Post by netchaplain on Jan 18, 2023 12:44:03 GMT -8
As a person, my Father conceived me in His heart of love back in the eternal counsels of the Trinity. “According as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love; having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will” (Eph 1:4, 5).
God chose to introduce me into this world via the fallen Adam, from whom I received a sinful life and nature. Other terms for that condemned life are; old man, flesh, Adamic nature, old nature, indwelling sin, old life and principal of sin (Rom 5:17; 1Co 15:22).
Now a believer, the same person but recreated, reborn into the Lord Jesus, I have been positionally stripped of, and separated from, that sinful Adamic life via my identification with the Lord Jesus in His death unto sin at Calvary. Still the same identity conceived in eternity, but now relieved judicially of all the old life received from Adam, I am a totally new creation in the risen Lord Jesus Christ (2Co 5:17; Col 3:3).
I am now in living union with the risen and ascended Lord Jesus Christ—His divine human life has become my new Life (Col 3:4; 2Pe 1:4). I am now one spirit with Him (1Co 6:17). He is my Head; I am a member of His Body (Col 2:19; Eph 1:22, 23). The Lord Jesus is the True Vine; I am a living branch in the Vine (Jn 15:5).
My heavenly Father is the Vinedresser (Jn 15:1).
Until I see clearly that I have been cut off from the Admic life in my death unto sin at the Cross (Ro 6:6; Gal 2:20; Gal 2:20), I will not fully enough realize that I am now a new creation in Christ risen (Col 1:21, 22).
When I do understand that I have been separated from the old life and united to the new, I am able to say concerning any action of the old man, "But now, it is no longer I (new man) who do it, but sin that dwells in me” (Ro 7:17, 20). As a new creation in the Lord Jesus, I am no longer responsible (not accountable, God knows all we want is to “please Him” – Phl 2:13—NC) for the presence of indwelling sin (Ro 8:9).
I am very much responsible however, to reject and not to yield to the demands of the sinful indwelling Adamic life (Ro 6:13; 12:1), and thus be progressively conformed to the image of the Lord Jesus (Ro 8:29;
2Co 3:18). No improvement for the condemned old (Ro 8:3, 7), just growth in the accepted new in which I am already complete (Eph 1:6; Col 2:10).
This faith responsibility is based upon my walking in, depending upon the Holy Spirit to minister and develop that life in my spirit (Jn 16:14; Gal 5:16, 23; 2Co 3:18; 4:11).
Now, where am I? I am in the Lord Jesus Christ where He is (Eph 2:5, 6; Col 3:3, 4). He is in my spirit, by the indwelling Holy Spirit (Col 1:27). I know that I am united to Him in newness of life (Ro 6:4; Eph 1:3); and that as such I am positionaly separated from the sinful Adamic life within (Col 2:6-13). My faith in these truths is governed by Romans 6:11.
If and When I allow myself, or even choose to drift back under the reign of the old Adam life (Ro 6:12, 13), the sin of doing so and the resultant sins are to be conscientiously confessed. Thus my fellowship with the Father and the Son is restored (1Jn 1:9).
Coupled with the Spirit’s daily processing, I am to depend upon Him to keep me aware of the wonderful fact that I am not in the old life—the Cross has made the complete and eternal separation by means of death. I am nowhere else but in the risen and ascended Lord Jesus (1Co 1:30).
Day by day the Holy Spirit faithfully maintains the “not I, but Christ” Life within. He cuts down the old life by means of the finished work of the Cross, and builds up the new life from it source, the Lord Jesus Christ (Ro 8:10; 2Co 4:11).
There need be no struggle to “put off the old” (Eph 4:22; Col 3:9); no effort to “put on the new” (Eph 4:24; Col 3:10 – no struggle nor effort because it’s a one-time action that we maintain continuously—NC). Rather, I am to exercise faith if the finished fact of the Cross (Rom 6:6; 8:9), as well as the completed fact of my resurrection and ascension in the Lord Jesus at the Father’s right hand in the Holiest of All (Eph 2:5, 6; Col 3:1-3).
Abiding in the Lord Jesus, I rest in Him where He is (Col 1:12). His acceptance by the Father is mine (Eph 2:13); His access to the Father is mine (Eph 2:18). In the Lord Jesus who is my very Life (Col 3:4), I am there (Heb 10:19-22). In Him there, I rest, fellowship and worship; in me here, He lives and serves (Col 2:9-13; Phl 2:13).
—Miles J Stanford
MJS daily devotional excerpt for Jan 11
“We are not to overcome the lusts of the flesh in order that we may walk in the Spirit. We are to walk in the Spirit in order that the lusts of the flesh may be overcome. The enemy can hold up young Christians on this point for a long time, so that they do not really get started on the Christian walk. They feel they cannot expect to begin to walk in the Spirit until they have, in some degree at least, dealt with the lusts of the flesh.
“They wait for some vague time when they hope they will have reached a more satisfactory position in regard to the lusts of the flesh, and will feel more confident about attempting a walk in the Spirit. But that is all the wrong way around. If we are to wait until we have, in some degree, mastered the lusts of the flesh before we venture to walk in the Spirit: if we are to wait until we feel that we can give some sort of security to ourselves and to God that we shall do a bit better in the future than we have done in the past, then we never will walk in the Spirit. For until we walk in dependence upon the Spirit we shall not, and cannot, overcome the lusts of the flesh.” -D.T.
