My Faith
Story
Reckoning
self as “dead indeed unto sin”
The
only one can reckon he/she is ‘dead indeed unto sin’ is the one who has been
through identification with the death of Jesus. When he has been through that
moral transformation, he will find he is enabled to live according to it; but
if one tries the “reckoning” business without having gone through
identification with the death of Jesus, one shall find oneself deceived; there
will be no reality.
When
I can say, “I am crucified with God’s anointed one: nevertheless I live; yet
not I, but God’s anointed one lives in me: and the life which I now live in the
flesh I live by the faith of the son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for
me,” (Galatians:2:20) a new page of consciousness opens before me; I find there are
new powers in me. I am now able to fulfill the commands of Yehovah, now able to
do what I could not do before; I am free from bondage, the old limitations, and
the gateway to new age life has be opened to me because of the sin offering
sacrifice of God’s anointed one, Jesus.
Galatians
5:1: Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith God’s anointed one has made
us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.
Romans 8:15: For you have not received the spirit of
bondage again to fear; but you have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we
cry, Abba, Father.
Notice:
Luke
11:13: If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children:
how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask
him?
He
says, “If you then, being evil.” Notice the significance? Why did he not say, “If
we then, being evil?” He did not say it because he knew he was essentially
different from them as the only perfect man.
The
speaker is the son of God; not just a man who is called Jesus, but the lord
Jesus God’s anointed one who lived his entire life without sin. God’s anointed
one, the uniquely begotten son of God. He does not include himself in that “you”.
But He does include the whole of mankind. “You being evil” means that we not
only do things which are evil, but that we are evil.
Our natures are corrupt
and evil, and those who are essentially corrupt and evil are not the children
of God. That is why in the prayer to our Father we ask to be delivered from
“all evil”.
Jesus
speaking to the religious leader of his day says:
Matthew
12:34: O generation of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak good things? For
out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.
The following applies to all of us.
Jeremiah
17: 9: The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately
wicked: who can understand it?
My nature before
baptism/regeneration was selfish, sensual, self-satisfied, all wrong and out of
order and as a result not fully committed to obedience to the lord Jesus God’s
anointed one.
That was my condition for almost 50
years all the while calling myself a Christian, committing perjury before men
and God, lying to others before God. As Jeremiah has stated in Jeremiah 17:9:
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know
it? The heart is capable of
great self delusion and deception.
Jesus said:
“IF any man/woman will come after me”… the condition is that he/she must leave
something behind. His/her right to himself/herself.
Our cross is
the sign that we have denied our right to ourselves and are committed to
manifest that we are no longer our own; we have given away forever our right to
ourselves to the lord Jesus God’s anointed one.
Unless the
lord Jesus, God’s anointed one is the lodestar there is no benefit to any sacrifice
on our part. Self-denial must have it spring in a personal outflowing love to
our lord Jesus which will show itself in obedience to his word. We are no
longer our own; we are therefore spoiled for every other interest in life except
we can win men/women to the lord Jesus, God’s anointed one.
The cross is
the gift of Jesus to his disciples and it can only have one aspect: “I am not
my own.” The whole attitude of the life in following “THE WAY” is that I have
given up my right to myself. I live like a crucified man in God’s anointed one.
Jesus made it plain that these are the conditions to following him.
It is a
slander to the cross of God’s anointed one Jesus to say we believe in him and then
go about pleasing ourselves all the time, choosing our own way to live our
lives, instead of living the way of Jesus, as he said he is the way, the truth,
the life, the light, etc.
Jesus said;
“IF any man/woman come after me – follow me.” The word “IF” means, you don’t have
to unless you want to, but you won’t be of any account to him in this life
unless your do!”
Wherever the spirit of Jesus is still battling around this one
point – my right to myself – and until that is deliberately given over by
myself to Jesus in recognition that he is my lord, I will never have the
relationship with him that he asks for!
