CHRIST IN YOU THE HOPE OF GLORY: COLOSSIANS 1:27 Col 1:27 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 Ask the person seated near you: Who is in you? . Concerning who is in an individual, the following three scenarios are possible: . 1. It is possible for self to be in the person 2. It is possible for satan to be in the person and 3. It is possible for God to be in the person. For an example of a person in whom the self is, we have the example of the man called Diotrephes. See 3Jo 1:9 I wrote unto the church: but Diotrephes, who loveth to have the preeminence among them, receiveth us not. Thus love of pre-eminence characterize a person in whom self is resident. Sorry to say but even in the church as then there are still people who are full of themselves, their self-importance, their ego and their needs. Another example is Herod who because he heard that a King has been given birth to in Bethlehem destroyed all the babies from one day old to two years old because he could not bear that any other person but he alone should be called king. The second category of people are people in whom the devil is. An example of such is the king of Tyrus Eze 28:12-14 Son of man, take up a lamentation upon the king of Tyrus, and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Thou sealest up the sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty. 13 Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold: the workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created. 14 Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee so: thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire. The prophet started by addressing the king of tyrus, a human being, but ended up by addressing the devil. This means that this king is so full of satan that he became identified with satan himself. He is addressed as satan because satan was the thing or person in him. He has become so full of satan that there was no difference between him and satan. Another example of a person who had satan in him is Ananias. We find his story in Ac 5:3 But Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost, and to keep back part of the price of the land?. As a pastor or minister, do you also lie to the Holy Spirit by lying to your spiritual leaders when you are filling return forms by inflating figures of attendances in the church programs so that you can receive promotion. Lying to the Holy Spirit is insulting the Spirit of Grace and only a person indwelt by satan can do that. If so repent and ask God for mercy and He is gracious and faithful to forgive and to restore you. Another example of persons who had satan in him is Judas just before he betrayed Jesus Lu 22:3 Then entered Satan into Judas surnamed Iscariot, being of the number of the twelve. However, we are not to discuss the first two categories of people, that is people in whom the self is, or people in whom satan is. We are here to discuss Christ in you the hope of glory. First thing we have to note is that for Christ to be in you the hope of glory, Christ has to be in you first. So, how does Christ enter into you to be in you. This is through faith in Christ and by being born again of the Spirit. Anyone who is born again of the Spirit has Christ in him, irrespective of his level of spiritual growth:- 2Co 13:5 Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates? 1Co 6:19 What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? Ga 4:19 My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you, The apostle Paul was addressing ordinary believers when he penned the letters from which these verses were extracted to the several churches, and so we can see that all it takes for Christ to be in a person is just for that person to believe in Christ and become born again. However it is one thing to have Christ in you as the hope of glory and another thing to have that glory manifesting. Thus it is possible for Christ to be in a person and throughout his life that person does not have the glory of Christ manifesting in him. In Mark 16:17 Jesus said And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; 18 They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover. However if we will confess the truth, how many of us do these signs follow. Instead of healing the sick, we ourselves are the ones getting sick and needing somebody to lay hands on us.. Instead of casting demons out, we ourselves are looking for someone to conduct deliverance on us. Why do those signs not follow us? Does it mean that we do not believe? No,. we believe, it is just that even though Christ is in us to do all these signs through us, the Christ that is in us is dormant. The Holy Spirit in us does not have free movement, and God is, so to say, trapped in us, and the hope of glory remains just that: a hope. So the question is what shall we do for the Christ in us to be released and for the glory to be manifested? . The answer is death. We have to die to self: Ga 2:20 I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. Joh 12:24 Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. Ro 8:10 And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. It is as far as our self or flesh is dead that the Christ in us is able to come alive in us and manifest the glory that has been inherent but inactive in us all along. The next question is How do we die to self. You die to self by practicing self-denial Ga 5:17b so that ye cannot do the things that ye would. When you do not do the things that you desire to do, you are practicing self-denial. To practice self-denial, you do not give the flesh or self everything that the flesh desires. The flesh wants to sleep instead of pray The flesh wants to watch films instead of study the bible The flesh wants to eat instead of fast. Self denial is when deny the flesh what it wants so that you can give the Spirit, (the Christ in you), what He requires. In the early days before becoming the G. O, Baba Adeboye used to find it difficult to do the midnight prayer, So he devised a method; he would put his feet in a bucket of water to ensure that he keeps awake so he can pray and study the bible in the night. He said on one of such nights, after he has put his feet in the bucket of water so as to keep awake to keep his appointment with God, God spoke and told him that a day is coming when people will be struggling to touch him so they can receive their miracles. Now I ask all of us who are here, has that day come or not come. We have heard many testimonies of people who receive their miracles only by looking at the face of Baba Adeboye. When the Christ in us is released from the bondage of self and the flesh, our innate glory shall manifest for the whole world to see. Another thing we need to note is that the flesh is proud instead of being meek and humble. The flesh wants to be respected, it wants to be noticed, it wants to be appreciated, to be honoured, to be considered brilliant, good, nice, pious, holy and righteous. Whereas the spirit is self-effacing, when it does good it does not seek recognition nor does it seek reward or repayment or even appreciation. The spirit is just what the testimony of Isaiah about Jesus was: Isa 42:2 He shall not cry, nor lift up, nor cause his voice to be heard in the street. And Mt 12:19 He shall not strive, nor cry; neither shall any man hear his voice in the streets. As we can recollect, whenever Jesus performed any act of mercy like healing or deliverance, he would always tell the beneficiary of the miracles: tell no one, only go to the priest to testify of what God has done for you. Jesus never performed a miracle to advertise himself. But you if you are a person who seeks to be honoured, respected or appreciated, it is a sign of the flesh being active in you, and it is that same flesh that is squeezing life out of the Christ in you, and which will not allow Him to manifest His glory in you and through you. This is because when the flesh is strong the spirit is weak and vice versa. No wonder the Apostle Paul said in 2Co 12:10 Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christs sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong. When I am weak, then I am strong means when my flesh is weak, my spirit is strong. There is a perpetual war going on in a believer between the flesh and the spirit: Ga 5:17(a) For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other. It is only the individual who have learnt to subdue his flesh and make it obedient to the Spirit who can have Christ in him actualising the hope of glory. Let us pray that the Lord by His infinite mercy will cause the Christ in us to be released so as to enable us to manifest His glory in the land of the living to the glory of the Father in the mighty name of Jesus.. Amen
Posted on: Fri, 26 Dec 2014 19:42:13 +0000
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