The secret to TRUE growth as a Christian

[0:00] it's dangerous for you to think more of yourself than you should but it's also dangerous for you to think less of yourself than Christ does I think one of the most pressing issues in the day-to-day walk with God for the believer is understanding clearly who God is and understanding clearly who they are in him touches everything your sense of calling how you handle your relationships what you do for work how you work how you handle things like hardships difficulties setbacks and ultimately it affects how closely you walk walk with God in a day in and day out fashion so what I want to do today is really focus in tight on three key ideas number one what are humans according to the Bible if we'd have a messed up idea there everything else is going to get messed up too because that's really the fundamental basis first off what are humans what is Jesus

[0:48] who is Jesus and then third who are those who find themselves in Jesus and this is going to be a pretty wide ranging discussion it's going to take us from the first two chapters of the Bible to the last two chapters of the Bible and it's going to touch on a lot of different things in between but if you understand who you are in Christ and you understand the role that humans were meant to play it should affect everything about how you choose to live your life in the best possible way so let's talk about it now it's possible that you're totally new to the channel you're brand new here you've never seen anything I've come up with before hey I'm Tim Barber this channel is really dedicated to unpacking what the biblical authors really mean by eternity and how we should live our lives differently in light of what the Bible says and the main concept that we work with is something that we call the overlap of Heaven and Earth in the beginning in Genesis 1 and 2 Heaven and Earth were completely overlapping spaces

[1:35] God and his people were together in the same space then the fall happened and those two spaces separated humans were kicked out of the presence of God but immediately God started the process of trying to get them to overlap again and this is where we find ourselves now because Jesus has arrived he was the ultimate place where they overlapped in the same space and what he's done in expanding the borders of God's kingdom is bring those two spaces to complete overlap once again he's working towards creating unification of Heaven and Earth uh as Paul says in Ephesians unifying all things in heaven and on Earth in Jesus until eventually we'll return to a complete one and one overlap where they are the same space which obviously points out that there are a lot of parallels between the first two chapters of your Bible and the last two chapters of your Bible and one of the revolutionary ideas behind all of this is that once you sort of see that picture and you learn to see the entire

[2:23] biblical story in light of how it begins and How It Ends and the connections and similarity points there you start to reframe the entirety of the story in between including our own life and it tells you an awful lot about what humans were created for in the beginning and what they're destined for in eternity in the beginning God was partnering with his human creatures in the garden to create a more garden-like World everywhere to expand the borders of his kingdom or in in God's words be fruitful and multiply to fill the Earth and subdue it to rule and Reign alongside him to take the cosmos the whole world that he created that was good and take it someplace even better and in the end after the resurrection after all the you know the things that people argue about like the Millennium and all that stuff after all that God's plan is to bring around the whole Cosmos the whole creation back to that kind of a state where we will now be glorified healed

[3:11] holy radiant righteous Sons and Daughters of the king tasked with working with him for the rest of Eternity to take the world in an increasingly more and more beautiful Direction partnering with him it's not just religious service it's not just getting moral life it is also actively partnering with God in every aspect of life to bring things more in line with what he calls good we call this whole concept the overlap of Heaven and Earth now I don't know if you've looked at the calendar recently I personally cannot believe that we're already almost halfway through November it still feels like it's like halfway through 2023 but we're staring down the barrel of 2024 and whenever we get around this time of the year I'm always thinking oh man all the like the gym is going to be packed with all these people on January 1st because of the New Year's resolutions and what's the message behind all these like Fitness companies all these supplements companies all these

[3:58] companies that are trying to get your attention and sell you something based on like this promise that you're going to do better this year it's new year new you you'll hear this from Cosmetics companies gyms Health supplements companies dentists plastic surgeons coaches personal trainers fat diets where they send you this big 5B bag of sludge that you can only drink once you put it into a cement mixer and every one of them is promising new life and the problem is it's a promise that they can't keep you're still more or less who you were before you took whatever supplement you still have the same habits you still are the sum total of the choices that you've made and no pill is going to change that what's more we're all still in Mortal bodies we're still facing down the inevitability of death and you really can't undo that that's God's business but what's interesting this this is something I noticed a few years ago plans the supplements the companies that really do seem to actually help people do

