Chapter 5

Sit

 

Sitting has to do with our self-image and who we are in Christ.  The devil can kill, steal and destroy us if our conduct and lifestyle are not pleasing to the Lord.  However, what we think of ourselves, or our self-image, determines our conduct.  We may try hard to change our conduct, but it is really determined by our self-image.  What we think of ourselves (our self-image) is the only thing we can change.  In order to have an accurate image of ourselves (accurate in God’s eyes), we must renew our minds by the Word of God.  “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God” (Romans 12:2).

If you want to have a fruit bearing abundant life, you will need to know how these three issues – SIT, WALK, and STAND – work together. 

We need to STAND against the devil - (warfare - John 10:10).  Satan is determined to steal your seed as described in Mark chapter 4. 

But we cannot STAND until we learn how to WALK - (our conduct or lifestyle - Ephesians 4:27).  Satan will attempt to cause you to walk out your life in an ungodly manner so that you will be unable to STAND against him with the power of Jesus, who is holy.

However, we cannot WALK until we learn to SIT - (our self-image - Luke 6:45).  Many Christians attempt to walk out a holy life by self-determination, which eventually becomes legalism and rules.  This style of life will cut you off from real relationship with the Lord Jesus.

We are living in a spiritual war and we need to STAND against the enemy, but we cannot stand unless we are living the right life and we cannot live the right life if we have the wrong self-image.

We need to know who we are (SIT) before we can live as we should (WALK) and before we can  (STAND) against the devil in our lives.  This is based upon three verses in Ephesians:

SIT - Ephesians 2:5-6 says, “…even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”

According to this verse, are we SITTING with Christ in the heavenlies; or are we going to do so after we die and go to Heaven?

WALK - Ephesians 4:1 says, “I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called.”

STAND - Ephesians 6:11 says, “Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.”

 

Let us learn to sit.

We are going to behave exactly like what our heart tells us we are.  “A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks” (Luke 6:45).

To SIT with Christ in heavenly places depends upon His Cross.  Look again at Ephesians 2:5.  It says that we were dead in our sins.  Can a dead man do anything?  No way.  A dead man does not need to learn to walk or stand, or to throw away bad habits, a dead man needs LIFE !  A dead man cannot give himself life, he cannot even try.  It took God through Christ to give us life.

First, let’s define sit in terms of the spiritual world.

Our legs are holding us when we stand, but when we sit we are resting our weight on the chair.  It is a matter of effort or rest.  We either become weary or rested.  We rest our entire weight on Jesus, our very selves, and our very future.

In creation, God did everything before He created us.  Adam began his life with the Sabbath.  What did man have to do with the creation in the first 6 days?  How much help did God receive from Adam in creating the heavens and the earth?  What was Adam’s first day like?  It was a day of rest.  Read Genesis 1.  God created everything in 5 days, then He created man on the 6th day.  Man did not help God.  The first day that man awakened to was the 7th day, which was the day of rest.  Only after Adam was totally provided for did he go to work.

God worked, then rested.  Man rests, then works.

This is the Gospel!  God completed the work of redemption.  He purchased us from bondage to sin and Satan and gave us a new nature, a new birth that implanted the very life and character of God inside of us.  We could do nothing to earn this.  All we can do is enter in by faith when we hear about the offer.

You may or may not feel different, but your feelings are not reliable.  You need to become accustomed to believing God’s Word and put your emotions and feelings aside.  Some wonderful and beautiful events have taken place in the life of a Christian.  The enemy, Satan, will use your old sense ruled mind to hide those facts from you.  They are facts, they can be relied on.  When we begin to take the Word of God as final authority, we will begin to see the truth.  Final authority is not circumstances, it is not your emotions, rather it is God’s Word.  Take a journey into the Word of God to see who you are!

There is a legal side and an experiential side to who you are. 

When you submitted to Jesus as Lord, and when God planted the Word of God in your heart, you entered into the death and resurrection of Jesus.  You experienced the new birth.  1 Peter 1:23 says, “having been born again, not of corruptible seed, but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever.”

Legally, we have been crucified with Christ according to Galatians 2:20 and Romans 6:6.  Galatians 2:20 says, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.”

However, we may not be experiencing that reality as yet.  This is where so many new believers get on the wrong track.  Just because they are not experiencing the truth of the Word, or worse, they may be experiencing the opposite of what the Word says, they become discouraged and quit believing.  In the world, seeing is believing, but with God, you must believe before you will ever see.

We need to know that we are not two people, we do not have dual personalities!  Some Christians promote this idea due to their experience of not having victory over sin.  Some say that Paul’s dialog in Romans 7 indicates that we have two natures living in us.  Romans 7 does not say that.  It says that the “sin principle” is working in us.  If we have been crucified with Christ and born again, then the old nature, the old man has died, and a new man has been born in us.

We need to renew our minds. 

