The other day I had a conversation with a client in my barber chair which was most revealing. He said to me, as we discussed the Christian experience, something like this; "I go to church and hear many good things such as; we should trust God no matter what might be our daily experience, we should exercise our Christianity in our behavior or moral standing, we must always forgive others, be kind and honest". Then he said; "after church I go home with a new enthusiasm, however soon I am confronted with who I really am when I look in the mirror and I know I cannot live up to the status or standards I am told I must". He simply realized that; "All men are sinners and fall short of the glory of God", "If we say we have no sin in us we are liars".
The problem is we Christians, if our mind is not totally dulled down by self preoccupation with the things of the world, someday will wake up to realize we are just incapable of living up to the preachers Sunday morning admonitions to promote and encourage a certain standard for us to follow. This man then told me he has left the church, although still a self described Christian. Why? He could not seemingly live up to it's expectations or simply fit the mold and presentation of Christianity as seen from the pews. His good works were never consistent, his morals were not up to par.
He was constantly disappointed with himself and saw himself surrounded by possible hypocrites like him, many observably more aligned with the world than he, yet complacent even happy in their church/social comfort zone. He was not capable of holding to the standard of the church or the bibles teachings as to moral behavior or it's idealism of the faith and neither was anyone else surrounding him, at least in his judgement, so he simply gave up on the church as a place to formulate his Christian disposition.
Does this sound familiar? It sure did to me! And if it doesn't you might consider the dulled down statement above. What is the problem? Is it that the teaching/preaching is not accurate? No not necessarily. These are all good things and often even biblical. The problem is in how we apply them. Or I should say to which man we apply them too.
You see the bible teaches we have two natures to deal with. The bible calls them the old man or first Adam and the new man or last Adam. The first [our current condition as human men and women] is declared by the bible to be born into sin. " Wherefore, as by one man [Adam] sin entered the world; and so death [the natural Adam mans condition] by sin; and so death passed upon all men" Rom. 5:12. The last man or new Man however counters death for us; " In Him you were also circumcised [separated] with a circumcision made without hands in the removal of the body of the flesh [deaths curse removed replaced by His representative status] by the circumcision of Christ [on the cross]; having been buried with Him" Rom. 6:4.
It is entirely our choice which man or identity/personality we cultivate. Understanding the difference will be the most important thing the believer will ever do. The first the old Adam man, who is declared judicially dead by God, but however remains functioning in the old Adam condition in which all of mankind are included, Christian or not. We all live in these sinful human bodies while on the earth. All fully capable and culpable believer and non- believer alike in our subjection to the old Adam sin nature. The non-believer simply has no idea of his condition. Unfortunately many believes also choose ignorance. Men living without exposure to the new creature he is in Christ by faith is condemned to remain in a lifestyle of carnality. " For they [anyone] that are after the flesh [of earthy position not mentally acknowledging their heavenly identification] do mind the thing of the flesh".
This old man is only escapable by a new mental enlightenment or revelation of our position or identity [new men] as a new creature in Christ, which we may approach and live in only by faith. Opening a door for the transformation of the soul. "And do not be conformed [staying in the old Adam mind set] to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, [not behavior, morals, works or church life] that you may prove what is good and acceptable and perfect will of God" Rom, 12:2. Never looking for any verification or validation of it by action or works good or bad from the Adam nature, as we cannot escape the human condition, which is sinful and self centered. Its all from a fresh biblical new creature mental approach from which the soul may change, to a new identification.
If we do not accept by the faith principal God's redefinition of us by the renewing of our mind. Learning from the Words revelation that we are new creatures seen in His Son; we will remain in what Paul described a carnal [immature, old Adam] state. Even worse we will live a worldly controlled existence as the old dulled down man, not even knowing how the Father sees us as completely identified in His Son. This is the absolute worse condition a Christian can live in! He will have no possibility to honor God in this position. Not knowing his own identity as viewed by the Father. As his own self perception when limited to the old man is one that makes him incapable of living the life God has designated for the Christian; even sacrificed His Son for, that His children might see and know themselves in the light of Jesus Christ's life, who is at His right hand in full representation of us.
The escape from the old lies in our self perception, nothing more. "Set you mind on things above...for you have died [judicially] and your life [the eternal life view of you by God] is hidden [positioned, represented] with Christ [in heaven] in God" Col. 3:2,3. This is not a theoretical view of our being which we may observe and look up to in gratitude. No this is the actual condition of what we are before God, as he has made us to be so in His Son. It is only approached and lived by revelation then by faith as truth of who we are as Christians.