[4:46] something different and change and move in a different direction in life they're not just selling you a supplement or a product it's not just a method or a process or information they actually offer you a different identity somebody new to become something new to belong to and Something to Believe In CrossFit works this way no one in CrossFit is just trying out a new workout routine you become a different kind of person you've subscribed to like some new ideology and it functions for on the same level some religions do so the question for us is this what are humans what does it mean to be Jesus humans and what will that look like for eternity and like most things in the Bible it's best if you go looking for answers starting from the very beginning I wonder if youve stopped to think about this but God had something specific in mind when he thought to create humans there was a purpose behind why he

[5:34] created us and again it's the same purpose for which he will restore Us in the end to live out forever and ever let's dive into Genesis 1 and have a look at the spot in the story right before God actually makes Humanity way down here in verse 26 then God said let us make Mankind in our image according to our likeness and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the livestock and over all the Earth and over every crawling thing that crawls on on the ground so God Has This brilliant idea to make humans but what he thinks to himself as he gets this idea is of absolute significance let's make them like us that word for image is actually the same Hebrew word that gets translated as Idol in other places in the scriptures so now I'm wondering did you know that the reason you're not supposed to make an idol of God is that God already did and any other attempts

[6:21] to create an image of God are going to cheapen both him and the image he already made you do now you're a little god statue running around world that God made he wanted the rest of the created order to look at you and think that's there's a little God person that the Creator made running around that's something like what God is like so after describing what a human is God moves on to what a human does and what was Mankind's first job let them rule okay do you know what that means reigning over the entire Earth and all the creatures that exist on it so God looks around at the world that he made and although it was good he says hm something's missing right let me make something to represent me I I have a great idea I'm going to make mankind I'm going to make them in order that they can rule I'm going to delegate some of my authority to them I'll be supervising them of course but what we need around

[7:09] here are little representatives of myself to partner with me in ruling this place okay this is before he even makes us this is sort of like the mission statement what we need is humans and here's what they're supposed to do Rule and Reign alongside me as my partners so then God makes the humans okay and there's tons going on here again we've got be fruitful multiply fill the Earth and subdue it rule so let's break all of those down one by one roughly we have one job and that's rule the world with God okay and item number one on that to-do list is be fruitful now a lot of people will talk about this as simply having children it certainly includes that right be fruitful and multiply certainly means make more y'all which is really good but it's not just that it's also the word fruitful is tied deeply into productivity creativity hard productive work that creates a good good

[7:59] outcome so get to work making wonderful things including More Humans right grow families develop children parent them well create more image bearers what does he say next it's fill the Earth okay this is a second command it's not just be fruitful and multiply fill the Earth as though that's like two versions of the same command this is a separate command and this one is an amplification so it's create good things make good outcomes make more of y'all and do it to the degree that you're filling the entire surface of the world that I made okay not just families not just in your local tribes but also in villages create Villages then towns then cities then societies and entire civilizations right start with families but then go further and this last one subdue it is where all the fun is the Hebrew word for this is Kash which means to bend something to your will right in this context it

[8:47] basically means to bend something to God's Will and ours in partnership with him very close attention because I really don't want you to miss this this is of Titanic importance God's desire in creating humans was so that he could have co-rulers partners and little representatives of his walking around the beautiful world that he made and called good working and living alongside him to take it somewhere even more beautiful together as his children this is the seeded out of which so many other roles grow that we see in the scriptures think about kings and queens right this was the role that humans were supposed to have as rulers under the rule of the one king over all God himself prophets what do prophets do they represent God his way and his will to the creation what about priests what do priests do they represent the created order before

[9:34] God and what he wants us to do isn't just moral living and religious involvement in rituals and spiritual things he wants us involved in ruling and managing this entire world that he made to take it all someplace incredible in other words the things that matter to secular Humanity matter just as much as the things that are important in sacred ways at least according to God now of course Genesis 3 comes along which if you've been following along with the story you know that that's the fall where the serpent deceives Adam and Eve into giving up the fullness of the experience of life that God wanted for them tragically the serpent convinces Adam and Eve that if they follow his way instead of God's way they'll become like God the tragic part is that they already were like God and the enemy convinced them to do the one thing that would strip them of the fullness of that Heavenly nature but God he pronounces

