7/25/2022 • Desk of Dennis Piller
Why Discipleship 2022 is Not Working.
We talked yesterday about discipleship and this formula that has been used for years that you will not clearly see in the new testament church. It has helped many people but too often the formula has left their walk with God more to the will of the person to follow some version of the 7 steps we discussed yesterday, rather than empty themselves to make room for God's indwelling spirit. Let's continue where we left off.
Shockingly, Jesus Himself could not live the Christian life without His Father: Jesus gave them this answer: “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing.” (John 5:19)
If He couldn’t do anything on His own, how did He live so flawlessly?
Look at His answer:
Whatever the Father does, the Son also does. I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me. I do nothing on my own but speak just what the Father has taught me.
Jesus only did what the Father did, and He did it by means of His Father’s indwelling life. Therein lies the root of Jesus’ amazing life.
We know that Jesus lived by His Father’s life.
But what about us fallen mortals? What about us Christians?
The presupposition that sits underneath virtually every sermon heralded today and most of the Christian books that fill bookstores is that we can live the Christian life if we just try hard enough. If we just study our Bible more, pray more, witness more, tithe more, hear more sermons . . . then we can be like Jesus. But that’s not the gospel. The gospel teaches that just as Jesus couldn’t do anything of Himself, we can’t do anything of ourselves.
Listen to the Lord again: “Without Me you can do nothing.”
The “Christian life” is impossible.
It’s only Him-possible.
It’s like building and operating a motel along a highway that never gets built. The glory of the gospel is that we who are fallen, tarnished, and marred have been invited to live our lives in the exact same way that Jesus lived His life: by an indwelling Lord. We can try as hard as we wish to be like Christ, but human effort will never touch the hem of that garment.
Let’s go back to resurrection day. It is evening. Jesus appears to ten fearful men in a sealed room. He penetrates the door and stands before them. The Lord bids them peace, and then He takes a deep breath.
As a resurrected, life-giving Spirit, the Lord Jesus Christ breathes into these men the wind of God’s own life.
Behold we show you a mystery:
Just as God the Father lived in Jesus, so now God the Son will begin to live in these ten men. The “only begotten” has now become “the firstborn among many brethren,” and God is now the Father of these disciples.
Go to My brethren and say to them, “I am ascending to My Father, and your Father, and to My God and your God.” From this point on, the apostles began to live their lives the same way Jesus Christ lived His
by the power of an indwelling Lord.
The passage moved from the Father living out His life in the Son,
to the Son living out His life in the disciples.
As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me. (John 6:57 KJV)
The Point: What the Father was to Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ is to you.
He’s your indwelling Lord.
The key part of being a disciple is to be awakened to an indwelling Christ—not as a doctrine or theology, but as a living, breathing Person whose life we can live by.
Paul’s central message was “Not I, but Christ” and “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” (See Rom. 8; Col. 1; Gal. 2; and John 14—17, where Jesus Himself spoke about His indwelling just before His death.) Jesus Christ lived His life by an indwelling Father. In the same way, we as believers can live the Christian life only by an indwelling Christ.
But we must be taught how. In short, the goal of the gospel is not to get you out of hell and into heaven, but to get God out of heaven and into you.!
Christians are rarely, if ever, taught how to live by the life of Christ who indwells them. So they rely on their own will to be a “good Christian.”
In other words, they live by the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil rather than by the Tree of Life.
Tomorrow, Discipleship – Living by the Tree of Life.
Mercy Me Almost Home
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7WEYwZrrs4
Excerpts are taken from Frank Viola's blog Discipleship in Crisis
