Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Jesus prayed to the Father: “The glory you have given to me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one,” -John 17:22.
Clearly, God’s glory is seen in physical light piercing the dense, living redwood fence reaching upward into God’s kingdom. Much more than this, His organic glory within each believer connects us with each other as we grow consuming grace. His eternal glory within us often escapes our attention. His glory becomes our glory as our oneness in Him and each other is manifested even in our own flesh, Romans 8:11.
Here is one mystery of Godliness unlocked for the believer who “has ears to hear.” Our soulish tendency is to rely upon self but the testimony of the Lord is sure making wise the simple, Ps. 19. When we “will” open the faith door into our mind and heart, we enter into God’s own sanctuary of counsel, Rev. 3:20. His Truth is light into our soul so we can discern His “good” and become wise, Heb. 5:14. This is where we need to spend personal time! His glory becomes ours since we are His.
God created within us a Spiritual person joined to the Spirit of God, 1Cor. 6:17. This is our identity; it is our nature since we have been born, not of man or the will of the flesh, but of God, John 1:13. We are a new creation made in the image or likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness, Eph. 4:22. This second creation, which scripture describes as being born “again” or born from above, John 3:3, is our entry into God’s eternal kingdom. Once in this position of grace, no one can pluck us out of God’s hand, John 10:28-30.
This righteous reality within us, created or born of God, is Spiritual. It is where God’s Holy Spirit dwells because we are now children of God, Rom. 8:9cf, 1Cor. 3:16, 6:19. Our casual attitude about this amazing event must grieve the loving heart of our Lord Jesus Christ. This defining experience leads us into glories of being in Christ.
Our righteous core, the pith of who we are, once born of God, is the spiritual seed germinated within us for our care and stewardship. We are to grow God’s grace through knowledge and experience under the tutelage of the resurrected God-Man, Jesus, by His own righteous Holy Spirit within us. We have been sealed into this position by Him!
We can easily say this is glorious. It is God working in us and with us so we might overcome finite weaknesses, conforming our own soul into His righteousness. This common thread is in the letters to the churches of Revelation. There is reward to those who are “overcomers,” Rev. 2:1cf.
Jesus Christ is our second Adam providing life rather than death. John tells us these things are written so that by believing in Jesus Christ, God’s Son, we might have life in His name, John 20:31. The believer has Christ’s resurrection life so that we can exercise human will injecting righteousness into our soul with resurrection power by his own spirit/Spirit, 1Peter 1:15cf.
The old nature has been put to death, it no longer controls man’s will but it is still living. The believer’s old nature no longer reigns (Romans 5) although it is alive and hostile to faith. The power of the old nature only exists by our choice to give it life, by choice. We are no longer slaves to its power since we have been set free and released from its grip by redemption through the blood of Jesus and His resurrection. Our call to be Holy is a command in the Greek. We are, here on this earth, just as Jesus is in heaven, 1John 4:17b. We are created in the righteousness of Christ and it will be on display if we walk in His light as we are intended to do. We are expected to accept this gift of God within our soul so that we can be who we are in Christ.
We are now in a position to work righteousness inside out. We have one nature inside us, and it is Jesus Christ. It is who we are by way of a new creation, created in the likeness of God. Jesus explains it to us in John 14:17, “You know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you.” This is the difference between the old covenant and the new covenant, it is the difference between the OT and the New Testament. The Holy Spirit was with believers helping them but now He is in us joined to our spirit and providing love and light to our soul. We are now a Spiritual person bringing the resurrection power of Jesus into our soul through our spirit/Spirit in Christ. We are now bringing righteousness into our soul through our will to be who we are intended to be in Christ.
Adam was created in God’s image but when Adam introduced sin into God’s creation of glory, God removed Himself from our fellowship. Man became reliant on self, the agent of sin. This is the sinful state man now brings into this judged and corrupt world.
We are the object of Satan’s purpose which is building his own kingdom of angels and men through deception and lies. Allowing men and nations to believe man is good serves Satan’s apostate purposes. Satan is the ruler of worldliness but also judged and condemned. It is Satan’s intent to frustrate God’s purpose, to delay his own condemnation. Man’s natural state coming into this world is godlessness and he does not seek after God.
