0022. Christ Produced My Life

Christ Produced My Life

"For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them" (Eph_2:10).

A Christian is God’s masterpiece. It was with His fingers that God created the heavens and the earth; it was with His fingers that He threw innumerable worlds into space; but, when God created man anew in Christ Jesus, He brought into play His whole omnipotent Deity to work out His plan; He emptied Heaven of His Son, and gave Him to die upon Calvary’s Cross. Man’s redemption and regeneration was made possible only when Jesus Christ, God’s Son, travailed in the agonies of death.

The 2nd chapter of Ephesians, verses 2 and 3, describes what we were when we were dead: "We walked according to the course of this world", we fulfilled "the desires of the flesh and of the mind", we were "by nature the children of wrath"–then, God passed by and we were quickened in Christ, created–born anew. We need to consider the mighty power which God wrought in Christ when He produced our life.

Salvation is not achieved by cultivation. It is a new birth. It is a life produced–a life begotten. We hear much of evolution these days and some are so foolish as to speak of the evolution of a rose or of a chrysanthemum. But it is impossible for any man by cultivation, or by fertilization, or by any method known by man, to evolve a rose from a dead rose bush.

The sinner is dead; the saint is one, made alive–created in Christ Jesus. Men talk of "producing" and, in a sense, they do produce, but they never create. Everything that man has is borrowed. If he wears a silk necktie, he borrowed it from a worm. If he wears a wool suit, he borrowed it from a sheep. If he wears shoes, he borrowed them from some animal’s skin. Christians are created anew. Nothing in the new life is borrowed from the old.

We are commanded to "put off the old man", which is corrupt according to deceitful lusts. We are told to "put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness".

God is the Father of our spirits and we are children of God. Our life did not lie within one breast, waiting for some outward power to fan the smoldering embers into a new birth. Our life did not evolve from some embryo, which lay dormant within our own breasts. We were born from above, born anew–our life was produced by Christ.

Autor: R.E. NEIGHBOUR