I want to expound on my last post. It’s some of the best news we can hear and I want more. When God says, “Not I but Christ,” He is not looking for my complete eradication, He is inviting my participation. Weird, right? How can it be, He NOT me, but invite my involvement?
To the masses of fellow rejected humans out there, this is just another statement that can be used to club ourselves with further rejection. Again, the old nature is invalid for spiritual life but to beat it with rejection is just as futile. God isn’t saying, “NOT you, you’re disgusting!” Oh, the enemy twists a gift to be just another brick in the wall of rejection and disapproval. This is not the heart of God at all. “Not I but Christ” is an invitation for a greater participation than if I did it on my own and by myself.
How can it be He Not Me?
“How?” you might say. Union! I can be no closer to Christ than to be in union, He in I and I in Him. Yes, the source of my life must emanate from Him, but the whole thing is set up so I might have complete participation. How? As a vessel, witness and observer!
I have looked to Him for a simple picture of this. Now understand, I am looking for a simple, earthly picture for an extremely heavenly thing. How can you contain the mystery of God in a common object lesson? Not easily, for sure! But here is what I believe: The exchanged life is like a man working in his garden wearing gloves. I am the glove and Christ is the life in the glove. It is His life and identity in me.
God isn’t burdening His children with the responsibility to perform His dictated tasks. God doesn’t send us to work alone in His garden for Him; we go into His garden and He works through us.
Christ as Me is He not Me
Christ’s life as my life is His life in my life, and I witness it as the miracle it is. I know who I am on my own. I saw what my self-life produced. Now that I am His, free from my independent life, why would He again send me into His world to do life, independent from Him? He wouldn’t! That would be like setting the recovering alcoholic up in the job of taste-testing whiskey.
Christ as me is the best news in the world. Do you see why the enemy would want this reality to be thwarted? There can now be no more powerful thing than He as me. Oh, what a JOY!
The Revelation of He Not Me
When at first I heard the revelation of He not me, Christ’s life and not mine, I wept. I wanted to be a part of it all. If I was involved, maybe I could make Him pleased with me. Somehow I could disprove that my self-life was the vilest thing in the whole world, that I was a complete failure, and that I couldn’t do anything right. You see, I came at it in rejection and ascribed to God the worst motives regarding me. It could be nothing further from the truth. God set up the reality for me to witness His life firsthand: a ringside seat.
It is a wonderful privilege to witness His very nature performed through me. He is the source of all Life. I get to watch His Life be lived in me, and we are ONE. I’m not eradicated; I am included in the most intimate union possible.
He indwells me to express Himself through me.
He has granted to us
His precious and magnificent promises,
so that by them you may become
partakers of the divine nature.
2 Peter 1:4 NASB
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There is a difference between me, the creation of God, and the fallen nature in me, the old man. When God made me, He said, it is good, He has not changed His mind on that. He loves me, His creation, and so I love me too, the creation of God. The fallen nature however, what I inherited from Adam, God has rejected, completely, finally, not sort of. Christ died. The death of Christ was the verdict of God on the old man. And so I love what God loves, me, the creation of God, I don’t reject it. And… Read more »
John, the analogy of the glove is very good. God is faithful to inspire… Even this, HIS INSPIRATION, is an example of Christ doing through us, and not our doing FROM ourselves.
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[…] My performance of His will is a recipe for destruction. As I have said in my previous posts: Christ’s life as my life is His life in my life, and that’s not my life as His life. Now say […]
Hi John ,
What you share has overtones of Norman Grubb , his ideas about union , christ in me as me , the false idea of an independent self that needs to be crucified , dont sit well with ideas of an old man and a new man battling for ascendency .
My Whole walk lately is wrapped up in what was said in this post. Thank you John for being such an encouragement to me John! I have so much to learn.
Sorry. One too many Johns in my post.
I needed to hear this today. Thank you.
“I came at it in rejection…” I never thought about my response like that before. Something that I need to see. Thank you
Well said John!
This post made me soar. Thank you.