He Is Your Life

"He Is Your Life" – Colossians 3:3-4 "For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God." Christ is not merely someone who helps: He is your life. And if the believer's life is hidden in Him, then it is not defined by his falls, nor by people's opinion, nor by his past, nor by the circumstance tormenting him today. This study expounds those two verses and then walks through four passages describing what God does on the inside: the new creature, the heart of flesh that replaces the heart of stone, the old self crucified, and the old clothing that must come off to put on the new man.

I. "For ye are dead"

A. On the day a person is converted, he dies: "old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new". Before, you were quick to anger, insecure, unable to sleep in peace, unable to love or be of use to anyone.

B. "Ye are dead" does not mean we stop breathing: it means the old life, the one without God, no longer rules.

C. And yet the outburst comes and we fall apart. That happens because inside we have not died, and because we do not let out what has to come out.

D. In Christ the believer dies to the slavery of sin and to living only for himself. Hatred and strife do not come from Christ; and where Christ and the Father are one, that is not accepted.

E. The body is corruptible and will one day be ash; but when the Son stands in the cloud we will be transformed. So the struggle of life cannot displace the essence, which is keeping our life in God.

II. Circumstances do not define you

A. You are not defined by your falls, by people's opinion, or by your past. "Let no one know what I used to be": we would all pray that prayer.

B. Your security is in God, not in your circumstance. Some circumstances torment so much that a person talks as if he had already been to the funeral home.

C. A circumstance is lived by fighting and facing it; otherwise we drown. And none of them is meant to destroy or embitter us, because in Christ we are in God.

D. When you blame your circumstance on someone, you make yourself a victim. "Everyone is against me": whoever lives that way builds his own crowd of enemies.

E. If Christ upholds us, we are in the Father; and the Father overcomes the circumstances. The one who comes out ahead is the one with faith.

III. Hope and direction

A. One must learn to live with hope, and that hope gives direction: what to do, what to say, what to keep quiet, where to be.

B. Circumstance torments most at night, when a person is left alone with himself.

C. Whoever loses direction loses purpose: today he says one thing and tomorrow another; today he is troubled and tomorrow he says God is with him.

D. What has to be learned is to trust God; that is faith, and faith is what moves a life. Exercising it moves the hand of God, and that is where the miracles begin.

E. There is a "when": when Christ appears. But the question is when you will let Him appear to you. He stepped in between the Father and our guilt; drawing us to Himself, He carries us to the Father.

IV. Walking in holiness, serving in faithfulness

A. If a person does not walk in holiness, the Holy Spirit departs; and a great emptiness is left in the heart.

B. Talking is not the problem; the problem is talking without knowing what you are saying.

C. Whoever is faithful to God ends up faithful to everyone: even when they hate you, you must love.

D. When we do not love, we wish harm. "I don't want anything to do with that person" is, in honesty, wishing them ill.

E. We like to see everyone's fault and never sit down to examine ourselves. A person examines himself when he reacts and afterward thinks: "why did I say that?".

V. "Your life is hid with Christ in God"

A. Your true life is safe, protected, and kept in God.

B. Though outside there is pressure, attacks, and uncertainty, your identity does not depend on people's opinion or on your circumstance, but on your union with Christ.

C. What the enemy wants is that you not pray and that you live weighed down. God wants freedom.

D. We are wasting life on circumstances; and by the time a person realizes it, there was no sowing.

VI. "When Christ, who is our life, shall appear"

A. Christ is not merely someone who helps you: He is your life.

B. One day it will be seen publicly who He is and who are His: "then shall ye also appear with him in glory".

C. Today you may not notice what God is doing in you; but the day will come for reward, restoration, and glory with Christ.

D. We live as if we held everything in our hand, and we hold nothing in our fist: we hold what the Scriptures tell us to do.

VII. A new creature (2 Corinthians 5:17)

A. "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature." The key is not whether a person behaves well or is improving, but whether he is united to Christ by faith: a permanent relationship.

B. It is He who makes a new creature; no one becomes one by his own effort. Because some days a person is good company and the next day unbearable.

C. God does not patch the surface: He gives new life inside —new identity, a different character, new desires, new direction, a new heart.

D. "Old things are passed away": the past no longer governs —the guilt, the chain, the habits, the old way of thinking— even if there has been struggle and process.

E. "All things are become new": it is no small thing. What becomes small is lukewarmness, and that is produced by living fixed on circumstances.

F. Do not live condemned by what you were: in Christ, God calls you by what you are becoming.

VIII. A new heart (Ezekiel 36:26)

A. It is the promise given to the people on their way to Babylon. There God gave them land, to build and to sow; the faith of those men moved the hand of God in the middle of a captivity.

B. "A new heart also will I give you": that is what is needed when a person can no longer bear a situation or a person.

C. "And a new spirit will I put within you": a deep renewal giving a new willingness to obey and love what is right, placed there by the Holy Spirit, who convicts.

D. "I will take away the stony heart": hardness, insensitivity toward God, pride, coldness, resistance, and lack of compassion. That is the greatest problem a person can have.

E. "And I will give you an heart of flesh": sensitive, alive, tender, obedient, moldable, responding to God's voice and able to feel compassion.

F. A question to take home: how many times a day do you move in compassion? If they are few, who is left to show God on the earth?

IX. Crucified with Christ (Galatians 2:20)

A. "I am crucified with Christ." The old self —the one who only looks out for himself, who neither loves nor serves, who hunts for everyone's weak spot— was put on the cross.

B. A person must be dead to his own self, to sin, to rebellion, to anger, to his venom. He no longer has the same right to govern himself.

C. "Nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me": personality is not lost; Christ becomes Lord and the source of the life, because He paid for all the sin.

D. He wants to form your character, and you must let Him. Because a human being uses his character to manipulate: "that's just how I am", "nobody changes me"; and not always with words.

E. "The life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God": while we live in this body we depend on Christ day by day, not on our own strength, because our strength abandons us.

F. "Who loved me, and gave himself for me": it is not a general idea, it is personal. That breaks guilt, lifts the fallen, and kindles gratitude.

X. Putting off and putting on (Ephesians 4:22-24)

A. "Put off the old man": the act belongs to you. The Holy Spirit forgives and cleanses, but the putting off is your own decision; and what is not put off becomes the greater ruin.

B. "Which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts": sin promises satisfaction, but it deceives and damages, and the old man ends up corrupting further.

C. "Be renewed in the spirit of your mind": transformation begins in the mind —thoughts, beliefs, focus— and God changes it with His truth, which is what sets free.

D. "Put on the new man": it is a decision, like putting on clothes. And it is today, not tomorrow, because tomorrow the heart is harder.

E. "In righteousness and true holiness": the new shows in an upright life set apart, guided by the truth and not by emotions or culture.

F. The old clothing is lying, wrath, resentment, stealing, taking advantage, harmful words, bitterness, anger, shouting, and insults; and all of it grieves the Holy Spirit. What has been cleansed is not to be soiled again.

XI. Application

A. Stop measuring yourself by your circumstance. What defines you is your union with Christ, not what is happening to you.

B. Do not make yourself a victim. Blaming another for what you are living keeps you tied to it.

C. Sit down to examine yourself, not others; and when you react badly, ask yourself why you said it.

D. Ask for a heart of flesh where yours is stone, and count how many times a day you move in compassion.

E. Let Him form your character instead of using it to manipulate your own household.

F. Put off the old clothing today and put on the new: tomorrow it costs more, because the heart hardens.