When we are born again, our spirits are regenerated, when we go to Heaven our bodies we will be renewed, but our minds are renewed daily as we live out the Word of God.  The answer to the struggle is as our Pastor put it into perspective during a service.  He said that we are not freaks, two people, but rather our “flesh” is really the old thinking in our brain and mind.  Our minds have old “tapes” that cause us to act according to the old nature.  It is kind of like a tree that has been chopped down but all the leaves have not died as yet.  The Scripture that supports this is Romans 12:1-2 which says, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”

Jesus became your sin and you became His righteousness.

2 Corinthians 5:21 (KJV) says, “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.”

How did this happen?  A blood covenant has been applied to your life.  A great exchange has taken place between you and Jesus Christ.  On the cross, He took every bad and negative thing in your life.  At the resurrection, He gave you every positive thing in the nature of God Almighty!  He begot you as sons and daughters and seated you with Him in a realm FAR above all your enemies.  Satan, your enemy, will do all in his power to steal this from you with lies.  However, if you know the truth, and stand on the truth, you will be a winner!  You went through the crucifixion with Him, the death with Him and have already been resurrected with Him.

We must look at how Jesus came to this place of sitting.  He was crucified, dead, buried and resurrected.  At His resurrection He became the first born of a new creation.  After His disciples and about 500 others saw Him for many days, He went back to the right hand of the Father, and was seated as King and ruler of the universe.

Now, if we are sitting with Him in the heavenlies, then it stands to reason that we went through the entire process with Him, through His death, burial, and resurrection to a new creation and ascension.  It is like putting a marker in a book, and then moving the book around.  The marker goes with it.  You may ask, “How can I have experienced this process with Christ, I was not even alive then?”

The answer to that lies in the fact that God lives in eternity, which really is the absence of time.  So when we experience the new birth, we pick up the entire history of  Jesus, no matter what the time difference may be.  Some Scriptures that support this idea are:

“How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” (Hebrews 9:14, KJV).

“…grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began” (2 Timothy 1:9b).

 

Following are some facts in the Word that you should meditate on.  These facts are good seed, which will bear good fruit in your life.

The Holy Spirit through the Word can make who you are in Christ a reality.  You need to take the Word at face value and believe it as a legal document.

You were hopelessly lost.  That means that someone else had to search for you.  Ephesians 2:12 says, “that at that time you were without Christ, …having no hope and without God in the world.”

You were dead in your sins.  There is no way out for a dead man, except to receive life.  Ephesians 2:1 says, “And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins.”

The blood Jesus shed on the Cross removed your sins.  He took your place.  Colossians 1:14 says, “in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins.”  Ephesians 1:7 says, “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace.”  The word ‘forgiveness’ actually means to separate or cut away.  Our sins have been taken away from us and put on to Jesus, our sacrificial Lamb.

You were already “in Christ” when the following events took place.

You were crucified with Christ.  “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Galatians 2:20).

You died with Christ.  For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection” (Romans 6:5).

You were buried with Christ.  “Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death” (Romans 6:4a).  “…buried with Him in baptism” (Colossians 2:12a).

You were made alive with Christ.  “And you, being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive together with Him” (Colossians 2:13).  “Even when we were dead in our trespasses, [God] made us alive together with Christ” (Ephesians 2:5).

You were raised with Christ.  You are seated with Christ.  “…even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:5-6).

That is our legal standing with God today and the foundation of our legal rights.  As far as the spiritual world is concerned, your position is with Christ in the heavenlies.  You are in a seat of authority.  Satan and your mind will tell you that you are not seated with Christ in the heavenlies, but that is a lie!  You need to know that God seated you with Him while you were yet a sinner!

You are a new creation.  “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17).

You might ask, how can this be?  Good question.  God put us in Christ.  “But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God – and righteousness and sanctification and redemption” (1 Corinthians 1:30).  Being in Christ is like you were in your father and mother as a sperm and an egg.  You inherited their history in your genealogy.  Just imagine that you are a marker inside of a book.  When the book is moved, the marker goes with it.  When the book is put on the shelf, the marker goes on the shelf.  If the book is burned, the marker is burned.  If by some miracle the book is restored and put back on the shelf, so is the marker.

Your history, and who you are in Christ is the result of the Blood Covenant with God through Jesus’ death on the Cross and His resurrection.

You are righteous.  Righteous means to have a right standing with God.  A son (or daughter) is righteous with his father by birth.  He is in the family and he has a right standing that the neighbor does not have.  We are righteous by our new birth, not by anything we have done.  “For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:21).  We are righteous because God put His life in us, not because of the way we act or live.

Satan’s dominion over you is broken.  Satan had dominion over your old nature, but your new nature is Christ’s own Spirit that has already defeated Satan.  Romans 6:8-10 says, “Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over Him.  For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God.”  If the spirit of the world has had you living in fear, God will set you free right now!

 

We need a renewing of the mind. 

“I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God” (Romans 12:1-2).

Here is God’s promise to you.  Hebrews 8:10 says, “For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put My laws in their mind and write them on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.”

Read 1 Peter 1:6-7.  What does it say about testing and trials?

