DEATH TO US ALL

      "I am learning to set aside in death everything in me which hinders the manifestation of the life of the Lord Jesus Christ".......Just what does that mean? Is this God's desire for all Christians? If so How may we accomplish it?

      There is a conventional societal collar being worn by the Christian today. We are held firmly by a self developed natural Adam self conscious tradition. By that development [if succumbed too] we have simply become members of a moral world betterment organization, or worse a self-improvement cult. This is a great restraint upon the spiritual liberation we need to live a life in Christ Jesus. However according to the Word of God; by embracing our own death upon the cross we will find the freedom that He has accomplished for us by His Sons death upon that same Cross.

      For the bible tells me so: Paul said of his ministry, "Death working in me works life in you". "For we who live are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh". The sake word here is that Jesus Christ might live in you as a conscious reality by your informed acknowledgement of His life replacing yours in the Fathers estimation. Because He died and we co-died with Him as natural Adam men and women: the work of His Cross. As Paul said of the apostles; "So that death works in us, but life in you". Jesus' all encompassing representative death was what he was referring to, as well as their worldly suffering due to their display of Christ as life in their walk.

      Again Paul said; "Oh wretched man that I am who shall deliver me from the body of this death"? He was acknowledging his sin nature and his need for deliverance from it. We all must come to realize this as Paul did! Then accept our natural condition as earthly men just like Paul. But the deliverance from the sinful nature, which is our condition as natural men, for us and Paul comes by faith in another's accomplishment and in no other way!

      Our Father knows that we are weakness incarnate; that we can do nothing. The trouble is that we do not know it. So He must bring us to the place where we see that we are utterly weak and helpless. His will, will be served, when we come to know everything about the first Adam man [us] must be put to death. Not by our action, but by our faith that we are in fact dead in The Fathers eye's as natural Adam men by Christ's representing us in His own Death.

      We hold onto him [the natural first Adam] for dear life. He is all we know, at least until we know of our own death, positioned and identified in Christ. We work and serve, pray and sing, go from one conference or meeting to another all in search of a final reckoning, a sound self satisfied standing. The more we try the greater our weakness is manifest. Romans seven makes this very clear indeed.

      "It is God who works in you" We are delivered by death [our own on the cross] so that the Father's will, will be done in us. In other words we are actually delivered and have life by the faith that all that we are as natural Adam men has died with Christ. By acknowledging this true truth we become free from doing the will of ourselves.

      The Lord Jesus Christ is to manifest His Resurrected life through and in us, "That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit". Note in this new Christ life we are to live in the Spirit. He is only alive in us consciously as a action, by faith in a Spiritual event and a Spiritual life of faith that we are "Hid in Christ Jesus". No feeling, work or self righteous action on our part will ever accomplish this.

      If we could live His Resurrection life by keeping commands, by works, or by experiences it would be forming a god man in the flesh or what the Adam man totally failed at. The world of good behavior, self righteousness, training, overcoming and law keeping cannot form His life in us. It is only by a faith that conducts His "death to us all" and a new creation life by and in His Spirit. So it is also only by a knowledgeable faith that we may say as Paul, speaking of his deliverance from self; "I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord".... that we may have the freedom to live unto Christ Jesus on earth and forever!