ABIDING IN CHRIST
My Part in sanctification as it relates to Abiding in the God-head – Part 3
“Jesus said, ‘He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit.’ Our challenge is not to bear fruit, but to abide” Charles F. Stanley (ref#230, p63).
“It is impossible to abide in him, unless we are first of all in him—vitally united to him by faith. [O]ur first care must be to get an interest in Christ, and our continued care must be to abide in him” Charles Ross (ref#241, p122).
“[T]hat which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ” (1 John 1:3 ESV).
“What does fellowship mean? To be in a state of fellowship means that we share in things. We are partakers or, if you life, partners—that idea is there intrinsically in the word. That means something like this: The Christian is one who has become a sharer in the life of God” Martyn Lloyd-Jones (ref#189, Sept 22nd).
“[W]hat is it to abide in Christ? It implies for one thing it’s a continued sense of need of him. [I]t implies also an abiding perception of Christ’s all-sufficiency and glory. Christians growing in poverty of spirit lies in this, that Christ is his. [T]o abide in Christ is to depend upon him—to trust in him—to adhere to him to the end. And this union is mutual. [J]ust as truly as the soul is to abide in Christ, so Christ is to abide in the soul—Christ in the soul through the indwelling Spirit, and the soul in Christ by faith” Charles Ross (ref#241, p123).
“Jesus says: ‘Even as the Father hath loved me, I also have loved you.’ What, then, is the love wherewith the Father loves the Son? Not surely the love of pity and compassion, but that of complacency and delight. Of the like nature is the love of Jesus to his people. It is true indeed, that he loved them with a love of pity and compassion, when they were in their low and lost estate—when they were in the filthiness of sin; but it is also a most blessed truth that ever since he made them ‘his own’ by his effectual grace—ever since he clothed them with his righteousness and made them the temples of his Holy Spirit—he regards them with peculiar satisfaction and delight” Charles Ross (ref#241, p129).
“[I]t is this love of complacency and delight on the part of Jesus, in which we are exhorted to ‘continue,’ or rather to ‘abide.’” Charles Ross (ref#241, p130).
“Christians are not merely people who are a little bit better than they once were and who have just added certain things to their lives. Rather, they are men and women who have received the divine life” Martyn Lloyd-Jones (ref#189, Sept 22nd).
Bonnie's Prayer Affair 