. "NOW YOU ARE LIGHT IN THE LORD....WALK AS CHILDERN OF LIGHT" Eph.5:8
It is the ego, the unconscious predisposed collective thought within ourselves that contains us as captured by the Adam of the earth's mindset and also serves to impede our walk in His light. In other words what we are and how we view all things including our spiritual life, is influenced even controlled by our very condition as Adam men. This is the mind pattern we allow ourselves to live in as earthly men. But is there another way, another choice and if so how will we find it?
The answer is yes as the Father has made a new way for us, His way. A new possibility for us earth bound creatures. But it requires a new perception of a new life, a spiritual life, strictly a internal one, and a new concept given by God's graceful provision. God has made the way clear for this never before known [prior to Christ's Resurrection] path for man by His Spirit. But a most valuable and necessary realization must come first: to allow ourselves to be enabled to see clearly that what we perceive, experience, think, within the confines of the earthly Adamic mind, is ultimately not who or what we truly are in the Fathers perception.
We have the privilege to discover that we cannot find our divinely created selves anywhere in that which only and continuously passes away; the ego the I, the Adam of the earth mentalities un-conscious concepts, which drive the Adam man's mind. No we must look elsewhere to find our new creation lives; "Set you mind on things above". We must therefore poses a new mind first for it's very perception. His thoughts of us have been given us by grace. Made available for acquisition of a entire new life. Then what holds us back?
The underlying emotion that traps us within the confines of the man in the world is fear. "Having therefore boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus" Heb. 10:19. The fear of being nobody, the fear of nonexistence, the fear of death. So we work naturally toward making that which we know so well [the ego/works/tradition] on earth define us. We will always choose the ego because of our lack of awareness of another way. But only the truth of who we really are, once intelligently realized, will set us free to be allowed to choose who we are made to be by the Father. But how will we find it? How will we live it once found?
Our identification is the key, the answer. Who we are announced to be by the self-centered ego all takes place in that which we perceive most valuable and available for use on earth, or our form and function. But no forms are permanent and no activity will survive or produces a living sanctification. "Present yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead" Rom. 6:13. So if we build our Christian life around the ego or self there will always be a sense of insecurity. Even though in our man made world we appear to be confident, we even may find some peace and comfort there. In other words we place trust in a temporal spiritually dead persona, a self construction, the inner man we were under sin; by pursuing the ego's earthly internal sub-conscious prescription. These are the works of men and have influenced what has become to often a carnal church. And seems the most prominent and current approach to Christianity today. One of a earth bound structure.
However There is a new man, a new personality, a new identification, awaiting us; one from which we may gain a divine incite. We will find it by the will of our faiths perception all by ourselves. But only when we are altered first by a deep and profound personal need toward God's destiny: the mental formula He has made for His children of His Son's inheritance. "The law of life in Christ Jesus" awaits. To know this and more importantly to live His life however we must look to His Words to guide the way!
There is little use in trying to force any spiritual issue in our lives or anyone else's. When our Father has us prepared for progress through our acknowledged weakness and the knowledge of His facts, we will then believe and we will then be able to "reckon" upon and rest in His revealed truth for living the new life.
Paul, God's great spokesmen to us, struggled with the exact same condition as us "sin, the world, the natural man". But through God's revelation he learned to live a new kind of life; a internal life formed by the Holy Spirit in him, he took on a new and conscious identification. He learned that no law was allowed nor any works would do as a means of producing either justification or sanctification toward the life in Spirit which God had made new for him. He discovered that the Cross had swept away any vestige of value to be found in the world or himself. He found our father had imparted a new life and nature to which nothing that applied to the old held any value. But we, as he was, are still found in a mixed condition. We have two principles in us, the old and the new. How may we separate them?
