Living the Christ-Life

This is the final week in our mini-series on Colossians.  This week we look at how to live like Christ, which is a summary of what Paul has been saying up to this point.  We will look at the transforming power of God, and how He uses it to transform us into the image of Jesus.

This message is based on Colossians 2:6-7.  To read it now, click here.
 
 
 
Several years ago, Our Daily Bread told the story of a group of students at a British University that had raised the question, “What do you want to be?”  A number of different answers were given: somebody said a champion athlete, an influential politician, a noted scholar.  One student said, “you might laugh at me, but I want to be a saint.”
 
I remember that because it really struck me, and I thought that that person is well on their way.  To have the boldness and conviction to mention that in a college classroom setting is an act of faith.  The person that would say that, especially in a classroom setting, is a person who is living the Christ-Life.
 
Paul wrote to the church in Colosse that they need to live in Christ. They need to be rooted in him.  They need to be strengthened in their faith in what they had been taught.  And they need to be overflowing with thankfulness.  These two short passages are a summary of what he had written to them up to this point.  Live in Christ, and be rooted and strengthened in him.
 
The Living Bible translates this “Let your roots grow down into Christ and draw up nourishment from him.  See that you go on growing in the lord, and become strong and vigorous in the truth.”
 
Paul addresses believers in the various churches that he writes to as “saints.”  They are saints.  All believers are saints.  He does that here in Colossians, he does it in Corinthians, and he does it in several other places as well.  We are all saints.  That doesn’t mean that we always act like saints, but in God’s eyes, we are.  But Paul makes it clear that is the goal of our life as believers. 
 
We are to grow in our faith, and our behavior is to reflect that.  We are to grow and become like Christ.  Rick Warren, in The Purpose Driven Life, says that is one of our purposes for living – that’s part of why we were created. 
 
Ephesians 4:24 says that we are to “put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.”  In verse 13, he says that we, as the body of Christ, are to “reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.”  We are to be like Christ.
 
This notion of becoming like Christ is called Sanctification, and it’s only possible through the sacrifice of Christ.  Paul writes in Romans 8:1 that “there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.”  We are born into a life of sin, and we can’t get close to being like Christ on our own.  Only through the forgiveness of our sins can we begin this process. 
 
Okay then, we understand that we are supposed to be Christ-like.  But how do we do that?  What should we be doing?  How do we get there?  Well, there’s the good news.  We just keep rooted in Christ, and God will do the rest.  He will mold you and make you into his image.  And according to Rick Warren, there are three primary means that God uses to do this.
 
The first is that God transforms us by His Truth.  In John 17:17, Jesus is praying before his arrest, and he prays for his disciples, saying, “Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.”  So the first way that God transforms us into his image is through his word.  By reading and spending time in God’s word, we are transformed into the people he wants us to be. 
 
I’m guessing most of you are familiar with the famous “Mutiny on the Bounty,” at least by name I suspect.  Following the rebellion against Captain Bligh, nine mutineers, along with the Tahitian men and women who accompanied them, ended up on Pitcairn Island, a tiny little island in the South Pacific just two miles long and a mile wide. Ten years later, drinking and fighting had left only one man from the crew still alive – John Adams.  Eleven women and 23 children made up the rest of the Island's population. So far this is the story we probably heard from the book and movie.
 
But you might not know the rest of the story, it’s really remarkable.  About this time, about ten years after coming to the island, Adams came across the Bounty's Bible in the bottom of an old chest. He began to read it, and the power of God's Word reached into his heart and changed him forever. The peace and love that Adams found in the Bible brought total transformation.  His old life of quarreling, fighting, and drinking was gone. He became a godly man.  He began to teach the children from the Bible until every person on the island had experienced the same amazing life change that he had. Years later, with a population of slightly less than 100, nearly every person on that Island was a Christian.  

That’s what happens when God truly gets ahold of you.  He changes you, He dramatically changes you, so much so that it changes everybody around you.  And don’t think for a minute that one person can’t make a difference.  One person made all the difference on Pitcairn Island.  There’s no limit to what one person, totally surrendered to God, can do.  And that’s how God transforms us through His Truth, which is found in His Word.
 
The second way that God transforms us is through trials.  We’ve all experienced this, though we might not have realized this is what was going on.  It’s not a very popular method, at least with the ones going through these trials, but it’s very effective.  God can get our attention through the trails and troubles that we face.  In 2 Cor. 4:16-17, Paul writes, “we do not loose heart.  Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.  For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.” 
 
