This concept has come up a few times in a few weeks so I will tap it out here again. My apologies if you’re getting it twice.
Christianity is different because of Christ in us. We are the only religion whose god comes in and lives his life in us. All other religions are the people working hard at becoming better practitioners of their faith and better people in their morals. If we copy them we are begun by the spirit but perfected by the works of the flesh.
The better answer is from Galatians. Faith is the mechanism of the Spirit. The Spirit looks for faith and adds his Life. We then display the fruit of the Spirit by means of our faith. Increasing the life of the Son is our responsibility as sons of God, and so Jesus the Son lives the only pleasing life in the universe from within our vessel. Hence Paul will say, “the life I live I live by the faith of the Son of God..” This is the direct grammatical rendering.
In this scripture quote we can see why Christianity has embraced Islamic religious verbiage. Even our translators can’t seem to understand that the fruit of the Spirit is the fruit of the Spirit, so when Paul says he lives by the faith (fruit) of the Son of God the translators prefer a less direct but still possible rendering: “I live by faith in the son of God.” This contest of meaning is the exact tug of war between Satan and God. Satan is not afraid of people living for God as best they can in their human flesh. We suck at it and that gives him the upper hand. But if we were to ever come into the understanding that we are jars of clay housing a power that is never us and displaying that life manifestly in our flesh, we might become Christians worth killing again.
The testimony of the life cannot be under valued. The Pharisees marveled at Peter and John, recognizing that they had been with Jesus. The Christian is never to display how good they are at our tenets and morals. The Christian is now and forever only a display of a Life which is radiating out by faith.
The ones who grasp this will find the battle intensify and deepen. This is a good sign. It drives us deeper into Him who is in us.
