Website owner:  James Miller

True Christianity is about having the spirit of Jesus Christ dwelling within you



   True Christianity is about having the spirit of Jesus Christ 
   dwelling within you, having his mind and outlook within you.  
   What is the spirit of Christ?  It is that set of attitudes, 
   values and outlooks held by Jesus Christ.  What are the 
   attitudes, values and outlooks held by Jesus?  We find them in 
   his teachings and conduct and in the epistles of the New 
   Testament (i.e. the letters written by the apostles).  Jesus 
   taught love of God, love of neighbor, humility, meekness, 
   peacefulness, forgiveness, kindness, goodness, virtue, honesty, 
   justice, moral purity, moral uprightness, self-denial, 
   compassion for the needy, service.  The spirit of Christ is the 
   spirit of God.  Jesus was God.  To have the spirit of Jesus 
   within us is to have the mind of God dwelling within us.  It is 
   to see right and wrong properly, as God sees it ---  to love 
   the things we should love and hate the things we should hate, 
   to have the right biases and prejudices, to love good and hate 
   evil. 

   By what means does the spirit of Christ come to dwell within a 
   person?  How does it get there?  It comes to be there by a 
   person making, at some point in his life, a decision to turn 
   away from sin and the ways of this world and embrace Jesus 
   Christ and his teachings.  It involves turning away from sin 
   and following the way of Jesus.  More explicitly, it involves a 
   deliberate renunciation of the outlooks, attitudes and values 
   of this world and the pursuit of the ways, outlooks and values 
   taught by Jesus.  And much involved in it is a heart hungry for 
   God's truth and his way, a love for his word, and time spent 
   studying his word.  It is about loving God and his word, having 
   his word in your heart, and the habit of trying to implement 
   his teachings in your life, honestly and sincerely trying to 
   obey them.  It is about taking the teachings of Jesus seriously 
   and trying to obey them.  It is about imitating Christ.  It is 
   about being a love-servant of God.  It involves a sustained 
   pursuit over time of the way of Jesus. 

   We find much reference to the spirit of Christ that dwells 
   within the true Christian in the epistles.  For example:


   1 Cor 2:12-16   Now we have received, not the spirit of the 
   world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the 
   things that have been freely given to us by God. {13} These 
   things we also speak, not in words which man's wisdom teaches 
   but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things 
   with spiritual. {14} But the natural man does not receive the 
   things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; 
   nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. 
   {15} But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself 
   is rightly judged by no one. {16} For "who has known the mind 
   of the LORD that he may instruct Him?" But we have the mind of 
   Christ.

   Gal 5:{16} I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not 
   fulfill the lust of the flesh. {17} For the flesh lusts against 
   the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are 
   contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that 
   you wish. {18} But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not 
   under the law. {19} Now the works of the flesh are evident, 
   which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, {20} 
   idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts 
   of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, {21} envy, 
   murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like; of which I tell 
   you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that 
   those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of 
   God. {22} But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, 
   longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, {23} 
   gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law. {24} 
   And those who are Christ's have crucified the flesh with its 
   passions and desires. {25} If we live in the Spirit, let us 
   also walk in the Spirit. 

   Eph 4:17-32   This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, 
   that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles 
   walk, in the futility of their mind, {18} having their 
   understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, 
   because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the 
   blindness of their heart; {19} who, being past feeling, have 
   given themselves over to lewdness, to work all uncleanness with 
   greediness. {20} But you have not so learned Christ, {21} if 
   indeed you have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the 
   truth is in Jesus: {22} that you put off, concerning your 
   former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to 
   the deceitful lusts, {23} and be renewed in the spirit of your 
   mind, {24} and that you put on the new man which was created 
   according to God, in true righteousness and holiness. {25} 
   Therefore, putting away lying, "Let each one of you speak truth 
   with his neighbor," for we are members of one another. {26} "Be 
   angry, and do not sin": do not let the sun go down on your 
   wrath, {27} nor give place to the devil. {28} Let him who stole 
   steal no longer, but rather let him labor, working with his 
   hands what is good, that he may have something to give him who 
   has need. {29} Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, 
   but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart 
   grace to the hearers. {30} And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of 
   God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. {31} 
   Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be 
   put away from you, with all malice. {32} And be kind to one 
   another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God in 
   Christ forgave you.

   Jesus told us that we must be born again.  We must shed the old 
   nature, tho old outlooks, values, and ways, and put on his 
   nature. 

   How many true Christians does one find, Christians controlled 
   by the spirit of Christ within them?  How many people really 
   live by the teachings of Jesus?  Not many.  You can 
   perhaps go all your life without meeting one.  You won't find 
   any among the non-religious masses and they are rare among 
   those who view themselves as Christians.  


   Jan 2009





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