Our cross is
something that comes only with a peculiar relationship of a disciple to Jesus,
God’s anointed one; it is the evidence that we have denied our right to ourselves
and made a full faith commitment to following him as our lord and master,
realizing that we have been bought and paid for by his shed blood and as such
we are not our own. It is only in him that we can become the slaves of
righteousness, doing what is right according to the will of his God and our
God, his Father and our Father.
You know what the third
commandment is? “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.” (Exodus
20:7) What does that mean? It is not only a question of swearing with the
mouth; it is a question of swearing with the life. If you are a Christian, you
are taking the Lord’s name on your life. The commandment says, “You shall not
take the name of the Lord your God in vain”, i.e., falsely or unworthily. If
you take the name of the God in your life, and in your lips, and you then turn
around and deny Him in your life, by your actions, you are guilty of perjury.
Nobody should to take the
name of Yehovah in their life or take the name of the lord Jesus upon
themselves, who is not prepared to obey their words, the truth.
We must realize that we are
always in the presence of God. Let us remember that everything in our lives and
conversation is in His presence, and may indeed be the thing which will
determine what others will think of Him.
Notice:
Popular teaching tells me
that my sins are forgiven even if I am still enslaved to sin and the sinful
nature. My sins are forgiven even if, in reality, the debt of sin is piling up,
so that every day I come back to God for forgiveness: “Lord, I’m sorry I failed
you, yesterday, today and probably tomorrow.” Is this the Christian life?
Some Christians want to
forget about sin because it is tiring to ask for forgiveness again and again,
apologizing to the Lord God day in and day out. Shouldn’t this come to an end?
Isn’t God tired of listening to our endless apologies? In what way does our
incessant asking for forgiveness differ from the need to offer sacrifices
endlessly under the Law?
Sadly, many Christians have
never crossed over from the bondage to sin described in Romans 7 to the freedom from sin, available
only in God’s anointed one Jesus, described in Romans 8. Sadly, many Christians
identify with the description in Romans 7 as
correctly portraying their failed “Christian” lives. Scripture, however,
must not be interpreted according to our failures in such a way as to exonerate
them. On the contrary, our failures must be examined in the light of Scripture,
and our lives must be made to conform to what Scripture describes as being
“Christian” or as being “in God's anointed one”. That life should be one of victory not
failure!
Notice a statement which the great George Muller once made about himself:
"There was a day when I died, utterly died, died to George Muller and his
opinions, preferences, tastes and will; died to the world, its approval or
censure; died to the approval or blame of even my brethren and friends; and
since then I have studied only to show myself approved unto God."
The key to it all, as George Muller reminds us, is that we must die to
ourselves. George Muller died to himself, to his opinion, his preferences, his
likes and dislikes, his tastes, his will. His one concern, his one idea, was to
be approved unto God.
A man must be born from above and become a new creation before he can
live like this. No man can die to himself except he has the spirit of the lord
Jesus in him, and then that man who can say, `I live; yet not I, but God’s
anointed one lives in me.'
That attitude of heart and mind is something that is only possible for
one who is regenerate and seeking to be renewed daily; who has received the
spirit of the lord Jesus.
Examine yourself and your life, your ordinary work, the things you do,
the contacts you have to make with people. Reflect for a moment upon the extent
to which self comes into all that. It is an amazing and terrible discovery to
note the extent to which self-interest and self-concern are involved, even in
the preaching of the gospel.
Have we come to realize the extent to which the misery and the
unhappiness and the failure and the trouble in our lives is due to one thing
only, namely SELF.
Man, according to the Scriptures, was meant to live entirely to the
glory of God. He was meant to love Yehovah God with all his heart, with all his
soul, looking towards God and seeking His honour and glory. It is the self
centered nature in man which God condemns. It is that self-centered nature [the
self ish nature] which is under the curse of God and the wrath of God. And as I
understand the teaching of the Scriptures, holiness is deliverance from this
self-centred life.
Jesus said: `I have come to do Your will, 0 God,' and he was wholly
dependent upon God for everything, for the words he spoke and for everything he
did. The son of God humbled himself to that extent. He did not live for
himself or by himself in any measure.
