Wednesday, November 12, 2014

TRUTH'S EFFECT

      "He who has begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ" Phil 1:6. The word regeneration as reference to our born again experience is not the remaking of our old Adam spirit; but a retentively new life. Our spirit is the center of our personality, think of  it as the motivator for who you are. In the case of the Christian it has been re-created entirely new and taken possession of by the Holy Spirit."Take my yoke [possessed and controlled] upon you....and you shall find rest for your souls [personality or defined being]". Matt. 11:29/

      The realization of this completely new person we have become is taken or formed in stages. This is by God's design: a converting of our mental self-evaluation into the image of His Son while we live on the earth. The permanent Holy Spirit established center of our new being must be given opportunity to form as a experiential reality by faith. The reason God has chosen to use a slow process is because He loves us and respects us as individual essential persons. In other words: He respects our humaneness and our entire being, as His created natural children or our basic self; as well as having created us anew as creatures in Christ, the inevitable result of His Son's complete experience [death, burial, Resurrection, Ascension], in which we are co-participators by His design. "That we shall serve in newness of spirit and not in oldness of the letter" Rom. 7:6. By that truth becoming a known dispersion [intellectual/spiritual assent] from the Father into our being we may see a true Christian identity and will learn to become in a mental understanding new creatures by actively/spiritually/mentally living in His Spirit. Yet He has made us to be always who we are throughout eternity and loves us as just that, the person who we are. The essential self still defines us even in the new creation body or new Adam personality and spirit. In other words we remain who we are but will come to see our life entirely defined in Jesus Christ, either here by acknowledging His Word as true of us in the faith of it, or in the hereafter. Gods intent for us is always conversion to His Son's image! "Being made free from sin we have become servants of righteousness" Rom. 6:18.

      God uses the natural supply we have been given to grow Himself in us. How wonderful and how like a Father to be patient throughout the growing up process. You see my friends the laws of nature as inspired by grace require such a way for Him, to extend Himself, grow His presence, through all the circumstance of our being.

      Most Christian, whether aware or not, are encouraged by the Church to perform in a way demonstrated by Jesus Christ as presented in the Gospels. He was on the earth he lived in a most admirable way and we are told to emulate Him. The problem with this approach is; if one is not prepared by the Word to see themselves positioned in glory as a new heavenly creature, holders of the faith of Jesus Christ representing their presence there as their true identity, then they only have the power of themselves to work with. "But now we are delivered from the law" Rom:7:6. We cannot appropriate His perfection without conscious union which is only found in the faith of oneness with Him. This requires the transfer of the Mind of God to our mind; a conditioning of our personality to the explanation of our presence in Christ, Him as our actual being, alive in His Spirit. Believed and made real in the faith of our understanding by the Word of God. "Set you affections on things above....for you died and you life is hidden with Christ in God" Col:3:2,3. In other words we are only enabled to walk as He walked by a union and fellowship with Him in awareness of the glory we have been given as those being in His presence. "Hidden in Christ with God', a citizen of heaven. All brought about by His Spirit in us by faith.

      There is a certainty in a truth, that is its nature. A truth has a effect. No one truth can produce the same effect as another, each has a new result. Living out our lives we become aware of our lack to abide in the truth, because we fail. But always the truth is measured, and its accepted, tested and disclosed by how it is practically manifested. Not by function, but by mental/spiritual acquiescence to our perfect union with the Father in Christ.

