He Must Increase But I Must Decrease
At Influencers, we anoint men as “Men of God.” In the anointing ceremony, the last of three questions is, “do you want to spend the rest of your life learning to become just like Jesus?” Paul’s perspective for God’s answer to this question is in Galatians 4:19: “My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you.”
The idea that “Christ is formed in you” is either doctrine, reproof, or correction depending on the stage of a Christian’s walk in Christ. What does it mean to have Christ formed in you? There is a book by Richard Foster called Celebrate Discipline. One chapter is “Celebrate Submission.” This verse about Christ’s formation in you has a diagram that begins with me as the priority of my own life. As we progress over time as Christians and as men of God, we decrease as Christ increases. Prior to the point of salvation, it’s all of me an none of thee. At the end of a Christian’s life, it’s all of thee and none of me.
When we’re first born again of God’s spirit of life in Christ, even though we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, we still need to contend with the flesh that we inherited from Adam’s original sin. After we’re saved, we are God’s works in progress, for we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works which he has foreordained that we should walk in them. In the journey of life, He progressively increases while we progressively decrease.
Every man has his own story. Brent was a teacher and assistant principal. He was appointed by his church to teach a Sunday School class. As he sat down to prepare for the first lesson, he experienced the “fear of God.” He heard the audible voice of God saying, “How dare you say that you’ll teach my word. You don’t know a thing about it.” From that day on Brent began to get up early to read the Word to prepare to teach. He learned to treasure this special time in the Word and meditate on what God was teaching him so that he could teach others.
Shortly after he began teaching Sunday School, Brent was invited to hear Dallas Willard at a church conference. The message was about preparing to teach the Word. Willard quoted from John 15 where Jesus said, “I am the vine and ye are the branches. Without me, you can do nothing.” Willard explained that abiding in Christ is like a tree with branches. On Sunday, the branches are the people who attach themselve to the trunk of the tree which is Jesus Christ. On Monday, many of the branches detach themselves from the tree and they flop around on their own for the rest of the week. Then on Sunday, the branches wonder why they aren’t bearing any fruit. The point of the parable is that the responsibility of the branches is to keep themselves attached to the vine in order to bear fruit. Jesus said, “If you abide in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit.”
Like most men, Brent struggled with the “lust of the flesh.” Biblically speaking, lust means over desire. It is anything that we desire over our relationship with God. After he taught Sunday School, the most tempting time each week was Sunday afternoon and Monday. His weekly willful sin haunted him. Brent became a part time Pastor at a small church of about a hundred people who met in the school where he was a full time teacher and assistant principal. He was later appointed principle to a school for at risk children. Because of God’s grace he turned the school around and it became a model of success for dealing with at risk kids. When he was fifty, one of his co-workers passed out and he intervened to help her. This woman had a reputation for seducing men and breaking up marriages. Brent later found out that she had a deep seated resentment for her father who had sexually abused her when she was a child. In her own twisted mind, to get back at her father for abusing her she sought out illicit affairs with any man who had befriended her father.
Once when Brent was alone with this woman, she approached him sexually, tempting him. He saw the face of a demon as she threw herself at him. Brent prayed with some of his elders. Later this woman confessed that she had nightmares of being raped by a demon. She began attending Brent’s church and she and her husband came to salvation. At church, a devout Christian woman agreed to mentor her.
At one point, she resumed pursuing Brent. He said, “If we do this, it will ruin both of our lives.” She continued to seduce him and Brent finally gave in to his lust for her. After Brent preached a sermon that Sunday morning, he confessed to his board of elders and to his wife . They helped him write a letter of resignation and he agreed to enter a twelve step program.
In the program Brent learned that whatever makes you most angry in another person, is the sin that you’re most tempted with. He became acutely aware of this when his anger was inflamed against the President of the United States for the President’s illicit sexual behavior with an intern. Even though he regularly attended the twelve step program, Brent’s personal life deteriorated as he continued to indulge in inappropriate behavior with his subordinate.
To have the word of God formed in you, you have to fight the evil in your own nature of the flesh. The world celebrates the nature of the flesh that is deviant from the Word of God. However, when Christ was crucified, our redemption from the world was completed spiritually.
In the midst of the spiritual battle, Brent could see the hook baited with his favorite food that he craved. Even though he could see the hook, he took the bait anyway. As God said to Cain, “sin is crouching at the door and it desires to have you, but you must master it.” The twelve step program calls it the “slippery slope.” They say that you need to get as far away from the temptation as possible.
1 Corinthians 6:18-20 says, “Flee fornication (sexually immorality.) Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body. 19. What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? 20. For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.”
How do you move yourself along the continuum where Christ increases and I decrease? You do it by denying yourself and following him. Ye are servants to whom you obey. Galatians 2:20 says, I was crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I but Christ liveth in me. And the life that I now live, I live by faith in the one who loved me and gave himself for me.
Either you’re a missionary or you’re part of the mission field. However, the two are not mutually exclusive. Our first mission field is our own minds. The spiritual battlefield is for the hearts and minds of believers. 2 Corinthians 10:4-5 says, “For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal (of the flesh) but spiritual to the pulling down of (spiritual) strongholds. Casting down imaginations (carnal thoughts), and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God (according to His word), bringing every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.”
The Christian walk is deliberate, intentional, and purposeful action according to His word. A disciple is a disciplined follower, disciplined to walk in the footsteps of the Lord. The Journey of life is to follow him one step at a time and one day at a time. The transformation from the man of the flesh to the man of the spirit is in Romans 12:1-2:
“I BESEECH you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.”
“And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.”
Jesus said, if anyone wants to be my disciple, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily and follow me. We take up our cross daily by crucifying the flesh daily as we follow him. It’s easy to follow him when we stay so close to him that he fills our vision as we “choke in the dust” of our brothers in Christ who are choking in the dust of the Rabi.
This is the key to walking with Jesus. When we abide in him, as John the Baptist said in John 3:30, “He must increase but I must decrease.”
And in following Him, may we ever live to the praise of the glory of His grace!
Your brother in Christ,
Michael