‘I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me’. – Galatians 2:20
It has been just over two weeks since I, along with the other students and student leaders at Globe, travelled to Horsham for our student weekend away. I have so much to say about the teaching so, in the interest of keeping this short, I have kept the detail about other aspects of the weekend to a minimum. Perhaps you can use the rough itinerary below as a conversation starter with a student to find out more…..
- The Bedtime Story
- 10/10 Food
- Woodland walks
- A copious yet necessary amount of tea breaks
- Evening entertainment
It was a great privilege to have Tim Ward who, throughout the weekend, gave three talks rooted in Romans 6:1-14. Within the central theme of being Made One With Christ we saw three key points…
Crucified with Christ
Our nature is to live in Adam, under sin. Yet, union with Christ provides the roots in which salvation grows out from. Through union to Christ, when He died to sin and bore the weight of its curse, we too died to sin. His death was our death. We are no longer under the representative head of Adam, but Christ; how freeing this is! Every aspect of our old self living in Adam has been crucified.
Raised with Christ
As we died in union with Christ, we also pass through death to be raised in Christ. Among the many helpful analogies Tim used across the weekend, I found his aeroplane analogy particularly helpful. Akin to flying in an aeroplane, we can only receive everlasting life in Jesus’ death on the cross, which passed through death. As a result, we are raised with Christ!
Life in the Spirit
The natural progression of being raised with Christ is Life in the Spirit. This happens in two phases. Firstly, as we are spiritually raised, we are no longer a slave to our sinful desires. Rather, we are free to reject the ways of our old self. However, freedom to reject our old self does not mean we can do so with ease, nor are we free from sinning. We are free from its mastery over us but must still choose to fight sin with the help of the spirit. The second is that of physical renewal to come.
My key take away from the weekend was that we are either fully united to Christ, or not at all. If we are united in Christ’s death, we are also to united in the suffering that led to his death. Suffering demonstrates we are united in Christ, by whose sufferings we are saved. Therefore, let us sit in our suffering, let us rejoice in our suffering and let us know that while we are suffering, we are in Christ. This does not make suffering easy, but what hope it provides!
In addition to this, Tim gave a fascinating seminar on the Doctrine of Inerrancy. It was mentioned as a weekend highlight time and again. I do implore you to discuss it in greater detail with someone who went as l cannot do the seminar justice within the limit of this blog. To whet your appetite I will give a brief outline: There are no mistakes in the Bible, and it matters.
The weekend was extremely formative for all the students, it strengthened friendships and reminded us of gospel truth. Why not get chatting to a student at church about what they took away? They might surprise you!