Living in the old man as identity the believer is taken up by his own self-consciousness rather than the Father's own scriptural revelation of Himself. His revelation is one thing our self consciousness is quite another. " Oh wrenched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from this body [old Adam] of this death?" Rom. 7:24.
Nothing should be more foreign and distasteful than a Christian centering his testimony always around his feelings about himself. Or even his emotional devout sincerity for his salvation, remaining a worshiper but never going through the veil of the earthly church life, having never reach the end of his self centered old Adam. "It is for the effectual displacement of all this, and to transfer the heart to a entirely new center, a heavenly spiritual reality, that the revelation of the old man is divinely necessary for our souls". "The father is come in to our life to detach us from that which is our natural [old man] center, that He may link our affections with another Person....even with the glorified Lord Jesus Christ...and make Him everything to our hearts, so that our association with Him may be known, [new man] and may become the deep abiding joy of our souls".
It simply cannot be said too much.... All Christians must learn to; "Set your affections [mind] on things above....for you died and your life is hidden with Christ in God" Col. 3:2,3. Our life is not here we are citizens of heaven....therefore we must come to know ourselves thoroughly in the old man condition of death, to associate with the new man [be consciously reassigned] we are in Jesus Christ as our life!
Sunday, October 18, 2015
Sunday, October 4, 2015
DRIVEN BY DESIRE
There is a very important even vital assignment for the natural man as he dwells on the earth. Yes the Adam man in the flesh, with all his sin's and weakness is used by our Father to glorify His Son. The natural sinful Adam man can contribute to the plan of God. How?
We as natural men and women may gain a spiritual component in Christ even in our self-centeredness. Yes He is our opposite, He is Spirit, Holy, Pure and True but He is also a Man, a Man before the Father, a perfect New Man in heaven. It is His presence there as a Man that establishes ours! "Alive unto God in Jesus Christ" Rom. 6:11.
The thing about our sinful nature, in being used by God for His glory, is that his very weakness as a flesh man is of most paramount advantage; sins despair, mans corruption and self centered nature drives him toward complete failure as to the things of God. The Adam man in his flesh nature has no capacity for holiness or even a relationship with Christ within himself. Coming to know this as fact is the primary prerequisite and condition for man in his discovery of Jesus Christ as life. We then may finely come to a place of our deepest need which serves God's plan for us.
Then comes a desire derived from the depth of our pain, the realization of our total inadequacy in our own efforts to gain Christ. Now we have a chance for a greater knowledge of God and therefore eventually at least for those who are truly humbled by their own nature. And by the negative results of our dependence on the works of the flesh [worldly, earthly, natural mans efforts] our spiritual heavenly position in Christ may be found.
God uses our very sin nature to motivate us toward faith in His Son as our conscious [alive to God in Christ] new creation life. We discover Jesus Christ the New Man and ourselves positioned in Him, for a spiritual life here. He is the object who is at God's side in glory representing our very being as new creatures. We may transfer to Him by faith of that truth. Him making us perfect by our valuation found in His Son, in the view and full satisfaction of The Father.
This is the position and status we hold forever in Spirit, assigned there despite our sinful condition as Adam men here on earth. We then could say we are driven by our own nature toward salvation, then a eventual realized new conscious existence as heavenly creatures. The advantage for us being we now serve God in a new creature defined attitude of ourselves, not our own self interest. This is God's intent for man!
Paul knew this truth well, and he should be the Christians primary example in the embrace of ourselves living in a new spiritual positional heavenly creation existence by faith; our true and only valid biblical designation, us as one Spirt with Jesus Christ; as to our true place, in co-existence with Christ in the Fathers estimation.
Paul's epistles messages were written primarily toward that end. So that we might discover our true heavenly nature as defining our Christianity. "We ourselves had the sentence of death in ourselves [reckoning upon Christ's Death as our own as to the natural man] that we should not have trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead" 2 Cor. 1:9. Putting no confidence in works, obedience, the church life, training, overcoming or our own personal accomplishments. For we are co- resurrected with Jesus Christ know to us by and in faith to a new life in glory represented and carried on by Him there as we live in our mortal sinful conditioned bodies here.
