New Life in Christ

As you see, I'm not Vern this morning. Actually, Vern's in California, I believe, with his family. His dad is having some issues, and he's taking care of that. Plus, Vern is never idle. I think he's actually going to be speaking this morning at his brother's church. So we need to pray for Vern and Nancy as they're away.

So actually, today I'd like to talk about a subject that I've talked about before, actually a greater subject, and it's actually about the riches of God's grace. And Dr. Lewis Perry Chaffer of Dallas Theological Seminary, many years ago, in one of his writings in his theological books, he put together his estimation of the riches of God's grace.

And he had counted basically 33 of those. And I've used that as a format before to speak. And this time, I'd like to talk about one of those elements, which is a new life in Christ. And so a quote from Dr. Chaffer is, in terms of this context of riches of God's grace, he says, those mighty positions and possessions which are wrought instantaneously and simultaneously by God at the instant an individual exercises saving faith. So what we're going to see in this particular one, there's actually, and I think we've had these handouts before, and if you don't see me after them, there's probably a two-page little handout that we passed out before, which are his complete list of his 33 riches of God's grace. We're going to talk about just one of those this morning.

But there's a greater list. I'm gonna refer to these as we go along through here. So I think to start out It's always good to kind of step back and and look and I I present this chart many times and it's just kind of get your feet in the ground and It's good to look through scripture to see well what things are true of me independent Once I've come to know Christ as my Savior what what things are true of me and what's called our position and what things are true of me and in terms of my condition, or how those relate. And there's this overhead which I've used in the past, that Hal Malloy used.

So basically our position, our truths about us, and that's what we're going to talk about today. We're going to talk about a truth, our new life in Christ is true of us the moment we believe. We don't have to work for a new life in Christ, we have a new life in Christ. And our conduct is to be based upon that new life in Christ.

So in this little pictorial we see that it shows our position, Is eternal and unchangeable those those things that we have in Christ cannot be changed We cannot slip up so to speak we cannot make a mistake and lose one of these one of these wonderful positions and possessions a contrary to that in our daily walk we may not live up in a sense to who we are we may not you know if you think about a an ambassador that goes to another country.

He may not live up to his ambassadorship in that country. He may fall short of that. Well, that's somewhat true of our moment-by-moment walk. God's desire is that we live in light of our position. We live in light of who we are in Christ, but sometimes we don't. So that's kind of the mix we're going to see here.

I'm going to spend most of my time talking about our position, and at the very end I'm going to try to apply that and see how does that work into our position, in our condition. So with that kind of as a beginning point, and actually, just a forewarning, and you looked at the handouts there, I just have a ton of scriptures, and in retrospect, I probably should have done a little bit differently, but hindsight's always great. As you finish your last thing, you say, well, I could have done this differently, and you think it was too late to do it differently. It's, you know, the hour is here, so bear with me. All right, so we're going to dive into this, and as a precursor, I found Dr. Chaffer had some six points I'd like to point out in terms of these great positions and possessions we have in Christ.

They're not experience. You might say, well, I kind of experience God's love, but God's love is really independent of your experience of that. God loved you, and that's a marvelous thing. He saved you. You experience that in a sense, but these truths are not experience in that sense.

They're not progressive. You don't become more saved. You may be more steadfast, you may be more assured of your faith, but you're saved the moment you believe. You don't go back and forth on this scale, I'm almost saved, now I'm saved. Some try to teach that. Some say, well, you can lose your salvation. But Scripture doesn't teach that. It teaches that once you put your faith and trust in Christ, you're saved eternally forever. The third one is, These are in no way related to human effort. You can't improve upon who you are in Christ. Since Christ lives in you, you grow in grace in the knowledge of Him, but you can't add to that, is what this is saying.

Fourth, they're eternal in character. We have eternal life. We are eternally His son. We are eternally His children, and so on. Fifth, they're known only through the Word of God. We would be at a total loss to come up with these wonderful truths outside the Word of God. They're totally contained in the Word of God, and the explanation of those lies there. They are not produced by man, but by God alone. God produces these wonderful things in the life of every single believer.

He doesn't look at a believer and say, well, you've, and this believer, I'm going to give more, this I give less. We all get the same amount of wonderful positions and possessions. We may not realize those, and we may not trust those, but we have them all. So there aren't super-Christians and not super-Christians. From man's appearance, looking at people, you may think that's the case, but it's not.

