) Someone said that we have given the Devil too much credit-and that is probably true. Of course, we cannot be like Him in our own strength or with our best effort; only by the power of the Spirit of God who indwells us can we be like Him in this world. The call to be like Him is not reserved for the super-spiritual or ministers, but is for every believer. There is a process of maturing and growing in the faith for believers, but even ‘babes in Christ’ can with the help of the Holy Spirit, reflect the nature of Christ. All of the ‘one-another’ scriptures give a clear picture of what being ‘as He is in this world’ looks like. May we be able to say as John said in the verse above that “we have come to know and have believed”; may we know the love God has for us, that when we abide in God’s love, He abides in us, and that “as He is, so also are we in this world.” Let us turn our heart and our focus to who God says we are and to the awesome implications of being made new creations.
1 Corinthians 15:58 “Therefore, My beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.”
Ephesians 8:1-2 “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved Children; and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma.”
Blessings, Buddy
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