You Can Live This Miracle
A group of Christian women gathered at their prayer meeting. Their guest speaker was an enthusiastic soul winner who overheard them discussing a disreputable woman in their neighborhood. So, he asked: “What are you doing to show the love of Christ to that lady?”
“We’re praying for her salvation every time we meet,” the group leader spoke up.
“Fine,” the evangelist remarked. “But she’ll go to hell if all you do is pray. Have you visited her? Have you shown God’s love to her?"
Christians often seem to want God’s Spirit to carry the message of His love to lost and hurting people. But believers are the ones who are to share the Gospel. Church members spend much of their prayer time urging God to do all the things that He chose and empowered them to do—visiting the poor and needy, comforting the feeble, blessing and providing for the destitute, encouraging those in prison, sustaining the weak, witnessing to unbelievers, and more.
How can God’s Spirit communicate His message to humans without a Christian through whom He can express Himself? What can Jesus Christ do in any town or community without a body through which to function?
When God visited humankind to manifest Himself to people (1 Timothy 3:16), the Bible says, The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us (John 1:14). He came in a physical body. Paul said God came in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself (2 Corinthians 5:19). God came to us on our human level and expressed Himself through the life and witness of a human person, His Son, in the form of flesh and blood.
After Christ was crucified, He returned in the form of the Holy Spirit to take up His abode in human beings as His temple (1 Corinthians 6:19). The astounding and dynamic fact of Christianity is that every time a person receives Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and surrenders to His Holy Spirit, the living Word, the Son of God, is made flesh and dwells among us again (John 1:14).
God In Us
Now, we are the Church—we are Christ’s body. We are His expression in our community today.
The Bible reminds us that God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power and He went about doing good, healing all who were oppressed of the devil for God was with Him (Acts 10:38). The same Spirit that empowered a human person known as Jesus Christ (the Son of God) to minister over two thousand years ago is the same Spirit who ministers through people today. His body today is the Church. The Church is you and it is me. We are His temple, His channel of expression, the carriers of His life now. Today we are His associates, His friends, His partners, His interpreters, His communicators, and His transmitters.
The great truth of authentic Christianity is the preeminent fact that Jesus Christ has so thoroughly redeemed us to God that it is as though no sin had ever been committed to separate us from Him (Isaiah 59:2). We are reconciled to God. We have been redeemed with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot (1 Peter 1:18-19). He loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood (Revelation 1:5). Why? We were brought back to God by the death of His Son, and now we are His friends and He is living within us (Romans 5:10).
This is the essence of biblical Christianity. God redeemed us so that now He can live within us and express Himself through us. Paul summarized the issue in three pivotal words: Christ in you (Colossians 1:27). He added, He works in us mightily (Colossians 1:29). He prayed, That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith (Ephesians 3:17). You are built for a habitation of God through the Spirit (Ephesians 2:22). He alerted us: Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you? (2 Corinthians 13:5). And John added, Greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world (1 John 4:4).
Paul testified: Christ lives in me (Galatians 2:20). He said, You are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwells in you. The temple of God is holy, which temple you are (1 Corinthians 3:16-17). Your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, which is in you, For you are bought with a price (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). You are the temple of the living God: God has said, I will dwell in you, and walk in you; and I will be your God and you shall be My people. I will be a Father unto you, and you shall be My sons and daughters (2 Corinthians 6:16,18).
You can see why this truth is so significant to the Christian faith. Our Lord does nothing except through His body. He functions through you and me—not just our congregations, groups, or denominations.
Jesus Christ—Our Vitality
Paul refers to our oneness with God as the great mystery that has been hidden from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to his children, which is Christ in you (Colossians 1:26-27). The ransom has been paid by the blood of Christ to redeem us from the domination of sin. We have been reconciled to God and justified before Him so perfectly and completely that it is as though no sin had ever been committed.
That is why Jesus Christ can now come and live in us and through us. That is why we can now receive Him into our lives. That is why we have been made the temple of the Holy Spirit and have become His body in action. In Him we now live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28).
And yet, many Christians leave the ministry of witnessing to others they consider more qualified or more spiritual. They say, “The church, the in-home groups, the women’s or men’s group, the youth teams are qualified to do the witnessing.” These are the believers who want their church to be involved in sharing Christ’s message with the unconverted, and they are willing to pay the expenses for the Good News to be shared, but they personally feel that others are more qualified than they are to do the job.
Yet, Christianity is a personal lifestyle. If Christ has come to dwell in us, we are His body. He wills to be interpreted through us. It is through our lives and our personalities that He wants to be represented in our communities. The essence of our Christian experience is Christ living, working, and ministering in us (Colossians 1:27).
