"For the law of the Spirit of life has freed me in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death" Rom. 8:2
Laws govern over all things, even freedom. There is the Law of the old testament, God's Law. The law of The Adam mans life the natural law or the law of the mind/soul. There is even the law of evil, Satan's law. it says that sin is in our flesh. Then there is the Law of Life, God's Life. The point I am trying to make is that over all aspects of our being there are laws. The laws themselves all stands alone, not functioning until they are put into motion. Like the law of gravity, it is there while we are up in the tree but not experienced as a action until we jump.
Yes God's life, His Law of Life in Christ will always be sovereign in us and will prevail, but for our experience of it we must rest in His grace and open faiths door to Him. A car is just a hunk of metal, inert until it is started and driven. Before there is action the laws stand only as a letter, no true experiential power. This includes God's Life in us, which is formed into action/experience by abiding rest in faith of it's presence and that it is true by His Word and is indeed our only life.
We are governed by these laws in that they are inherent, they exist. But we are not controlled by them. That is until we put them to work. The Old Testament Law requires strict obedience to all its statutes; break one you have broken them all. That is why we cannot keep them and must be saved from them and were on the cross, many try all fail. The law of the natural life is simply man in his natural state, he must by the law within him go his own way, not Gods way, even in his attempts to do good. But until he takes action good or bad, the law lies dormant. Of course eventually we all put into action this self centered processed law; the primary stumbling block for us Christians.
Man's natural effort will never do though, it cannot please God. If the law of evil takes hold we sin. The natural man goes his own way. The commandments cannot be kept. All three are missing the mark and led to sin. It simply cannot be helped. We will eventually put all these laws into action. That is why we needed salvation. We were saved eternally in God's sight from the law of sin and death obtained at the fall. But there are laws which govern all of the Adam man in his natural body, mind and heart as long as he lives on the earth.
These laws it seems have power by our cooperative action. They exist, they are there, but it is ourselves that make them work or give them power and furthermore we cannot help it. We will give them power! But the Law of Life has its own power. Why is that? Because this is God's Life Law within us. And when in action becomes His life as our experience. His Holy Spirit living for and as us in these bodies. Remade in His image. His own Life given us by grace [unmerited favor] at salvation. This Law says we have God and that we have His Life. It is His action within us, not ours, that makes this Law the one which can be kept. Because He does it for us as us, this is Law by grace. He is now our life by His Law action in us.
But we who are also under the other laws must somehow step aside from them for us to knowingly experience His Law of Life. We first came in contact with this Law of Life when we were born again or came to know we truly believe in Him and His Son whom He sent into our lives. But this truth's realization as a action/experience Law comes only gradually. Why? Because of the presence of the others.
It is then up to us, after being informed, to do with this Law of Life as we see fit. We can follow it as a Law of our own life by faith that His Word is true. Be partakers of His grace. Allow Him to function freely in our mind. Simply yield to it. Be obedient to Him by trust and faith in His goodness, enjoying what He is accomplishing in us, quietly inwardly. Or we can choose to ignore it and try our hand at the other laws.
Many Christians are set upon making their life difficult however. We all know that the other laws do not result in life but never the less we continue to try and make them work. We want to be God's workers. We hope to be what we should be. We set out to do what is right, but in our human nature we always fail. Again we miss the mark.
The Father has left us in such a state for a good reason; so we would have need of Him. We remain weak and by that weakness will see that we must rely only on Him to keep His Law. Be obedient in our faith of His Law and His Life within us by His power. "Not by [personal and outside forces] might, not by [personal] power, but by His Spirit". This gives us His power. Him working with our weakness allowing us to actually be obedient to His law which is life. If we are broken by the other laws then He can prevail. It is in our needful acknowledgment of Him as our only life where we will find His power.
There are other laws as well, the law of faith for example, as in faith has power, but only when counted upon. But which would we choose among the many, upon first encountering the choices. Starting from a clean slate lets say. Well we all probably would say: I would choose the Law of Life! But I don't think so. Would we even know what to do with it? We would, in the beginning of our understanding at least be hampered from the advantage of the Law of Life by our own nature.