Paul says: `Let this mind be in you, which was also in God’s anointed
one Jesus.'
The cross of the lord Jesus is the supreme illustration; and the
argument of the New Testament is this; that if we say we believe in the lord
Jesus and believe that he died for our sins, it means that our greatest desire
should be to die to SELF and serve him in newness of life as one bought and
paid for by his precious shed blood.
Jesus is the beginning of God’s New Creation, and he became a sin
offering sacrifice in order that a new people might be formed, a new humanity,
a new creation, and that a new kingdom would be set up, consisting of people
like him. He is `the firstborn among many brethren', He is the pattern. God has
set for us, says Paul to the Ephesians: `We are His workmanship, created in His
anointed one Jesus.' We are `to be conformed to the image of His son'.
That is the life to which God calls us to have in the lord Jesus His
anointed one and He enables us to do so by the power of His spirit and the
spirit of the one who died for us, in order that you and I might live it.
I have been saved =
regeneration
I am being saved = renewal
in mind and heart
I will be saved = the
resurrection!
How do you become the son
of your Father in heaven?
By being utterly renewed, transformed! Paul says
exactly the same thing, as we have seen before in Romans 12:1-2, especially
v.2: “that you be transformed in the renewing of your mind”.
Becoming a
Christian is to become utterly changed.
Baptism is essential, but
unless you are transformed, you are not saved.
The challenge is enormously
high, but it is accomplishable only by God’s power.
The lord Jesus is saying,
“I want you to move into this new land, a Promised Land.” See it? We come out
of Egypt, what for? To stay in the wilderness like so many Christians do? Not
at all!
To enter into the new
country, the new land, the atmosphere, the new area, the kingdom of God - the
atmosphere of love. In there you will find all God’s promises, but only
there. So we are moving out of the old
way of life dedicated to SELF, out of the wilderness of this world, and into
the land of Promise.
By faith, I have entered
into the land of God’s promises.
1 John. 4: 16 says,
“So we know and believe the love God has for us. God is love, and he who lives
in love lives in God, and God lives in him.”
God, as to His character,
as to His nature, is love. And he who abides, that is, he who lives in love,
who conducts his life in love lives in God and God lives in him.
He who lives in love will
find that he is living in God and God is living in him.
Remember: that only as new
creations in God’s anointed one will we experience
the promises of God - His saving power, new age life, age upon age lasting
life!
It must always be borne in
mind that those who are saved are those who “have been called according to His purpose” (Romans:8:28). And what is
that purpose? It is stated in the very next sentence, “To be
conformed to the likeness of His Son” (Rom:8.29).
Jesus says, “You therefore
must be perfect, as Your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew:5:48). This is both
a call and a command, so anyone who refuses to obey it is evidently being
defiant, insisting that perfection is irrelevant for salvation.
He also says you cannot be
his disciple unless you deny SELF, hate our self which is how you take up your
cross daily, and follow him in newness of life. (Luke:9.23; 14.26-27).
The Lord himself made it
clear that, “The gate is
small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and few are those who find it” (Matthew 7:14).
That is
precisely why salvation is by grace, but also in this sense: that without God’s
empowering us, enabling us, by the His Spirit, it would be impossible for us
to live the new life to which He has called us.
Is God truly at the center
of our lives, or are we still at the center? Are we still subtly running the
show; or are we allowing the Spirit of God to guide us and direct us in the way
we should go?
We start with regeneration
because only that which is born of the Spirit is spirit, and therefore
spiritual. We are made spiritual becoming a whole new person in God’s anointed
one, Jesus, not by human effort or zealousness, but by God’s work of new
creation transforming us.
Zechariah: 4:6: “Not by might,
nor by power, but by my Spirit, says Yehovah of hosts.
When we become spiritual,
our new life will grow and develop, moving towards a definite goal: the
fullness of the image and stature of God’s anointed one Jesus.
