“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”
Faith is one of the most pivotal elements in the life of God’s people since it determines destiny and qualitative growth in our created existence of grace. We are Drilling Down faith.
When I was a boy, we drove our 1935 two-tone grey Plymouth through a redwood tree. They had a one way road through one of these behemoths in northern California. A few redwoods are still alive today “who” were just beginning life when Jesus was born. It is hard to imagine how massive these ancients become. I wonder how large we can grow our faith?
Like the redwoods. our faith grows under the invisible hand of God. It grows slowly because it needs established, tested love. How long does it take emotional love to grow strong into rooted devoted love? Faith takes seasoning as well. Established faith is vital in God’s grace culture.
Faith and grace are pith ingredients of Spiritual relationships with Jesus Christ our Savior. Love is center and enlarges the capacity of both grace and faith. Both essentials meld together because our indwelling Holy Spirit seasons within us our implanted logos (λογοs). Jesus Christ is the λογοs of God, our living stone (1Peter 2:4).
God creates His life source within us and implants His (λογοs) logos seed into our soul soil. We are united to God in Jesus Christ our Lord so we can brew our life into His. Yielding into His grace is like opening the door of our heart. The Jesus λογοs pours love into the grace in which we stand giving us the capacity to respond into His living righteousness. This is faith. It is a relationship! Grace produces our faith and we grow using it. We must learn how to consume God’s grace.
Faith flows righteousness out from God’s love through our heart’s submissive prayer into our degenerate soul creating His life. There is an individual identity in our divine union glorifying God within our redeemed life, His life. He engages our life in divine love by our faith. It is a mystery to our finite minds but an absolute reality experienced in our personal souls. Faith glorifies God because it is our heart of trust and dependence. Redwoods simply render a conscience reminder of God making possible the impossible through His gift of faith in us.
We Drilled Down, in our last discussion, the two verses above observing faith’s relationship to resurrection power producing righteousness in our life. Salvation saves us from sin and redeems ownership out from sin. God’s resurrection power is the “dynamite” (δυναμις) power creating righteousness both imputed and real, Phil 1:11. In Christ we are righteous and it is the blood of Jesus through His resurrection power keeping us righteous in Him.
Righteousness is real and imputed. We are in reality Spiritually united into Christ and serve as His earthly abiding place. We were, infact, created righteous even as imputed righteousness is unquestionaby working in our natural soul. We are to put to death with resurrection power the natural flesh within us by His Spirit, Zac. 4:6, Romans 8:13, Col. 3:5cf.
We place too heavy of an emphasis on imputed righteousness distorting who we are (created) in Jesus Christ our Lord. Being partakers of His divine nature through promises is not imputed, it is a holy living reality. His living water bubbling up within us is not imputed water. The life of
Christ in us is not imputed, it is absolute and real as is God Himself.
In Christ Jesus our living Lord, we already have eternal life. Not ony that, but according to Paul, we have the mind of Jesus, i.e., we have within us a divine capacity to do the will of God, 1Cor. 2:16. It is a matter of cultivating righteous desires and making righteous choices since we have been created Spiritually righteous in the image of Lord Christ Jesus.
CHOICES
One of the subtle doles piecing the believer’s world is new desires. Being created in Jesus Christ brings new wants into our world of choices. Each believer is different but each brings a new spiritual thirst and capacity for faith. Jesus Himself, through the Holy Spirit, baptizes each new believer into a grace culture of love providing forgiveness and peace, fruits and gifts, Galatians 5:22, Romans 12:6cf.
The old Adam, our natural nature, has been replaced with a new Adam, Jesus Christ Himself. The old has passed away and the new has come bringing a new Spiritual capacity to discern and understand. Adam had it before he sinned but lost it becoming Spiritually dead. In Adam we are without Chirst Jesus, depraved, ruled by things, pride and reason. In Christ we are born of God, literally entering into God’s righteous domain of absolutes, some of which are gifted in us by God’s grace.
RIGHTEOUS CHOICES IN CHRIST
Our natural state in Christ Jesus is righteousness. Through the redemption blood of Jesus, God is able to create a new righteous life born out of Himself, not out of flesh but born out of God Himself. This is what John tells us in the first chapter of his gospel. Jesus describes this new birth to Nicodemus as a Spiritual birth, not of the flesh. This Spiritual birth is describe in 1Corinthians 6:17 as a union of our spirit with God’s Spirit just as a man and woman are joined in physcial union. In Christ this is our natural state, righteousness in Jesus Christ.