The others work in us throughout all our being, inquire into all our depositional choices. We are our nature, which we cannot escape. I think we all would choose freedom first, even perhaps unaware that we have. Its a simple choice, Adams choice, the only choice with the advantage of being true to our inescapable natural state. In other words its a circular choice which stays true to the natural men and women we are. Allowing us to be what we are. We will naturally arrive back to where we started, as natural men choosing our own way. Perhaps then another law should be taken under our consideration, one more binding, the law of slavery.
Being a slave give us no choices. Paul called himself a slave of Christ for this reason. He had no other choice. Is that not a law? He knew that Jesus Christ was Lord and life's reality within him as well as in glory. That a life within Christ Jesus was his only true life. Yes the other laws affected him: "oh retched man that I am, why do I do the very things I would not". He was, as us now, a retched man while on earth in the natural man. But his slave status, the inescapable one triggered by his faith, lived in grace, overrode all the others, set them aside: "It is no longer I that live, but Christ Jesus that lives in me" and its the same for us. We simply must come to know ourselves as faiths slaves of the Law of Life, to live the Christian life! So how then shall we proceed?
Its really quite simple, at least in principal, We arrived into Christianity by sheer grace. Born into the Lord Jesus Christ, Him freely given to us. Why then would He not manifest Himself in us by the same principal, the law of Grace?
The sad condition of the Christian is that we do not know this as our life's only power for living. Grace is mostly seen for the pardoning of our sins not for living Christ. Its law and effortless true life power then left untried. We are so grateful for our salvation that we wish to be put to work in gratitude for what He has done. This work is also law. It always fails to bring Christ as life.
But on the other hand abiding in Him is not work. It is not a condition for enjoying His salvation but a consenting to let Him do it all for us, in us and through us. Our part is simply to yield, rest and trust, then wait. In Our faith of His Word as we wait patiently we will see Him perform His life in us.
The only testimony we need is the fathers testimony of His Son. By abiding we will see His work in us and have His testimony. Any testimony we have about ourselves is of sin and unbelief. The Fathers only speaks and works in His Son. He shows by His Word what His Son is to the sinner. By our faith in the Word of God we will partake of the Law of Life which is in Christ Jesus. A Law overall. There is no other way to put this the Law of Life into action.
Friday, January 23, 2015
Saturday, January 10, 2015
RUNNING THE RACE UP THE HILL
"But to the one who does not work, but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness" Rom. 4:5
When we receive life from the Lord Jesus Christ there was no work involved, no self effort, and there should be none in the manifestation of His life in and through us. Grace is all we have and all we will ever need. Faith in the bibles facts always proceed the manifestation.
When I was in the Army we used to sing a song while running: "up the hill, down the hill, over the hill, round the hill, air born rangers". Singing it caused great bravo and instilled feelings of bravery, but it did not make us air born fierce fighters. We were actually if anything by our song as stimulation, counterfeit fighters. The hope of the cadre was that the comradeship of the march and the words we sung would brings us to make a decision to become advanced infantry fighters. A sort of brain washing.
What we are in Christ and what we become in Christ are given purely by His grace or a free gift and can be engaged in only by faith. In the trying to be what we already are in our own effort we miss the great advantage of our failure, ["In my weakness He is made strong"] and therefore His grace and also the opportunity of faith. Any victory we have by trying is false under those conditions. In other words if a Christian has to work for his freedom it is not the real thing. "Now to the one who works, his wages are not according to grace, but according to what is [self centered] due" Rom. 4:4. The question we should ask ourselves; is anything due us? The answer should be yes, death. "For the wages of sin is death".
Death is what is due, but life is what we got! Praise God for His grace. The thought that should ever be before the Christian mind is; how do I live this grace driven life? This is not a will-less life but a effortless life, if grace is the supplier at least. The condition for life under which God by His nature has required for living in Him must be a sin free life. And if it is lived solely by grace and faiths facts it is just that. Any other way is counterfeit or self effort. Yes we might sin in our body or daily life, but grace given to us has done away with the judgement of it, and faith in the facts prove it. So by a grace life we are really entirely dependent for a life in the Spirit on the freeing work of the cross for forgiveness and for deliverance unto that life by our faith in the position we have been put in, not in any way by our performance. But is our singing together, exercising our sense's as we run the race possibly substituting a counterfeit bravo? Causing us to believe that we are actually living the grace supplied freedom life of Spirit? Is this the life of the law of the Spirit of life that is in Christ Jesus? Do we know the difference?
