The Awareness of Christ in You

The Awareness of Christ in You: Your Identity Changes Everything

Becoming aware of Christ in you is not a spiritual slogan. It is the foundation that determines how you look at your life, your sins, your struggles, and your mission. In this message preached at ADN Montreal, Pastor Malu Bialuta goes back to the fundamentals: who you were in Adam, who you are in Christ, and why God still leaves you on this earth. Everything hinges on the awareness of what you carry.

1. Christ Is the Most Beautiful of All the Sons of Men

Before entering into your identity, you have to contemplate the one who comes to live in you. He is the Beloved, the Bridegroom, the Redeemer, the Savior, the Good Shepherd, the High Priest, the Prince of the kings of the earth, the first and the last, the Alpha and the Omega. The Bible says he is the most beautiful of all the sons of men. No one can equal him in love, in wisdom, in splendor, in power, in authority, in holiness, in strength, in courage, in faith, in humility.

He is the Lamb of God slain for your sins. He is the ransom, he is the sacrifice. He is the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the bright morning star. Other emperors called themselves king of kings (Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus), but they ended up in a tomb. He did not stay in the tomb. He is the firstborn from the dead, the only one to have triumphed over the grave. This is the Christ who comes to make his home in you.

2. Back to the Fundamentals: Who You Are by Creation

In Genesis 1:26, God says, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let him have dominion." You were not created by accident. You are God's masterpiece of creation. Your worth is not defined by your appearance, it is not defined by your body. You are a spirit who lives in a body and who has a soul.

In the original plan, man had the same characteristics as God. He carried God's nature. He had dominion over the creation entrusted to him. He lived in the presence of God, in a harmonious relationship with him. Jesus himself reminds the Pharisees of what the law said, "You are gods" (John 10:34), with a small "g." Say it out loud for yourself: I am a "god" created in his image.

David confirms this in Psalm 8: "You have made him a little lower than God, and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet." That is your identity. You are not meant to live in defeat. God created you to have dominion, and dominion already lives in you. Lift up your head, stop looking at others, look to the one who created you.

3. Adam's Sin and Spiritual Death

God had placed the tree of life at the center of the garden, because life was meant to be the center of everything. The serpent came, and Eve let her mind be corrupted, to the point of confusing the tree of life with the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 3). Listen carefully: when you lend your ear to crafty people, to twisted language, your thinking loses its focus.

Adam died spiritually. Death, in the Bible, is not the ending of life, it is separation. Your spirit does not die, every spirit is eternal. When the Bible speaks of death, it speaks of separation from God. Three consequences struck the entire human race:

• A life separated from the presence of God, "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23).
• A life enslaved to Satan, "You are slaves of the one you obey" (Romans 6:16).
• A destructive life, called death, "Through one man sin entered the world, and through sin death" (Romans 5:12).

This picture is what you were before accepting Jesus. And to this day, if you have drifted away, God still gives you the chance to come back from death to life.

4. In Christ, a New Creation

When you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you are saved (Romans 10:9-10). This is not symbolic. A real regeneration takes place. God gives you a new spirit, a new heart, and puts his Spirit within you (Ezekiel 36:25-27).

Your soul does not change all at once, that is why you still carry memories from the past. It must be restored. But your spirit is new. Peter says it, "You have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God" (1 Peter 1:23). You now carry spiritual genes of life.

Paul reminds the Corinthians, "You were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God" (1 Corinthians 6:11). Washed, clean. Sanctified, set apart. Justified, declared righteous before God. There are Christians who carry a backpack through the cross, who are still weeping over past sins. You are justified. The record that once condemned you was nailed to the cross. You no longer have to carry the guilt. The devil is the accuser, but you have an advocate at the right hand of the Father who intercedes for you.

5. Awareness of Your Identity Makes Sin Fall Away

A king's wife does not behave just any way. It is not because she forces herself, it is because she is aware of her rank. An adult will not go play in the mud with children, not out of willpower, but because he knows who he is. Many Christians fall because they are not aware of who they are in God.

Listen to this word from 1 John 3:9, "No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God's seed abides in him." You can commit a sin, but you are no longer a sinner. A soccer player who plays once a month is not a soccer player. A smart child who fails one test does not become stupid. Stop calling yourself a sinner. It is your Father you are insulting.

Awareness of your identity is fed by the Word. Proverbs 20:27 says that the conscience is a lamp the Lord gives to man, and Psalm 119:105 says the Word is a lamp to your feet. The more you meditate on the Word, the more you feed the awareness of your identity, the more sin falls away on its own. It is not by digging through your sins that you become holy, it is by growing in holiness that sin falls away. The Christian life is not a life of stress, it is a life of surrender, a life of rest. Christ is the focus, just as the tree of life was the center of the garden.

Another pastoral aside: we spend too much time working on our flaws and not enough time cultivating our strengths. Take a sheet of paper, write down your flaws, you will find thirty. Write down your strengths, you will find five. Talent is the grace God has given you. Be aware of your flaws, but invest in your strengths. And do the same for others, especially in your marriage: tell your husband, tell your wife what good you see in them.

6. Why Christ Saved Us: Because of Love

The first question to ask yourself is, why did Christ save us? Because he loved us from the foundation of the world. His love was already shown in the way he created you, different from all the rest of creation, a little lower than God himself (Psalm 8).

