City Church Seven Hills

It’s taken quite a bit longer than I thought it would, but we’ve finally come to the last article in our What Do We Believe Series. While we haven’t covered every tiny bit of theological nuance, we have laid out a comprehensive foundation of what we believe and teach at City Church Seven Hills. There’s more, of course, but these article represent an accurate picture of where our church falls on the theological spectrum.

For this last article, we’re going to focus on the presence of God and what that means for the Christian life. We start, as always, with the line from our doctrinal statement:

We believe that experiencing the tangible presence of God is essential for the Christian life. (John 15:5, Ephesians 3:16-19, Romans 6:4-9)

Like many lines of our statement, it seems simple. Yet it’s easily, and often, overlooked. The entire point of our lives as followers of Jesus, is fellowship with Him. We believe it is critically important that our lives not be reduced to following a list of commands or principles found in the Bible. Rather, we need to live out of the place of John 15:5. Apart from Jesus we can do nothing.

That’s easy enough to say, but what does it mean? Ephesians 3 sheds more light on this and makes it clear that this abiding is something we experience as a literal, spiritual reality, not just an intellectual proposition. Let’s walk through Ephesians 3:16-19.

This is a prayer that Paul is praying for the believers at Ephesus and we can claim it as something God wants for us as well. Verse 16 is a prayer for empowerment through the Spirit. This connects back to John 15:5. The power to produce fruit comes from being joined to the vine, to Jesus. It is from Him that unlimited resources flow to empower us. As we abide in Jesus and rely on Him for power, He makes His home in us – He abides in us as we abide in Him. This continues to strengthen us as we sink deeper into the love of God and abide in that love. As we abide in His love, we have the power to understand how wide, how long, how high, and how deep it is. This is understanding that only comes from deep, intimate knowledge. You can’t learn it just by reading about it. You must live in it and experience the power of this love working fruit in your life. Because we can never understand it fully. It is a matter of experience and it leads to us being “made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.” (Verse 19).

It’s experience, not mere knowledge or understanding. Romans 6:4-9 takes it a step further, rooting our very lives in the life and power of the risen Christ. We were buried with Him, united with Him death, that we may also be united with Him in life. Though countless books filled with innumerable pages have been written on this subject, none of them can lead to a true understanding of this death to life transformation. Because it must be a matter of experience. Not just a past experience, but the continual abiding Jesus spoke of in John 15.

I find it very helpful to think of Paul’s writings as a commentary on the teachings of Jesus. Where Jesus was short to the point of being cryptic at time, Paul pours out page after page. But Paul’s teachings are all rooted in Christ and I believe we can trace every word he wrote back to something Jesus taught. So this idea of life in Christ that Paul develops in detail here, calls back to what Jesus said:

“Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing.”

To remain in Jesus is to be “united with Him in His death” that we may “also be raised to life as He was.” This is how we produce fruit. This is how we access those “glorious, unlimited resources” available to us by the Sprit from Ephesians 3:16. It’s in walking out this abiding union in death and life that we find that power to know and experience the love of God. And it’s only by being joined to Christ that we are made complete with fullness of life and power.

We believe these things are a matter of daily experience for the Christian. Continual encounter with the presence of God is the means by which are transformed into the likeness of Jesus. It’s not just mushy feelings and it’s not just words on a page. It’s a true experience of genuine relationship with a real person who loves us more than we will ever understand fully.