The Quest For Truth

Jesus was a friend to many sinners. He insisted that He came to save sinners and not the righteous. So how are we to relate to sinners? One way is to make friends based on your terms as found in the Bible and not giving in to their terms. Jesus never adopted any behavior of the tax collectors and publicans to win their friendship. It was always on His terms whether they liked it or not. And most of them did like it. They liked to be friends with a godly man and change their own ways.

Taking sin too casually is a cause of much sin in our life.There has to come a time in our life when we say it is enough and close our hearts to sin. We don’t do this in our own strength but in the power of God through the Holy Spirit. Closing our hearts to sin is a blessed experience.

If we are full of turmoil and stress and tension inside of us then there must be something wrong in our belief system. As Christians we are not supposed to live like that. In the temptation of Jesus we see that He fought with the enemy but it was from a position of rest. He could always maintain His composure when fighting calmly with the devil. He was deriving strength from the inner man through the Holy Spirit. This is fighting from a position of rest and victory. We don’t fight to win but we fight from a position of victory that Christ has won for us.

The Christing life is not a lifelong struggle against sin, the devil and the world. We are not supposed to live fighting but resting in Christ. Someone may say, “If I do not fight then won’t I lose the battle.” That is where faith comes in. Resting involves having faith in God. We do not worry whether we will produce fruit or not. We leave it in the hands of God. He is the one who is going to produce fruit in us through the Holy Spirit. We believe this fact in faith because Christ is the vine and we are the branches. We just abide in Him and He produces fruit for us. We do not even have to struggle to abide in Him because God in Christ has already made us to abide in Him. We accept this in faith. We may fall and sin at times but even through our mistakes we learn more how to abide in Him. We learn not to fight sin but to allow God in Christ through the Holy Spirit to fight our battles and so we rest in Him. This is the true meaning of faith and victory in Christ because the just shall live by faith. Our whole attitude should be of faith in God which is resting in Christ.