March 3, 2021 SEATED WITH CHRIST
Ephesians 2:4-6 “But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our wrongdoings, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the boundless riches if His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”
Recently, I have come to have a better understanding of what it means to be ‘seated with Christ in heavenly places.’ For some time I have understood that we are in Christ and that He is in us and that we have the Holy Spirit to empower us for life and that we are to live as unto the Lord. To be seated with Christ certainly sounded good, but I did not have a clear picture of what that meant in a practical way. Let me share what I now believe to be one of the implications of being seated with Christ in heavenly places. First, we are seated with Christ; this is a picture of rest and completeness-Jesus’ work has been done and we are complete in Him. Being seated with in the heavenly places is to be our base, or the position from which we operate from in this temporary earthly life. The things we do here should be flowing out of our ‘base’ in the heavenlies where we sit with Christ. In a very real sense we are to be ruling over our affairs, over life, from our position with Christ in heavenly places. No doubt, we have to be about life here on earth, but we must see that we are already complete, we are already equipped, to live the life that comes from being seated with Christ. We do not have to live in doubt, defeat, frustration, a sense of incompleteness, selfishness, or in any way that is unbecoming of Christ. I think it is helpful for us to see ourselves sitting down with Christ in heaven, ruling, and over-seeing our physical life here on earth. We share the life of Christ, and the scriptures reveal to us what His life is like. It is a life-long pursuit, but an amazing pursuit, to learn more and more of our identity in Christ and what it means to be sons and daughters of God-the creator of all things, AND to learn of our inheritance we have in Him. So, let us not become narrow in focus, or shortsighted concerning our life on earth; we are seated with Christ in heaven, and from that position we rule over our lives in the nitty-gritty of life here on earth. The most critical issue for us is that we live and move in our true identity in Him; there is no other way that leads to abundant life.
1 Corinthians 6:17 “But the one who joins himself to the Lord is one with Him.”
Colossians 2:9-10 “For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; and in Him you have been made complete, and He is the head over every ruler and authority;”
Blessings,
Buddy
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