[10:22] these curses God did not undo the entirety of his plan with humans it didn't all get eliminated and broken down into destroyed it got twisted and broken and marred and made a little dirty and hard to understand and see think about it are humans still fruitful yeah we're extremely productive and there are 8 billion of us alive right now we've gotten that part right although obviously child birth is a lot more painful for women now than it was then are we still rulers over the Earth yeah we're just not very good rulers we're selfish self-exalting we're destructive we're foolish I think pretty much no matter where you are on the political Spectrum in the United States you can agree that there are a lot of fools occupying our places of government are we still working and co-laboring with God yes but sometimes it's a contentious work relationship sometimes we want our way more than his we don't trust in his wisdom for what makes a good World we're still God's image but

[11:10] now rather than a perfect reflection of God's nature we're a distorted reflection of God's nature you know we we still reflect his light but it's just in a broken way like kind of a a mirror that drops and cracks here's the key this is true of you even if you're not saved all Humanity still has this mantle on their shoulders how do we we regain the fullness of that calling and that's where Jesus comes in obviously as the story of the Bible continues you start to focus the story down from all of humanity onto the story of Abraham's family the Jewish people and one of the themes that comes up over and over and over throughout that entire section of the Old Testament really the second 2third of the book is that humans keep screwing it up no matter how much God tries to help them out either by warnings or by teachings or all of these different things we still find a way to make a mess of things and the prophets

[11:57] as they started like reflecting on this they started to focus down their thinking on man what we really need is like a new human to show us the way and he's going to have to be like all of the best humans that the Jewish people have ever produced he's going to have to be like a new Moses he's going to have to be like a new David he's going to have to be like even Abraham he's going to need to be someone who speaks for God and leads his people he's going to need to be someone who rules over the the Dominion that God gives to him he's even going to need to be the progenitor of a new race of people they gave that person a bunch of titles Messiah right which is the anointed one who' come and restore the people to God and God to the people Daniel saw the vision of the son of man right the one to whom is given the right to judge the beastly Nations and rule over them with God's full approval even back in Genesis 3 there was the promised seed of the woman who was going to come

[12:45] and crush the head of the serpent the one who deceived Humanity in the very beginning the point is that Jesus was this new human he was setting up a way to belong to and begin the new Humanity that was reconnected with with the calling that Adam and Eve had in the very beginning and he did that by defeating the powers of evil and darkness and sin by dying on the cross and then being resurrected and Vindicated by God on the third day he disarmed them he took away their power uh and then when he came back he made a new way through death into a new kind of Humanity on the other side he's what humans are supposed to be Paul even calls him a second Adam so now there's a new template a new prototype a new Exemplar for what it means to be a truly human one partnering and co-ruling with God and it looks like Jesus now those who follow along behind him are in him

[13:34] given the same calling Jesus declared after he rose from the dead that all authority in heaven and on Earth had been given to him and then he commissioned his followers to announce that his eternal life and the restored human calling are available to All Humans even now in the present so these aren't just realities that take place at the end of your life once you're resurrected leaving us unchanged and still completely broken and hopeless lost in the present while we wait for that day there you yours now Paul says that if anybody is in Christ he is a new creation Jesus said that eternal life is knowing God and Jesus Christ whom he has sent in that same passage this is John 17 in his high Priestly prayer he says that he has given his glory to those who believe in him meaning you're now in God's eyes you're a glorious holy healed Saint you already are the person that enters into the New Creation in the end

[14:23] or rather I should say the new beginning now you really might not feel like it right now and I completely get that but you need to understand this you have already been given the status and nature of a person who has been restored as a child of God given the mantle and blessing of a newly remade Heavenly human and the restored position of prophet priest and ruler under God in fact the word Christian simply means a little Christ I'm not saying we are our own saviors I'm not saying we are God that's all craziness what I am saying is that you are a little image of Christ a little copy of Christ someone who should be like Jesus loving and serving your neighbors being an agent of God's will connected with God's spirit partnering with God to expand the borders of God's kingdom through your work your ministry

[15:10] your relationships and everything that you do with your time I don't think it's possible to overstate how important this is this is a pretty big shift in thinking that is both extremely exciting and horrifyingly sobering CU if our if our actions don't look more and more each day like the kind of person Jesus was as we go further along then perhaps were not the genuine article I think immediately of Romans 5 and 6 where Paul sets up this idea of being in Adam and then being taken out of Adam and put into Christ when we were in Adam you can think of like a bucket right everything that was true of him was true of us and now that we're in Christ we've been taken out of that and placed into this bucket where everything that's true of Christ is true of us meaning if I'm in Christ it means I'm not in Adam and the things that describe Adam no longer accurately describe me the bucket labeled Adam says foolish enemy Fallen evil sinful broken and selfish but the