      The Resurrected and Ascended glory of Jesus Christ is a admitted truth for any Christian who is a true believer, but if we really knew Him in glory or Ascension we would be forever changed; marked by that truth! "For I reckon [count true] that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be reveled in us" Rom. 8:18. We are all aware of man's weakness, we sin, we die and we experience distance from God in our natural state; but to know a Man in glory, a Man who has been accepted by the Father in moral perfection, this is a revelation. A Man formed of flesh like us, residing in glory is a truth that few are conversant with; at least as to how it might imparts life to themselves as a current conscious union with Christ. "Being filled with fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ, unto the glory and praise of God' Phil. 1:11. The Word however has made clear that as we come to know Him in glory and that by the Spirit we may become superior and maintain a distance from the natural man; we may then by that knowledge and faith in this truth become morally suited or positioned and identified to the glory to which we are associated with Him in heaven. As the Word has made clear; we are new creatures, "hidden in Christ" and "accepted in The Beloved". Quite simply this is the reality of the Christian experience from the Mind of the Father. All our earthly performance and life of a Christian identity must stem from this truth. "But rejoice in that you are partakers of Christ sufferings [co-crucifixion and death], that, when His Glory shall be revealed [you partake of His identity], you may be glad with exceeding joy" 1 Peter 4:3.

      The source of the Christian life is a Person who has entered the presence of the Father in all the attributes expected and necessary for man, one of sinless perfection. Until one knows himself seen by the Father in this Man before Him one cannot be truly delivered from the conscience of a earthy nature. We as Christians must come to apprehend our life as one seen in Christ by the father as His satisfaction and the complete and actual Representation of us. Which is the only way God can contemplate us as His accepted children. "That the name [His very presence in you] of our Lord Jesus Christ may be glorified in you, and you in Him according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ" 2 Thess. 1:12. Therefore in the faith of that positional understanding we gain the distinct sense of belonging to a Man [Jesus Christ] and become identified with Him in heaven. We are thus separated in our conscience thought [the appraisal of ourselves] from men of the earth, even though we still reside in these bodies here. These are all Spiritual truths and the only reality by which we may gain a true consciousness of a presence in Christ, by the Fathers design! "Stand fast in the liberty with which Christ has made us free" Gal. 5:1 You will find the door to this, our Christian reality, by studying and reading the Word of God, no other way! The lack of wiliness by the average Christian to engage the Spirit within him by the Word is the reason for the plague of spiritual defeat taking place in the life of much of the Church. "Study to show yourself approved".

      Our function on this earth is therefore not about building a community or servicing the needs of others. Yes good deeds are condoned, but by them we often turn inward; if they are the primary motivator for our faith. The Christian identity must not be held to a earthly moral persuasion; that has been the source of much shame for Christianity, by the hypocrisy it has so naturally generated. We all must know that on some level as the world media is always happy to remind us of our frequent failures. We must become separated from that fleshly natural condition and conduct ourselves by a new awareness of our presence on the earth as beheld by God, "hidden in Christ" and taking His identity by faith as our own. This spiritual apprehension will then furnish a path for the Christian life formed by Spirit and not one of the flesh. " Holding forth the Word of life, that I may rejoice in the day of Christ that I have not run in vain [a earthly identity], neither labored in vain" Phil. 2:16

      We may feel thoroughly satisfied with the gift of our salvation, assured of a heavenly path upon our earthly demise, but we remain associated there with the earthly man. But to know the Saviour in the condition of His glory is another matter. One may see the Father's satisfaction that our debt has been paid in the Son, but this requires a constant reminder in order to enjoy the experience. Whereas if we are in union with the Person who paid our debt in which the Fathers satisfaction for us is expressed, we may rest in the shelter of our heavenly citizenship. We are home! "That you may be blameless and harmless, children of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom you shine as lights in the world" Phil. 2:15.

      The true truth seeker should be seeking to be transferred in his thoughts, effected by faith to the place of the Saviour, coming to know of their acceptance in the Beloved; where we are set aside from the old nature and the ruin of a earthly existences, re-defined in Him, abiding in glory as the spiritual/heavenly new creature we have been made to be by God, hidden in Christ. By coming to know ourselves in union with Him in newness we are thus enabled by Him to be like Him as we dwell here. Then we will walk as He walked [one with the Father] and His life [oneness with the Father]will be manifested in us as we tread the path of happy destiny upon the earth. The reading of a essay by J.B. Stoney inspired this blog.

      One last personal note: We will always be the same tomorrow as we are today, except for the transference made in us by the Word of God and the fellowship we engage in!



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