My beloved this is altogether a work of the Spirit. Thus I am confident that an invitation to die to yourself, to repent and see your only hope in the sacrificial death of Christ is a powerful invitation. For this is the will of God for you. To die that you may be born again.
The second article of the true believer's declaration of independence is this:
His Life Empowers Me. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.
Paul, having admitted that he is no longer the same man, also admits that he is not under his own control. It is Christ who is alive in Paul, leading him and guiding him. This man is under another power.
We now move from considering the doctrine of justification to the doctrine of union with Christ. This is a beautiful doctrine of the Bible which says that when we are justified, declared holy before God, based solely on our faith in the Cross of Christ, and by faith we mean a transfer of trust from self to total reliance on the merits of Jesus and in obedience to His Gospel, when that happens, we are united to Jesus Christ. He lives in us.
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Our union in Christ was taught by Jesus:
I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you (John 14:20).
I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing (John 15:5).
I pray that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me (John 17:21).
This is what Paul taught and told the Corinthians: You are not your own; you were bought at a price (1 Corinthians 6:19-20).
The life of my wife has empowered me. I am different because we have walked together these many years.
In infinitely more supernatural and transforming way, I can no longer imagine living without the power of Jesus Christ flowing through me. The life of our Lord possesses those who are His. We cease to live when His death saves us, but we truly begin to live again through His life. He comes into a person's life and takes control and empowers us in every area of our existence: our relationships, our attitudes, our decisions, our responses to sorrows, our understanding of tragedy, and even our awareness of joy in the midst of it all.
Is Christ alive in you?
The third article of the true believer's declaration of independence is this:
His Love Compels Me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
This last article of Paul's declaration of independence catches us off guard. In the midst of a theological reflection on his struggles for justification by faith, in his talk so filled with the doctrine of union in Christ, the giant theologian caps his Freedom Speech off with this tender statement: He loves me.
