A friend of mine who has a way with words, after reading my last blog said, "redemption equals restoration, clarification and intensification of one's self". When I completed, what was for me, a life changing writing, using personality as a platform to view what is really our redemption, I wrote the following; "I Michael, in Christ am found Identified by the Father as myself, the same me as always, except now the Father sees that redeemed person me, accepted by the judicial price paid in the death of His Son to sin, and that now my sin nature has therefore, been judged, and is no longer alive, so death has no power over me, it is dead. I am redeemed. I am free to be myself, the same Michael who God loves, but now by faith the life I live, is the life the Father has given me as a new man, with a new nature. The very nature of His Son who represents me before the Father as me, and is me by the occupying power of the Holy Spirit in me, The Mind of Christ".
This new life that now occupies me is Christs life, not the old Adamic life. My new nature is not in any way allied with our meant by God to make the old better. The intent of God is to completely do away with the old man Adam, not to help him. There is not a bit of the old sin nature found in the new born again creation, but I am still there, the essential me, but now in union with the living God, Jesus Christ. I am as He was, with Him in me on this earth now. Jesus did not come to affiliate Himself with fallen man on the earth, but to separate us, to due away with us as a fallen race, and impart a new identity, realized in our own conscious self awareness of these identity truths.
My great fear and unfortunate observation, is that many Christians I speak with, and once I also, do not understand this identification truth. They as I once did, live to serve and certainly have faith to believe in the Son of God and even His redeeming example on the Cross, therefore justified, a truly wonderful thing. But because they have not understood that by faith, and by having their minds enlightened by the Word of God, they find themselves living with a mindset of a mutual objective in their first man's personality, with Jesus in making the old Adam have a common end with the wishes and example of Christ, a well meaning performance of what they think is right, or what the institutional church has taught them is the fulfillment of their Christian duty and spirituality. Therefore, at least as to the freedom to be found in the new nature, are caught in the place of the old dead personality, the flesh. Something Paul teaches over and over is not to be the fate of the believer. Why is that so?
As I'm sure we all know, when Christ died on the cross, He died in the view of God, representing all of humanity, and all that a Holy God could not receive [sin in the flesh] was put to death on behalf of us, all in His Son's sacrifice. But somehow this was not taken to mean, in the mind of my belief, for many years to be a open door to a very radical concept; I, if represented by Jesus, in the death of my old man am done away with, and may now live in a eternal state having access to God, then am I not also represented by this same Jesus in Resurrection to a new life, uncluttered as to realization of it, clearly seeing by faith in the Biblical truth that I am walking this earth as a new creature in Christ. We my friends are offered that. It is our responsibility to seek it out. Oh it is a completed fact in that Jesus Christ was Sanctified to that truth by His father and by that us too. But in order for us to live in the active realization of our being sanctified we must choose the radical path. Death to the old nature and find that by, study, contemplation and prayer the faith to live under the heritage of what the Bible declares; we are now found in Jesus the Second Man The Last Adam, no longer needing to succumb to what we were in the First.
Perhaps it would help to understand our spiritual reality in Christ, as that of being found in another. How does that work? It was a great help to me when I saw how the Biblical concept of heritage works. The ancients thought of themselves as corporate beings, a part of something larger than themselves not individualistic in their contemplative self assessment. The Jews considered that their very nature [value of being] was present in Abraham long before they were born. Genealogy was a concept that established legitimacy. Note the great effort the writers of the Gospels took to record the lineage of Jesus, in both Joseph's and Mary's family histories. We could also simply think of ourselves as being present in the lives of our forefathers in that if not for them ,we would not exist. We in that way, by association, were effected by the nature of another, identified if you will, in them.
In order to establish our new creation, human/spiritual identity, we must look under this concept to another. That first other for us, in the big picture is the first Adam, so we were seen as a human personality by God, being identified in the sinful nature that Adam entered into in the fall. You could say we inherited Adams propensity to sin [which was a potential in him from the very beginning] in our humanness, identified in another. For the Christian, thank God, the story does not end there. Jesus Christ is also know as the Second Man, The last Adam, we are said to have a new nature [identity] which is established in us when we are born again, sealed in us by the Holy Spirit. What is it that is sealed ? Its our new nature, our new identity, which in the eyes of the Father[the only eyes that count] makes us inheritors of a new spiritual personality[nature] which we received by our born again association by faith with the Second Man, The Last Adam. So that makes us seen, and legitimizes us in Gods economy, the same as His Son, Jesus Christ. We by this understanding are positioned in Christ Just like we are positioned in the first Adam. The all important difference being, in the first we were born of water, as all human babies, inheriting our standing before God by the physical natural means, baby first Adams. Whereas in the second birth we receive and are sanctified [separated] to the heritage, standing, living source of us, by faith in the reality of our presence in Christ The Second Adam. And all of that was made available to us by His life in human form lived in perfect obedience to faith in His Fathers care as a human personality [empowered by His awareness of His heritage and personal identity in the Father] and that was what qualified Him to be the sacrifice which did away with the first mans heritage, a sin nature and therefore ours also by association as He represented us as a human man. And upon His Resurrection He was shown to be The New Adam we could find our life in by faith. POSITIONAL/IDENTIFICATION in the Second Man, Jesus Christ. We are now as He was, a child of God on this earth and for all practical purpose in the economy of God are living in Jesus who is in heaven, our Adam in whom our being is represented before God
Well my friends you may be wondering why this guy keeps going on and on about the positional truth doctrine ? Its because I came to realize that its the only one that counts! While there is much to learn about Gods gift of Christianity from the Bible, not knowing who you are in Christ will only make it wood hay and stubble, a mere intellectual pursuit. Why bother with this Christian life if we do not live it as God, in His unfailing love would wish for His children too. His word is clear I just wasn't listing for 35 years. So dear readers you can count on this blog continuing in a positional /identification theme, or until Christ is my life. I will leave you with a quote from C. H. Mackintosh.
" The more clearly we enter in by faith, into objective truth, or what is true of us in the Lord Jesus, the deeper more experiential and practical will be the Spirit's subjective work in us, and the more complete will be the manifestation of the moral effect in our life and character."
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