Romans 5:6-8, "While we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person. But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." This is a love the human mind cannot grasp. There is no greater love than laying down your life for your friends (John 15:13).

This love is received. Romans 5:5 says that "God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit." Do not put pressure on people to love you the way God loves you, no human being is capable of that. Go to God, let yourself be filled with his love, and you will be the first to love differently.

7. Why God Keeps You on Earth: The Mission

Second question, if you are saved, why does God still leave you here? Because out of love, he entrusts you with a mission. The way for you to tell God you love him is to do his work. Remember Peter, when Jesus questions him about his love, he concludes three times with, "Feed my sheep" (John 21).

All the problems of the world come down to two things: either people demand love, or they refuse to give love. Selfishness is refusing to give. Rejection is demanding. The solution is Christ, because Christ is true love. And this love is meant to flow through you toward the world around you.

8. Ezekiel 47: The River That Flows from the Temple, That Is You

In Ezekiel 47, the prophet sees water flowing out from under the threshold of the temple, toward the east. It flows, rises to the ankles, then to the knees, to the waist, and becomes a river that can no longer be crossed on foot. This water flows down into the plain, enters the sea, and (here is the heart of the text), "the waters of the sea will become fresh." The prophet marks two points on the shore, En Gedi and En Eglaim, two oases on the Dead Sea.

The Dead Sea is closed off. No life survives there. First lesson, if you do not pass on what God gives you, you become like that sea, lifeless. It is service that turns you from a dead sea into a living spring.

Second lesson, in John 7:38 Jesus says, "Whoever believes in me, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water," and the apostle John clarifies that he was speaking of the Spirit. In the Old Testament, the water flowed out from the temple. Under the new covenant, you are the temple of the Holy Spirit. If the water from the temple made the Dead Sea fresh, the water flowing out of you has a mandate to bring life to the land where God has placed you.

Stop complaining about what is happening around you. You are responsible for the spiritual state of your city, your country. This mandate begins with prayer, because the first ability you have to bring life is to release words of life. John 1, "In the beginning was the Word... in him was life." It is with the Word that God created everything, it is with the Word that you can operate in the supernatural, and this Word passes through prayer, the moment it joins with the Spirit to create.

9. A Call: A Spirit of Prayer and Supplication

If people do not mobilize in prayer, it is not only because they are disappointed at not being answered. It is mainly because they are not aware of what happens when they pray. When you become aware of the movement taking place in the unseen realm, you pray differently. No one needs to beg you anymore, in the night, you wake up to pray.

Two testimonies illustrate this reach. A sister, after two nights of praying in tongues in Kolwezi, was delivered from a spirit that had followed her from a former boyfriend, and the very next day, her ex called to accuse her of walking out of his life. Another sister, in South Africa, had prayed in a dream for an unknown pastor at 3 a.m. Twelve years later, in the United States, she meets that same pastor, whose marriage, which had been under attack during that very season, had been miraculously restored.

God travels the earth looking for prayer partners. When he wakes you up at night, wake up. Cultivate speaking in tongues, because that is when he takes over your prayer and directs it exactly where it is needed. That is why we must pray to receive a spirit of prayer and supplication.

Key Takeaways

• Christ in you is not an image, it is a reality that redefines who you are.
• You are a spirit created in the image of God, a little lower than him, called to have dominion, not merely to survive.
• In Christ you have a new spirit, a new heart, a definitive justification. You are no longer a sinner, even when you commit a sin.
• Awareness of your identity is fed by the Word. It is the Word, not effort, that makes sin fall away.
• God saved you out of love and keeps you on earth for a mission, that the living water flowing from you would bring life to the land where he has placed you.

Personal Application

• In what area of your life do you still define yourself as a "sinner" rather than as a justified child of God?
• How much room does the Word take up in your week, enough to feed your awareness of your identity, or just background noise?
• What strengths has God placed in you that you neglect because you are obsessed with your flaws?
• Who around you needs you to remind them of the good you see in them (a spouse, a child, a brother, a sister)?
• How much of your time is devoted to interceding for your city and your country, rather than complaining about their state?

Verses Cited

• Genesis 1:26
• Psalm 8
• Proverbs 20:27
• Psalm 119:105
• Ezekiel 36:25-27
• Ezekiel 47
• Jeremiah 1:5
• John 1:1-4
• John 7:38
• John 10:10
• John 10:34
• John 15:13
• Romans 3:23
• Romans 5:5-8
• Romans 6:12-16
• Romans 10:9-10
• 1 Corinthians 6:11
• Colossians 3:1
• 1 Thessalonians 5:23
• 1 Peter 1:23
• 1 John 3:9-10

FAQ

What does "the awareness of Christ in us" mean?
It means becoming aware that Christ truly lives in you through his Spirit, and letting that reality redefine your identity, the way you deal with sin, your prayer life, and your mission. This is not a theory. It is what changes the way you behave every day.

If I am born of God, why do I still fall into certain sins?
Because your spirit is new, but your soul is still being restored, and because the awareness of your identity is not yet fed enough. It is not by digging through your sins that you become holy, it is by meditating on the Word, communing with the Spirit, and walking in surrender that sin then falls away on its own.

How can I practically "bring life" to the land where God has placed me?
It starts with prayer and with the words of life you release. Intercede regularly for your city and your country, cultivate speaking in tongues so the Spirit can direct your prayer beyond what you understand, and commit yourself to the service and mission of your church rather than simply showing up to consume a Sunday service.