We introduced the idea of “knowing our self” in the context of agape love in our last discussion. Any absolute knowledge can only come from God who made us in the first place. The totality of self flows out of the creative mind of God and we have the mind of Christ, 1 Corinthians 2:16c.
This is a great setup to talk about having the will to believe what we know. It is one thing to accept something as true, it is quite another to make it a habit in our behavior. It is what we used to call a credibility gap, mentally agreeing to something without our passionate embrace. We are quite willing to agree as long as there is spin room, that is, room to maneuver out of a conflict. This is how presidential approval ratings drop from the 50s to the 30s or 20s.
We are realistic enough to recognize a difference between who we are and who we are intended to be. Perception is generally dictated by our flawed humanity. The designer’s intent, absolute truth, is the missing piece we no longer have within ourselves. We reject absolute qualities because we don’t see them in our natural world. At the same time we know we are limited and lacking. Eternal absolute qualities are contained in Jesus Christ but not in us without Him.
God is an absolute person and His Word describes absolute qualities intended for us. This is the unique nature of agape love. It is defined by absolute devotion to another without regard for self. Our natural world is built upon relative values because of our frail humanity. In Christ, we can segue from what is natural/relative to what is spiritual/absolute. Love permits us to move from where we are to where we are designed to be, in Christ Jesus. Knowledge of ourselves in Christ needs our passionate embrace to make His/our eternal absolutes articulated in our experience.
The credibility gap is the difference between the person of Jesus and our personal experience. John’s tells us, “as he is (Jesus) so also are we in this world”. Credibility gap? This is a vital point in the gospel message.
Who we are in Christ is different than who we are in the flesh. “Aye, there’s the rub”, to quote the Dane of Denmark. The scripture’s claim for life is out of human reach even for a believer. So we rationalize a “two nature” theory to accommodate the gap. This theory distorts the truth by being partially correct. The scripture actually means what it says and says what it means! As Jesus Christ is, right now at the right hand of the Father, so are we right now in the flesh.
This is not, as some will argue, a legal standing before the judge. This is not the robes of Christ’s righteousness covering up who we really are. It is clear, this is who we are “in this world” living in our sinful flesh!
So then, the question arises, what “self” do we accept? The self we know and experience everyday or the “self” defined by scripture for the believer in Christ … even though it is different than our experience?
Lets review our spiritual anatomy by “Drilling Down” in 2Corinthians 5:17. In a separate discussion we will do a similar Drill Down on Galatians 2:20. Memorize both of these verses, if you have not already. They contain fundamental gospel principles.
1. 2 Corinthians 5:17. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”
Let’s go directly to the word creation. This word used scripturally, according to Vine, is “The consequence of the creative hand of God”. This is distinct from something made by the hand of man. Being born again is the “consequence” or product of God’s own creative hand within our already existing life. The word for creation is also the word used for birth, meaning coming into existence by creation.
Let’s go back to the anyone Paul is talking about. The Greek pronoun used is a non-gender interrogatory meaning “what-ever person”, who ever it might be. If they are created by the hand of God in Christ they have been “born” new.
So, let’s go back and rephrase what it is saying, if anyone whomsoever has been brought into existence by the literal hand of God, that person has been born with a brand new life and the old things are no more.
But notice this verse starts with “Therefore”. Why is this therefore there for? The “therefore” drives us back into the context which provides rich meaning to the verse itself. For brevity’s sake lets go to verse 14, “for the love of Christ controls us”. This takes us back to our previous part 1 of this In Christ discussion, where we observed knowledge is itself interrelated to love. Here, we find, agape love lies behind (1) the death of Jesus, (2) His resurrection and (3) His life in us. Look at verse 16, “From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh, (pause and think about that for a moment!). Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer.”
We have this absolute quality of agape love in play not only with knowledge flowing to us but also with the very essence of our new born life. “His love controls us” by the grace extended to us because of our agape relationship. And on top of that, we are to view everyone including Jesus Christ from this new capacity to understand absolute truth in agape love.
This is strong language. It moves directly to our point, since we are created new, born again, we are to no longer view ourselves from a human point of view. We are, rather, to live out of our birthed life in Christ which is the essence of who we now are! We are to see things from an eternal point of view where we are now seated with Christ in heavenly places, Eph. 2:6.
This absolute quality of agape love flows to and into the believer providing an eternal absolute reality beginning to be processed into the human soul. Our need to create a “two nature” theory is to satisfy a human point of view we are admonished not to do.
This is not symbolic or legal rhetoric as some of our theologians suggest. Our life in Christ is not only a positional title, seen as legal status, it is as real as is our faith. It is as real as the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ!
This leads us into one final 5:17 Drill Down point. Pastor John Fletcher (1729 – 1785) wrote a series of letters to a parishioner about the capacity to hear God. It was published as Christ Manifested after his death. In this small paperback, Fletcher documents, from both Old Testament and New Testament, the capacity of those “in Christ” to empirically experience the person of God.
He points to the Greek word for discernment used in Hebrews 5:14 and Philippians 1:9 speaking to a spiritual sense acquired by believers. He equates it to our five natural senses but on a spiritual level. Greek lexicons by Moulton and Bauer both agree (αισθανομαι) is speaking of a spiritual sense organ.
This spiritual sense organ is brought into existence within every believer created new in Christ by the hand of God. We have a capacity nonexistent in the non-believer. It is something the angels look upon in wonder. It is ours as “children of God”, as members of His body, it is beyond our comprehension let alone within our ability to grasp even with the mind of Christ. This gift of grace in each believer provides us individually with personal access to God almighty, it is extraordinary, unbelievable and true!!
We are given the capacity by God’s grace to accept miracles in ourselves we have yet to experience. Read carefully what God’s word actually says and process it into the soul with expectation before we experience it. Faith is experiencing something we don’t yet totally grasp. It is the evidence of what is not seen, not the thing itself. Faith is the substance of what is not seen.
Accepting ourselves in Christ is believing all that is declared in scripture to be true and acting upon the veracity of our Savior who made all things by the power of His own word.
Passionately embrace what we know to be true so that its reality is demonstrated in our experience. Amen!