Paul’s life, heart, and thoughts are all
centered upon God’s anointed one, Jesus. That, according to Paul, is how the
perfect think. Spiritual or inner perfection is
governed and motivated not by earthly and external things but by the Lord
Jesus, the One who sits at the right hand of the Father, who is indwells us by
his spirit. If we have been crucified with God’s anointed one, Jesus, we will no
longer live according to our own self-centered lives, but because God’s
anointed one lives in us, we will no longer look at things from a human point
of view, but with the “mind of God’s anointed one, Jesus” (1 Corinthians:2:16), see
things from his point of view.
This way of living and looking at things is what
constitutes the inner perfection that derives from the indwelling Spirit of
Jesus which provides us with a heart attitude centered on God.
God leads us, His children,
at times when we are not fully aware of it. Often we only realize it in
hindsight. Who are the children of God? They are those who are led by the
Spirit of God (Romans 8:14).
Holiness means to be
separate and distinct from this world and its carnality. Paul exhorts us to
move on to the attitude of heart the Jesus had and has (Phil:2:5), which
is the essence of perfection.
Biblical perfection means
one’s heart is wholly centered on God. His/her whole life revolves around Yehovah,
not on himself/herself. His/her heart and mind are focused on Him as the goal
of life.
We know that we are nowhere
near the absolute perfection that we observe in the lord Jesus, who has never
failed in any action whatsoever. This kind of perfection is unattainable at the
present time, but it is what we ought to strive for until the end.
“We know that when he appears, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is” (1John:3.2). Only
then will we become fully like God’s anointed one Jesus.
The flesh obscures the
vision of God at present and will continue to do so until the day we will be
granted to see God’s anointed one face to face and become transformed into his
perfect image and likeness.
We are waiting for the
transformation of the body, “the redemption of our bodies” (Romans:8:23).
Paul’s fervent aspiration is that
“I may attain to the
resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained
it or have already become perfect, but I
press on…” (Philipians:3.11,12). Here is an explicit link
between absolute perfection and the resurrection from the dead.
So we understand that only
spiritual perfection, concerns us in the present time as people who have
become new persons, as “new creations” (2 Corinthians:5:17), in
God’s anointed one Jesus.
We discover that pursuing
perfection leads us to walk on the “narrow road” (Matthew:7:14) on
which we are called to take up our cross [deny self completely] and follow
Jesus (Matthew:16:24; Mark:8:34;Luke 9:23).
Anyone who declines to bear his own cross [deny his/her self completely] will
find that he will be unable to walk this narrow road that leads to new age life
and, consequently, cannot be the Lord’s disciple. For so many, many years I
declined!
Why is this so? Precisely
because human nature with its earthly appetites, pursuits and aspirations will
oppose the call to spiritual perfection with tooth and claw because it sees its
security and its interests being threatened. That is why when we become new
persons in Jesus, it is absolutely necessary to settle the question of what
exactly our attitude towards our earthly physical) life is going to be. Failing
to do so is to court certain defeat right from the outset.
Are eternal things the main
concern of our hearts? Do we look at our health, our occupation and the like,
through the eyes of a faithful steward who serves God as the center of his
life?
The Christian life is very
practical; it comes to grips with these concrete realities of everyday life. It
is within the sphere of daily life that we come to experience the fact that perfection has to do with the enduring spiritual quality of
our lives. That is what salvation is about.
Notice:
To have “little faith”
really means a failure to realize the implications of salvation, and the
position resulting from salvation. My trouble was due to the fact that I did
not realize to the full, the implications of the doctrine of salvation…..
Ephesians 1: 18-19; 2:1,4-5: ……. being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His
calling, and what the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and
what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according
to the working of His mighty power… You He has made alive, who were dead in
trespasses and sins… God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith he
loved us…. Even when we were dead in sins, has made us alive together with His
anointed one, (by grace you are saved;) and has raised us up together, and made
us sit together in heavenly places in His anointed one Jesus:
God's children are destined
for glory. All the purposes and the promises of God are meant for us and
designed with respect to us; and the one thing we have to do is just to realize
what God has told us about ourselves, as His children. A man then begins to
apply the logic which argues: `If, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to
God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by
his life' (Romans 5:10).
