The Christian Life

The Christian Life is simply Jesus Christ living through you.

Most believers have wrestled with the question: How am I supposed to live the Christian life?

Your Need

There’s no doubt that God’s desire for you as a Christian is to live in a godly way.

Only conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ…

Philippians 1:27

The question is: How does that work? How do you get that kind of life in your day to day walk?

Many different answers to that question have been offered. But there is only one true answer, and the Bible is very clear about it.

The reality is that even as a new creation in Christ Jesus, your sin nature will seek to dominate you until the day you go home to be with Christ. This means that the harder you try to live the Christian life, the more you will fail. The reason is that you’re trying to live a righteous life out of a sinful nature.

Paul wrestled with this in Romans 7 where, as a new believer, he discovered that as much as he wanted to do the right thing, his sin nature was always getting in the way.

For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not.

Romans 7:18

Coming to this realization in your Christian life is terribly defeating. Near the end of Romans 7, Paul cries out, “Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from this body of death?”

God’s Provision

It’s at this point of recognizing our inability to live the Christian life that the Word of God breaks in with good news! Just like the Gospel was good news when you were a lost sinner, the Bible contains good news for you as a Christian. Like the Gospel, this good news is also centered in the cross.

When you put your faith in Jesus’ death for your sins and resurrection from the dead, you received eternal life as a gift. But what you may not realize is that much happened in that moment. Romans Chapter 6 explains this.

Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.

Romans 6:3-4

When you put your faith in Jesus Christ, God did something amazing for you. He baptized you into Christ. This isn’t water baptism, this is a work of God to permanently identify you with Jesus Christ as a person.

Why would He do that? Because you needed a new life! You needed the kind of righteous life that only Jesus has. And the only way to do that was to make you a participant in Jesus’ death and resurrection. Jesus’ death is counted as your death, and His resurrection is counted as your life.

What this means is that you have died to the power that the sin nature exerts over you. You no longer have to respond to it! On the flip side, you are now free to have the Lord Jesus live through you by the power of His indwelling Spirit!

This was all God’s work, and He’s done it for you as an act of grace. Jesus’ death for you freed you from sin’s penalty, your death with Him freed you from sin’s power in your life. This is true for every single person who has put their trust in Jesus as their Savior.

Receiving the Gift

So, why doesn’t every believer walk in that freedom? If you’re free from the power of sin, why do you still respond to it?

It’s a matter of faith. Just like you placed your trust in Jesus’ death for you and His resurrection, you are now free to trust that you died and rose with Him! You can count it as true. That’s what faith means.

Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Romans 6:11

You received salvation from the penalty of your sins once for all the moment you put your faith in Jesus’ cross work. However, experiencing freedom from the power of sin in your day to day walk requires repeated responses of faith. For your Christian walk it is not faith in Jesus’ death for you, but faith in the fact that you died with Him, and have been raised to life with Him.

Faith means that you are trusting God to do for you what you cannot do for yourself. Instead of being controlled by the sin nature, you are free to count yourself dead to its power, and to trust Jesus to live His righteous life through you.

All of this is summed up in Galatians 2:20:

I have been crucified with Christ; and it is 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.

Galatians 2:20