From God's eyes, every believer, true believer in the Lord Jesus Christ has every single wonderful possession at the moment he believes. Okay. So now, this particular one we're going to talk about today is a new life in Christ Jesus. And this new life is imparted by Christ himself. We're going to see in here as we go through, we're going to see that God the Father, gave God the son life, and God the son gave the believer life. We're going to see that progression from the father to the son to the believer.

And in John 10, 10b, it says, I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. So kind of breaking that verse down, Christ came for the following purposes. That we might be possessing life, we might be Having life and this possessing life is not just a little bit possessing it. It's a super abounding Life in Christ and is totally of his doing and none of our own Okay, so let's look at there are several words at least three words I'm actually might be a few more but in looking at at scriptural at least three words that are translated life in the New Testament so I like to kind of go over those two of those and Actually, we'll just go into them and take a look.

Some of them you may be familiar with. Some of them, actually, we hear about in other contexts. The first one is psūkhē. In the Greek, that's a Greek pronunciation. We pronounce that probably psyche, but psūkhē in the Greek. And psūkhē in the New Testament usually means the breath of life, physical life, the breath of life. Sometimes it's the life element through which the body lives and feels. and it's translated various ways. Usually life and soul are the two primary translations. Occasionally you'll see heart, sometimes even mind. I'm going to have examples of this word, psuche, but that's one word for life, physical life.

The second word is bios. Interestingly enough, if you're a computer geek, you have a bios in your computer. That's kind of interesting. You have a bios and there's a Greek word that talks about that. is a word meaning the element or principle of life and the soul and spirit. Actually, this is what's kind of key here.

It refers to the period, means, and manner of life. And we're going to see that in some of the examples here. You'll see how the word is used as a manner of life or a means of life. And it's translated life or living. So now let's look at some examples of these two words, psuche and bios.

So for psuche, The first one I have is John 10 11 it says I am the Good Shepherd The Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep So from this context and actually if you look in Scripture that phrase laying down your life actually occurs a fair amount of times Lord Jesus used that more than once and actually we're going to see another verse here shortly and lays down his life. So from the context that it's his physical life, he laid down a good shepherd would do that, right? He protected the sheep, he would lay his life down, give his life for his sheep.

And then interestingly enough, Peter, who always, always had things to say, he always tried to be ahead of the Lord here. And in this context, you'll see that the Lord says he's going away. And he says, Well, I'm going to follow you, Lord, I'm going to come after you. And he says, I'll even lay down my life for you. He'll give his physical life.

And the Lord says, will you, Peter? If you look at the next verse, it says, will you, Peter? And it's referring that Peter will deny him three times. So Peter was very much of the mindset, I'm going to go out there, and I'm going to get that. And we're studying Acts now downstairs, and it's interesting. We're just getting into Peter's sermon. And Peter has a lot to say.

A lot of times he's ahead of the game and not really thinking, but he was willing to lay down his life. So this is physical life again, and this is Psyche. And then the last one here for Psyche is in 1 Thessalonians. Having so found an affection for you, we were well pleased to impart to you not only the gospel of God, but also our own lives, because you had become very dear to us." So in this case, it's talking about the fact that they wanted to present the gospel, but in addition to that, they were willing to give of their own lives and getting out the gospel, giving their own lives was part of that. And it might actually mean, looking at the context there, it might actually mean maybe giving of themselves to the point of exhaustion. It could possibly mean that as well.

So that's psuche. So let's go on to bios. Okay, bios. And remember, we had the three kinds of, before we look at this verse, we have the three kind of categories. either a period or duration of life, a means of life, or a manner of life. So let's see this verse here and see how that fits in. It says, and this is talking about the seeds that were sown by the sower. The sower goes out to sow. And this is kind of giving out God's word, the allusion to that. The seed which fell among the thorns, these are the ones who have heard.

And as they go on their way, they are choked out with the worries and riches and pleasures of this life. So bios in this sense is this idea of the means of life, the worries, the riches, the pleasures of life. And then the next one is in Timothy. It says, no soldier in active service entangles himself in the affairs of everyday life so that he may please the one who enlists him as a soldier. So this kind of speaks to the fact that they're not getting caught up in the everyday things of life. So obviously, this is talking about just maybe a duration of life or the means of life, possibly.