I have attended one church or another for thirty seven years and until the past few years I never knew there even was a difference. Until the Lord in His grace heard my cry for something more than my self effort for life,[which always failed] a new horizon of reality at the top of the hill remained elusive. As Paul said; "I have not arrived but I move forward to apprehend that which I have been apprehended of [my position in Him] by Christ Jesus". Which I now know is my quest also and it can only be traveled driven by pure grace, arrived at in faith of facts! The study of the doctrine of position and identity in Christ opened a very refreshing door [please read the Green Letters by Miles Stanford]. Now guided by my positional reality I may find my way up the hill; allowing grace to led the way.
"Having predestined us [a position] unto the adoption of children [a position] by Christ Jesus to Himself [a identity] according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, wherein He has made us accepted [a position and identity] in [a position] the beloved [a identity]. In Whom [a position] we have redemption through His blood the forgiveness of sin according to [a positional /identity] the riches of His grace" Eph 1 5-7. This is the position by grace we abide in, in the Lord Jesus: It is Spirit. We apprehend it and live it out only by faith. With Him as our positional and spiritual acceptance before God we will learn to expect less and less from ourselves. As we become fully established in our position of being Hid in Christ and in the Beloved, we increasingly reject self. This is then how we take Him as our identity and become our destiny of Christ's body on the earth.
Knowing myself as I do, and how it was for so many years that I used the motions, traditions and enthusiasm of the group handed down by its leaders, with good intention, as substitute for my true Christian identity. I now with a heavy heart carry a burden to share life with others. The life which can be found in the inner man of all saints; accepted in the beloved, a positional and mingled Spirit life. The danger of all of mans organizations that carry faiths torch is that the activity easily becomes the counterfeit. The natural goodness in the Adam man is always available: holding the flock in the grip of the old nature. Feelings of having the spirit by expressions/outward motion/enthusiasm in comradeship, and even a determined loyalty to the well respected doctrines. Spoken of by beloved past patriarchs and the brotherhood of the saints, are often a barrier to living a accepted by grace in the Beloved positional/mingled spirit of life. Which is provided for only in faiths effort. Engaged in moment by moment, and in no other way.
Words are not enough, good intentions have no true spiritual value. Only the broken heart and the fellowship of Christ's suffering will due. Before we can be the corporate body we must have the individual realization, the reckoning by faith, that we are dead in Christ. The old man is no more to be fed. A new man has been raised up and He is Christ. We are identified and positioned in Him for life. We are with Him in heaven because He is there representing us as a living intersession. He has dispensed Himself, entered us, to supply Himself on the earth, as our new creation self, He is here. All else, even if it produces good, is a counterfeit. "He that abides [lives their life by faith positioned] in me, and I [ in your awareness of your identity positioned in Me] in him brings forth much fruit: for without Me [as your identity before the Father] you can do nothing" John 15:4,5.
Up the hill over the hill round the hill grace filled Christian soldiers! The battlefield awaits but we may now be fully trained, no longer a counterfeit, by taking in the Spirit of life by faith; which is in Christ Jesus. It is by faiths action power mingled with our renewed spirit. Making ready our mind in a newness of identity. Life in the Spirit supplied to form the maturity of faiths position we hold in the heavenly by the ingesting of the Word of God! Victory only comes through the facility of Spirit. There is no place in glory for the goodness of the natural Adam. So let us run the race fully armored in His identity and always in the power of faiths position of us in His Spirit.
When we receive life from the Lord Jesus Christ there was no work involved, no self effort, and there should be none in the manifestation of His life in and through us. Grace is all we have and all we will ever need. Faith in the bibles facts always proceed the manifestation.