In Gal 2:20 Paul said, "I have been crucified with Christ". Then he said; "They that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with its affection and lusts" Gal. 5:24. Both of these are judicial statements or God's view of us! It is true of us, but it is ours to make it true, appropriate it in ourselves individually. This is what Paul was saying in Philippians when he cried out; "I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus" Phil 3:14.
Then Paul told us; "You have died and your life is hid with Christ in God" Col. 3:3. Again this is a judicial statement or a truth concerning us strictly from God's point of view. In other words we are looked at by God as dead [annulled in Hs consideration], in the old Adamic order or natural world/earth/traditional centered ego-man. But he has also said, we are a new creation now.
"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here" 2 Cor. 5:17. How is this true? Because we have been in His mind re-created in the image of the resurrected Son; a Man in heaven in the flesh. "Set you affection on things above, not on thing on earth" Col. 3:2.
So we may in our faith of that as true of us in God's view leave the old thoughts or Adam order morally as to identification behind. Paul's said; "You have died, [judicially] yet you live". Your new life is a hidden life; not in the sphere of our bodies. We have no order to conduct a institution on the earth to improve mankind. The Spirit life is not empirical, but a life of thought, of faith, a inner life only. A life that trusts and rests in the assurance of a brand new truth revealed to us as individuals by faith in the Word's facts. Yet a active practical life we may live here in the rest and assurance of the moment; as we occupy His thoughts of us. Sadly few have develop this kind of a spiritual life taught by Paul. Why?
Because we often fail to take to heart and are almost never taught Paul's exhortation in Rom. 6:1 in a practical and personal way. God told him to tell us...."Likewise reckon [count it internally as a absolutely living truth] yourself also [like Paul] to indeed be dead unto sin [Adam's earthly natural ego centered concept] but alive unto God in [we contained in God's mind sanctified or separated unto His Son's Person/Spirit as a represented fact for the active conduct of a life eternal by spirit or in our mind] Jesus Christ our Lord".
"We thus judge [holding this new thought firmly in mind], that if one died for all [Adam men on earth in their old concept or ego] that they which live [in new identification thought] should not henceforth live unto themselves [the old man's thoughts] but unto Him [aware that we are seen by God in Him] that died and rose again" 2 Cor.5:15. In other words our only thought of ourselves as those regenerated [new birth, a new beginning, a new order] in Christ is to be as God sees us as "in Christ". He is our only object to define the Christian life dwelling within us by Spirit or God's thoughts! But He can only be contained in or even found in faith's thoughts on our part; to gain a new personal identification He will supply. By that belief He is then honored to live through us morally, actively, practically, thus providing by Spirit the light to guide the way."That He might make known the riches of His Glory on the vessels [us] of mercy Rom. 9:23.
Thus by applying God's thoughts of ourselves given to us by Paul's revelations we become whole. No longer a fragment or the Adam of the earths ego's perception. Our new nature progressively emerges; which is one nature with God. " Be ye perfect" [original Greek is whole] just as Christ commanded. In other words be what we already are in God's sight!
Knowing this new self is rooted simply in BEING, instead of lost in a earthly conception or rooted in the worlds manifestation of the Christian life. The new life is found just as Paul said; "Always bearing about in the body [mind] the dying of Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal bodies" 2 Cor. 4:10. Paul is saying of himself he is reckoning it true because he has found all that we are in and of ourselves as natural earth creatures is simply sin.
Paul learned the hard way; he was troubled, perplexed, persecuted, forsaken; yet not distressed and certainly not destroyed. As his life was identified by his daily death "for Jesus sake". So death and life go together. However few practice the death part preferring a life they are taught by the Adam world.
God has given us a new life to practice in these mortal bodies, a life by/of His nature. But we cannot have it except as we keep the old life in death or under nullifying power or inactive; as too spiritual identification. God will place us, just as Paul, in His new life by our weakness. "Most gladly, therefore will I glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me .... for when I am weak then am I made strong" 2 Cor. 12:9,10. It is thus we at enabled [given the authority] to walk in the light!
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