[15:58] Christ bucket says you know in permanent marker beloved wise holy righteous perfect whole child when he rescued you he literally took you up out of the Adam bucket and dropped you into the Christ bucket and so your life ought to look the part and In this passage how does Paul sort of conclude his line of thinking for the death he died he died to sin once for all but the life he lives he lives to God so you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus the old man who lived the life of sinfulness has died there is no Reviving him he is gone annihilated removed from existence but the new man the one who's been made alive to God can never die again and if I'm really a Christian this person is the real me I don't know if you've ever noticed this before but not once in any

[16:47] of Paul's letters does he refer to the people he's writing to as sinners in Paul's theology that's not who they are it's who they were when they were in the kingdom of darkness but in Christ that's not the case any longer he's writing them in instructions on how to abandon sinful lifestyle so he clearly knows that sin exists in their communities but his entire point is that you should stop sinning because that's not who you are in Christ that belonged to your flesh but now you're reborn after the likeness of Christ filled with God's Own Spirit the point of the receiving and indwelling of the spirit is that it is the proof that new creation has happened to us to us and in us and it's also the power which allows New Creation to happen through us most of us as Christians and this comes from faulty teaching that doesn't understand this whole picture that the story of the Bible is telling most of us think of ourselves as just morally broken evil and corrupted down into the core of our

[17:36] heart even after we're saved we disparage ourselves and say things like I'm just a sinner saved by grace thinking we're being humble but what we're actually doing is robbing the gospel of its power no The Sinner is who you were and what little there is that still identifies with your dead sinner self can only be referred to as your flesh but you are not your flesh you have your flesh you battle against your flesh but you are not your flesh who you are is God's child a king or queen under the King of Kings right a prophet who boldly allies with God a priest who connects God to his creation a beloved member of God's own family in whom he is well pleased You Are Holy like God is Holy you're a walking talking Temple of God's spirit the truth of the grace of God says that you are free beloved holy righteous wise good and worthy in Christ

[18:27] in short that you are like Christ but we have an enemy who tells us every day that we are sinners that we're addicts that we're failures that we are weak that we are evil that we are broken still even if we're in Christ in short that we're like him instead so who are you going to believe who gets to Define for you who you are and what you were made for are you going to listen to the Sun or are you going to listen to The Serpent the gospel offers you an entirely different identity it uproots who you were and sets you on the course to the Eternal overlap of Heaven and Earth connecting you at the same time with the the Heavenly calling that all Humanity was given in the beginning and the destiny to regain that calling in fullness in the New Creation Kingdom now of course let's be honest none of us really experiences life that way we still have arguments with loved ones even small arguments even huge arguments we still have moments where we're

[19:15] confused you know not comfortably and confidently reigning with Christ over our lives and our circle of influence we still battle with sicknesses we should be trending in the direction of Peace in Christ obedience to God's will more and more sinlessness not ever expecting to fully reach that because we do live in a world where the enemy still has this motivation to tear us down that's that's all he wants is to tear down the Believers to accuse the Brethren as Jesus says we do have a traitor in the gates of our own castle which is our flesh but we allow that traitor to get away with his treachery way more frequently than we should but the key is to remember that the work has already begun in us our identity has already changed our Nature has already been renewed and remember that Miracle of Miracles one day it will be completed when I first started studying God's

[20:04] Eternal purpose and his plan for eternity where he's restoring the entire universe in Christ I got really excited about external restoration I got really excited about the idea of seeing animals in the new Earth I got really interested in seeing the entire universe remade like the like the Christmas song Joy to the world where it says as far as the curse is found I was really excited about the fact that the entire curse as far as it can be found is going to be removed and as Paul says the the creation that's groaning as in labor pains will one day be liberated from its bondage to slavery and Decay I got really excited about having an actual Resurrection body and seeing my own my own father again who passed away and all the Believers who have passed away living in glorified healed restored bodies on the restored Earth that's