When I was in the Army we used to sing a song while running: "up the hill, down the hill, over the hill, round the hill, air born rangers". Singing it caused great bravo and instilled feelings of bravery, but it did not make us air born fierce fighters. We were actually if anything by our song as stimulation, counterfeit fighters. The hope of the cadre was that the comradeship of the march and the words we sung would brings us to make a decision to become advanced infantry fighters. A sort of brain washing.
What we are in Christ and what we become in Christ are given purely by His grace or a free gift and can be engaged in only by faith. In the trying to be what we already are in our own effort we miss the great advantage of our failure, ["In my weakness He is made strong"] and therefore His grace and also the opportunity of faith. Any victory we have by trying is false under those conditions. In other words if a Christian has to work for his freedom it is not the real thing. "Now to the one who works, his wages are not according to grace, but according to what is [self centered] due" Rom. 4:4. The question we should ask ourselves; is anything due us? The answer should be yes, death. "For the wages of sin is death".
Death is what is due, but life is what we got! Praise God for His grace. The thought that should ever be before the Christian mind is; how do I live this grace driven life? This is not a will-less life but a effortless life, if grace is the supplier at least. The condition for life under which God by His nature has required for living in Him must be a sin free life. And if it is lived solely by grace and faiths facts it is just that. Any other way is counterfeit or self effort. Yes we might sin in our body or daily life, but grace given to us has done away with the judgement of it, and faith in the facts prove it. So by a grace life we are really entirely dependent for a life in the Spirit on the freeing work of the cross for forgiveness and for deliverance unto that life by our faith in the position we have been put in, not in any way by our performance. But is our singing together, exercising our sense's as we run the race possibly substituting a counterfeit bravo? Causing us to believe that we are actually living the grace supplied freedom life of Spirit? Is this the life of the law of the Spirit of life that is in Christ Jesus? Do we know the difference?
I have attended one church or another for thirty seven years and until the past few years I never knew there even was a difference. Until the Lord in His grace heard my cry for something more than my self effort for life,[which always failed] a new horizon of reality at the top of the hill remained elusive. As Paul said; "I have not arrived but I move forward to apprehend that which I have been apprehended of [my position in Him] by Christ Jesus". Which I now know is my quest also and it can only be traveled driven by pure grace, arrived at in faith of facts! The study of the doctrine of position and identity in Christ opened a very refreshing door [please read the Green Letters by Miles Stanford]. Now guided by my positional reality I may find my way up the hill; allowing grace to led the way.
"Having predestined us [a position] unto the adoption of children [a position] by Christ Jesus to Himself [a identity] according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, wherein He has made us accepted [a position and identity] in [a position] the beloved [a identity]. In Whom [a position] we have redemption through His blood the forgiveness of sin according to [a positional /identity] the riches of His grace" Eph 1 5-7. This is the position by grace we abide in, in the Lord Jesus: It is Spirit. We apprehend it and live it out only by faith. With Him as our positional and spiritual acceptance before God we will learn to expect less and less from ourselves. As we become fully established in our position of being Hid in Christ and in the Beloved, we increasingly reject self. This is then how we take Him as our identity and become our destiny of Christ's body on the earth.
Knowing myself as I do, and how it was for so many years that I used the motions, traditions and enthusiasm of the group handed down by its leaders, with good intention, as substitute for my true Christian identity. I now with a heavy heart carry a burden to share life with others. The life which can be found in the inner man of all saints; accepted in the beloved, a positional and mingled Spirit life. The danger of all of mans organizations that carry faiths torch is that the activity easily becomes the counterfeit. The natural goodness in the Adam man is always available: holding the flock in the grip of the old nature. Feelings of having the spirit by expressions/outward motion/enthusiasm in comradeship, and even a determined loyalty to the well respected doctrines. Spoken of by beloved past patriarchs and the brotherhood of the saints, are often a barrier to living a accepted by grace in the Beloved positional/mingled spirit of life. Which is provided for only in faiths effort. Engaged in moment by moment, and in no other way.