Whatever
happens to us, “He that spared not His own Son, but delivered him up for us
all, shall He not with him also freely give us all things?”
The vital
thing is to see ourselves as His children.
The children
of God had their names written in the Lamb's Book of Life before the foundation
of the world. There is nothing contingent about this. It was “before the
foundation of the world” that we were elected (Ephesians 1:4-5).
His purposes
are immutable and changeless, and they envisage our eternal destiny and nothing
less. This is constantly expressed in various ways in the Scriptures. “Elect
according to the foreknowledge of God,” “separated unto God’s anointed one Jesus,”
“sanctified, set apart by the Spirit.”
When people believe things like that
they are able to face life in this world in a very different way. That was the
secret, once more, of the heroes of the faith in Hebrews 11. They understood
something about the immutable purposes of God, and, therefore, whether it was
Abraham or Joseph or Moses, they all smiled at calamities. They just went on
because God had told them to do so, because they knew that His purposes would surely
come to pass.
God never
contradicts Himself, and we must remember that He is always behind, beneath and
everywhere round about us. “Underneath are the everlasting arms.”
When we come
to know the love God has for us, and rest in it (1 John 4: 16) our whole lives
will be different.
Ephesians
3:20: He `that is
able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to
the power that works in us'.
Romans
6.17, affirms that “you became obedient from the heart” to the teaching of God’s
word, and as a result you were set free from sin and became slaves of
righteousness (v.18).
What does this mean? It
means that obedience is the basic reality of the
spiritual life, because
the hard reality is that everyone in this world, without any
exception, is a slave. But there is good news: God has given every
one of us the freedom to choose whose slave we will be; slaves don’t normally
have such a choice.
We can choose to give our allegiance to sin or to
righteousness in Christ, to obey the one or the other. This ultimately involves
a choice between life and death.
What does obedience of heart mean? It
means rather a conforming of our hearts to God’s heart. That is
why Paul says, “Be imitators of God, as beloved children” (Ephessians:5:1). “Be”
is in the imperative mood; it is a command or
exhortation. The call
to imitate God is issued to all who are born from above, who
are regenerate, and who have God as Father. Every true child of God will not
only see it as an obligation to imitate his Father with
his heart, but also have it as his heart’s desire to do so.
In giving His Son, “God was in His anointed one reconciling the world to
Himself” (2 Corinthians:5:19). Will
we follow Him in reconciling the world to God? In the call to imitate God, our
life mission has been marked out for us. God, by His own example, sets before
us the scope and the standard of what we are called to imitate, to reproduce in
our lives, to put into practice—and it leaves us breathless! But His Holy Spirit (pneuma, the word also means
“breath”) will sustain and strengthen us as we follow Him.
In John
14.6, Jesus says, “I am the way.” For that reason, in the
book of Acts, the called-out Assembly or the Christian community is described as those “belonging to the Way” (Acts 9.2); while the
gospel, of which God's anointed one is the center, is called “the Way” (Acts 19:9,23;
24:14,22).
The called-out Assemblies or people who live faithfully according to God’s word
thereby embody “the Way” in their lives.
Disciples are followers of
the Way. We must walk in
the way, and follow it. Salvation has to do with a commitment to follow Jesus
wherever he leads. This
specifically means that our lives conform to his as our way of life. Jesus is
the model, the pattern, the template, according to which the Holy Spirit daily
fashions us, so that we will finally be fully conformed to his image (Romans:8:29). God
saved us, put us through a new birth from above, and made new creatures of us precisely so
that we may have His life and bear His glorious likeness. But this requires
that we faithfully follow and obey Him.
We are not saved simply by
believing that Jesus died for us. He has indeed died for us, but equally important
is that we die with the lord Jesus; for
unless his death takes effect in me, it cannot be effective for me. To be
saved and become a new creation is not merely a matter of an external transaction but of an inner transformation.
