Basically, it's the realization that we have died to sin, died to ourselves and now it is Christ who lives in and through us. This might sound like familiar language but as I discovered, many of us are not living it out. If you're like me you have lived your Christian life day to day, week to week with some good days and some bad days when it comes to your relationship with God. If we are feeling crummy about where we are at, we might say things like 'I really need to spend more time in prayer' or 'I haven't been reading the Bible as much as I should be.' We base our relationship with God on what we are doing or not doing. It can become a constant struggle of trying to grow in our relationship with God. A good way to think of it is we may start our Christian walk at A and we are trying to get to Z by doing certain things and staying away from worldly things. So when we screw up we think we have taken a step back from say F to D, but when we are doing well we think we are progressing from F to J.
I know I have fallen into this thinking, especially when I compare myself to other Christians, but this is not biblical thinking. This teaching showed me that it is not about my efforts to try to get 'closer' to God. Once we receive Christ, we become part of His body. We are in Christ and Christ is in us. This is the language that is all over the New Testament. You will not find language regarding our relationship with God and what we must do to improve that relationship. The only relationship that matters is between Jesus Christ and God the Father and that never changes. Since we are now in Christ, we now have the same relationship that Jesus has with the Father. Being in Christ, we cannot necessarily 'get closer' to God since we are part of Christ. Its like trying to get one of your body parts closer to you. It doesn't really make sense since its part of you. Going back to the A-Z thinking, by being in Christ we are placed at Z right from the start; its just that we don't realize it. Nothing we do can progress our relationship with God. All we have to do now is recognize that we died with Christ and it is now His life living through us (Galatians 2:20). It is an exchanged life. We die so that Christ may live in us. So our Bible reading, prayer, fasting becomes less of a struggle but more about coming to know the reality of our death and life in Christ. We do these things to know the reality of our life in Christ. It is no longer I who do them, but it is Christ. It is no longer I who tries to evangelize but it is Christ. I have died. It is in the past tense. I am dead to sin and have been raised up in Christ.
When we screw up, it is the old life, our flesh, manifesting itself. As we come to know the reality of our relationship in Christ our old life decreases and no longer manifests itself and Christ increases. Being in Christ makes the Christian life no longer a struggle but full of freedom, joy and peace. A picture of what many of us are trying to do is to get into a room that we already in. We have a blindfold on and we are trying to find a door that gets us closer to God. What we don't realize is that we are already in the room that we want to be in but we are not enjoying it and we are blinded by our own efforts. If we simply take off the blindfold, we will know where we truly are- in Christ!
If you want to read or listen to this teaching go to following links:
http://www.marketstreetfellowship.com/publications/NIBC_Book.pdf - PDF file of the book Not I, but Christ
http://www.marketstreetfellowship.com/foundationaltrack.php - landing page for streaming/downloading. The chapter titles are a little different than what's found in the PDF.
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