RECKONING SELF AS “DEAD UNTO SIN”
The only one who can reckon he/she is ‘dead indeed unto sin’ is the one who has been through an 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 an 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 – Yehovah’s anointed one: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but God’s – Yehovah’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 is enabling power in me. I am now able to fulfill the commands of Yehovah and His Son Jesus, now able to do what I could not do before; I am free from the bondage of sin, and the old limitations and the gateway to a new age life have been 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 – Yehovah’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 those 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
sinless man.
The speaker is the son of God; not just a man who
is called Jesus, but the lord Messiah Jesus God’s – Yehovah’s anointed one who
lived his entire life without sin. God’s – Yehovah’s anointed one, the uniquely
begotten son of God - Yehovah. 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
evil things 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 “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, prideful, all wrong and out of order, and as a result not totally committed to obedience to the lord Messiah Jesus God’s – Yehovah’s anointed one. That was my condition for almost 50 years all the while calling myself a Christian, committing perjury before men and God, and 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, die to self.
Our cross is the sign that we have denied our right to ourselves, died to self, and are committed to manifesting that we are no longer our own; we have given away forever our right to ourselves to the lord Messiah Jesus God’s – Yehovah’s anointed one, who purchased me by the blood he shed when he presented himself to his God and Father Yehovah as a sin-offering sacrifice, allowing God – Yehovah to reconcile all humanity to Himself.
Unless the lord Messiah Jesus, God’s – Yehovah’s anointed one is the lodestar there is no benefit to any sacrifice on our part. The denial of self must have sprung in a personal outflowing love for our lord Messiah Jesus which will show itself in obedience to his words. We are no longer our own; we are slaves who own nothing but exercise stewardship over what the lord Messiah Jesus gives to us physically and spiritually. We are to live out the lord Messiah Jesus in our lives as living in the world, but not of the world – with its attitudes and motivations that are heavily influenced by the prince of the power of the air – Satan who deceives the whole world.
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 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 for following him.
It is a slander to the cross of God’s – Yehovah’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, who 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 decide to, but you won’t be of any account to him in this life unless you make that decision!”
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 die to self, in recognition that Jesus is my lord, I will never have a relationship with him that he desires in his love for me to have!
Our cross–dying to self is something that comes only with a peculiar relationship of a disciple of Jesus, God’s – Yehovah’s anointed one; it is the evidence that we have denied our right to ourselves, died to self-interests, and made a total 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, but are now his slaves. 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 Yehovah.
Do you know what the third commandment is? “You shall not take the name of Yehovah your God in vain.” (Exodus 20:7) What does that mean? It is not only a question of swearing with your mouth; it is a question of swearing with how you live your life. If you are a follower of the lord Messiah Jesus, are you taking Yehovah’s name in vain? The commandment says, “You shall not take the name of Yehovah 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 take the name of Yehovah in their life or take the name of the lord Jesus upon themselves, who are not prepared to obey their words, the truth.
We must realize that we are always in the presence of God - Yehovah. Let us remember that everything in our lives and conversations is in His presence and may indeed be the thing that 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 my 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? Absolutely
not!
Some Christians want to forget
about sin because it is tiring to ask for forgiveness again and again,
apologizing to Yeovovah 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 – Yehovah’s anointed one Jesus,
described in Romans 8.
Sadly, many followers of the
lord Messiah Jesus identify with the description in Romans 7 as correctly
portraying their failed 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 “a follower
of the lord Messiah Jesus” or as being “in the Messiah”. 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 – die to self. George Muller died to himself, to
his opinions, his preferences, his likes and dislikes, his tastes, and his
will. His one concern, his one idea, was to be approved by his God and Father
Yehovah.
A man must be born from above and become a new
creation in the Messiah Jesus before he can live like this. No man can die to
himself except he has the spirit of the lord Messiah Jesus in him, and then
that man who can say, `I live; yet not I, but God’s – Yehovah’s anointed one
lives in me.'
That attitude of heart and mind is only possible
for one who is regenerate and seeking to be renewed daily, who has received the
spirit of the lord Messiah 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 for the glory of God - Yehovah. He was meant to love Yehovah with all
his heart, with all his being, with all his mind, with all his strength,
looking towards God – Yehovah, and seeking His honor and glory. It is the
self-centered nature in man which God condemns. It is that self-centered nature
[the self-Ish nature] that 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-centered life.
Jesus said: `I have come to do your will, 0 God,'
and he was wholly dependent upon God - Yehovah 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 in any measure.
Paul says: `Let this mind be in you, which was also
in God’s – Yehovah’s anointed one Jesus.'
The cross of the lord Messiah Jesus is the supreme
illustration, and the argument of the New Testament is this; if we say we
believe in the lord Messian 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 – Yehovah’s New
Creation, and he became a sin-offering sacrifice so 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 - Yehovah 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 - Yehovah calls us to
have in the lord Messiah Jesus, His anointed one and He enables us to do so by
the enabling power of His spirit and the enabling power of the spirit of the
one who died for us, so 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 the
same thing, as we have seen before in Romans 12:1-2, especially v2: “that you become
transformed in the renewing of your mind”. Becoming a follower of the lord
Messiah Jesus 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 the enabling power of the spirit of God and
of His son indwelling you.