Words are not enough, good intentions have no true spiritual value. Only the broken heart and the fellowship of Christ's suffering will due. Before we can be the corporate body we must have the individual realization, the reckoning by faith, that we are dead in Christ. The old man is no more to be fed. A new man has been raised up and He is Christ. We are identified and positioned in Him for life. We are with Him in heaven because He is there representing us as a living intersession. He has dispensed Himself, entered us, to supply Himself on the earth, as our new creation self, He is here. All else, even if it produces good, is a counterfeit. "He that abides [lives their life by faith positioned] in me, and I [ in your awareness of your identity positioned in Me] in him brings forth much fruit: for without Me [as your identity before the Father] you can do nothing" John 15:4,5.
Up the hill over the hill round the hill grace filled Christian soldiers! The battlefield awaits but we may now be fully trained, no longer a counterfeit, by taking in the Spirit of life by faith; which is in Christ Jesus. It is by faiths action power mingled with our renewed spirit. Making ready our mind in a newness of identity. Life in the Spirit supplied to form the maturity of faiths position we hold in the heavenly by the ingesting of the Word of God! Victory only comes through the facility of Spirit. There is no place in glory for the goodness of the natural Adam. So let us run the race fully armored in His identity and always in the power of faiths position of us in His Spirit.
Tuesday, January 6, 2015
FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT
In my last blog I wrote about spirit and attempted to define it as life, seen in a conscious awareness of Christ as that life. Of course God's Spirit entails much more than that, but my hope is to show Spirits application to our daily life as an experience; Him in us for living. Well the question is, once we find ourselves in His life, what do we do with it? How can it be seen in a practical sense? I believe Christians have little understanding of the depth and reach of what they have become by believing in Jesus Christ as Lord, and by their faith in Him. We have received His very life. So lets explore a Spirit life in Christ. Which is what we have."Advancing steadily toward the completeness and perfection that belong to spiritual maturity" Heb. 6:1.
When we were born again a evolutionary change was begun. The bible says a Spirit entered us which is life. Jesus said, " I am the way the truth and the life" Which gives us a new way. "Having boldness to enter the Holiest" Heb. 10:19. This is the Holy Spirit entering us, which was called by Jesus Himself "another" comforter or Paraclete; meaning one who stands beside to guide and help show the way, the first or "other" comforter being Jesus Himself, while on the earth. So the Holy Spirit is "the Spirit of life which is in Christ Jesus". Sent to us, residing in our mortal bodies, by Jesus from Heaven. Announced to us in building our faith by the renewing of our minds, requiring reading God's word. We have become and are becoming a new creature from this process. This is what a Christian is to be. We are in no way to be compatible with the world. The natural man is not a container for Spirit.
But there is more to a life of Spirit, much more! Jesus who sent His Spirit to us is in fact the embodiment of God Himself, "One with the Father". God on the earth in a Body. "For in Him all the fullness [the complete expression of God] dwells" Col. 1:19, and "In Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily" Col. 2:9. So if Jesus' Spirit entered us so did God Himself, and because they are one, Jesus Himself entered us also. The complete Godhead is now living in each and every Christian. This is not just a mental/soul exercise, but a spiritual reality. This is a fact stated by Jesus Himself. "I in them, you in Me that they may be perfected into one, that the world may know that You have sent Me and have loved them even as You have loved Me" Jn. 17:23. "The Spirit of life which is in Christ Jesus" as defined by the Word of God. This is also a positional reality, because if He is in us then we are in Him. "Of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who by God is made unto us righteousness" 1 Cor. 1:30.
Now what are we to do? How shall we live? The life given by God's breath in the Garden, the Adam man, was not to be eternal life. "He became a living soul". He was a created life. God gave Adam power to live and communicate with the Father. Yes Adam was created to be in permanent volitional fellowship with God. But this was not eternal life. Man bodily had a created beginning so his created substance was not eternal. In order for man to become eternal he has to live as spirit, and gain life in spirit form. Mans spirit was however sacrificed to death by his own choice. On earth man continued to selectively have power available to him to contact God as in the beginning and through out the old Testament dispensation. However this is quite a different example of what we now have actually become in Christ Jesus by Spirit. A position not available to the first Adam dispensation who all entered death. They did not know or have the Son nor the Holy Spirit living in them, who is life within us in this dispensation. "Alive unto God in Jesus Christ, our Lord" Rom. 6:11.