And then the last one here in 1 John 2.16, it says, For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life is not from the Father, but is from the world. So this talks about the boastful, this is a manner of life, a boastfulness of life. So as we're going to see here, these two words don't really fit into the kind of life that God has promised each and every believer.

There's another word that we're going to see here shortly. And it's a kind of very familiar word. People name their children this name. It's really a cool word. But both psuche and bios are not the words that God has chosen through the Holy Spirit to communicate his wonderful life that he has for every believer. OK, so that word is zoe. And you know, I was watching a movie the other day. Lots of, especially young girls, are named Zoe. It's kind of cool. So Zoe is using the New Testament of life as a principle.

Life in the absolute sense. Life as God has it. That which the Father has in Himself. So like I mentioned before, we're going to see this progression. The Father has life. He gives the Son to have life. And then the believer has life. And then the next one, the father gave to the incarnate son, I'm sorry, that which the father gave to the incarnate son to have in himself. And it's translated life. And actually, very few, almost exclusively life.

Now, to be fair to this word zoe, it is used in other contexts to mean, we get our word zoology for it. So this is a very elevated, When it's used of eternal life, of the life that Christ has, the life that God has, it's an elevated usage of that word.

So what's happened is scripture has elevated this word zoe to a new level. And I thought that entrenched synonym in the New Testament, in the New Testament zoe is the more noble word and expresses the highest and best that saints possess in God. So this word zoe, Scripture uses in a way that is unique, whereas we would use it maybe in a much broader sense. Scripture use it in a very specific sense and a very wonderful sense. And we're going to see that as we go through here. So from now on, every time you see life, zoe is the word behind that English word. So all the scriptures I pick from here on out use zoe. OK, so now I thought it would be good to show a contrast in this new life in Christ, what it is and what it is not. The new life in Christ is not a new manner of life. This is God's very life, Christ's very life.

It's not a new standard. It's not something that we try to live up to. You say, I want to live up to this new standard of conduct. There will be a new standard of conduct as you are a believer and you have God's life, but we're not living up to that through human effort. It's not a new ideal. You say, well, there's God's life, and I'm working hard to get there, and boy, someday I'm going to get there.

No, it's not that at all. You have this life. So that's the negative side. The positive side is the new life in Christ is bestowed through the new birth. Just think about this. In Scripture, there's a whole pattern that goes through showing that the believer has a new life, starting with the new birth.

You must be born again. Christ talked to the Pharisee and he kind of shocked him. You must be born again. How can I be born again? Do I go to my mother's womb? I don't understand that. This new life in Christ is beyond our comprehension in some ways.

It results in sonship. It results in us being a child of God and so on. There's a whole bunch of things we can list here. It secures for the believer the fatherhood of God. We can call him Father, Abba Father. It secures this wonderful relationship. We don't have a stale relationship. We have an intimate relationship because we have his very life. We're on the same wavelength, as Mike Doyle likes to say, we have a new history. Our history is Christ's history. We have his life, his history.

I mean, it can't get any better than that. And then we have these wonderful verses that we're going to see. One of them is, Christ in me, the hope of glory. Another one is, I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. So as you can see, this is not something I'm grasping or seeking toward. It's something I have. And this goes back to our little picture about the position and the condition. We have this possession in Christ. And we're to live in light of that. And we're going to see, we're going to go through here. I tried to break down.

I looked at the verses that that are used for Zoe in the New Testament, and I tried to break them down into categories. I had a little help from Chafer in doing this, but I tried to break them down and say, how can we categorize these set of verses talking about this Zoe life? So let's look at that. So how God's life, Zoe, is presented in the New Testament. So first of all, that word is in terms of in terms of the way used for God's wonderful life, it talks about the life that the Son of God has. There's wonderful verses that describe this wonderful life that our Savior has. That's one set of verses.

Actually, there's really just two major divisions. The second set is the believer in life. And I kind of broke that down into three categories. First, a contrast. Spiritual death versus spiritual life. And that's kind of key. It's key to see where we came from, so to speak.