Our trials don’t seem like light and momentary troubles when we are going through them.  They might seem pretty serious.  We fear and we’re afraid.  We sometimes lack confidence in ourselves, and even those around us.  But in the end, our confidence is restored, and we find peace.  Because God is working in us through these trials. 

I have a couple of light hearted stories to share with you this morning.  A fellow awoke one morning to find a puddle of water in the middle of his water bed.  In order to fix the puncture, he rolled the mattress down the stairs, through the house, and into the front yard.  He then fills it with water again so he could locate the leak easier. His yard had a pretty good slope to it, and this enormous bag of water became impossible to control and it soon began rolling down the hill.  He tried to hold it back, but it headed downhill and landed in a clump of bushes that poked it just full of holes.

Disgusted, he threw out the water-bed mattress and frame and bought a brand new standard bed, placing it in the same location as the water bed had been.  The next morning, he wakes up to find a puddle of water in the middle of his brand-new bed. It turns out the upstairs bathroom had a leaky drain.  There was nothing wrong with the waterbed, until he tried to fix it.

In a similar story, while assembling a new water bed, a man realized he would need a hose to fill the mattress. So he runs down to the hardware store and buys one. He attaches it to the bed, ran it all the way through the apartment to the kitchen sink, then, figuring he has a couple hours before it’s filled, goes out to lunch. About an hour later he comes home to check on the progress. That's when he realized he had bought one of those sprinkler hoses. 

On a little more serious side, in December of 1987, a Soviet astronaut returned to the earth after 326 days in orbit. He was in remarkably good health, which hadn’t been the case in previous long term voyages. Five years earlier, after 211 days in space, two cosmonauts suffered from dizziness, high pulse rates, and heart palpitations. They couldn't walk for a week, and a full month later they were still going through therapy for atrophied muscles and weakened hearts.  At zero gravity, the muscles of the body begin to waste away because there isn’t any resistance. To counteract this, the Soviets prescribed a vigorous exercise program for the cosmonauts.  And, they invented the "penguin suit," a running suit laced with elastic bands. It resists every move the cosmonauts make, forcing them to exert more energy. Everything they did required more effort, but that’s exactly what they needed.

We often long for dreamy days without any difficulty, but God knows that’s not really good for us. The easier life is, the weaker our spiritual fiber becomes, we become stronger through trials.  

A final way that God transforms us is through the temptations and tests that come our way.  James 1:12 says “Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him.”  The Living Bible translates this as standing firm through temptations.  The person that stands firm and doesn’t give in to temptations receives the crown of life.
 
We think of temptations as those things that make us sin.  But has it ever occurred to you that every temptation offers an opportunity to do the right thing, as well as the opportunity to do the wrong.  Temptations simply give us a choice – we can do good or evil.  Rick Warren writes “While temptation is Satan’s primary weapon to destroy you, God wants to use it to develop you.”  Be strong against the temptations you face. 
 
As the Union Pacific Railroad was being constructed, a huge trestle bridge was built across a large canyon out West. Wanting to test the bridge, the builder loaded a train with enough extra cars and equipment to double its maximum expected payload. The train was then driven to the middle of the bridge, where it stayed for an entire day. One worker asked, "You trying to break this bridge?" "No," the builder replied, "I'm trying to prove that this bridge won't break." 
 
Most of you know my son Stewart, he works at the bicycle man in Alfred Station – it’s a bike shop that specializes in recumbent bikes.  They sell most of the top manufacturers of recumbent bikes, but they also have their own line, the Linear, that they make right there on premises.  When they look to come up with a new design, they’ll build the frame and send it out for “stress testing.”  They’ll put it under every test they can think of to try to make it fail, they literally try to break it.  They do this to make sure that it won’t break when you buy it.  I think every durable product you buy is tested like this.
 
We are too.  The temptations that Jesus faced after His baptism weren't designed to see if He would sin, but to prove that He wouldn't.  The temptations that we face are the same.  They’re not necessary designed to make us sin, they’re there to prove to you that you don’t have to sin.  Be strong when you face temptation.  You don’t have to sin.  Show God how strong you are.
 
We grow by spending time in God’s word, we grow through the trials and troubles we face, and we grow by temptations.  This kind of growing and becoming like Christ isn’t easy.  It certainly isn’t quick.  It takes time, a lifetime.  But we must never loose sight of the goal, God’s desire for us is to see us grow and to become more Christ.  Don’t fight it.  Let God work in you.  Continue to pursue opportunities to grow.  Continue to show the strength of your faith.  Continue to live the Christ life.