By Tammy Lacock

“Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh.” (2 Corinthians 4:10)

In this final part of The Cross, Warren takes us into the very heart of the Apostle Paul in the hopes that his gospel of grace will take hold in the hearts and minds of those who hear it.

Without Paul’s writings, we would never fully understand what exactly happened at the Cross. Paul was the only one raised up by Christ Himself to explain it.

Paul’s gospel explains the abundant life Christ promised to us by His death on the Cross. As believers in Christ, we are now complete in Him, by the uprooting of the sin-nature passed down through the curse of Adam by Satan, replacing it with Christ’s nature, His Incorruptible Seed.

By His very life within us now, we can now truly live free, free to rest in Him and experience and know His Peace “that passeth all understanding,” even amidst our inevitable sufferings. By Christ in us now, we stand perfect before God as His bona fide sons and daughters. There is nothing we can do to be perfect. Christ is our perfection. Paul’s gospel of grace tells us that even when we fail, God only sees Christ.

In 2 Corinthians 4:10, Paul expresses his intimate love for the Christ within him by acknowledging our need to bear the suffering in our bodies and death to ourselves as the only means by which Christ can be manifested through us as believers. Just as by Christ’s death we have been given new life, so too, by our own suffering and death to our old lives, Christ’s life can now come through us. Life comes through suffering and death. The suffering and death to ourselves manifests His life through us to others. The trials and tribulations in this life are meant to cultivate a deep and unique relationship with Christ, one that becomes a love affair as we continue to live and breathe in Him.

Through Paul, God’s ultimate plan for us is revealed: To know and live Christ as our new life, to live and rest in Him knowing everything is in His hands, and to reciprocate His perfect love for us by making Him our first love each and every day and through every single suffering.

His death ushered in our new and everlasting life. Christ in you and me, the hope of glory!

“Even the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to his saints: To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory: Whom we preach, warning every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom; that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus.” (Colossians 1:26-28)

By Tammy Lacock

This week, Warren Litzman dives deep into Christ’s death on the Cross so we might understand exactly who we are now in Christ.

In His last words, “It is finished,” Christ testified that His death was the culmination of God’s plan of salvation for humanity. If not for His death on the Cross, we would not have new life. We would remain dead in this world, never to experience eternal life with Him.

By Christ’s death, Satan’s nature, which was passed down to us by the curse of Adam, can now be uprooted and exchanged with Christ’s nature, joined to our spirits making us one spirit in Him (1 Corinthians 6:17). We are brand-new creations, crucified at the Cross with Christ, and raised to a new life in Him in His resurrection. We are no longer defined by anything outside of us. Our identity is Christ, alive and well in each of us.

The Apostle Paul was the greatest psychologist of all time because not only did Christ reveal to him his new identity, but He revealed to him exactly how the believer in Christ can now live in freedom from sin.

Warren explains, through Paul’s epistles, that the reason we continue to make poor decisions as believers is because we don’t know who we are. Paul’s gospel of grace—that we are saved not by anything we do or don’t do, but by Christ’s perfect sacrifice on the Cross—reveals to us our new identity in Christ, and by Him we are made bona fide sons and daughters of God.

“To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” (Col. 1:27)

“The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together. For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.” (Rom. 8:16-18)

We can be confident of eternity with Christ in heaven when we know Christ is already in us now. Once we start to get a grip on Christ as our new life, the Holy Spirit continues to renew our minds, bringing us into a closer unique relationship with the Christ in us, through our everyday circumstances and situations and especially through our adversities.

God’s plan of salvation is finished. By only believing in Christ as our Savior, we are redeemed, co-heirs with Christ to God’s kingdom. Yet the Apostle Paul tells us this is just the beginning of our new life in Christ. By cultivating a deep relationship with the Christ that lives in us now, through the renewal of our minds, we can begin to experience here and now the abundant, eternal life that Christ’s death promises.

“The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” (John 10:10)

By Tammy Lacock

This week, Warren Litzman makes it plain and clear exactly what God did at the Cross. We must look to the Cross to understand God’s boundless and unconditional love for each and every one of us. By Christ’s death and resurrection, the sin-nature (Satan nature) passed down through the generations from Adam’s curse by Satan, is literally uprooted and replaced with the incorruptible seed, Christ. This is what it means to be saved, born again. By just believing in Him, we are made brand-new creations and bona fide sons and daughters of God, to live eternally—now and in His heavenly home.

Jesus was more powerful in His death than when He was alive. By Christ’s death, we are no longer bound by Satan and this world. When Christ died, we died too, to our old lives operated by Satan. We have a new Operator in Christ. In Him, there is no more sin and death for us.

It’s important to understand that God didn’t change our minds when we got saved. Our spirits were saved, being joined to Christ making us one spirit in Him (1 Corinthians 6:17), yet our minds have a lot of catching up to do. The Apostle Paul makes this clear throughout his epistles, helping us understand our new life now in Christ. Now as new creations in Christ, and by the help of the Holy Spirit, we must now allow the Holy Spirit renew our minds, by letting go of the old knowledge of good and evil, sin and death, which we were cursed with by Adam’s sin. We look to the Holy Spirit to replace it with a new knowledge, “the excellency of the knowledge of Christ,” as the Apostle puts it in Philippians 3:8, “Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ.”

God wants us to come back to life. Our minds have been corrupted and now need a full housecleaning. Christ living in us now brings us back into the awareness of our status as God’s bona fide sons and daughters and therefore, our inheritance of eternal life in Him. Satan’s knowledge of good and evil no longer can take hold, once we decide to give our minds over to Christ and begin living our new life in Him.