And maybe it's no shock to us here, but if you walked up to a person today and said, you're dead, they would say, but I'm talking. I'm talking with you. How can I be dead? what you would be meaning if you say, well, you're spiritually dead. They say, well, no, I'm alive as anybody else. And they probably would argue with you if they weren't a Christian.

But it's important to understand the significance of this new life in Christ is that we came from spiritual death, and we've moved to spiritual life. That's just key. So that's why I included that in the list. And that word zoe is used in that contrast. Secondly, we're partakers of life. We have partaken of this life, not through any merit of our own. We have this life. It's a possession we currently have. And then lastly, this life is indeed our Savior.

It's the indwelling Christ. It's no longer I, but Christ. And that's earth-shattering, really. You're telling me to live not my life, but Christ's life. And that only can happen by faith. It's not some great effort on our part is simply by trust and faith in who we are in Christ and what He's done.

So that's kind of the outline for the remainder of this. And I have a last chart that's going to kind of talk about, based upon these wonderful things that we have, how does that affect our condition? How will we walk in light of those? So that's kind of where we're going.

Okay, first of all, God the Son in life. First of all, the father gave life to the son. And that comes from John, and there's actually quite a few verses along this line. John 5, 26. For just as a father has life in himself, zoe, even so he gave to the son also to have life in himself. So he gave to the son to have life in himself. And that's his very nature.

Life outside of God has no meaning. God is the definition of life. And we're going to see another verse coming down the road here where he basically says that. I'll just walk ahead of myself here a little bit. I am the way, the truth, and the life. There is no truth, there is no life outside of God. It's one of the key points here. Actually, I just want to read, if you have your Bibles or some kind of device. In John 1, we talk about the Word, and in Him was life. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him. And apart from him, nothing came into being that has come into being. And then we have our verse here. And in him was life, and the life was the light of men.

So we see that the word, the Lord Jesus Christ, he's unique. He's separate from the Father. He was in the beginning with the Father. The word Christ was God. He's with God. He was in the beginning with God. And he's also, all things came into being through him, and nothing came into being that has not come into being. So basically, he's life. The Father has delegated that responsibility to the Son. In him was life.

And then Christ states his mission. This is why he came. His first coming here. He says, When we had this verse earlier, a thief comes only to steal and to kill. But in contrast to that, Christ said, I came that they may have life and have it more abundantly. His desire that we have his life and have it more abundantly. So if that wasn't enough, I'm going to give you three more. He's called the Prince of Life.

And if you look up the word prince in the New Testament, it has the idea of origin, authority, founder, So he's the founder, the origin of life, and here at Acts 3.15, talking about put to death the prince of life. We were talking this morning in our Acts class about the fact that when Peter preached this sermon, he preached it and he said, you have put to death or you killed your Messiah, you crucified your Messiah, and they just The Jews there were just amazed. And they said, what do we do? And he says, repent. Repent and believe. Repent and put your faith in. Repent and be baptized. I'm sorry.

So basically, one of the key things that Christ is called the Prince of the Author of Life. The life Christ was manifest to us. In 1 John 1-2, and the life was manifested. The word manifested is the idea to reveal. I like the idea of, you think of a kind of container with a lid on it. It's to take the lid off. The life was exposed. The life of Christ was exposed. The life was manifested. And we have seen and testify and proclaim to you eternal life, which was with the Father. and was manifest to us. So this is in John where he's describing the Lord Jesus and how he interacted with the Lord Jesus. Okay. And then here's a verse I spoke about earlier. And here's where he just states it just succinctly.

Jesus said, I am the way, I am the singular way, I am the singular truth, I am the singular life. No one comes to the Father but through me. So if you think about that, There is no truth outside of Him, and there's no life outside of Him either. So that's why it's important to see that the physical life that we have is not what Christ is offering. He's offering to a life that goes beyond physical life. Here's the category here I want to talk about, spiritual death versus spiritual life. Now, like I said, I think it's kind of important to make sure that we kind of have this understood.

First of all, in Ephesians there, in fact, let's just read, I like to read Ephesians, once again, let's read Ephesians chapter 2, and let's read the first five verses here. It says, And you were dead in your transgressions and your sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince and power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lust of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh, of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, being rich in his mercy, because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead, in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ, by grace you have been saved.