The Apostle declares, “If you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is lord,’ and
believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans:10:9).
Here several other
important things are stated as necessary for salvation:
(1) public confession of
Jesus’ lordship,
(2) believe in your heart,
(3) believe in his
resurrection by God’s power.
These words won’t mean much
to us unless we identify with him by following him who is the
Way, the Truth, and the Life. In other words, we “work out” (through following
him) what God “works in” us (Philipians:2:12,13)
through our union with the lord Jesus. In the
process of salvation, the out-working must necessarily follow from His
in-working.
What does this “in-working”
mean in experiential terms? Does it not mean that the Holy Spirit is
transforming our “inner man” into the likeness of God’s anointed one in every
way?
What does our “out-working” of it mean? Does it not mean that we, on our part, and conform all our thoughts and deeds to
that likeness which God is working in us—which is exactly what “imitating God’s
anointed one” means?
John epitomizes identification
with Jesust in these memorable words, “As he is, so are we in this world” (1 John:4:17).
Three things are firmly
linked together here:
1.
perfection (of
love),
2.
salvation(confidence at the final judgment),
3.
and identification with God’s anointed one.
Peter uses the expression
“follow in his steps”:
1Pet:2:21). Where
the Lord Jesus takes a step,
there we put our foot; when he takes another step,
we follow him in that footstep too. We are
inseparably associated with him in
everything he
does, thus learning to become like him under the
teaching of the God’s
Spirit.
A true Christian—a
disciple—is one who follows in
the footsteps of the lord Jesus. What does Jesus
require of his disciples but to imitate him? The
lord bore his own cross and
says to us, “Come with
me, go where I go, and do what I do; carry your
cross as
I carried mine, and thus you will be my
disciple.” To follow him is to imitate
him in every
thing, but above all his attitude. “Have this attitude
in
yourselves which was also in God’s anointed one
Jesus” (Philipians:2:5).
From the first day of our
Christian life, we are called to take up our cross daily [deny SELF] (Luke 9:.23). The
cross is the instrument of the death of our old person or ego, allowing us to
follow the lord Jesus in newness of life, as a new person in him. The cross is
the indispensable means by which God fashions us into His anointed one’s image.
Being liberated from sin (justification) and being transformed into his image
(i.e. renewed towards perfection) are what constitute the Christian life; and
this life is a great and wonderful experience.
It costs us nothing to believe, but it costs us everything
to follow and to imitate him. Jesus said, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and
they follow me” (John:10:27).
If the Jesus is our
Shepherd (lord and savior) and we are his sheep, the question is not whether
the cost of following him is too high but, rather, “what is the cost of not following him?” It is a question of
surviving or perishing, of life or death. We simply cannot afford not to follow him.
We were buried
together with [gr. Syn] him through
baptism into death, in order that as God’s anointed one was raised from the
dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if
we have become united together with him in the likeness of his death,
certainly we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection, knowing this,
that our old self was crucified together with him,
that our body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves
to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin. Now if we have died
together with God’s anointed one, we believe that we shall also live
together with him [in a bond of union and identification]. (Rom:6:4-8)
If we are united with him,
how can we not follow him? If we are united with him, how can we not conform
our lives to his? Those who are truly united with him will certainly imitate
him (conform their lives to his).
Many who profess to having
been Christians for a long time, yet who have never experienced the reality of
the new life in God’s anointed one. They know they are still enslaved to the
power of sin, to the self, to covetousness, to worldliness. Not having experienced
the reality of the Christian life, they finally realize that they are
unregenerate. Why then are they still unregenerate? Beloved, it is because they
have never died with him. They haven’t been united
with him in his death and therefore cannot enter into the new life in God’s
anointed one.
