We took a look at this verse last time as an introduction to faith. It suggests by context both living and walking are different, living does not necessarily equate to walking. The scriptural record is clear, our faith links the resurrection power of Jesus to both living and walking. Faith not only establishes us in righteousness but also provides the power to bring Jesus into our very soul so that we can live and walk in the Spirit.
The question becomes, why do we want to move mountains and mulberry trees? Faith not only moves mountains, it does much more, it makes us righteousness. The task of making us righteous is greater than moving mountains and this is exactly what we are called to do. We have been given the power to be righteous by faith.
We also considered the flawed human perspective of judging eternal things from a human perspective. Eternality is not a natural condition reasoned by created minds. The natural man cannot grasp God’s things without God’s Spirit, 1Cor. 2:10ff. We need spiritual discernment to see and understand God’s eternal truth. But this is impossible in our natural created state. The Eternal Way and Means Committee met. They gave us both the way and the means to enter into righteousness and to grasp eternal things. God made what was impossible possible!
BORN of GOD John 1:13
Being born of God provides the power to be righteous through faith. The miracle of natural life is replaced by the seed of God’s resurrected life. This life, His life, is creating new life liken to raising people from death. It is replacing natural life with something super natural. It is supernatural! This sounds way out and it is … but it is also the way God has chosen to bring us into Himself.
You may hear from the pulpit there is a “change” in a person who is born again. This is a little misleading. While change takes place, the change is brand new life! It is not changing a bad person into a good person or making reforms to a person’s existing character. It is, in fact, birthing a brand new person while leaving the old one still breathing with old habits, likes and dislikes!
Being “Born of God” is just that, born with God’s divine nature, being spiritually united with Him. We are born a second time, spiritually! This is who we are. We are actually born a Spiritual person just as God is a Spiritual person. God’s absolute righteous reality is our reality. We become like Him, holy and purely righteous … spiritually! This is our new identity.
Our soul is separate. It is not spiritual but is connected to our spirit. There are many references alluding to this separation, Hebrews 4:12, 1Thess. 5:23, 1Corinthians 6:17. A confusion arises out of our temporal experience of feeling.
Feelings are deceptive as indicators of truth. We discipline feelings over time to make them reliable but it is a painful process. Feelings are what babies use to keep themselves from getting burned. Babes in Christ also have not learned to discern who we are in Christ from our soul. Our text of truth is the scripture and our compliance trains our soul, Hebrews 5:14, through our spirit/Spirit.
The word of God reveals truth so we can not only live in truth but also walk in truth. It is important we place God’s truth in our heart. The Holy Spirit will take the truth, hidden in our heart, Ps 119:11, and use it to instruct our soul. God’s word is His expression of truth and reveals to our soul His righteous will.
Our soul is also the center of human values, preferences and desires. Our natural orientation for living is rooted in the discipline we have brought to the heart and mind of our soul. This “natural,” old orientation rooted in self is not spiritual. It is where we have formed habits for personal comfort and it is the seat of our moral structure. We must teach our soul’s human structure to become God’s spiritual structure so that it becomes our default resource.
This self-centered soul will test our faith. It is the antithesis of righteousness because it relies on self. Our soul is spiritually dead and hostile to God but it is also subject to who we are in Christ. The only way we can bring our soul into the righteousness God created by union with our spirit is by faith. Faith comes from spiritually hearing God’s word in our heart. This is why it is so important, not only to listen to God’s word, but to drill down and capture its meaning within our mind and heart. “He that hath ears, let him hear.”
At another time we will dwell on the heart’s importance and see how much stronger the heart is than our mind. We will also find that the spiritual strength of belief rules the effectiveness of our mind. It is critical we build a spiritual structure out of God’s truth to rule our mind.
We are merely vessels of clay containing Christ who is our treasure, 2Corinthians 4:7ff. The choice is ours. We have been given grace! We can invest the treasure of life in our vessel of clay or we can hide it in the ground and indulge in pleasures of our mind and an “old nature” or we can begin making spiritual investments in God’s truth and send eternal returns into our heavenly account.
Here is a trilogy of gospel verses. Lets plow them into our soul so they nurture our mind and the Holy Spirit can release into our heart the power of their truth. We probably already know them but it isn’t enough to know just the words. Knowing the words is our starting point. Consider making these three verses arrows for a gospel quiver to use for personal ministry. Drill down favorites verses to add to your quiver.
