When Jesus died on the cross He paid a huge price for us to have a new life in Him, we know that this rebirth was not just going to be ‘a second chance’, another attempt to live life in a way that would be pleasing to God and allow us to get into heaven. No, what Jesus did for us on the cross was the purchase of a whole new dimension of life. It was to be eternal life, because it was going to be Christ’s life within us. We were spiritually dead, ‘But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive together with Christ even when we were dead in our transgressions.’ Ephesians 2:4.
Furthermore it wasn’t a case of God saying, “Ok, I’ve made you alive spiritually, now you need to prove you’re worth it, by living as Jesus did”. No! He actually put Christ’s life in us in order that, through Him, we could live like Him in increasing measure. Paul describes this in Galatians 2:20 ‘I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.’ What a relief that we have not just joined a self improvement society but Jesus has taken our old sinful life to the cross with Him and given us His own life in exchange.
It’s now our task to ‘count ourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus’. We now have that constant choice to ‘offer ourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life’ Romans 6:11-13. This is not a lottery win, whereby I don’t need to work for the rest of my life, but something much, much better. In heaven there is all that I need to live as Jesus would like me to. Everything that is His, is now mine in Christ. It is deposited in the heavenly realm. Paid for by the cross. We are now to become ‘instruments of righteousness’ at His expense.
On the cross, Jesus died to purchase us back from the kingdom of darkness into the Kingdom of light. That involved the forgiveness of all our sin past, present and future, the account cleared, the debt paid. It also included a vast deposit of grace and favour. We are told that ‘He who did not spare His own son, but gave Him up for us all- how will He not also along with Him, graciously give us all things’, Romans 8:32. The apostle Peter puts it like this ‘His divine power has given us all things pertaining to life and godliness, through our knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and goodness’. 2 Peter1:3.
John said at the beginning of his gospel that ‘to all who receive Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God’ John 1:12, and ‘From the fullness of His grace we have received one blessing after another’, or literally from the Greek ‘of the fullness of Him we all received’, John 1:16. So when we became a born again Christian we received the very life of Christ, and our spirits became alive in, or ‘with’ Christ. My new life has all His fullness in embryo form and as I go on daily receiving grace upon grace from Him, my new life grows and Christ is formed within.
It is as if my debt was paid and a massive current account deposited on which I now may draw daily. It’s an instant access account, one for which I don’t need to wait until it matures, before I can withdraw from it. It is also one from which I can withdraw without depleting the balance. I have the password to this account and it is ‘thank you Jesus’, and I can draw on it at any time as I use that password, because that is the password of ‘faith’ that releases into my life that for which Jesus paid the price.
He said to His disciples, ‘And I will do whatever you ask in My name so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. You may ask Me for anything in My name, and I will do it’, John 14:13, and what greater pleasure can there be for Him than that we ask for, and receive from Him, those things that will enable us to live as He did on this earth. ‘Thank you Jesus’ is the access code to all the treasures laid up in heaven for us, that we need in order to ‘walk as Jesus did’, 1 John 2:6. So let us use it often and freely, as we travel through our days with Him.
