STRIVING VAINLY TO ATTAIN

      All that we are now or ever will be in Christ is already accomplished. As Jesus Himself said "it is finished." I tended to wander lost in the land of the world for many years before coming to a realization: that it is only by faith will my true identity be reveled. I was striving to attain what was not needed, but was already a present reality; an accomplished fact in the Lord Jesus Christ. The simple truth is that the deliverance I sought I was incapable of discovering because I sought it in my flesh, under the auspices of the old man. The new nature of who I am in Christ, that I now have become more familiar with was not attainable by striving in a busy searching or frantic fellowship of Church activities and studies. My soul made a discovery; the deliverance which I was incapable of attaining The Father had already supplied in The Son. There was no longer any need to try to accomplish it by any way I might perform. The power that held me in my worldly place for so many years was lack of need and a self centered satisfaction with who I was even in my unhappiness. I had not realized the Christian life is not conversion and consecration only or a life of duty and proper moral actions, but it is living Christ as life in faith. I began to see that my life is really the all consuming desire of Jesus Christ to reincarnate Himself in me.The power to supply this Christ life flowed from Him. I am only to receive it by trusting in faith that I am a new creature in Christ.

      The question I now must ask is what must I do to honor the intent of Jesus Christ for me to experience this Christ life? As I stated in my last blog The biblical doctrine study I spent two or so years in was a great start for me; "nourished up in the words of faith and good doctrine" 1 Tim 4:6. Doctrine, its not a dirty word you know, and its important! Doctrines should be thought of as the description or logic behind a thought or idea produced by a solid faith in clear cut facts as is written in the Word of God; such as our being positioned in Christ. I would highly recommend the pursuit of the positional/identity doctrine, and can recommend and have in this blog many times good biblical expounders of these basic simple truth doctrines. That being said however: our experience is where the reality exists in our daily walk, and for me as a Christian it comes down to this: we must believe in our spirit that The death of Jesus Christ was in effect our death to sin and self. And that the life we have now is all in His Resurrection. We Have a newness of life, which is now spiritual. The relations to The Law and sin and the world which Christ had became our own and He died to it all. W. M. Newell said "Our experience of it all [Christ as life] is simply the entering by faith into what has already happened at the Cross."

      My friends knowing who you are in Christ is all important; so that you may live it! Everything else is secondary. You will live it in your faith first, not your works. We Christians simply must develop a definition of our self that reflects Christ in the inner man, and by that become who we really are: by a purposed faithful intent, based on our spiritual position in Christ in heaven. In order for that to happen we must become aware. God's Word awaits!

      "God now commands each of us to reckon ourselves as having died with Christ to sin--and therefore as now dead unto sin; and having risen with Christ, and therefore now alive to God" Wm R. N. Rom. 6:11. We must appropriate or reckon [count as true] these facts. Then we can by God's grace take the attitude of the facts. This is the obeying of the faith of the facts of God's Word. The experience will follow! The cross was the first step in our redemption, the new creation, in union with Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit will make these facts true in our experience. Remember it is not for us to seek to experience this Christ life by works or feelings and self effort, but it is only ours in simple faith of a biblical fact. The Christian life is not our living a life like Christ, or our trying to be Christ like, nor is it Christ giving us power to live a life like His; but it is Christ living His own life through us " for me to live is Christ" Phil. 1:21. Our life as Christians is to be defined as the very life of Jesus Christ Himself and it is only in the spirit of faith that this life can be found. So we must rest and wait and trust there is no other way all else is striving vainly to attain.

