Our salvation is not only of God and from God, but it is God. " All thing are of God who has reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ" 2 Cor. 5:18. It is one thing to know we have our life in the Lord Jesus but it is quite another to be in consistent communion with Him as too that life. Many saints profess to have found pardon and peace in Him, who in reality are feeding upon a variety of things [works, emotions, tradition etc.] which have no connection with Him whatsoever.
The more clearly we enter, by faith, into objective truth by knowing the Word of God and what is true of us as clearly indicated in His Word the nearer we will be to His truth and His intentions for our Christian life. "For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free" Rom. 8:2. We then may begin to know that which we are made to be, according to His Word, in our risen High Priest Christ Jesus the Lord, and the more experiential and practical will be the subjective growth in us. Resulting in a life in which His Spirit will be made more complete in us, by the manifestation and moral character [personal attitude as to our identification held in Christ] of His life in ours.
It is often the conviction of guilt that opens the door to His justification but it is the experiential knowledge of self, its utter unworthiness, and the acknowledgement of His complete representation of our new creation being before the father that brings us a new life; as we can of ourselves never be worthy, nor can we emulate him by our earthly actions and form. A new and living life is only found within our sanctification of separation in knowledge unto His and our co-life with Him as heavenly [spiritual] new creations; made so in us as we abide in [live within] that truth by Spirit in faith. No self effort clears the guilt no self effort effects growth, all must be of Him. Very few Christian seem to know this as they have become reliant upon tradition and emotional experience, assuming they are in God's way by their learned and mimicked behavior.
What must be sought and what must be found is deliverance. A word seldom heard in todays church. Why? Because first the Cross must be taught, its co-effect upon our being. But His death and ours on that tree together is all too difficult to understand for many under the current kingdom building world view. That which we must be delivered from; the world system, the devil and most importantly ourselves must be made know before deliverance freedom reigns.
But then how do we become delivered to His new and heavenly spiritual life of freedom? Victory comes through the reckoning [counting it as true] of faith, not through struggling and striving. Who is responsible for faiths growth in us we might ask? We would quickly answer why it is I. Nothing could be further from the truth! When the standard for the Christian life is low [as it is in this modern time] the responsibility for growth is placed upon the believer. But when it is known that God's standard for us is His Son, all expatiations of maturity must be place in Him. "For it is God which works is us both to will and to do His good pleasure" Phil. 2:13.
In our relationship with the first Adam [our actions and works upon the earth] we have no deliverance at all. As all members of the flesh class of man, the old Adam, are under obligation to furnish personal righteousness before God, as moral beings responsible to Him under the Law. There is no freedom in that position, no deliverance. Paul made that clear in Romans 6 and 7. Our churches today are primarily occupied with programs and works designed to improve this old Adam and his culture. Resulting in much busyness and responsibility toward our own needs and to the worlds systems. Today there is very little teaching that: "It is no longer I that live, but Christ who lives in me" Gal. 2:20.
But our true position as believers is declared by Paul in God's Word to have been perfectly secured in the risen Lord Jesus Christ; our reasonability in the fallen old man having been discharged in our federal head the Lord. "For the death that He died He became, once and for all, dead in relation to sin; but by Him the life which He now lives He is alive in relation to God" Rom. 6:10. He became sin for us at the Cross, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him; Him having taken the old mans nature and declared it a dead thing. We then were taken up by Spirit in representation into His identification before God in Glory; in the Person of the Son. Knowing this by faith and accounting it as our Christian life brings the spiritual knowledge of true deliverance, from which a godly platform of service may be furnished to God's Glory! "In the same way you must also regard yourselves as dead in relation to sin, but as alive in relation to God, because you are in [seen within the represented personhood of Himself] Christ Jesus" Rom. 6:11.
No comments:
Post a Comment