We don’t become Christian in order to just identify ourselves only with that title while still unwilling to detach ourselves completely from our old selves, our old ways, and this wicked world. The Christian life is not based on what we want to do according to our own human ways. In order words, living in self-will, which is tantamount to idolatry because we’ve become our own god as a result.
Living in such way gives us a tendency for us to just do what we think is right in our own eyes. Therefore, It’s all about what God has commanded us to do in His word. Besides, we don’t become Christian for the sake of imposing our morality, our ways of life, our deadly excuses, along with our sinful attitudes upon God, so that He can somehow accommodate us. Well, there is no such thing!
Shockingly, that’s precisely what so many people are doing with their lives as far as their responsibilities to God are concerned. They know that God doesn’t approve something they are practicing; however, their behaviors as well as their tendencies are a direct representative of them trying to coerce God to approve their lifestyles or to accept them just as they are.
It’s quite interesting to see many people in church who are still living a sinful life; however, who somehow think since they obey God by doing certain things, He will not be that concerned about what they do with respect to their own favorite sins. You have also people who call themselves Christian, at the same time who take great pleasure in indulging deliberately in the very things that are considered as sinful in God’s sight such as homosexuality, fornication, debauchery, and so forth.
What’s problematic about that is the fact they don’t even seem to be bothered by that just as if it’s okay. So many people have chosen to develop a certain level of comfortability with certain sins. That’s kind of reprehensible behavior is nothing more than self-deception. Well, God is a complete God, so anything required by Him must be done expressly in a complete fashion. By the way, He’s not interested at all in partial obedience from us.
It’s all about our willingness to submit ourselves fully to Him in reverence and awe, so that He can do whatever He wants done through us. Most importantly, Christ’s authority and Lordship must cover every perimeter of our lives. There can’t be any area left out for the enemy to use in order to make inroads into our lives. To sum it all up, the Christian’s life revolves around our total submission to God through Christ.
Our Coming to Christ Must Compel us to Live for Him.
Evidently, anyone who has become a Christian did not do so by having a gun pointed at his/her head. It’s a choice that everyone has made under the conviction of the Holy Spirit. We accept Christ because we realize that our old ways of life were unsustainable and unacceptable to God. We were into such a desperate situation where there was nothing that we could have done in order to get out of that detestable state by our own human power and will. Therefore, we desperately ran to Christ with a broken and contrite heart seeking His forgiveness, so that He can save us from our sins and accept us into the God’s family.
Christ’s death is the sole all-sufficient weapon we really need in order to be victorious over sins. As Christ said in (John 19:30), “It’s finished”. Our debt was paid in full, which means that we’re no longer slave to sin and Satan. It’s God’s will that we live a holy life because He is holy (1 Peter 1:16). The point is that God is holding us up to His own holiness standard. We could not have done that on our own human ability and power; thereby, Christ came for the sake of providing us a way out of that detrimental situation we were once in for the purpose of empowering us to do what our human ability would have never been able to allow us to do.
Christ has made an extremely important investment for us, and we’re left with the responsibility of demonstrating Him why His death for us was not in vain by our complete obedience to Him. Because Jesus didn’t give His life for us in order for us to continue to live the same sinful ways we used to live that had compelled Him to come and die for us in the first place. When we deliberately give ourselves over to sin, we place Christ back to the very same humiliation, shame, and sufferings that He had endured in order to save us.
We Must Change Our Ways.
Let’s put it that way, if you had a massive debt that you could not pay on your own, and because of how dire your situation was that impelled someone with a good will to pay that debt completely off for you. In that case, it makes absolutely no sense for you to continue and piling up debt again and again by hoping that same individual will do the same thing for you. Humanly speaking, that would be highly irresponsible to ever do such a stupid thing. The death of the Lord is so precious to us; we must always make sure that we don’t take it for granted by our constant rebellion to God. In other words, we must never take it as something that Christ had owed us.
Our love and reverence for Him will be determined through the means of our willingness to live a life pleasing to Him. To put it another way, a life that brings great joy, honor, pleasure, and glory to the Lord. Let’s put that into perspective, for instance, you’ve made a major investment into something, and after a while, you notice that the benefits of that investment keep on growing and growing, how would you feel about that?
When we strive to separate ourselves completely from this wicked world system through the power of the Holy Spirit, along with bringing our carnal nature under control in order to live for the Lord alone, regardless of what the circumstances are, this truly brings tremendous pleasure to Him. Just as earthly parents are well pleased when their children are doing well, so is our Lord. The reason is that we’re doing precisely what His death is intended to equip us to do.
What does it to truly mean to live for the Lord alone?
My old self has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me (Galatians 2:20).
The Bible says the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 6:23). Prior to salvation, we were disconnected with God that’s representative of spiritual death. The main culprit is sin because it creates a compulsive desire for us to keep on practicing the same things continually that ultimately leads to death. The Lord died by taking up the sins of the whole world that has brought death upon humanity upon Him.
Since we were already dead to sin, we’ve shared His death on the cross due to the fact we are the very ones who were supposed to die as eternal life through Him was being transferred to all men. While eternal life is hanging over the head of everyone, but only those who accept the gift of salvation that Christ has purchased for us will be saved (John 3:16).
If we were dead to sin why trying to go back in that horrible death’s state we were once in? Why trying to live a life below what was accomplished on the cross by Christ? Let’s use that strange analogy which makes sense biblically speaking, if someone had suffered a tragic death as a result of doing something horribly wrong, and if somehow that individual ends up getting his/her life back; consequently, there is no reason whatsoever for that individual to turn back into doing the same thing which had resulted his/her death in the first place.
As believers in Christ, we’re not only called by God to eternal life in Christ but to live holy lives as well. Living for the Lord simply means complete surrender to His Lordship and authority. Just as if our free will no longer belong to us anymore due to the fact that we’ve become His own property. He must be preeminent in everything we do as His own people as well as His servant.
Conclusion
There is nothing else we can ever give back to Christ that would match up to His death on the Cross. Since we all as believers have Christ’s righteousness imputed to us; thus, all He is asking of us is our total obedience and trust into Him. We are to completely abandon ourselves in Him and submit to His will continually, and He will bring to completion what has already been started.