So this is the first verse that talks about, verse one talks about, and you were dead. And death, as I kind of have my little picture there, death in scripture is almost always the idea of separation at various levels. We're separated. So we were separated from God. You were separated from God. in your transgressions and your sins. And then down in verse 5 it says, even when you were dead or separated in your transgressions, so when you were in that state, God made us alive.

And that's the word Zoe. Together with Christ, by grace you have been saved. And then what's interesting here, this one is kind of a shocker. Christ is talking about, this is before we have the information of the epistles. In the Gospels, he's talking to people, he's talking about to the disciples, and he says, you know, follow me.

But Jesus said to them, follow me, allow the dead to bury the dead. I mean, that's just, he referred to these people that his disciples wanted to go back to their kin. And he said, in a way, I'm sure they didn't understand this. Let the dead bury their dead. Pretty, pretty telling. Okay, so with that in mind, that kind of shows us where we came from. So now I want to look here at the wonderful possession of life.

In John 3.15 it says, so that whoever believes in him have eternal life. And actually it's the idea of having eternal life. It's something in the present tense. What's interesting is, the question is, when does eternal life begin? And you think, well, that's kind of a trick question. When does eternal life begin? You say, well, that's when I get to glory, right? No, every believer, eternal life has already started.

And there's a sense in which, to be fair, there's a sense in which, and we know from scripture, God doesn't create people that don't live forever. They will either live with him forever or without him forever. But this spiritual life, this is another thing on top of that in a sense. This life we have from Christ, his very life in us is another Beyond that the fact that of mere existence every man woman child will exist always either with him or without him This is talking about a relationship with a person our Savior So this is another level beyond that and this is having eternal life. It's in the present tense Okay, and then in John 640 it says for this is the will of my father that everyone who beholds the son and believes in him shall Well, once again, we'll be having eternal life in the present tense and I myself will raise him up on the last day So this kind of alludes to the fact that you have eternal life, but you're gonna they're gonna bury me in the grave I still have eternal life, but he's gonna raise you up not to worry. It's it's all good We have eternal life, so I'll die but I'm gonna go to be with him and and God's not worried about that He says I'll raise you up in the last day.

So not not to worry. I Then in John 6 23 for the wages of sin of death is the wages of sin is death But the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord Okay, so I like this I went crazy here after a while I got a few more here two more John 10 28 and Here's a here's a wonderful gift. I give I And I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hands.

I know this is Courtney's favorite verse. I've known Courtney for a long time. This is a verse he would quote many, many times. And it's one of those ones that you want to put next to your heart. You get in trouble, you say, wait a minute. Nobody can take me. I'm his. It's a wonderful, and I think it kind of gives you a definition of what he means by this special life. I give you eternal life. It's not going to end. This wonderful relationship is not going to end. And nothing can impact that. Nothing can change that. And then John 17, which is always a wonderful place. This is eternal life. So this kind of flips it around a little bit.

It talks about, well, what's eternal life about? It's about knowing a person, that they may know you and the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sinned. It talks about knowing somebody. So this life that we have in Christ is a personal thing. It's an intimate thing. It's like knowing your wife or knowing your children. It's a personal thing that you know each other so well.

And that's what the Lord desires. Okay, so that's partakers. We've done two of those. And now then the last one here, I even decided to go back to this just so you know where I'm at. If I get lost after all these verses, you probably Anyway, the last one is, and probably the most important one, is that the life is this indwelling Christ. Okay.

In Colossians 127 it says, let's see how I'm doing here, okay. To whom God will to make known what is the riches of his glory, of his mystery among you, among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory." And there's a parallel verse that says, in Romans 8.10, it says, Basically that you're in Christ and Romans 8 10 talks about being in Christ a very see that is a truth that that sometimes we overlook sometimes we forget we're in Christ and he's in us and that's something we need to hang our hats on and Then Colossians 3 3 for you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God and when Christ who is our life is revealed then you will be revealed with him in glory and So here it talks about the fact that... I like this word hidden. I found this verse a very comforting verse.

