Philippians 4:13 (New International Version) 13 I can do everything through him who gives me strength.

If we choose to believe in Jesus, and what He has done for us, then all that He is and has is ours.

We have already seen that it is impossible to satisfy God’s holiness and God’s purity by our own efforts, and that all of us have already failed even before we could start thinking about it.

This means that we need Jesus to be our Saviour, we can’t do it, and we cannot add to the perfect job Jesus has already done for us. He is our justification, the root of our salvation.

A good analogy goes as follows: There is a thatched house on top of a hill. This hill is well known for terrific thunderstorms. If we don’t have a lightning conductor, on the first thunderstorm the house will be struck down, but if we have a lightning conductor, when the thunderstorms come, the lightning conductor will absorb all of the thunder and protect our house. God’s purity demands the absence of sin, all of us are contaminated and deserve the thunderstorm to strike us, but in His goodness, God loved us so much that He provided Jesus, our lightning conductor, so that we would not be stricken down by it, but saved and protected by it!

If we truly have repented and given Him our lives so that we can say like in Galatians 2:20 that it is no longer I that live, but it is Christ living in me, then we will want to please God through the heart of Jesus far more than any law would be able to make us do anything in our own efforts. It is just like we would want to please the person we most love on the face of the earth. We will have a love in our hearts that will produce a desire to please God out of His strength at work in us, and not our own.

We are still the ones doing it, but our eyes are not on what we do, our eyes are on Him empowering us to do it, so that we can give Him all the glory and all the praise. This is the fruit of our salvation and this is our sanctification: this is evidence that we are Christians, little Christ’s, and followers of Christ.

God wants to see our faith in action. This is the proof that we are in Christ; we are changed into His image little by little. Jesus’ standard is to spend a lot of time with His Father in prayer, and then reach out to the poor and destitute, and bring His love and compassion into their lives, and meet them at their deepest point of need. Jesus loved sinners, but hated sin.

1 John 4:4 (Amplified Bible)

4 Little children, you are of God [you belong to Him] and have [already] defeated and overcome them [the agents of the antichrist], because He who lives in you is greater (mightier) than he who is in the world.

I pray that you would turn to Jesus for your total security and for your protection and provision. I pray that you would come to know Him as your Rock and walk on the narrow ledge of love that leads to life. Jesus is the Living Word made flesh who dwelt among us, and He left us His Word so that we would come to know Him intimately. I pray that you would grow in intimacy with Jesus, and that you would come to understand Him and His character as He really is.

  1. Why do we need Jesus?
  2. What happens when we become aware of our identity in Christ?
  3. Why does God want to see our faith in action?