Are You Committed?

By Tammy Lacock

In this week’s podcast, Warren continues to explain the two important commitments in which God’s plan operates.

The first is Christ’s deep commitment to us. In His death, He committed His life so that in His death, we too would die to our old lives, and in his resurrection, we would also rise to live a new life in Him. He who knew no sin bore all of our sins and transgressions so that we would be freed from Adam’s curse of sin and the law. By only believing, we are saved from this world and Christ becomes our new life. We are born again. We are now complete in Him, finally allowing us to be who God created us to be. Nothing else fits us but Christ. In His commitment to us, God gave us His Son as our hope, our only hope of glory.

The second is our commitment to Christ who now lives in us. Warren emphasizes that only through Paul’s writings are we able to understand how to live now with Christ as our new life. Are we committed to Him? Or are we still living our old lives?

Paul was the only man raised up by Christ, Himself, to bring us the message of Christ alive in us. It was revealed to him in the Arabian Desert, and he brought it first to the believers in Antioch, where they were first called Christians, or Christ-persons. Paul began to explain our new life in Christ and how we are to live with this knowledge. His message changed the course of history, yet it has yet to really take hold. Most Christians don’t know who they are in Christ. At least three times, Paul says this knowledge was given to him to give to us (Ephesians 3:2). He also says, “Follow me as I follow Christ” (1 Cor. 11).

And in Philippians 3:8, he says, “Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ.”

Paul explains that we must change our thinking. In order to live here and now, he says, we must commit ourselves to the Christ within us. When we come to know and love Him more and more, we grow to understand His deep commitment to us, a commitment made before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4).

We grow to understand that we, too, are now sons and daughters of our Heavenly Father. We grow to learn of His unconditional love and His relentless grace.

We grow to understand the price He paid so He can be our new life. And according to Paul, it’s not so much about getting into Heaven. Although we are saved by just believing, it’s about our love affair with, and commitment to, Christ now.

And so I ask again, are you committed to Christ? Or are you still living your old life?