Is this true of us as it
was for the lord Jesus: “The
death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to
God.” “If we have become united with him in
the likeness of his death, certainly we shall be also in the
likeness of his resurrection.” The word “likeness” here refers to our being
made to imitate him in his death and resurrection? Our old man was crucified with him; so now we are
called to work out what God has worked in us; that “working out” is what
imitating Christ means.
We thus arrive at the
striking realization that salvation has to do with “imitating Jesus” from
beginning to end. God our Father began that salvation process in us, and will
complete it in us in when He brings us to final perfection through the lord
Jesus. Now we see why Jesus is called “the author and perfecter of faith” (Hebrews:12:2).
For our part, although we
cannot die Jesus death, we can die “in the likeness of his death”. What does
that mean? Just as he died to sin (v.10), so we die to sin. In this way we
share in the likeness of his death to sin; it is
a death to sin like his.
The counterpart to “the
likeness of his death” is “the likeness of his resurrection” (Romans:6:5). His resurrection is what makes the new life not just a possibility for us, but a
reality in us. Dying with him is not an end in itself but
the doorway into the new life in God’s anointed one. In this new life, we are
like God’s anointed one, in that the life we live we live to God (Romans:6:10).
Faith commitment that
doesn’t respond in total obedience to the Lord’s call is not a faith commitment
that leads to new age life. If we die with God’s anointed one, our lives won’t
be the same. Our relationship to the world will change beyond recognition. Believing by itself changes nothing. Following God’s anointed one will change everything. Identifying with God’s
anointed one in his death and in his life will turn your life upside-down. It
will sever your link to the world. You will view the world with different eyes.
To be “in God’s anointed one”
always refers to life, the new life in God’s anointed one, which will be
brought to its full consummation at the Resurrection (1 Corinthians:15:22). God
won’t finish His work in us until He has changed us so completely that we won’t
recognize ourselves!
If we have died with God’s anointed one, we now live in him, and experience the power of the
resurrection life as we “walk in newness of life” (Romans:6:4).
The true Christian, the one
who lives in God’s anointed one, is one who follows him and models himself on
him, imitating his holiness, his mercifulness, his wisdom, his single-minded
focus on his mission, his communion with the Father. He patterns his whole life
on Jesus, and follows in his footsteps from the first step to the last. That
first step is to walk into the grave—into death—having been crucified with him.
The command to be perfect
is a call to be like God’s anointed one, to follow in his steps, to identify
with him in every aspect of our lives. It is a call to take up our cross [denial
of self] and follow him daily (Luke 9:23) Day by day the cross [death to SELF] will
transform our thinking. We are being made conformable to his death (Philipians:3:10). As a
result we experience his power and victory in our Christian lives. We will follow
the lord Jesus day by day, learning to think his thoughts, and going in the
direction his spirit as he leads us. We learn to do all things with the
salvation of others in mind, for Jesus died not for himself but for others.
If we have not died with the
lord Jesus, we cannot avoid being the center of our own thinking. But when we
imitate him, he will be the center of our thinking. That is why we look to
Jesus (Hebrews:12:2). The purpose of looking to Jesus is to
imitate him and the pattern of his life. As we progress towards perfection, our
focus will move away from ourselves to God, the Father of the lord Jesus.
If we
are still the focus of our own lives, then we are still unregenerate. But if we
focus on God in all things, remarkable things will take place in our lives.
When we forget about ourselves and focus on Jesus as the pattern of our lives,
amazing things will happen; we will experience God’s work in us and through us
to others. We now pursue a goal that transcends ourselves. If we follow Jesus
example, living for the sake of others, our lives will be focused.
It is in that focusing on him that we are being changed
into his image by God’s power. Moreover, imitating Jesus keeps him in the
center of our hearts and minds constantly. “If any man is in God’s anointed one, he is a
new creation” (2 Corinthians:5:17).
Quotes from “Becoming a New
Person” by Eric Chang. Edited by Bruce Lyon
God’s salvation is not
unconditional. It is conditioned on obedience to the truth.
Hebrews 5:9: being made
perfect, he became the author of age upon age salvation unto all them that obey
him.
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