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!
No comments:
Post a Comment