"Man has no life from which the Father could expect anything, and so He gave a new life in His Son, that He may produce it." I thought this statement written by a old saint, W. J Hocking, from long ago summed up who we are as Christians quite well. We just must come to realize that it is God who provides us with a identity; and it is His Son. I have noticed that just in the last few weeks my readership has fallen of dramatically, perhaps its due to my poor writing style, but I suspect its simply that my blog victims are tired of being reminded that only a completely new life will due, and they are not perhaps prepared to change from the comfort zone they rest in, in this world. I will still trudge forward on the happy road of destiny; as I see in my self no good thing and I know from experience that if left to my own devises I will fall into the sin and complacency of that old life from which The Father expects nothing, nor can He as it is dead. I once lived with no knowledge that there was another life which could make me joyfully alive in Christ. Now however I have been made aware and oh how miserable I would be if I fell back.
"Not as though I had already attained....but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus" Phil. 3:12. This was Paul's story and is mine also! In order however to understand what it means we must have biblical contextual knowledge [as with most all scripture] and this is where the crux of the problem is for many Christians, in my humble opinion anyway. Each book of the bible has a theme. The book of Philippians was the experiencing of Christ, taking Christ as our living pattern goal, power and secret, not finding Him in earthly works accomplishments, but as mind soul and heart, Him as the object of our person hood. Paul had not attained all that he could or would like to in his minds concept of his life in Christ, so he moved forward. What was he moving toward? A apprehension. But of what? Evidently that which He was, as he says; he was already apprehended [made to be] by Jesus. What does this mean? Before we can know this we must first know ourselves. A shocking revelation if we are to be honest! We must fully realize our sin nature and need, and know that in our flesh we cannot please God, nor does He expect us to. He died judicially on the cross to do away with that part of us, and that for His own pleasure, [not our relief] because of His love: He made us into new creatures apprehended by Him, seen and defined in His Son only, not by our actions. I hope this makes some sense to you happy leftover blog friends! Its vitally important to know this truth if you expect to ever grow to spiritual maturity. Lets explore more and discover how we may be seen for ourselves in the loving grace of The Father.
To apprehend or be apprehended of, is to gain, grasp or seize the truth of the new nature brought by Christ to our mind by the Holy Spirit, in the new birth. This calls for a striving onto maturity in the spirit, a taking on of the likeness in our personal definition of ourselves of Christ Himself: this is called being "conformed to the image of Christ." We must experience our sufficiency in Christ; completely casting aside the earthly version of our old nature as to who we are. However we still need to see ourselves for what we were and capable of knowing how little we can become conformed to Him in the old nature. As we are made aware of our weakness in the flesh, thoroughly coming to know our need, and the insufficiency of self effort to be conformed to His image; we then will look to the grasping of our sufficiency in Jesus Christ and Him crucified as our only hope in this life to acquire His image. He was Resurrected and Ascended to Heaven, so that we may obtain His image in a conscious way as new creatures, with Him as the object of who and what we are now by our own reckoning, the knowledge of His Spirit having been joined with ours as He became alive from the dead to show this new life is ours and that we also are alive from the dead for He died unto all that we were in the flesh. We are now new creatures with a new life to be lived on this earth in Christ Jesus! Identified in Christ. This is a biblical positional fact rendered in our regeneration by God's Spirit interacting with ours because our need brought us to a place of desperation for a hope, and that hope was provided by the Son of God, Jesus Christ. To Him be the power and glory forever! May God keep us from a worldly perception of ourselves; which is defined as all that is not of The Father. This new life of ours is reveled by The Son and brought to us by The Holy Spirit. It comes by the taking on of the Divine nature in a conscious awareness, as God's will for us. We then will open our eyes to the vastly more joyful and all encompassing existence we may find in a contemplative positional awareness of a life provided by the occupation of the mingled Spirit of the living God with ours. We will then become entirely new men and women by choosing to believe and live in faith of this new truth seen in ourselves by faith in His Word, that tells us that we are one with Him..
I think the word appropriation would be appropriate for us to consider here. We in the west have developed a mind set and a culture by which we tend to define words and ideas by their capacity to form action and material or accomplishment and merit, with a strong emphasis on information [books books and more books] and intellectual pursuit. I have been hanging with a group of late who hale from the east, The Local Church, which was started by Watchman Nee, the writer of the very well accepted Christan book The Normal Christian Life. They, because of their acceptance of what some see as a more mystical concept of the believer to be seen as having not only the opportunity to appropriate the gift of God as being one in the spirit with Him, through scriptural knowledge and study. But they also easily except a mystical union as our very condition, not held back by a ridged intellectual, doctrinal approach. We in fact are one with God: a metaphysical reality, which is contained in our physical presence [the mind] which we occupy on earth in our persons, a self contained spiritual God/man position, if you will. They sometimes use this term god-men to describe the Christian; which many in conservative Christian circles have a very difficult time with and I must confess I once did also. But lets not jump on the self righteous band wagon without noting the all important need for contextual consideration and perhaps even we may be helped by learning or at least be open to a more mystical/heart felt approach to such scriptures as: " Eph. 4:6 "One God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all" or John 17:22-23 "that they may be one, even as we are one; I in them, and You in Me that they may be perfected into one". I quote these verses in part to show God's announcement to us that we are to become a living spiritual part of Him, we have become the very life of Jesus, He lived through us, as our mind matures to this truth, in these bodies on this earth. We have had the divine nature imparted and are partakers of His Spirit or He might be described as mingled with our spirit, hence the term god-men. This cannot be denied as scriptural truth, I firmly believe. But it can only be understood and most importantly lived only by having faith in what is seen by some as a mystical concept of our being; as no man can explain how this takes place in practical terms, hence mystical. Now that wasn't do hard was it? It is simply left for us to appropriate this spiritual reality as a self aware defined spiritual life; and then we may better be seen in our own mind for ourselves, who we truly are!
My friends the very thing that Paul was striving toward and what the organized Church has been trying to provide, much of the time by works, has been ours all along, we needed only look to our mind's understanding. We are apprehended in Christ or laid hold of, contained in, The Son of God. We as Paul must pursue it, gain it, grasp it, take possession of it. Really its all been laid out for us, this discovery of a new life, in Romans Six, Seven and Eight. As William R. Newell said, and can be found expanded upon in his great book Romans verse by verse: "These chapters are the great master key to spiritual life and liberty." "These, God's revelation to us present the Cross as unlocking the door to understanding." "Our death to sin was completed at Calvary in chapter Six". "Our struggles to produce that which God has already accomplished is found in chapter Seven." "By Chapter Eight we find that the Holy Spirit will produce in our experience what God completed for us on the Cross and in Christ our life." There will be a path cleared to the open door of a reckoning [counting as true] that we are actually delivered from the sin nature, "dead to sin", our old self. In our everyday life by the cross, we are free from sin's reign the moment we end our own self effort, "Yield yourself unto God, as those that are alive from the dead" Rom. 6:13. This is the perfection Paul sought in Phi.3:12, which was already his, and is ours also, it just needs to be laid hold of; it is there waiting for us. My good and faithful friends in Christ Jesus, may we together grasp the truth of a oneness in Him, and thereby be who we are, and were always meant to be, seen for yourself.
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