The lord Messiah 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 professed
followers of the lord Messiah Jesus 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 – Yehovah’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 – Yehovah’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 – Yehovah’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” (Romans 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 defiant, insisting that perfection
is irrelevant to salvation.
He also says you cannot be his
disciple unless you die to SELF, and deny self which is how you take up your
cross daily, and follow him in the 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 His Spirit, it would be impossible for us to live the new
life to which He has called us. If our God asks us to do anything, He will always
provide the enabling power of His spirit to accomplish what He has asked us to
do.
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 - Yehovah 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 spiritually by becoming a new creation in God’s –
Yehovah’s anointed one, Jesus, and not by any human works - efforts or
zealousness, but by God’s – Yehovah’s work transforming us who are new
creations in the lord Messiah Jesus.
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 – Yehovah’s anointed one Jesus.
Paul’s life, heart, and thoughts are all centered
upon God’s – Yehovah’s anointed one, Jesus. That, according to Paul, is how those
seeking perfection. Spiritual or inner
perfection is governed and motivated not by earthly and external things but by
the lord Messiah Jesus, the One who sits at the right hand of the Father, who
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, having
died to self, 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 Yehovah’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 enabling 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 that Jesus had and has (Philippians 2:5), which is the essence of perfection.
Biblical perfection means one’s heart is wholly centered on God - Yehovah. His/her whole life revolves around Yehovah, not on himself/herself. His/her heart and mind are focused on Him and His Kingdom as the goal of life.
We know that we are nowhere near the absolute perfection that we observe in the lord Messiah Jesus, who never failed in carrying out the will of God - Yehovah. This kind of perfection is unattainable at present, but it is what we ought to strive for until the end of our lives or this age.
“We know that when he appears, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). Only then will we become fully like God’s – Yehovah’s anointed one Jesus.
The flesh obscures a vision of God at present and will continue to do so until the day we will be granted to see God’s – Yehovah’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…” (Philippians 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 cross [deny his/her self daily] will find that he will be unable to walk on the difficult road that leads to new age life and, consequently, cannot be the lord Jesus 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 defeats 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 - Yehovah as the center of our lives?
The life of a follower of the lord Messiah Jesus 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 because I did not realize the full 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 to us-ward who believe, according to the working of His mighty power… You have made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins… God - Yehovah, 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 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 concerning 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 that argues: `If, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God - Yehovah 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 - Yehovah had their names written in the Lamb's Book of Life before the foundation of the world, and according to the foreknowledge of God - Yehovah. There is nothing contingent about this. It was “before the foundation of the world” that we were elected (Ephesians 1:4-5). According to God’s – Yehovah’s foreknowledge, He knew all those who would come believe His message of salvation and be totally committed to obeying His will in their lives. 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 – Yehovah’s anointed one Jesus,” “sanctified, set apart by His Spirit.”
When people believe things like that, they can 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. After all, 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 - Yehovah has for us and rest in it (1 John 4: 16) our whole lives will be different.
Ephesians 3:20: He that can 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 – Yehovah’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 - Yehovah 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 the Messiah, to obey 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 – Yehovah’s heart. That is why Paul says, “Be imitators of God - Yehovah, as beloved children” (Ephesians 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 anew, who are regenerated, and who have God - Yehovah 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 – Yehovah 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 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 church or the followers of the lord Messiah Jesus are described as those “belonging to the Way” (Acts 9.2); while the gospel, of which the Messiah is the center, is called “the Way” (Acts 19:9,23; 24:14,22). The churches or people who live faithfully according to God’s – Yehovah’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 total 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 His Spirit daily fashions us so that we will finally be fully conformed to his image (Romans 8:29). God - Yehovah saved us, drawn us to a new birth, and made us new creations in His son precisely so that we may show forth His son’s life and bear His son’s likeness in all we say and do. But this requires that we faithfully follow 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 – a member of the New Humanity 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 - Yehovah 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 – Yehovah’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 (Philippians 2:12,13) through our union with the lord Messiah Jesus. In the process of salvation, the outworking must necessarily follow from his in-working.
What does this “in-working” mean in experiential terms? Does it not mean that God’s – Yehovah’s Spirit is transforming our “inner man” into the likeness of His anointed one in every way? What does our “out-working” of it mean? Does it not mean that we, on our part, conform all our thoughts and deeds to that likeness which God - Yehovah is working in us; which is exactly what “imitating God’s – Yehovah’s anointed one” means?
John epitomizes identification with the Messiah Jesus 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 – Yehovah’s anointed one.
Peter uses the expression “follow in his steps” (1 Peter 2:21). Where the lord Messiah 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 and leadership of God’s Spirit.Hebrews 5:9: being made perfect,
he became the author of age upon age salvation unto all who obey him.
Written
by Oswald Chambers edited and added to by Bruce
Lyon
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