But God loved man, He is Love, not His attribute only, but His Nature. He wanted man to have life always and forever from the beginning. Of course He knew man would fail to embrace that life on earth, as he would sin causing his own death. God therefore chose to reconcile Himself to man; to come here bodily out of love and died in mans place. "For the punishment for sin is death", both physical and spiritual. He was then buried for us, and He then brought Himself up from the grave so that He might fellowship with us for all eternity: The Adam man now seen in a entirely new Spirit Man, a ascended Jesus, a New Man, A New Adam. He ascended, representing us as a Man, for the Fathers pleasure in glory and for the reconciliation.This was the needed carrying out of the death of man, accomplished by the Son. His death and Resurrection brought eternal life to man which man had never before had, called redemption; the conquering of God's enemy, sin and death overcome on our behalf. We then became brand new creatures, spirit creatures. Citizens of heaven by God's judicial declaration: which includes by God's grace those who died physically in the old Adam, prior to the Cross, but who had because of their faith been declared righteous.
Just what are we then now? First lets look at the three forms of Spirit [God is a Trinity] that inhabits our mortal bodies, not in any order. First the Holy Spirit; what is its function? This Holy spirit occupies our mind forming our morals and thoughts and most importantly our intuition and godly feelings which derive from and feed our new renewed and alive spirit and mind. We must use this Holy spirit wisely, it forms us as Christians. We must allow it to nurture us, take in information it has inspired through God's Word, the bible. Follow it's leading in trust and faith. Its only message is to glorify Jesus Christ in us.
What is Spirit's work? The gain of Spirit is in us, but now the work is of God Himself. By gaining knowledge and taking in the word of God The very Spirit of God grows in us, we become formed into the image of His Son by this work, done by God the Father started if you will by the Holy Spirit. God's Spirit brings us growth, again by faithfully reading His Word. We might be so bold as to say we are becoming God-men. After all He, God Himself lives in us and we are being shaped to become like His Son in the inner man, who is also God. Not by any deeds behavior or accomplishments including intellectual, but in thought or the apprehension of ourselves.
Then by the formative work accomplished in us by God the Father and the Holy Spirit's gift of a Christ centered intuition or thought, we become the ultimate containers of the Godhead and The Spirit of Jesus Christ becomes our life. This is a normal Christian life; Christ as life, dispensed in us. In fact before God ours is a completed and fully formed life, us seen as Christ, our heavenly position, a done deal. Otherwise there could be no concurrent fellowship let alone son-ship; as God by His nature demands perfection before any possibility of relationship. All of God's plan for us from Adam to Christ is to bring us into His perfect Spirit. God could not wait for us to be good enough on earth, to accomplish great deeds for His kingdom. No for our eternity in Him to begin we must be perfect now. He made that so by His Son, a Man. Planed and completed in the Fathers Mind, applied to each and every individual whom He foreknew would respond; before the foundation of the earth. We have already been perfect from eternity, as the view of the past is made real by the present, and our present has been thoroughly described in the Word. "Even as He chose us in Him [Jesus] before the foundation of the world to be holy and without blemish before Him [in heaven] in love" Eph. 2:4.
"He [the Holy Spirit] shall glorify Me [Jesus] " Jn. 16:14. The work of the Holy Spirit within us is to displace the old man, our natural soul, and then the emplacement of the New Man, the Spirit of Christ Jesus. The Fathers work in us is to do His will, us conformed to the image of His Son, in the inner man. Many Christians recognize God's will and have adopted it as their own to be done in their own strength, but they will always fail. Why? This, the will of God in us, which we find in human resolve and intellect, and even by faith, is not a permanent marker, in that it requires nurturing to grow. Yes to be sure He never leaves us, its just we must always be seeking Him. Our spirit must be stimulated moment by moment by the Holy Spirit. We must stay tuned you might say. "Apprehending that which we have been apprehend of by Christ Jesus". Remember we are still under the occupation of a old nature created being, encased in the old Adam, as our endowment on this earth, the condition of our soul. As the believer learns by his inherent weakness, because of his old Adam nature, that he himself has no power. He will then learn that by the Spirit found in him and by God's Words, applied to the believers mind; he will live the Christian life in a renewed form. What freedom this brings! "Without Me [Jesus] you can do nothing".