First of all, it talks about something that's happened. You had to die. And this gets into the whole thing. We're going to talk about this a little bit toward the end here. But you died with Christ. You were buried with Christ. That's just key to understanding that you no longer live. It's Christ that lives in you. A death had to occur. Your death had to occur. Without that, you couldn't be separated from Adam, from your sin nature. That couldn't happen. For you have died, and your life is hidden, or better, it's covered up. Out of a cloak, you're covered up by Christ.

We have a new little grandson, and we like to kind of hug him. You know, he's all just little guys just like that. I keep thinking he's just all covered up He's all and we just you know, it's kind of squashed him. So we're covered up with Christ Not too much Okay, and then lastly John and this is this is what was we read earlier in John 5 11 and 12 and the testimony is this that God has given us eternal life and And this life is in His Son. So the life that we have is in His Son. He who has the Son has the life. He who does not have the Son of God does not have life. Black and white. There's no in-between. Do you have the life or don't have the life? Everyone will live forever. Will you live with Him in intimate fellowship with Him or will you live outside of that?

You say, Roger, after all that, I'm tired. So what does this mean? What does this new life in Christ look like? So this is my attempt at kind of a, this is the conditional part. So we spent, we have my heavenly scene, so to speak, and then we have the earthly scene. So all those chapters, we're looking at what we have in Christ. And that's key.

If you don't know, if you don't know who you are, If you think you're a Russian and not an American, you may skate for the wrong team in the Olympics, right? Of course, these days, what guys will do, I noticed it kind of cracks me up, they'll change their citizenship to get on another team. It seems not fair, but hey. Well, we want to change our citizenship. Our citizenship is with Him in heaven. So, okay.

So, this life is not trusting yourself, but Christ. This is what it's not. This new life in Christ is not trusting yourself, but Christ. This life is not trying to improve yourself. And this is a toughie. I mean, you learn in school, you go to college, you take all kinds of courses, how to improve yourself, and it just goes over and over and over and over. You come to scripture and it says, in essence, it's not I, but Christ. Don't try to improve yourself. Can you improve upon Christ? You can't. You can't improve upon Christ. You can't. You know, it's impossible. So don't do that. So we're going to say, well, what should you do is the question come here.

Life is trusting who you are in Christ. And I think one of the verses that is helpful in that area, in fact, there's a whole bunch. Romans 6 is kind of a goldmine of those. And if you look at Romans 6, you'll see this is the first place in the book of Romans that it tells you to do something. And what does it tell you to do? So in Romans 6, it goes through and talks about all these different things.

In Romans 6, it talks about, back in the early verses, wrecking yourself, that you are dead or separated from your sin nature, but alive to God. It talks about knowing that you are baptized into Christ Jesus, immersed into Him, you're in living union with Him. It talks about walking in newness of life, which we're going to see here shortly. But this verse says, in light of what you've read in the earlier parts of Romans and down to Romans 6, it says, even so consider or reckon yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God.

So we're to count upon were to count upon that we are dead to sin or our sin nature, but alive to God. So that's one of the things we're to do. And then another thing, and this is by no means an exhaustive list. This is a couple of things that kind of occurred to me. This life is abiding in Christ as seen in the vine and the branches illustration. So if you remember that in John 15. And actually, did I put that in here? I don't think I did. But in John 15 it says, abide in me and I in you.

So right there at the beginning there's this reciprocal relationship. So we know that positionally we're in Him. He says to live in light of that, abide in me and I in you. As a branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in me. So what Christ is saying here, we're not to operate outside of this relationship. We operate within this relationship.

It's His life. We're abiding, abiding and resting in Him. You know, in Scripture, there's several words that kind of are very closely linked. You think about what God is asking us to do. He's not asking us to... He's asking us to exercise faith, in essence.

But you see, sometimes it's called trust, belief. Faith, trust, and belief are all very, in fact, the core word, I think pistis in the Greek, is very, very similar between faith, trust, and belief. And abiding is actually another kind of variation on that. It's all about trusting what you have and what he's done on your behalf. So actually, that's it. I hope that was helpful.

And let's close in a word of prayer. Dear Father, we thank you so much, Lord. We thank you for the blessings we have in our Savior. We thank you for the life that is beyond our comprehension, that we have the very life of our Savior. We have his life in us, and you ask us to live in light of that, to trust and rest and operate in his life, and recognizing that we have these wonderful truths about us. And we thank that we ask this in his son's name. Amen.