“Christ died for all that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who died for their sake and was raised.”

One of the great tragedies in the churches today is the fact that so many are of the belief that they have been saved so as not to go to hell, or that they might end up in heaven and never come to realise that these two things are really nothing more than fringe benefits.

The real purpose of God’s action in sending his Son, the Lord Jesus, to die and be raised again, as we saw in the above scripture, was that we might belong to the Lord Christ. Further to that fact we read in Rom 7:4 “We have died to the law through the body of Christ, THAT WE MAY BELONG TO ANOTHER, to him who was raised from the dead IN ORDER THAT WE MAY BEAR FRUIT FOR GOD.”

The prayer of the apostle Paul was that the believers in Colossae should “lead a life worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, BEARING FRUIT IN EVERY GOOD WORK and increasing in the knowledge of God.”