The proof of whether or not you believe is NOT how you feel.  The proof is what will come out of your mouth from the abundance of your heart.  Luke 6:45 says, “A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth the good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth the evil.  For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.”

The only way to overcome and be healed from things like sin, fear, guilt, addictions, feeling unworthy, feeling like a failure, etc. is to accept these facts.  When we know for sure that God loves us, that we belong to Him, that He has made us a new creation and old things have passed away and we know that our new identity is in Christ, that we have been purchased from slavery and been given the choice to accept the absolute Lordship, authority and care of God, that is when we begin the process of overcoming all the bad things in our life.

The easiest thing to remember is the Cross.  The Cross of Jesus took everything that is bad in our life and that comes into our life, and transforms it into a blessing.

All this fantastic and good news of who we are should not give us a proud, puffed up attitude.  “I am the vine, ye are the branches”(John 15:5a, KJV).  Without absolute dependence upon the life of God living in us, we are nothing.  We are not called upon to be independent power people.  We are called upon to be totally dependent upon the life that was inserted into us.  A branch cannot do anything, it will die,  if it does not stay united with the vine.  We need to take on the cloak of humility and know that without Him we are nothing!  If you examine John 15, staying dependent is always related to the Word of God.

 

Don’t be a chicken, you are an eagle!

One day, an eagle’s egg fell from its nest and rolled into a chicken pen.  The eagle was born with the chickens and acted like a chicken, but it kept seeing a difference as it grew.  No one was there to tell it that it was not a chicken, but an eagle.

When storms came, the eagle would rush off to the chicken house with the rest of the chickens, running for cover, but the eagle always looked over his shoulder and up, and he saw these other strange birds on the cliff.  They were not afraid, they were not running.  They were standing with their wings locked into special sockets (that makes them like a wing welded to the fuselage of an airplane), they gazed right into the storm, even though it was still miles away.  They waited and waited and then, bang!  The storm hit them but instead of hurting them all it did was make them soar.  They went straight up into the air, up to 30,000 feet above the storm into clear air.  The eagle would say to himself, “Oh man, look at those guys, I wish I were like them.”

One day he looked UP, and saw an eagle flying and soaring high with a storm.  All of the sudden, he knew, “I am not a chicken, I am an eagle.  Why should I run?”  He climbed the hill, locked his wings,  then he took off and soared!

My friend, you are not a mere human, you are not a chicken.  You are made to soar in the heavenlies with Christ.  Look up!

Now remember the parable of the sower in Mark 4 (read it).  Satan comes to steal the seed of the Word of God sown in your heart.  Today a seed of who you are was sown.  Tomorrow, stand fast if discouragement comes through some circumstance.  The Word is true!  Circumstances come and go.

 

The following is a quote from Richard Wurmbrand’s devotional, Reaching Towards the Heights - May 15th.  [i]

 “We become holy by feeding upon the right spiritual food.

In an experiment it was found that worms that usually live in the darkness can be conditioned to leave this habitat and to prefer the light.  As often as they would withdraw into darkness, they would get electric shocks, whereas if they came out in the light, they found abundant food.  With time, these beings ‘put on a new worm,’ to use the biblical expression.  Contrary to the habits of their species, from that time on they preferred the light to darkness.  Then these worms were cut into small pieces and added in the food given to other worms: and, lo, these worms also changed their habits.  They had increased, with the addition of the flesh of the new breed of worms, their Ribonucleic acid (RNA), the depository of memory.  They would shun darkness and prefer light just as the beings upon which they had fed.  Similar experiments have also been made with other animals.

If you wish to put on the new man, a man of righteousness and holiness, feed upon Christ.  He has become flesh in order that He might become your daily food.”

 

On the Cross, Jesus quoted from Psalm 22:6 which says,  “I am a worm.”

Strong’s concordance [ii]gives this definition for worm:

"08438 elwt towla` {to-law'}.  from 03216; TWOT - 2516b; n mAV - scarlet 34, worm 8, crimson - the female 'coccus ilicis' 1b) scarlet stuff, crimson, scarlet 1b1) the dye made from the dried body of the female of the worm “coccus ilicis.”

 

When the female of the scarlet worm species was ready to give birth to her young, she would attach her body to the trunk of a tree, fixing herself so firmly and permanently that she would never leave again.  The eggs deposited beneath her body were thus protected until the larvae were hatched and able to enter their own life cycle.  As the mother died, the crimson fluid stained her body and the surrounding wood.  From the dead bodies of such female scarlet worms, the commercial scarlet dyes of antiquity were extracted.

What a picture this gives of Christ, dying on the tree, shedding His precious blood that He might “bring many sons unto glory” (Hebrews 2:10, KJV)!  He died for us, that we might live through Him!

 

 



[i] Wurbrand, Richard.  Reaching Toward The Heights.  Bartlesville, OK: Living Sacrifice Book Company, 1979

[ii]  James Strong. Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of The Bible. Abingdon Nashville