Paul was kept in Constant weakness as to himself by his thorn in the flesh. He had a positive weakness you might say. He did not engage his will by a resolution to bear his suffering as men are prone to do. But he used his weakness, engaging it as a means to gain Christ. We are not talking here [for us] of a physical thing [I believe Paul perhaps was not also]which man could stiffen himself under to bravely carry on.
No our own and Paul's inherent positive weakness is the knowing recognition of the sentence of death upon the natural and the suffering that brings to all that the earthly Adam man is in himself. Which is our condition [sinful] in which we actively reside in here on earth, born of God or not. In that respect we are all the same. Mankind is dead by Christ on the Cross, all of mankind. We must [only Christians can] reckon that true in faith. Therefore all of natural mans old Adam [us not identified in our mind as new creatures positioned in Christ as our total identification] accomplishments [even Christians] are voided of value; literally of no consequence to God! The realization of that condition [totally sinful, unacceptable] within ourselves [ God sees us as dead by His Son] being the only way to freedom from our worldly obligations or mans personal attempt to be reconciled with God by works. As Paul said "Always dying for Jesus sake" should be our calling.
All this exercise [acknowledgement of the death of our Adam man by faith] goes on down here in the one who has been conscious of being caught up in paradise. Paul was taken up to heaven, "a man in Christ". We are also taken up, by faith, positioned in Christ there by a co-ascension lived by faith in that as biblical truth. Which is every bit as valid, as to knowing a complete change of identity, as Paul's experience was. Therefore "No confidence in the flesh"
If on the one hand, we touch the infinite privilege of "a man in Christ," as Paul, we must be prepared to be the other; to view ourselves as dead as to any value toward God as earthly self assigned Adam men; co-crucified with Christ; for the discipline of God [natural mans suffering in our condition as sinners] which bring about death in and upon what we are naturally. So that we may prove the grace of the Lord by acknowledging our death in Christ actively and learn how divine power is perfected in human weakness.
Many Christians are too strong to know what this means. Will and energy, service and works, are now the primary example of the Christian. This is the worlds way taught to us by the compromised churches; whose primary mission is serving the flock and bettering the world. Many do not yet know that a great many things effective in the world are not so in the things of God. For we are a new race of new men, heavenly, spiritual, who must learn to live by faith in that which is and was accomplished by Jesus Christ. All else is of no value what-so-ever. There is nothing lasting or true in ourselves under our own power, no matter how good our labor nor the religious spiritual feelings we may experience in our acts.
Divine power does not work alongside of human power. Human power must be set aside so that divine power may be conducted by the Holy Spirit. In our prayers for divine power the answer will most likely be the experience of our utter weakness, our self perceived nothingness as natural men and women. This is the humbling necessary for a godly life, as preparation for His use on this plane of existence while enclosed in a natural human body.
The power of man must be set aside. The Lord said to Paul and us...."My grace is sufficient for you; for my strength is made perfect in weakness". Therefore it is from the ashes of weakness, distress and persecution like Paul that we are to gain the desire to be driven toward the glory of a life outside of ourselves to know a life positioned and identified in Jesus Christ Himself, by faith and only by faith!
We as natural men and women may gain a spiritual component in Christ even in our self-centeredness. Yes He is our opposite, He is Spirit, Holy, Pure and True but He is also a Man, a Man before the Father, a perfect New Man in heaven. It is His presence there as a Man that establishes ours! "Alive unto God in Jesus Christ" Rom. 6:11.
The thing about our sinful nature, in being used by God for His glory, is that his very weakness as a flesh man is of most paramount advantage; sins despair, mans corruption and self centered nature drives him toward complete failure as to the things of God. The Adam man in his flesh nature has no capacity for holiness or even a relationship with Christ within himself. Coming to know this as fact is the primary prerequisite and condition for man in his discovery of Jesus Christ as life. We then may finely come to a place of our deepest need which serves God's plan for us.
Then comes a desire derived from the depth of our pain, the realization of our total inadequacy in our own efforts to gain Christ. Now we have a chance for a greater knowledge of God and therefore eventually at least for those who are truly humbled by their own nature. And by the negative results of our dependence on the works of the flesh [worldly, earthly, natural mans efforts] our spiritual heavenly position in Christ may be found.
God uses our very sin nature to motivate us toward faith in His Son as our conscious [alive to God in Christ] new creation life. We discover Jesus Christ the New Man and ourselves positioned in Him, for a spiritual life here. He is the object who is at God's side in glory representing our very being as new creatures. We may transfer to Him by faith of that truth. Him making us perfect by our valuation found in His Son, in the view and full satisfaction of The Father.
