Cp. 1 Understanding Who We Are in Christ - pt.2

You may be asking yourself what sort of things am I talking about and I will share my thoughts on this but some of them may be bitter pills to swallow. Our old man believes these things are our earthly rights as citizens and may infringe upon our rights as free men. We must come to realize, however, that we are no longer free men and women. We have been bought with a price, we have surrendered our will and self-determination to Christ and we now trust Him with our lives and have become His bond servants.
The first issue to deal with is our sense of self. The world has it’s mottos like, “if it feels good do it”, “you only live life once so live it to its fullest”, we are taught to please ourselves first and that “looking out for number one” is the only way to go. If you go to any book store or library and look in the “self help” aisles you will find hundreds of books dedicated to the topic of self but in Christianity we put ourselves last. Jesus said in Mark 9:35 - …"If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all." (NIV). There is an old Sunday school song which says it best, “Jesus, then Others, then You, what a wonderful way to spell Joy...”
We start by putting away all our selfish desires and seek ways in how we can bless and help our brothers and sisters in Christ. This isn’t easy but it gets easier as we put it into practice. This way of thinking is extremely contrary to our human nature. Generally speaking, the process from being an unsaved person to a follower of Christ affects all our relationships: family, personal, business, how we act at our place of occupation, the way we treat and interact with the general public and even the educational and political aspects of our lives must change. Let me offer a couple of specific examples.
One area we should consider is education. It’s easy not to make waves and continue to let our schools teach our children lies and philosophies that are different from our Christian beliefs. We must, at some point, make a stand and fight for our rights as citizens not to have our children force fed things we disagree with like evolution, abortion is OK and tolerance towards sinful behavior and that certain sexual behaviors are as normal as God’s design of marriage being between a man and a woman. They are not; but let me clarify here that while the bible teaches that homosexuality is a sin, it is not a “worse” sin, then adultery or sex outside of marriage or pornography, etc. They are all sin and man is the one that categorizes one sin as being worse then another. In God’s eyes “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God” and that “there is none righteous, no not one“. In fact He goes on to say that “our righteousness is as filthy rags to him.” It is only through the shed blood of Jesus and His righteousness that covers us that we have any hope at all of eternal life.
The hardest area to come to terms with is our political views. In my opinion, Christians should be neither Democrats or Republicans. We should be independent, conservative voters who vote for the party or person who will most likely keep this nation as attuned to God’s ideals as they can. Sometimes it’s a matter of the lesser of two evils, but we must make our political decisions not on the worldly aspects of government such as social security, government programs, war, taxes, medical benefits, etc. but on whether or not this person or party will make attempts to stop the murder of the unborn, protect our right to self-defense, not allow liberals to legislate sin as being ok and acceptable, allow Christians to home school their children if they desire to, allow creationism be taught alongside evolution, not make agreements with evil nations who seek our destruction, continue our national support of Israel and not try to re-write the constitution to eliminate our Christian outlook on society, to name a few. War, while undesirable is not sinful if undertaken to bring freedom to oppressed peoples or as a matter of self-defense.
All these thoughts and ideas that I laid out for a Christian’s political viewpoints are unpopular but that is how it must be. Jesus tells us that we will be hated and persecuted for His name’s sake. Christians are unpopular politically because we call sin, sin and that angers people. They don’t like to be told that they will have to justify their accepted behavior before a holy and righteous God, especially if they don’t believe in Him. But the fact is that their belief or unbelief is irrelevant because as we all know, they will have to stand before God and give an account of their lives and we as Christians will too. We will have to stand before Him and explain why we, for example, thought our social security checks were more important then the life of the unborn or why we supported a party who lowered our taxes but outlawed discrimination in churches against homosexuality.
Consider these two verses…
Col 3:10 - “…and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.” (NIV) and Gal 2:20 - “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (NIV)
Living the Christian life is one of the hardest things to do in this world of self-indulgence and those who think Christianity is a crutch for the weak, children and the old obviously have no idea of what they’re talking about. The bible calls us a “peculiar people” and since we believe far differently from what the world thinks it is understandably so. We are peculiar because of our faith in Christ and the aspects of life that go along with that faith and the bible tells us that in the last days we will be persecuted tremendously for our beliefs but we must endure that persecution until the end. Christ taught that “if they hate me they will hate you also” and that even our families will turn against us, so it is important to take these warnings seriously and determine if we are willing to stick our necks out to that degree. Hard times are coming and if we can’t stand with Christ in the simple things of life like our children’s education and our political views then how can we stand with Him when our lives and the lives of our children depend on our willingness to pay the ultimate price? Think about it!
Another term to describe us is found in Rev 1:6 “and has made us to be a kingdom and priests to serve his God and Father — to him be glory and power for ever and ever! Amen.” (NIV) We are called priests and as such we have a priestly duty to serve God. We do this by doing what the OT priests did but in a new way. They interceded on behalf of their people by accepting and offering sacrifices. Since Christ became the ultimate sacrifice, we no longer have to perform that function but we still have a responsibility to intercede on the behalf of others. We can offer intercessory repentance which is praying for the forgiveness of sins for those who are on their death beds or are otherwise unable to ask for repentance on their own. We can intercede on behalf of those who are plagued by demons or have a serious addiction they need to overcome. We can intercede for other believers to help them attain the position that Gods desires for them and for physical or emotional healing.
We also must realize that we are heirs according to Rom 8:16-17 - “The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. 17 Now if we are children, then we are heirs — heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory“ (NIV). As joint-heirs with Christ we must take on that attitude in our faith. We, as children of a holy and righteous King, are Princes and Princesses of the Kingdom of Heaven and we should begin acting like it. No longer should we put up with the actions of our enemy, Satan. He has been defeated and we need to claim the authority that we have in the name of Jesus Christ over the Devil and his minion’s influence in our lives as God’s word shows us in Luke 9:1. Getting the backbone we need to wage spiritual warfare successfully is hard work but being able to live a victorious life and to receive the overcomer’s crown is well worth all the time and effort the Lord requires of us.