Our Spiritual state is not to be confused with our soul state which has been conditioned in the self satuated need to survive and compete in a ravinous worldly culture.
Paul explains in Romans 5 how our old Adam in the flesh has been replaced by the second Adam of Jesus Christ when we are Spiritually born. We are freed from the old Adam because it has been put to death and we are made alive in Jesus Christ. The righteousness of Christ has been been imputed to us so that the reign of sin is abolished in our soul. We are born of God Spiritually becoming a righteous Spiritual person while our soul is covered by the imputed righteousness of Jesus as we are being sanctified. We are by a created nature righteous as a Spiritual person and we are training our heart, mind and will to become what Spiritually we already are in Christ.
Ephesians 4 describes putting on our living in the new man while putting off the old man. This transitions us from habits and passions of our old natural world to God’s culture of grace by ‘’renewing the spirit of our mind,’’ 4:23. Greek scholarship agrees this renewing in the ‘’spirit of our mind’’ is the divine work of the Holy Spirit. We are not charged with renewing our mind, it is God constantly renewing ‘’the spirit of our mind’’ so we can easily put on the new man while putting off the old. It is as simply as taking off an outer garment, like a rain coat, and putting on Christ’s righteousness, the inner garment we all ready have. We put on the new from the inside out and take off what is already dead on the outside. It is like the catapellar shedding his skin for his butterfly wings.
This brings us back to the λογοs (logos) of God. Jesus created His life in us by birthing us out of God. Our first birth was out of Adam. This second creation birth in Christ is being ‘’born again.’’ Peter describes it as an imperishable seed through the living and abiding λογοs of God, 1Peter 1:23. John depicts Jesus on the earth as the λογοs of God (John 1:14) but the written scripture is also the λογοs of God (Hebrews 4:12). These meanings blend into the gospel’s organic character, it is living and true!
The Holy Spirit reveals to us Jesus Christ, in our heart and mind, through the written word. Our new birth includes a Spiritual capacity to hear with Spiritual ears God’s truth (discernment, Heb. 5:14). It is one of the Holy Spirit’s tasks to reveal the risen Jesus to us through our written word, John 16:13, 1Corinthians 2:10.
In order for the imperishable living seed (1Peter 1:23) to grow within us producing fruit and faith requires nurturing with the living λογοs word which the Holy Spirit uses to instruct and grow our faith.
This is why we provide scripture verse “Drill Downs.” It is one thing to memorize scripture. It is quite another to have their meaning cached in our hearts for the Spirit of our Living God to illuminate into our souls.
In June, Lord willing, we will do a Drill Down on Galatians 2:20 in combination with 2Corinthians 5:17. There will be no Grace Notes for May since we will once again be traveling to Ethiopia and using this Drill Down for a training workshop. If you don’t already have these two verses memorized, memorize them in May so you will be prepared to grapple with their message in a June Drill Down.
Doing spiritual exercises in the word gives the Holy Spirit the meat and potatoes to nurture our Spiritual growth. Nurturing is a work He continues to do because we have been baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus, Phil 1:6. Doing Spiritual ‘’workouts” in our soul gives us the ability to make healthy righteous choices in Christ. In other words, shedding our caterpillar skin for butterfly wings.
You and I are part of a special group of people. We have been called to be the Lord Jesus Christ’s Body in a glorified inheritance to be revealed in a very short time. We are in the end times. We need to take advantage of remaining opportunities to learn spiritual lessons before we are called to glory giving an accounting. Boot camp is almost over.
You and I are righteous if we are in Christ. We are called to be who we are! If we live in the Spirit, we need to walk in the Spirit, Galatians 5:25.
The way to love our Lord Jesus Christ is to consume all the grace we can by faith acquire, seek the Lord while He may be found, submit to His revealed plan and purpose as individuals and members of His Body. This is our task as believers. It requires discipline and there is an urgency! The white linen worn by the Bride (us) is the righteous deeds of the saints, fine linen, bright and pure, Rev. 19:8.
Now unto Him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, Ephesians 3:20.