Believers refer to our godlessness as our natural state. Secular man attempts to explain existence in natural ways, using natural terms as being “good.” Man is naturally hostile to God and does not seek or “need” God choosing rather to define a natural explanation for life. The world defines natural to be without God while the opposite is true. God’s way is the natural way.
This worldly natural state is also the place we establish values in our mind and heart to make life choices. We construct values in childhood which become a basis for our life preferences. These values become rooted in our soul influencing default choices. These rooted beliefs protect ourselves in a self dominated competitive system of materialism and self-good. This is the “self” we call our soul. It is where our emotions, reason and will to choose have been trained by culture and education to define who we are. We are subjugated by this self defined person who competes in earthly culture. This natural flesh culture wars against the Spiritual person born within us. But our earthly orientation is no longer who we are once created new in Christ. We are called to put to death this influence in our life. Our life in the flesh is now vulnerable to the resurrection power of righteousness in Christ because He has already nailed it to the cross.
The spirit of man was created in Adam to be in sync with God Himself. When God left sinful man He also left a “God shaped vacuum” in the soul of man. It is clear being created new in Christ Jesus is Spiritual while the values in the soul are still rooted in self dominated world culture. Our God shaped vacuum in our soul has been filled with a new Spiritual man who is Righteous and Holy.
Jesus speaking to Nicodemus explains it is necessary to discern the flesh from the spirit. While God created us new Spiritually, He left to us the love task of bringing our soul into compliance with our new Spiritual man created righteous and holy.
It is “natural” to assume, then, that we have two natures, a new man and an old man. One can take this idea to Romans 7 and easily interpret the passage in this way … until one puts it into the context of Romans 5 through 8. In context it becomes clear Paul is illustrating a principle laid in Romans 5 that law has been replaced by grace and we now stand in grace. His argument is that we no longer can live in sin, “God forbid!” Reckon yourselves dead to sin and alive to God. In our grace state there is no condemnation to those in Christ Jesus. This is how we walk in the light and learn the sinfulness of sin while at the same time exult in the joy of salvation through faith by grace.
In the shadows of these stately redwood giants, exhibiting God’s created life, we stand in awe (above pic). As the light changes, our sense of them changes. The trees don’t change but the light provides different perspectives. Our views can change depending upon our use of light.
The light source doesn’t change but how it is filtered allows us to see things from different points of view. Colors of light are simply light at different frequencies, filtered for effect, but when it is unfiltered it is bright and colorless.
We also marvel at the grandeur of God’s own written word. God reveals the light we need to see His truth. Who He is, is much greater than the words of our printed pages. But He is also alive in us to reveal to us, and in us, His glory according to our own measure of faith. Pray with me that we might grow our faith to consume more of His grace so that we can glorify our Savior and Lord being who He enables us to be in Him. It is a question of filling ourselves with His light and love.
The above John 3:21 scripture is another way of expressing 2Cor. 4:7 where we are described as mere vessels of clay containing God’s treasure. It is all about Him and our willingness to beam His light. In John 3:21, “whoever” is a person who has experienced God’s work both in and through themselves. We are only complete as a person when we participate in doing what is true and His Truth dwells within us.
God’s word contains Jesus Christ Himself. Jesus is the λογοs and the Bible is also the λογοs of God, John 1:1-18, Heb. 4:12. The Holy Spirit takes the things of Jesus and reveals them in us when we both listen and “hear.” We have to listen for Jesus’ knock on our heart’s door and we have to open the door! But when we do …. we start to understand agape love and enter into God’s light.
This marvelous, amazing miracle God performed within each believer, a new creation, created new in the image of God, gives us a spiritual capacity unknown to the unbeliever. This miracle gives us the capacity to come into God’s light, stand in it and purify our soul.
We are glorified by the work of God’s own hand in us. We do not have to wait till we arrive in heaven to experience the glory of God. God’s grace to us, through Jesus our Lord, grows us, making us instruments of His righteousness now while we are visible to those who are not in God’s family, 2Thess. 1:12. It is God’s light revealing His glory. Light is God’s tool expressing the grandeur of His glory. It is God working inside-out. He did the inside work and now we are called to work it out!
For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believer that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. –Romans 6:6-12.
But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. -2Cor. 4:7
The righteous shall live by faith, everything is from God and nothing from us!
‘’So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.’’ - 1Corinthians 10:31.