This is the position and status we hold forever in Spirit, assigned there despite our sinful condition as Adam men here on earth. We then could say we are driven by our own nature toward salvation, then a eventual realized new conscious existence as heavenly creatures. The advantage for us being we now serve God in a new creature defined attitude of ourselves, not our own self interest. This is God's intent for man!
Paul knew this truth well, and he should be the Christians primary example in the embrace of ourselves living in a new spiritual positional heavenly creation existence by faith; our true and only valid biblical designation, us as one Spirt with Jesus Christ; as to our true place, in co-existence with Christ in the Fathers estimation.
Paul's epistles messages were written primarily toward that end. So that we might discover our true heavenly nature as defining our Christianity. "We ourselves had the sentence of death in ourselves [reckoning upon Christ's Death as our own as to the natural man] that we should not have trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead" 2 Cor. 1:9. Putting no confidence in works, obedience, the church life, training, overcoming or our own personal accomplishments. For we are co- resurrected with Jesus Christ know to us by and in faith to a new life in glory represented and carried on by Him there as we live in our mortal sinful conditioned bodies here.
Paul was kept in Constant weakness as to himself by his thorn in the flesh. He had a positive weakness you might say. He did not engage his will by a resolution to bear his suffering as men are prone to do. But he used his weakness, engaging it as a means to gain Christ. We are not talking here [for us] of a physical thing [I believe Paul perhaps was not also]which man could stiffen himself under to bravely carry on.
No our own and Paul's inherent positive weakness is the knowing recognition of the sentence of death upon the natural and the suffering that brings to all that the earthly Adam man is in himself. Which is our condition [sinful] in which we actively reside in here on earth, born of God or not. In that respect we are all the same. Mankind is dead by Christ on the Cross, all of mankind. We must [only Christians can] reckon that true in faith. Therefore all of natural mans old Adam [us not identified in our mind as new creatures positioned in Christ as our total identification] accomplishments [even Christians] are voided of value; literally of no consequence to God! The realization of that condition [totally sinful, unacceptable] within ourselves [ God sees us as dead by His Son] being the only way to freedom from our worldly obligations or mans personal attempt to be reconciled with God by works. As Paul said "Always dying for Jesus sake" should be our calling.
All this exercise [acknowledgement of the death of our Adam man by faith] goes on down here in the one who has been conscious of being caught up in paradise. Paul was taken up to heaven, "a man in Christ". We are also taken up, by faith, positioned in Christ there by a co-ascension lived by faith in that as biblical truth. Which is every bit as valid, as to knowing a complete change of identity, as Paul's experience was. Therefore "No confidence in the flesh"
If on the one hand, we touch the infinite privilege of "a man in Christ," as Paul, we must be prepared to be the other; to view ourselves as dead as to any value toward God as earthly self assigned Adam men; co-crucified with Christ; for the discipline of God [natural mans suffering in our condition as sinners] which bring about death in and upon what we are naturally. So that we may prove the grace of the Lord by acknowledging our death in Christ actively and learn how divine power is perfected in human weakness.
Many Christians are too strong to know what this means. Will and energy, service and works, are now the primary example of the Christian. This is the worlds way taught to us by the compromised churches; whose primary mission is serving the flock and bettering the world. Many do not yet know that a great many things effective in the world are not so in the things of God. For we are a new race of new men, heavenly, spiritual, who must learn to live by faith in that which is and was accomplished by Jesus Christ. All else is of no value what-so-ever. There is nothing lasting or true in ourselves under our own power, no matter how good our labor nor the religious spiritual feelings we may experience in our acts.
Divine power does not work alongside of human power. Human power must be set aside so that divine power may be conducted by the Holy Spirit. In our prayers for divine power the answer will most likely be the experience of our utter weakness, our self perceived nothingness as natural men and women. This is the humbling necessary for a godly life, as preparation for His use on this plane of existence while enclosed in a natural human body.
The power of man must be set aside. The Lord said to Paul and us...."My grace is sufficient for you; for my strength is made perfect in weakness". Therefore it is from the ashes of weakness, distress and persecution like Paul that we are to gain the desire to be driven toward the glory of a life outside of ourselves to know a life positioned and identified in Jesus Christ Himself, by faith and only by faith!
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