When Jesus was in Nazareth, He could do no mighty work there because of unbelief (Mark 6:5-6). Without human faith on the part of people in Nazareth, Christ’s ministry was limited. Without faith that He is at work in and through us today, His ministry is still limited.
Unique Privilege
Many people imagine or assume that God will eventually send angels to proclaim this Gospel to the world. Very often Christians pray and wait for God to do what He told them to do. The Bible says that the glorious Gospel has been committed to our trust (1 Timothy 1:11; 1 Thessalonians 2:4; 1 Corinthians 9:17; Galatians 2:7). He ordained that ordinary people like you and me are to communicate the Good News in all the world, to every creature. If we do not do it, the message of Christ and His love will not be communicated.
Paul said, I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who hath enabled me, for He counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry (1 Timothy 1:11-12). The Gospel is now committed to us. He has now enabled us. He now counts us faithful. The witness of Christ now depends on us.
This is biblical Christianity! Everything else is ritualistic, ceremonial. Christ lives in us. That gives purpose to our lives. We have been filled with His Spirit for a reason, not just to be “spiritual” but to go beyond the walls of our church sanctuaries to tell others about Jesus Christ and His love.
Christ in Action through Christian Believers
Many times, Christians pray and tell God all the things that they want Him to do. Their prayers sound very humble as they give Him all their orders for the day or the week. But much prayer time is wasted by people asking God for two things that He will never do:
They ask Him to do what He has already done.
They ask Him to do what He has told them to do.
The Holy Spirit is not a heavenly agent whom we can dispatch to accomplish our missions in life. He functions through us as believers. He gives the instructions and we respond. We are His temple today (1 Corinthians 3:16-17; 6:19). He moves among people when we do. He accomplishes His mission in us and through us.
The Human Channel
The Church of Jesus Christ is not a building. It is the followers of Jesus who have been cleansed by His blood. Now, today: He speaks through our voices. He walks in our shoes. He touches with our hands. He embraces with our arms of love.
The Church cannot send Christ or His Holy Spirit out as a spiritual messenger to bless the poor, to comfort the distressed, to visit the sick, and to persuade those who are lost to believe the Gospel. The only way He can visit the sick and witness to unsaved people is through believers like you and me. He now touches people through our hands and embraces them with our arms. He hears people through our ears and perceives their needs through our eyes. He now speaks to people through our lips.
Christ’s ministry in any community is limited to those through whom He is allowed to live and express Himself. He longs to speak to people about salvation, to convey the truth to them of the Gospel, but He can only do it through believers who allow Him to speak through their lips.
If Christians are too busy to go and witness or to share their Lord’s message, then He has no other channel through which to minister, and the unconverted world will be lost. Those who are sick or in prison may never be visited by Christ if believers do not go as Christ’s representatives and minister to them in His name.
People may never see God if they do not see Him in action through Christian believers like you and me.
That is why it is vital that we express our witness of Christ outside the walls of the church sanctuary, where hurting and despairing people are to be found. Sharing Christ’s love with them is the most vital and spiritual ministry possible for followers of our Lord today.
Our Regal Mission
Have you shared with someone the way of salvation and offered to help him or her to receive Christ’s life? Has He been able to speak good news through your lips? Have you permitted Him to look through your eyes into the face of someone who is hurting and speak words of comfort? Have you permitted Him to touch someone who is lonely or frightened or in despair through your hands? Has Christ embraced someone who needs help, using your arms? Has He given strength to someone who is faltering, by using your shoulder for him or her to lean on?
This is biblical Christianity—Christ living today in and through ordinary human persons like you and like me. Are you concerned about the lives of unconverted people in your neighborhood and elsewhere? Have you informed them or shared the uplifting lifestyle of Jesus Christ with them?
Have you assumed that such matters are the responsibility of the corporate Church? You are correct. But the Church is not the congregation or the denomination. The Church is you. It’s you and me. Christ has endowed us with that supreme honor.
The Lord does not live in a stone cathedral or in a temple of bricks and mortar. He lives in us—in our bodies. We are His temple. He ministers, exhibits Himself, demonstrates His compassion, and extends His mercy through people like you and like me. This is the divine heritage that makes our Christian lives worth living.
This truth is the heartbeat of soul winning. Everything else is ceremonial. We can automate the rituals of the Christian religion. But the dynamics of the Christ-life must be an inspiration, a revelation—a miracle that we live.
T.L. Osborn
