Receive Grace: To Possess Christ
Ephesians 3:14-21
Pastor Jim Luthy
Every October a scramble takes place in our country to come up with a good costume. Over the years I’ve seen people dressed up like famous men and women such as Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, and even Doc Holliday. Presidents are popular, too. Some stores will carry masks of all the most recent presidents—Carter, Reagan, Clinton, and pick a Bush, any Bush. With a little effort and maybe a little cash, we discover each October that it’s easy to put on the appearance of another.
How often do we see people putting on the appearance of Christ?
I once knew a man that was constantly grumbling about the carnality of former President Clinton. He believed every scandalous story and constantly decried the President’s adultery. It was an affront to his Christian values, so he said. Little did I know, but later I discovered, this man was having an affair himself at the same time. How can you explain this? It’s easy and makes us feel safe to put on the appearance of Christ.
Paul called this "having the appearance of godliness, but lacking power."
I was told the story this week of a man who visited Hawaii and had a wonderful time, except, he said, that he spent the entire time with his head down. When asked why he kept his head down, he replied that he didn’t want to offend his wife by looking at the women in bikinis. To this the hearer replied, "Dude, you’re awesome!" In this man’s mind, and in the mind of his hearer, he had clothed himself in Christ. What he thought was godliness actually put him in bondage. It’s easy and it makes us feel safe to put on the appearance of Christ.
I know a woman who spent a year in the Mormon church during her journey to know Jesus personally. Never mind that she couldn’t embrace all of their theology—having grown up in the church and having a foundation of teaching—their family values appealed greatly to her. They offered her much in the way of a new life, an orderly life, but it was all about conformity. Works. Appearances. The appeal of the Mormons is that it’s easy and it makes us feel safe to put on the appearance of Christ.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death."
Paul knew that his explanation of how he became a servant of the gospel might entice people to put on Christ on the outside. I fear that is what you heard. When I talked about receiving the grace to proclaim Christ, its quite possible, and maybe even probable, that all you heard was "proclaim Christ." But that is not what I said. Proclaiming Christ without possessing Christ is nothing more than putting on appearances. That’s why Paul went from telling the story of how he experienced the grace to proclaim Christ, to indicating that his prayer for the church was that they, by the same power, would also receive grace—the grace to possess Christ in their inner being.
For this reason (or "because I have received such incredible grace that it made me a servant of the gospel,"), I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. (Eph. 3:14-21)
Paul’s prayer was not any ordinary gift. He did not pray for their help in time of trouble, nor did he pray for a felt need. He didn’t ask for money, and he didn’t ask for healing for Aunt Betty’s athlete’s foot. These things are all fine and good to ask of our Father, but his prayer was for what those who made up the church in Ephesus and other churches in the region really needed. His prayer was that they would receive the first grace, the initiating grace, the all-critical grace of Christ dwelling within them. My prayer for you this evening is the same, that you would receive the grace to possess Christ. Only when you receive the grace to possess Christ in your inner being will you ever receive the grace to proclaim Christ on the outside.
We saw last week and can see here that grace comes by the power of God. Power is the initiative and force of God that allows us to receive grace. Without power, grace is out of reach. Power is God’s authority to separate our sin from us as far as the east is from the west, making room for the Christ. Power is God’s Spirit opening our eyes to our sin and to the truth about God, making us hungry and thirsty for righteousness. Power is the vehicle that delivers grace to us. When we receive that power in our inner being, we no longer work up a frenzy to clothe ourselves with Christ on the outside. God’s power alone makes a way for grace.
How will you know that the power is at work in you? One word—hunger. Jesus said, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled." Like the hungry vagabond standing patiently in line at the food kitchen, the power of God makes us desperate to wait for him to fill us. Worship, whether we worship together or you are worshiping alone, is the active waiting of a desperately hungry man or woman. Our worship is like the desperate cry of the hatchling crying out to the mother bird, "Feed me!" The Lord cannot resist feeding us when we are so hungry that we abandon all to worship him and have his power make us ready to receive him as our own. He cannot wait to dwell within us.
The word Paul uses for dwell here is quite interesting. It is katoikeo, a word combining the primary particle kata, which means "down" with the root word oikeo, which means "to occupy a house." Luke and John use katoikeo quite liberally. In the book of Acts, Luke uses katoikeo 21 times, always to describe where people live--"the dwellers in Jerusalem" (1:19), "the dwellers in Mesopotamia and Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia" (2:9), and so on. John, in Revelation, uses the term 12 times to identify the people living on the earth and once as a reference to the place where Satan lives. Paul is not so free with the term. He is more likely to use the root word oikeo alone. So it is significant when Paul uses katoikeo when praying for Christ to dwell in our hearts.
Paul’s not suggesting that Christ just kind of hang out with us. He’s not praying for the church to have an occasional "Chicken Soup" encounter with Jesus that makes us warm and fuzzy and reinforces our belief that someday we will get to be with him in heaven. His prayer is that the living Christ will take up residency in the home of your heart today. He’s asking the Lord to get in there, shake things up in there, clean things up in there, and stay in there. He’s praying that Christ will be so deep down within you that you are more likely to cough up your liver with dry heaves than cough up your faith in Christ in the presence of trouble or temptation. He’s praying that your character will be formed by Christ in you. He’s praying that your actions will be initiated by Christ in you. He’s praying that you will be rooted and established in love, able to grasp, together with all the others in whom Christ dwells deep within, how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ. He’s praying that an initial dwelling of his Spirit within you will be so rich and impactful, that you will have nothing other than more and more of him, until you have been filled to the full measure of all the fullness of God.
