Thoughts on the Sanctification process: tensions between the self life and renewed life and transformation through the renewal of the mind.
I have been crucified with Christ, I no longer live, the life i live in the flesh I live by the Faith of The Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.
If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me. He that would lose his life for My sake will save it for eternal life and he who would save his life will lose it.
We are called to the death of the old self, the unrenewed nature which is apart from Christ. We can die to everything not of Him -our own small selfish and carnal desires, we can be rid of them and indeed we have died to them, if we have received Christ.
Every desire out of the new life that God implants in us, can be trusted and depended upon if we have received the new life, the life of Christ in the Holy Spirit. Desires that arise out of the new life- desires to please God the Father, desires to do righteousness, desires to do justice and service desires for humility are all expressions of the new life within the heart. Every desire that God did not plant cannot be allowed to persist.
James 3:17 esv But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without variance, without hypocrisy.
Ephesians 5:9 esv for the fruit of the light is in all goodness and righteousness and truth.
But everything that remains of the old nature must be put to death, being brought to submission to the power of the Holy Spirit to obey the reality of the cross which is a spiritual reality, having already occurred in our lives and is in the process of being worked out. We have been crucified with Christ, those who are Christs have already crucified their sinful passions and desires, in the Spirit realm it has been done and accomplished in the eternal spiritual realm, but what remains is for that same reality to be worked out in the earthly realm the realm of practice and experience and time. The eternal and heavenly needs to be to be worked out gradually in the temporal and earthly.
When we look and stare at the revelation which proceeds from the living Christ, that revelation itself works into our natures. what is needed is a continuing revelation of what has already happened to us in Christ. To see Christ, having defeated the sin nature in death, having risen again to the right hand of the Father, to perceive through the revealing power of the Holy Spirit the risen Son of God day by day.
How we obtain this revelation of Christ is though the surrender of our entire lives in worship - if you lose your life - to obtain life, to obtain Christ, revelation and life will be yours. We exchange our old natures for Christ's life and nature, we exchange our self will for the Father's will. The Holy Spirit comes to give the new when we surrender the old. The Holy Spirit comes to reveal Christ, to show us the risen and living Christ and impart that same reality of the risen Christ into the heart.
John 16:15
All things whatsoever the Father hath are mine: therefore said I, that he taketh of mine, and shall declare it unto you.
Romans 12: I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.
Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
Ephesians 4:23 says and that ye be renewed in the spirit of your mind.
IT is in the continual surrender of our lives in worship and thanks to God to glorify Him that the Holy Spirit also comes and takes the word of God to apply it to our minds that we think through God's perspectives.
Renewed in the Spirit of the mind means the Holy Spirit is able to renew our Spirits and that renewed Spirit imparts the thoughts and desires and intents of the Holy Spirit into our Spirit and that controls the thoughts, the natural mind, the heart, the emotions, intents and motives of the heart.
Dealing with the Fallen man -
Romans 8:2 The law of the Spirit of life in Christ has set us free from the law of sin and death.
Faith in Jesus and the saving power of His crucifixion reaches to the inner depths of the Christian. The power of the cross to put to death the fallen nature through the Holy Spirit, - that power that comes centred in the cross and transmitted by the Holy Spirit to kill the sin nature is stronger then the power of sin that dwells in us.
The Holy Spirit is stronger than the sin nature which lives in us. The presence of the Holy Spirit ousts the power of the sinful nature. Every time the Holy Spirit applies the death of Jesus through the Cross to our fleshly nature, The Holy Spirit is victorious.
Romans 8 says that 'we' put to death the works of the flesh through the Holy Spirit.
Who is this "we" who put to death the works of the flesh? i submit that it is the renewed spiritual man, the one created in likeness of His righteousness that does this. In other words only one who is born again who possess the new Spirit man can do this. We surrender the fleshly nature to the power of the Holy Spirit for Him to put it to death, we choose the new life to live as those alive from the dead to God.
'Working out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you both to will and do for His good pleasure'.
The Will of the Father through the Holy Spirit empowers the renewed will of the Spirit man.
"if my word abides in you, and you abide in me, ask whatever you will" notice it is our will that is operative here - 'whatever you will', not 'whatever I will'. the result is answered prayer - "and it will be done for you".
God works and wills in us, we (the new spirit man) then wills and work thorough His empowerment through Him. We were not designed to work and live apart from the vital Spiritual union with Christ - He in us, We in Him, that is our privilege and position as Christians which were are exhorted to continually work and live in. Practically it happens through communion in the Holy Spirit in prayer and reading and meditating on the word of God.
Paul himself thought himself as crucified, "i have been crucified with Christ" and His life lived in the faith of the Son of God who loved him and gave himself for him. In other words, when he thought of himself without Christ his conclusion was - 'Crucified!', and the verse immediately brings us to how he thinks about himself - the life i now live by the faith of the Son of God", which is in vital union and communion with the Son of God, living by His faith, united in the life and gift of Christ Himself.
Thus the manifested outward evidence of the presence of the new Spiritual life in a man is a gradually increasing process in the truly and genuinely saved. it is manifested more and more, as more of the works of the flesh are being destroyed through the consent and will of our spirit man working with the empowerment that comes from the Holy Spirit.
1 John 3:8 Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared (was manifested) was to destroy the works of the devil.
The works of the Father and Son are to destroy the works of the devil. We manifest Christ through His life within us, when the practices of sinning (as referenced by 1 John 3) are destroyed thorough a thorough outworking of the life of Christ which reaches to the realm of our innermost intents, motives, feelings, thoughts, imaginations, and outwardly to the realm of speech and action.
Ps 40:8
I delight to do thy will, O my God; yea, thy law is within my heart.
The Holy Spirit births forth the desires and mind of the Father within us so that we with God do the will of God.
We are called to gain a new perspective through the reception of the life of Christ. When the life of Christ comes into a man, it should gradually change the way he thinks and sees the world.
A new perspective without the life is self deception, a new perspective which is being shaped and formed by the reality and power of a new life within is powerful, the new perpective paves that way for 1) powerful life transformation and 2) increased spiritual discernment and 3) empowerment to walk in the perfect will of God.
We do fall, we do fail and fall back into sin and follow the flesh - the word exhorts us to confess our sins to believe that He will cleanse us of all unrighteousness and give us grace to walk in holiness again. To return to our high position in Christ as His Children 'perfecting holiness in the fear of God'.
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