Reliance on Christ

Ron Block is a musician with Alison Krauss and Union Station. He wrote the following about reliance on Christ:

"Faith is the turning point for sanctification. While the NT [New Testament] writers speak of needing forgiveness, they also speak of the need for holiness, the necessity of heading toward completion, maturity--perfection.

"I’ve had people think I am very nearly heretical for saying so, for saying 'When I sin it is no longer I,' and especially that we are dead to the Law (not just the ceremonial Law, but the moral Law Paul quotes in Romans 7, 'Thou shalt not covet.')

"He said that the Law gives sin an occasion over us, and that sin shall have no dominion over us because we’re not under the Law, but under grace. We’re dead to the Law, and alive to Christ; He became sin for us, that the righteousness of the Law might be fulfilled in us (not by us, but in us); His Spirit being the fulfilling power through us. But I digress--this is a different, though not entirely different, subject.

"The point: that Jesus had no advantage that I don’t possess in Him. Most of us are so tied up in thinking, 'Oh, well, He was God, the second Person of the Trinity!' But we miss the point in Philippians that He set aside His omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence to be a human cup indwelt by the Father, empowered by the Holy Spirit, and operating only by faith. He came in the form of a servant--a pattern-shower and of course much more than just 'our example.' But most people want to 'imitate Jesus' by trying to do the works He did, by being good (or their interpretation of 'good'), always somehow missing that Jesus said, 'I can do nothing of Myself' and 'The Father in Me does the works' and also, 'Apart from Me you can do nothing.'

"That infinitely powerful engine that was in Jesus is in us, available to us by the same means it was available to Him--by faith. The Holy Spirit is an engine, and at the same time the driver, who wants to have us in willing cooperation with His purposes of love in this world."