[20:53] brought to the fullness of its Glory too things like camping trips things like enjoying all the beauti beautiful places in the world that I'm not likely to have an opportunity to enjoy in this life that really captured my imagination and it obviously that that is a massively important thing that has huge implications for how we're supposed to live today because this place is going to be restored not just burned up and we're going to get airlifted to heaven when we die but in the years since I am getting more and more excited about my own internal restoration both in terms of what it means for how I am living now and what what project I think I'm contributing to and also what it means for my eternal existence on that day when God does bring his full restoration just imagine having a heart a mind a soul and a body that is perfectly without flaw or Brokenness or evil or

[21:43] sin imagine hearing your favorite song and having the kind of existence that never gets tired of it in fact every time you listen to it you have just as much amazement and wonder and joy as the first time you heard it even as you learn more about what makes it so good imagine being perfectly grateful for every single good thing in your life imagine having no accusatory thoughts no internal doubts no self-hatred no false confidence no self-deception imagine fully truly really wanting only right things all the time imagine that both you and everyone that you're surrounded by only wants exactly what God wants and you all know exactly what that is all the time never being afraid or worried or angry or frustrated or sad or sick or injured never ever again all your addictions your sinful beliefs your

[22:32] destructive habits all of that is going to be healed and lifted off of your shoulders forever and imagine a culture where this is true of absolutely everyone who lives there that's what we're all headed toward but remember that work has already begun you are already a royal citizen in God's kingdom where everything is different that reality will progressively catch up to your current one with the passing of time until God comes and finishes the job himself so let's wrap this thing up my my central contention in this video is that you need to recognize who you are in Christ you need to recognize what humans were made for what is lost and what isn't in the diminishment once we fell Which is less than you might think I'm not saying we're not before we're saved we're not you know crazy sinful and disobedient to God in all kinds of ways and frail and broken and weak-willed and weak-hearted and

[23:20] weak-minded and completely losing our way like sheep that's that is true that's the case but once you're in Christ Paul James Peter Jesus himself the entire New Testament is pushing you towards the idea that in Christ you have already been remade you've already been made new that seed has been planted and it's growing and sprouting and flowering and bearing fruit in your life as long as you don't quench it or chop at the base of the tree and your task now is not to grit your teeth and try to be better it is to relax into God's love to settle into the fact that you have been remade and to live and think and act act and feel from a place of a different identity let's look at what Paul has to say about this this is Colossians 3 starting in verse one he says therefore if you have been raised with Christ keep

[24:08] seeking the things that are above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God set your minds on the things that are above not on the things that are on Earth for you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God when Christ who is our life is revealed then you also will be revealed with him in glory therefore treat the parts of your Earthly body as is dead to sexual immorality impurity passion evil desire and greed which amounts to idolatry for it is because of these things that the wrath of God is coming upon the sons of Disobedience and in them you also once walked when you were living in them but now you also rid yourselves of all of them anger wrath malice slander and obscene speech from your mouth do not lie to one another since you stripped off the old self with its evil practices and have put on the new self which is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the one who created it a renewal in which there is

[24:56] no distinction between Greek and Jews circumcised and uncircumcised Barbarian syian slave and free but Christ as all and in all so as those who have been chosen of God holy and beloved put on a heart of compassion kindness humility gentleness and patience bearing with one another and forgiving each other Whoever has a complain against anyone just as the Lord forgave you so must you do also and he sort of finishes up that line of thought in verse 17 by saying whatever you do in word or deed do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus giving thanks through him to God the Father hopefully you could kind hear what I was talking about there it's interesting because he does talk about like Earthly things but that's the flesh he's talking about because Paul elsewhere talks about God's plan to restore the Earth to remake it to heal it like in Romans 8 he's not saying abandon being a physically embodied human he's saying abandon the things that pertain to the way of life

[25:45] that this world offers and that's really the world's system more than it is the creation itself he's saying get rid of those things and live as the person you have been made to be and where is that person seated at the right hand of Christ in the Heavenly places now I really want to talk about this more there are so many things that we can unpack about this what does this mean for how you overcome addictions negative behaviors negative selft talk how do step into this more and more each day how do we think about these things what I really would love to do I want to hear your comments I want to hear your questions drop them down below and I'm going to compile a list of things and if I start to see a theme arise in the questions that are popped down there into the comments I'm going to write them down and I'm going to address those questions one by one in future videos but for now check out this video over here where we go in a little bit more in-depth detail about what it looks like

[26:34] to live your Christian Life with God's priorities in mind every day now I'll see you over there further up and further in