What It Means To Believe in Christ.

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This morning I spoke about what it means to believe in Jesus. Then I proceeded to the main topic, which was that of the resurrection of our body. The central act of redemption is the bringing of eternal life to our physical body. Yet, perhaps due to the early influence of Gnosticism, the Christian salvation has come to mean the forgiveness of our sins so our spiritual nature can live in a mansion in Heaven for eternity.

(7/6/2007) I started off this morning talking about what it means to believe in Jesus. I had prayed for the burden of the Lord, and the sixth chapter of the Gospel of John came to mind. As I read it I noticed that Jesus exhorted us to believe in him, and then He went on to direct us to eat His flesh and drink His blood, because by doing so we attain to the resurrection of our body.

Now, it is obvious that believing and eating are not the same action. So do we gain eternal life by believing, or by eating? Today we would ignore the eating and drinking and focus on believing.

I have noticed that many people who say they believe in Jesus are not substantially changed after many years of believing. Yet we are to be a new creation in which old things have passed away. All has become new. But such total change does not occur as often as we might like.

So what is it. Is it believing in Christ, or is it eating His flesh and drinking His blood? What gives us eternal life? What bring us to the resurrection of our body?

I began to think about what it means to believe in Christ Does it mean to believe that He exists? Does it mean to believe He shed His blood as an atonement for our sins? Does it mean to believe He is the Christ, the Anointed One? Does it mean to believe that God raised Him physically from the dead?

Is it belief in these truths that enables us to be raised from the dead?

The modern Evangelical churches would give us a resounding "Yes."

The Bible would thunder, "Absolutely not."

If I am correct in this, we are in a mess today.

I asked our congregation this morning what it means to "believe in Christ." Tony Damianos, along with others, gave the correct answer. To "believe in Christ" means to "do what He says."

Is Tony correct? Does believing in Christ mean obeying Him and His Apostles, or does it mean only believing in the correct facts about Christ?

My personal opinion is that God is not nearly as concerned about our theological position as He is about our behaviour.

When we stand before God I think He will judge us according to how we treated God and our fellow man. Of course, we cannot refuse the Lordship of Jesus Christ when God brings us to Christ. To do so is to live in spiritual darkness.

I think the problem today is we have attempted to divide between belief and obedience. You hear teachers cry, "Faith alone." What they mean is, we will please God no matter how we treat God or other people if we profess to believe in Christ. I don’t think a greater misunderstanding of God is possible.

The entire Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, is a statement concerning good behaviour and bad behaviour, between unrighteousness and wickedness. Good behaviour is that of keeping God’s commandments. Bad behaviour is that of not keeping God’s commandments.

The two greatest commandments are that we love God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind, and our neighbour as ourselves. This is what God is looking for.

God gave Jesus Christ to us so we could be forgiven our past sins, and then, through the transforming work of the Holy Spirit, learn to love God with all our heart and our neighbour as ourselves.

In order to receive the transforming work of the Holy Spirit we have to confess with our mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in our heart that God has raised Him from the dead. When we do this, we receive God’s Spirit so we can be "saved," that is, rescued from the power of Satan so we can live a godly life in Christ.

Because of our self-love we have said that we must confess Christ and believe in Him, and that is all God requires. We seem unable to comprehend that the purpose of receiving and obeying Christ is so we can be made a new moral creation.

To heap confusion upon confusion, we claim that to be saved is to go to Heaven, rather than what it actually means to be saved, which is to be rescued from Satan so we can serve God in righteousness.

God is looking for His moral image in us, not our belief system. Our belief system is of value only as long as it serves to deliver us from Satan’s image and bring us into God’s image.

The whole point of eating of the Tree of Life, the Lord Jesus Christ, is that we may regain that which was lost in the Garden of Eden. What was lost was bodily immortality. We ate the tree and we died physically.

Christ has come that we might have eternal life, that is, that our inward nature may be filled with the Spirit of God leading to the filling of our deceased physical body with the Spirit of God at the return of the Lord.

To stand once more upon the earth in a physical body, now clothed upon with a robe of indestructible life from Heaven, our personality being filled with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is to be fully redeemed, fully saved.

You can hear the morning sermon at morning. http://www.wor.org/audio/audio.htm

You can hear the evening sermon at evening. http://www.wor.org/audio/audio.htm

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