Jesus & Paul, Part 6
Manage episode 396407327 series 3550502
To Reveal His Son In Me
By Tammy Lacock
“To reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen; immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood.” (Galatians 1:16 KJV)
This week, Warren Litzman focuses on the very intimate relationship between Jesus and Paul so we can understand this same intimacy in our own relationship with Christ.
In Galatians 1:16, Paul tells us Christ revealed to him something that hasn’t been revealed to anyone before. Christ raised up only Paul to deliver to us a new gospel, the only gospel for us today. Warren singles out Paul’s words “in me” to explain this new gospel. These words “in me,” which Paul uses over and over in his epistles, tell us literally and not figuratively that Christ now lives in us. We are no longer to see Christ outside of us, as Jesus of Nazareth, but we are to see Him now as the resurrected Christ living in us. This is what a Christian is: one in whom Christ lives. The Son that was in the body of Jesus of Nazareth is the same Son that now lives in us as believers. His new body is the body of believers. We are the Body of Christ.
“For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ.” (1 Corinthians 12:12 KJV)
“So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another.” (Romans 12:5)
Paul was given this revelation and tells us that only by revelation of the Holy Spirit can we also begin to understand our new life in Christ. The Holy Spirit—given to us by God on the Day of Pentecost—is our Comforter and Teacher of our new life. As human beings, it’s extremely difficult for us to accept a new life. The Holy Spirit helps us understand who we are now in Christ, that we don’t have a changed life, but have exchanged the old for a brand-new life. He helps us understand that we weren’t created to live this life on our own. Now that we are complete in Christ, we can begin to live who God created us to be, and that is to bring Him glory.
In Galatians 2:20, Paul tells us we were crucified with Christ on the cross. In order to understand our new life in Him, we must also understand our death with Him. Just as we are no longer to know Christ in the flesh, we are no longer to know our old lives. As we relationship with Christ in our daily lives and fall in love with Him more and more—knowing He is no longer outside of us but the very life we now live—we can die to our old lives and let Him come out of us just the way God intended from the beginning (Ephesians 1:4).
This is Paul’s gospel: by Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection, we are now married to Him, one flesh with Him—He in us and we in Him (Ephesians 5:31-32; John 4:13).
197 episodes