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!
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