Do you recall doing reviews in school—going back over a subject to ensure your fundamental understanding was solid before delving into fresh material? 

Guess what? We should review: Who are we? Why do we matter? What are we doing? 

For all of the various relationships, jobs, obligations, responsibilities, projects, and products of our lives there are two essentials. Only two. Jesus focused on the same, two things as well, which is why I believe this review is a good idea. 

He said the knowledge that must lash our soul to a secure mooring every day is that, a) He lives in us, and b) we live in Him (ref. Jn. 14:20). 

This is the essence and entirety of our review: He lives in us. We live in Him. 

These two points are the Gospel. They are the Good News dispelling the extremely bad news of our irretrievable uselessness to God apart from His redemption of us. 

Threaded through these eight words that form two concepts is the ingenuity of God called grace. Through Christ and in Christ...God took us from the destitute, ancestral line of our forefather, Adam, and exchanged our non life in him for real life in Christ Jesus. Pictured in these two simple phrases is the determination of God to enter into an eternal, blood-sealed covenant with us, the ones He transformed via Jesus’ sacrifice. 

When you and I relinquish our independence to the benevolent reign of God in our lives, Jesus establishes residency in us. Incredible? Certainly! But simply stated: Jesus’ intent through His indwelling is to live His life through us. 

Our enemy has endeavored with all diligence to pervert our response to Christ’s indwelling. While Christ came to live through us, we are tempted by him to adopt a backward philosophy of our life. Instead of letting Him live through us, we strive to live for Him falsely believing this will please Him and increase our value in His eyes. 

The angriest book in the Bible is written to a sincerely misguided group of people living in the region of Galatia. The Galatians believed they could take what God gave in grace and enhance it with their own effort. Paul, the man who penned the corrective letter to the Galatians, is incensed that they would adopt such a foolhardy belief, and tells them so in his fiery treatise. 

Truth number one is: Jesus Christ lives in us in order to live through us. 

Second: Ah, that is the next.