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

by Jim Miller

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. those letters written by his 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
SOURCE - http://solitaryroad.com/a979.html