When that happens, Christ is no longer your burden, but your life. No longer do you have to put on appearances, shouting your disgust with the world’s adultery but lacking the power to resist it yourselves. No longer do you have to fear evil, keeping your head down because you cannot see beauty without entertaining lust. No longer do you have to earn your way to God or heaven, like every other religion in the world, because he is with you—deep within you—and his presence testifies of his power to save and deliver you from all kinds of evil. Man, oh man, let me tell you, that is living on another level!
It bears notice that this gift of grace to possess Christ, like every other grace-gift, comes through faith. I’ve heard it said and believe its true that we have as much of Christ as we want. We may not have much, but we have all we want.
How much do you want him? Do you believe that his presence inside of you can and will make a difference in the life you live in the body? Do you believe that giving him lordship over every area of your being will bring you greater joy than the self-rule you’ve entertained your entire life? Then receive the grace to possess Christ. He is yours, by the power of God at work in you, through faith.
A.B. Simpson, founder of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, explains how you receive him in his book Wholly Sanctified:
In the upper portion of New York City, many citizens may often have noticed, especially in the past years, a great number of miserable shanties, standing on the choicest sites. Though perhaps on the corner of a splendid new avenue or looking out on a magnificent prospect, the house was utterly unworthy of the site. Suppose that a millionaire should want to purchase this site, and that the owner should begin, before giving possession, to repair the old shanty for the new owner, putting fresh thatch on the miserable roof and a new coat of whitewash on the dirty walls.
How the purchaser would laugh at him and say, "My friend, I do not want your miserable old wreck of a tenement fixed up like this. At the best, it will only be a shanty when you have done all you can to it and I will never live in it. All I want is the ground, the site, and when I get it I will raze the old heap of rubbish to the foundations, and dig deep down to the solid rock before I build my splendid mansion. I will then build from the base my own new house according to my own magnificent plan. I do not want a vestige of your house, all that I require is the location."
This is exactly what God wants of us and waits to do in us. Each of us has a splendid site for a heavenly temple. It looks out upon eternity and commands a view of all that is glorious in the possibilities of existence. The house that is built upon it now, however, is a worthless wreck, it is past improving. Our patching and repairing is worse than waste. What God wants of us is simply that we give him the possibilities of our lives and let him build upon them a temple of holiness which he will make his own abode and which he will let us dwell in with him as his happy guests in the house of the Lord forever.
It’s the day after Jesus’ tomb was found empty and the disciples are embroiled in a controversy that makes skating at the Olympics look like a group hug. The Jews believed the disciples stole the body to say he had risen. Some of the disciples didn’t believe the news Mary the Magdalene brought them about his being risen and assumed the Jews took the body to finish off their movement. So they go up into a room and lock the doors, cowering in fear and unsure of what to do next.
Go into that room and feel the tension. Mary has tried in vain to convince them she saw Jesus. Some believed her. Some wanted to believe her and found reason to, but it was tempered with much doubt. Thomas didn’t believe her much at all, and wouldn’t until he saw Jesus’ nail-pierced hands and touched his gashed side. The arguments went on and on into the evening and had probably come to the point where nobody was talking at all.
Do you want to know what that room must have been like? Take 6 representatives from Planned Parenthood and put them in a room with 6 representatives from the National Right to Life Committee. Tell them to make a decision about whether or not abortion is okay. Tell them they can’t come out until they’ve made a decision. They might start with a debate and eventually argue a little, but sooner or later they’ll just give up and they won’t talk to each other. That’s the kind of tension I imagine was in that room.
You might disagree. "The disciples weren’t like the different sides of the abortion debate. They had a common cause." My reply, first of all, is that their common cause was broken by differing beliefs about the resurrection. Second, much like the abortion debate and undoubtedly even more so, these people had invested everything on Jesus. They left their homes, their jobs, their families, their security. They put it all on the line to follow Jesus! Having risked everything, do you think they didn’t bring a little passion into that room that would be somewhat effected by whether or not Jesus did actually rise. Absolutely! And their investment was unravelling before them. That’s tension.
You’ve felt that tension. You feel it when your belief runs smack dab into your unbelief. You feel it when temptation beats on you over and over again and the will to resist is almost unbearable. You feel it when a loved one dies and your theology is not enough to make sense of this heart-breaking world. You feel it when choosing faith means that God absolutely must come through or everything you’ve ever professed will prove to be a lie. Have you been there? I’ve been there, and I’ve found that God allows me to go there to see for myself whether or not I am truly hungry.
That’s where the disciples were, caught in a fog of tension and turmoil so thick you could scarcely look across the room. Maybe the reason Thomas left the room was because he felt it was the best thing he could do before he really exploded. But while he was gone, John 20:19 tells us Jesus came into the room and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you."
Peace be with you. What an overstatement! His presence alone would have lifted the fog of tension and turmoil. Did Jesus really need to say "peace be with you" when standing among them was enough to wipe out all fear and doubt?
Jesus dwelling within you will speak peace to you. His presence will give you roots and establish you, as the Psalmist says, "like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does, prospers." What more do you need to surrender your heart to him today? Do you, like Thomas, need to see his hands and touch his side? How much seeing will be enough for you? Jesus said, "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."