      Man is made up of a duality, which I have discussed before. This is the most important concept a Christian could take into their understanding, in order to be what he or she has been made to be by God in the born again experience! Jesus Himself had a dual nature; fully God and fully man. We all know this, but I suspect we may not understand how this can be, as one might know a scientific formula and get results. It is the same for the human Christian, we are made in His image which is spirit, we know this is a bible truth. So then we too must be a duality as we also have the flesh. We do not need to put this together as one might a puzzle to see what it looks like. There is the natural man and the spiritual man a biblical stated fact. Man operates in sin, the natural state completely, until he is born again. That is when the spirit is redeemed, made new and alive in us and now has a new capacity. He was formally dead to the things of God. He now believes; only a entirely new alive man can accomplish that, the re-born spiritual one. The major deficit in today's Church understanding is that most simply are satisfied with a better improved old nature, which if we are honest is easier to feel and see and perhaps control, in a moral legal way, so that example is most often seen as representative of the Christian. He is upstanding in the community and busy with doing and helping.  However the problem is the old and new coexist. We can know this is true because if we were redeemed in our human nature in totality we would not sin. But we do, and that is the human flesh nature that stays with us. That is why we always eventually fail in tying to display our Christianity in the outer man, at the very least under the best of performances pride will enter in. Our job as new men and women in Christ is to allow The Holy Spirit in and through our spirit to become our primary motivator and identity, overwhelming the old nature, not by works but by faith. Then all of our activities as Christians will take on a new meaning, at least to ourselves. This will only be accomplished by faith and awareness in the inner man that the old is of no value to God or us.

      The weakness, the modern institutional Church finds itself in with so many milk fed immature Christians is precisely because of its efforts to make the old human sin nature a better performer. This started with the views of the early reformers [Martin Luther] who have influenced most of today's Christian leaders thinking. They have to their loss crowned the old man as saved thus attempting to put a life to the spirit via the works of man and then presenting it as God's plan. They have nurtured pruned and stirred the soil around the old man trying for growth in a dead tree. Thereby giving little ground to the new creation growth of the spirit, which is: Christ as life in the new man recognized as being the composition of God organically occupying the spirit of His children individually and corporately completing the Church body, with no need for improvement. This is the oneness we have with God, positioned and hidden in Christ in spirit. "God is Spirit and all who worship Him must do so in spirit and truth." Could it not be more clear: we were created by God in His image for the purpose of containing Him

      It is in our total dependence upon the Holy Spirit that our identity in Christ is made true, God has dispensed Himself into man. It is forever and always Jesus Christ at the right hand of The Father as object we must trust. Christ has made us who and what we are in Him wholly outside of ourselves, a position we have in Him and our identify. It is only by the grace of The Holy spirit we are made His Body. While we carry with us the personality of the old nature as baggage; the inner man is being made into the image of The Son. " May your spirit, soul and body be preserved complete" 1 Thes.5:23. The Word likens us as vessels in Rom. 9:23 and also declares we have three parts into which He pours His Spirit. When we receive life in our spirit we actually are indwelt by God and therefore that new life given as grace becomes a new creation. God is mingled and dispensed into us in newness of life; His Life. It is not because we have a new life in ourselves that we are the temple of God, but because the Holy spirit dwells in us, he is the definition! God comes into our spirit to become the content of what we are. We are created anew and our very human existence is purposed to contain God in our spirit. This new life then spreads to the soul under The Holy Spirit's influence; which is the seat of the defining of our personality, our developing being, our self image and mind if you will. These changes in us are gradual, and while we grow and suffer in this world our bodies are slowly being conformed to the image of Jesus Christ in totality, we will someday be just like Him. We will become filled and saturated with God, body, soul and spirit just like Jesus is now in heaven. In this present place we have become you could say, God-men, by His entering into us we are the body of Jesus, from whom we have received our inheritance and personal image on this earth, as well as heaven: " Because those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the first born among many brothers" Rom. 8:28. There you have it my friends Jesus is the first as an example of what we are in the new birth, in the Fathers estimation now and forever. I hope you will choose with me to go forward in faith being identified by the works of God in the inner man. To be ultimately manifested to the world as one who no longer is striving vainly to attain. Thank you to the Local Church [Watchman Nee] and of course W. R. Newell for inspiration and information along with others of the godly anthology's I read daily.