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Walk in Christ

Matthew 4:19 CSB “Follow me,” he told them, “and I will make you fish for people.”

To follow Christ means more than just going with Him everywhere He went. To follow Jesus means to live like Him. He is the example of who we are. To walk with Him means to adhere to the same standard of life He exhibited. 

Jesus said that those who love Him will follow Him and keep His commandments (John 14:15), but following His commands is not the same as keeping The Law. We are not saved by following a set of rules. But once we are saved, we adhere to the lifestyle prescribed by the Father and presented to us in Christ. We are empowered by the Spirit to walk in His ways.

As we follow Christ, here are some of the things that we need to know about our walk: 

Made New

Our lives have been made new through our spiritual birth in Christ. We have obtained a new identity in Christ. Therefore, we should live differently.

Romans 6:4 CSB Therefore we were buried with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too may walk in newness of life.

2 Corinthians 5:17 CSB Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, and see, the new has come!

Made Righteous

Most people struggle to ‘own’ their position in Christ. It sounds too good to be true, but we were indeed made Righteous. Our righteousness is not dependent on what we do or don’t do, but on what Christ has done.

Romans 4:25 CSB He was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.

Made Perfect

We are not just righteous. The Bible also says that we have been made perfect – complete – by our identification with the death and resurrection of Jesus (Colossians 2:10,12). We should not walk around with a feeling of condemnation, trying to win God’s favor through our works. We are already perfect. 

Walking in our new identity means we walk uprightly … not so that we can become perfect; it is because we are perfect in God’s sight that we walk uprightly. Our walk comes from our new identity in Christ. We don’t get our identity from our walk. Our works should then also come from our new identity, the identity that we get from Christ, not the one we achieve through our works. The apostle Paul advises us to “walk worthy of the life we have received” (Ephesians 4:1). He again admonishes us to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12). While this may sound counter-intuitive, he is not saying that we should work for our salvation. He is saying that now that we are saved, let us show forth the fruit of our salvation.