Verse 1, John 3:16. (These words are the words of Jesus Himself),
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
Verse 2, 2Corinthians 5:17.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
Verse 3, Galatians 2:20.
I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.
This trilogy of verses will equip us to share the effective message of God’s grace and instruct us concerning whom God intends us to be. We need to give percolation time to these verses so the Spirit can plow righteous conditioning deep into the heart and mind of our soul.
Being “born again” (John 3:3) is not a symbolic suggestion. Jesus did not suggest to Nicodemus that he change his perspective or philosophic view of life. Jesus is speaking of a literal Spiritual birth. This is what the second verse in our trilogy tells us, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation,” 2Corinthians 5:17. The Greek word for creation here conveys the Hebrew meaning when God created Adam and breathed into him the breath of life, Genesis 2:7. The step from believing to having eternal life in John 3:16 is literal birth by God, John 1:13. God birth’s within us is a righteous creation but does not create a new soul.
The first verse in our trilogy is John 3:16. Belief opens our heart’s door to an eternal salvation flowing out of God’s love through grace into us. The Greek word for belief is the same root stem for faith. Belief is the verb form while faith is the noun for the Greek pisteuo and pistis, respectively.
Our third trilogy verse brings in the death issue referring to our “old nature.” Paul says it straight in Romans 6:11, “So you must also consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”
I have been crucified with Christ, it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
The idea that Jesus did not actually die is a desperate argument. They actually mummified his body by wrapping and sealing it, John 19:38-40. As Christ died so also we must put to death our soul and provide it with resurrection life, 2Corinthinas 4:11, Romans 8:11.
The sum of these three verses gives us a summary view of our human gospel experience. In John 3:16 we have a believing faith which is our response to God’s grace allowing us to make Spiritual choices. In 2Corinthians 5:17 we have God’s new creation placing Christ in us as well as placing us in Christ. Not only are all things new but the old has passed away. This would seem to include our “old nature,” releasing us from the domination of natural things. This meaning is also conveyed in the term “redemption.” In the third verse, Galatians 2:20, we have the resurrected life of Christ manifested in our flesh through the indwelling Holy Spirit, Romans 8:11.
It is important to grasp these verses collectively because they contain another gospel principle. Faith is both organic and structural.
We witness both of these phenomena in natural daily life, a pattern of things eternal. Everything is orderly constructed and designed for life. Here is where we begin to acquire our eternal perspective of natural things. Faith has an inherent quality of structure defining a tangible object for human belief. Faith also has a dynamic quality, the Holy Spirit of God, engaging the human spirit, 1Corinthinas 6:17.
In John 3:16 we have we have the human object of Jesus producing unnatural consequences by demonstration of power and authority over natural things. Believing is an organic exercise of our will to submit to God’s consequences of structure.
In 2Corinthians 5:17 we have the creation of new life which yields to a new set of grace rules replacing the old ones under law, Romans 5. This new structure is contained in the body of Christ (the church) including our individual membership, 1Corinthinas 12:27. This is a spiritual body requiring us to live “spiritually” because God is a Spirit, John 4:24.
In Galatians 2:20 both the structure and organic function of Christ is expressed through the orderly plan of grace expressed as a replacement of law with God’s power, Christ living in us by faith.
Integrate these three verses together and see how God’s word joined to itself grows into a definition of what God’s eternity looks like. Knowing this defines for us who we are in Christ. Here are two more verses complimenting this discussion with a little fuller meaning.
“Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted (organic) and built up (structure) in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.” -Col. 2:6.
“But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not blood nor of the will of the flesh nor the will of man, but of God,” -John 1:12.
This is very important as we begin to understand Spiritual things from God’s reality. We must have a right view of who we are in Christ and who Christ is in us. Then we begin to understand not just our “position” in Christ but the eternal reality of who we already are in the flesh because we are already in his body and individual members of it, 1Corinthians 12:27.
If you are in Christ, Christ is in you because you have been born not of the will of men, but of God. Being born of God is a high privilege, consider it! But it is also a calling and a responsibility! Ponder who you are in Christ and understand that our God is a consuming fire!
“Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believer in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” -1Peter 1:8