We often say the work of the Spirit is to save souls. Yes true, but is it just to save them? No, it is in order that Jesus Christ may have a place on earth as the residence of God Himself in us. The Spirit grows in us not so that we will be mature only but that Jesus may have a larger place. "From glory to glory". The all inclusive object of The Holy Spirit is glorifying the Lord Jesus Christ and to fill all things with Him. This is being filled with the Spirit. It is not a filling to merely do our work and certainly not a emotional experience to stimulate our senses, but to honor the One who has filled us. We are to seek this filling of Spirit.... "Unto the treasure of the stature of the fullness of Christ" Eph 4:13. May we all seek Him in spirit!
When we were born again a evolutionary change was begun. The bible says a Spirit entered us which is life. Jesus said, " I am the way the truth and the life" Which gives us a new way. "Having boldness to enter the Holiest" Heb. 10:19. This is the Holy Spirit entering us, which was called by Jesus Himself "another" comforter or Paraclete; meaning one who stands beside to guide and help show the way, the first or "other" comforter being Jesus Himself, while on the earth. So the Holy Spirit is "the Spirit of life which is in Christ Jesus". Sent to us, residing in our mortal bodies, by Jesus from Heaven. Announced to us in building our faith by the renewing of our minds, requiring reading God's word. We have become and are becoming a new creature from this process. This is what a Christian is to be. We are in no way to be compatible with the world. The natural man is not a container for Spirit.
But there is more to a life of Spirit, much more! Jesus who sent His Spirit to us is in fact the embodiment of God Himself, "One with the Father". God on the earth in a Body. "For in Him all the fullness [the complete expression of God] dwells" Col. 1:19, and "In Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily" Col. 2:9. So if Jesus' Spirit entered us so did God Himself, and because they are one, Jesus Himself entered us also. The complete Godhead is now living in each and every Christian. This is not just a mental/soul exercise, but a spiritual reality. This is a fact stated by Jesus Himself. "I in them, you in Me that they may be perfected into one, that the world may know that You have sent Me and have loved them even as You have loved Me" Jn. 17:23. "The Spirit of life which is in Christ Jesus" as defined by the Word of God. This is also a positional reality, because if He is in us then we are in Him. "Of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who by God is made unto us righteousness" 1 Cor. 1:30.
Now what are we to do? How shall we live? The life given by God's breath in the Garden, the Adam man, was not to be eternal life. "He became a living soul". He was a created life. God gave Adam power to live and communicate with the Father. Yes Adam was created to be in permanent volitional fellowship with God. But this was not eternal life. Man bodily had a created beginning so his created substance was not eternal. In order for man to become eternal he has to live as spirit, and gain life in spirit form. Mans spirit was however sacrificed to death by his own choice. On earth man continued to selectively have power available to him to contact God as in the beginning and through out the old Testament dispensation. However this is quite a different example of what we now have actually become in Christ Jesus by Spirit. A position not available to the first Adam dispensation who all entered death. They did not know or have the Son nor the Holy Spirit living in them, who is life within us in this dispensation. "Alive unto God in Jesus Christ, our Lord" Rom. 6:11.
But God loved man, He is Love, not His attribute only, but His Nature. He wanted man to have life always and forever from the beginning. Of course He knew man would fail to embrace that life on earth, as he would sin causing his own death. God therefore chose to reconcile Himself to man; to come here bodily out of love and died in mans place. "For the punishment for sin is death", both physical and spiritual. He was then buried for us, and He then brought Himself up from the grave so that He might fellowship with us for all eternity: The Adam man now seen in a entirely new Spirit Man, a ascended Jesus, a New Man, A New Adam. He ascended, representing us as a Man, for the Fathers pleasure in glory and for the reconciliation.This was the needed carrying out of the death of man, accomplished by the Son. His death and Resurrection brought eternal life to man which man had never before had, called redemption; the conquering of God's enemy, sin and death overcome on our behalf. We then became brand new creatures, spirit creatures. Citizens of heaven by God's judicial declaration: which includes by God's grace those who died physically in the old Adam, prior to the Cross, but who had because of their faith been declared righteous.
