Christ Magnified In My Body # 6

Christ Magnified In My Body # 6

It's this same epistle where Paul says, "Let this mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus." Well, actually that's literally translated A"let the love which dominated the life of Jesus, the disposition of Jesus, be yours." His was a disposition of love and concern. Wherever He went, He went about doing good. Well, if that mind is in me, I'm going to have some restless minutes or restless hours. I'm going to have to struggle with my own conscience. I'm going to have to struggle with the light I have. I'm going to have to struggle with the challenge that comes to me from a dozen different countries to get the message of Jesus Christ there while it is yet day.

"...that Christ may be magnified in my body." He was magnified through his brain, I'm sure. God couldn't have shared some of the things He shared with any other person, except with Paul. Magnified with His spirit, his hands: he wrote these epistles. He didn't type them. Every part of his being was coordinated to the service of God" - that Christ may be magnified."

Before long, well have some lovely flowers around here called dandelions. Nobody cuts them and puts them on the table in the house. You may have 20/20 vision, but you haven't seen the beauty of the dandelion. Not until you take a magnifying glass and see that it's maybe the most exquisite flower that God ever made. When you see it through a magnifying glass, that thing comes alive. That's what Paul says. When people look at my life, Jesus Christ is clearer, and nearer, and more wonderful. Is that true with us? Do you think your children would say that about you? "Oh, my Daddy and Mommy...I've never seen Jesus, but I know who Jesus is life. He's like my Daddy."

Old Jonathan Edwards gets ridiculed. He took a stack of notes. He read through them. He had a candle...a big frowning face and his gravel voice. Then he reads through his sermon, the greatest, most famous sermon outside the Bible: "Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God." People will remember, because he thundered. They said when people fell off their seats, instead of showing mercy, he kind of thrust the thing into them deeper: the truth of God. People hung onto pillars that were supporting the gallery because they were afraid they'd fall into the abyss. He didn't spare them. Sure he groaned. Sure he prayed. But his daughter said, "People say my Daddy is a severe man. A man that poured out judgment. But in the home, he lives just like Jesus. And every day my Mommy comes out of the closet and her face shines like the face of Moses shone. Because she spends at least two hours in prayer with God every morning. Oh, when she comes through the house, there's something so different, so fragrant." Well, that's what God wants, isn't it?

Brother Dave was in my house the other day. Last Sunday he preached in maybe the largest church in Denver, Colorado. He said, "Len, as we sat there, I was ready to preach. Suddenly I was overcome with grief. I just walked forward and sat on the floor. I didn't go to the pulpit. I began to weep, God just gave me such a burden." It was a congregation of about 3000. He said to them, "There's a girl in here who's being sexually molested by a man. The man is going to go to jail." As he said it, a girl about 16 years old ran down the aisle. She cried, "Mr Wilkerson, I'm the girl who's being molested! My Daddy did it! He has to go to jail!" Dave said he just groaned. There must have been 15 or 16 other women who also came and said my father, or brother, or somebody is sexually assaulting me every week. His spirit just groaned. He stayed there 50 minutes weeping. I said, "Dave, bless you." The average preacher would have said, "I just had a kind of little upset in my spirit. I feel that there's somebody in trouble. I'd like a few of you to pray. Raise your hands. We're going to pray for this girl. She's in trouble, I know she is." Instead of that, Dave swept aside all of his theology and sermon. He obeyed the Holy Spirit and the whole church broke up in weeping and brokenness, seeking God. It happened without him ever have to open his mouth preaching.

I'm sure that's the kind of spirit the apostle had because the Spirit of Christ indwelt Him. It's the Spirit of God dwelling in him. The fruit of the Spirit. As I've said before, if Jesus had said one word differently, it would have killed ten million arguments since Pentecost. I he'd said "by their gifts ye shall know them," it would have killed a million arguments. But he didn't say that. He said, "by their fruits." And the number one fruit of the Spirit is LOVE. The Spirit of Christ is LOVE. God so LOVED the world. I go to the Greeks. I go to the intellectuals on Mars Hill. I go in prison. Wherever I go, I want Christ to be magnified.

I don't want somebody to say, "If that's Christianity, then I don't want it." I don't want somebody to say, "You know, the way you live, you blur the image of Christ." I want those people to look through my life and say, "I see Jesus Christ." Well, that's what Paul dared to say. He says, "Christ lives in me." He doesn't say, "I'm saved." He doesn't say, "I have the baptism." He says, "Christ lives in me."

It's much easier to say,"I'm saved." It's much easier to say, "I have the baptism." We"re accepted on"par" with the rest of the people in the church. But suppose you stand up and testify that "Christ lives in me!"

He wants sin to have no dominion over us. The Greeks used to say "Man, know thyself." The Lord says, "Control yourself - in the Spirit." Paul says, "I keep my body under. I control it. I control my passions. I control my appetite. He was never an excessive eater, I'm sure of that. I don't think he was an excessive sleeper. You know, it looks a bit chronic when you put it this way. We live 24 hours a day. Supposedly, we work 8 hours. We sleep 8 hours. We have 8 hours free. Put that into 60 years. You sleep 20 years. You work 20 years. You're free 20 years. It doesn't look too much when you take it in the day but when you put into terms of years, it's a very different thing.

Now here's the man who eats up the time. He says "redeeming the time," which from the Greek literally means "buying up the opportunity." This opportunity will not come tomorrow; it comes today. So I "buy it up. I eat it up." I don't waste time, money, or opportunity. It's not difficult. It's not a case of living inside a steel shell. It's a case of the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ, and the Holy Spirit governing my life. He constrains me when I'm too slow and he restrains me when I'm too quick. It's a joy to be in submission to Him!

Paul says he's the bond slave of Jesus Christ, a happy slavery.  It's a joy to serve a Master like that. "That Christ may be magnified by my body," he says, "whether by life or by death!" It doesn't matter which way.

Well, there's no other way to live, surely. Having the body under control by the power of the Spirit, presenting my body A LIVING SACRIFICE, HOLY, ACCEPTABLE, all packed up in that first verse of Romans 12. This is really only the normal Christian life. There is only one kind of Christian life: THE LIFE OF HOLINESS.

~Leonard Ravenhill~

(The End)

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