Just what are we then now? First lets look at the three forms of Spirit [God is a Trinity] that inhabits our mortal bodies, not in any order. First the Holy Spirit; what is its function? This Holy spirit occupies our mind forming our morals and thoughts and most importantly our intuition and godly feelings which derive from and feed our new renewed and alive spirit and mind. We must use this Holy spirit wisely, it forms us as Christians. We must allow it to nurture us, take in information it has inspired through God's Word, the bible. Follow it's leading in trust and faith. Its only message is to glorify Jesus Christ in us.
What is Spirit's work? The gain of Spirit is in us, but now the work is of God Himself. By gaining knowledge and taking in the word of God The very Spirit of God grows in us, we become formed into the image of His Son by this work, done by God the Father started if you will by the Holy Spirit. God's Spirit brings us growth, again by faithfully reading His Word. We might be so bold as to say we are becoming God-men. After all He, God Himself lives in us and we are being shaped to become like His Son in the inner man, who is also God. Not by any deeds behavior or accomplishments including intellectual, but in thought or the apprehension of ourselves.
Then by the formative work accomplished in us by God the Father and the Holy Spirit's gift of a Christ centered intuition or thought, we become the ultimate containers of the Godhead and The Spirit of Jesus Christ becomes our life. This is a normal Christian life; Christ as life, dispensed in us. In fact before God ours is a completed and fully formed life, us seen as Christ, our heavenly position, a done deal. Otherwise there could be no concurrent fellowship let alone son-ship; as God by His nature demands perfection before any possibility of relationship. All of God's plan for us from Adam to Christ is to bring us into His perfect Spirit. God could not wait for us to be good enough on earth, to accomplish great deeds for His kingdom. No for our eternity in Him to begin we must be perfect now. He made that so by His Son, a Man. Planed and completed in the Fathers Mind, applied to each and every individual whom He foreknew would respond; before the foundation of the earth. We have already been perfect from eternity, as the view of the past is made real by the present, and our present has been thoroughly described in the Word. "Even as He chose us in Him [Jesus] before the foundation of the world to be holy and without blemish before Him [in heaven] in love" Eph. 2:4.
"He [the Holy Spirit] shall glorify Me [Jesus] " Jn. 16:14. The work of the Holy Spirit within us is to displace the old man, our natural soul, and then the emplacement of the New Man, the Spirit of Christ Jesus. The Fathers work in us is to do His will, us conformed to the image of His Son, in the inner man. Many Christians recognize God's will and have adopted it as their own to be done in their own strength, but they will always fail. Why? This, the will of God in us, which we find in human resolve and intellect, and even by faith, is not a permanent marker, in that it requires nurturing to grow. Yes to be sure He never leaves us, its just we must always be seeking Him. Our spirit must be stimulated moment by moment by the Holy Spirit. We must stay tuned you might say. "Apprehending that which we have been apprehend of by Christ Jesus". Remember we are still under the occupation of a old nature created being, encased in the old Adam, as our endowment on this earth, the condition of our soul. As the believer learns by his inherent weakness, because of his old Adam nature, that he himself has no power. He will then learn that by the Spirit found in him and by God's Words, applied to the believers mind; he will live the Christian life in a renewed form. What freedom this brings! "Without Me [Jesus] you can do nothing".
We often say the work of the Spirit is to save souls. Yes true, but is it just to save them? No, it is in order that Jesus Christ may have a place on earth as the residence of God Himself in us. The Spirit grows in us not so that we will be mature only but that Jesus may have a larger place. "From glory to glory". The all inclusive object of The Holy Spirit is glorifying the Lord Jesus Christ and to fill all things with Him. This is being filled with the Spirit. It is not a filling to merely do our work and certainly not a emotional experience to stimulate our senses, but to honor the One who has filled us. We are to seek this filling of Spirit.... "Unto the treasure of the stature of the fullness of Christ" Eph 4:13. May we all seek Him in spirit!
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