“Truly, truly, I say unto you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death into LIFE.”
“I came that they might have LIFE and have it abundantly.”
“But these things are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have LIFE in his name.”
LIFE is the second thread in our BodyLife trilogy of “L”s. We are speaking, of course, of Jesus’ resurrected LIFE in us. This common term in the evangelical community has lost its cutting edge. The living Life of our resurrected Jesus is literal. Not a mystic concept or theological idea, Jesus dwells in believers, Colossians 1:27, 2Cor. 1:22, Romans 8:1cf.
This truth is absolute! Do we see Jesus in believers or do we hear them pleading for Jesus’ help? No wonder Christianity is viewed as mystic and off the wall! How would you answer this? Valid or not?
God tells us in Hosea 6:6, He just wants us to Love Him. The problem is, we don’t! We don’t love God, or Jesus, or the Holy Spirit. We receive God’s love poured into our hearts when we are born again. Then, we allow worldly concerns and comforts to distract us from the new joy we found in our Lord and Savior. We became Spiritual but so few of us grabbed this reality nurturing it within ourselves. Soon, we lost the sense of being what Spirituality means. Let’s look and listen to the word about being members in His body, i.e., members in the Body of Christ.
A profound reality is ours when born of God and not of the will of man, John 1:13. This is the point Jesus makes to Nicodemus. Being born of God is a supernatural creation within us, 2Cor. 5:17. It is a Spiritual event forming us in a likeness to God Himself, a Spirit, Eph. 5:24, John 4:24.
This reality we must absorb into our personal culture (the living life of Jesus within us) so we can make it part of our BodyLife. It can take years but we must grasp and direct it into our spiritual culture! It is fundamental to being who we are in Christ. Acknowledging the words is not enough. This reality must deeply penetrate! It is walking by faith rather than by sight. It is a matter or our heart, our will, our mindset being saturated with an eternal absolute. It is foundational to what we do. God made His people Spiritual joining our spirit to His, forming an eternal union through Jesus Christ our Lord, 1Cor. 6:17. It is a mystery we understand as we exploit God’s grace by faith entering into His love since we are children in His family and loved.
Paul graphically draws it for us in Colossians: “He (God) delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins,” Col. 1:13. The word translated “transferred” in the Greek is a combination of two words meaning “to come together” and “to set in place” or “anoint.” The verb is in the indicative aorist tense giving the sense that God has not only transferred us from darkness into light but has firmly established us by pounding our stakes permanently into His ground.
“Transferred” is not a wrong word but it is a little weak because we are not only moved out from the kingdom of darkness but firmly established in the Kingdom of Christ. Our attention to this nuance helps us grasp the nature of what has happened when we are born of God and created new in Christ Jesus. We are established in Christ’s kingdom and have also become His personal possession which we will see in another session on redemption.
Refresh the story of Jacob running to escape Esau’s anger in Genesis 28:10cf. God met Jacob the first night on the road to Haran in a dream. Angels were ascending and descending on a ladder from heaven. God made a covenant with Jacob that night and Jacob responded by making God his God. After this, Jacob’s story completely changes. He is faithful to God and never abuses his relationship with Laban even going the extra mile under Laban’s lies, abuse and trickery. How much like the world is Laban! But Jacob relied completely on his new relationship with God and even worked an additional seven years for Rachel, the woman he loved.
Jacob’s new relationship with God was Spiritual. It was based on faith in a covenant made with God. Jacob was totally faithful to his commitment. Jacob endured life’s tests (in faith) and was faithful to his God even while living in the midst of Laban’s idols.
Jacob had the Holy Spirit dwelling with him. We have the Holy Spirit dwelling in us, John 14:17b. This is the new center for our whole being and changes our reality. Being born of God defines us as Spiritual, making our Life eternal and changing our human references from temporal to eternal. Our identity is transferred from carnal-earthy to righteous-Spiritual making us children of God. Jacob was faithful with the Holy Spirit but we are sealed wholly “in Christ” by His Spirit. We have a higher calling than Old Testament saints having in us Christ’s resurrection power. We are called to enter, with our will to choose, into a personal relationship with God in whom we are now Spiritually joined.
This explanation gives a little more clarity for 2Cor. 5:17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” The passage goes on to say, “All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.” In other words, God not only removed us from “darkness” but gave us His BodyLife with capacity and gifts to minister to others as members in His Spiritual Body. Our identity is completely a new Life sustenance including an inheritance coming out of our resurrected Jesus because we are in Him.
Jesus Himself was born of His Father through the virgin Mary. This is why Jesus tells the people from the 5,000 that they must eat the bread that came down from heaven because He came down from heaven to be human born by God through Mary. When we eat His flesh and drink His blood it is spiritual not simply a symbolic communion. We need to nurture the spiritual life God has birthed in us so we can grow grace and knowledge in our Lord Jesus Christ who lives in us by the Holy Spirit. We cannot maintain our spirit/Spiritual life without eating His flesh and drinking His blood.
This escapes our attention because becoming Spiritual doesn’t change our physical obligations in a material world. Our daily routines require human energy and focus distracting our spiritual commitment. Our will to choose God is a prerogative given to us. Our will enables us to choose that which we desire just as Jacob chose to love God.
Our will to choose is a function of our soul including our passions and capacity to reason. In the scriptures this soul-life is translated life from the Greek word psuche, ψυχη. Another Greek word translated life in scriptures is the word zoe, ζωη. This word describes the Spiritual ‘new self’ created in the likeness of God, Eph. 4:24. This is the word used for everlasting life and our new life because we have been birthed into it by God. This zoe life makes us alive in Christ being “dead” without it.
Included in our zoe, ζωη, Life are spiritual senses. Once we are born of God we are equiped with ears to hear spiritually. Note the numerous references Jesus makes to those who have ears to hear Spiritually. We also find this in Hebrews 5:14 where the word for spiritual senses is translated discernment, ‘But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinghuish good form evil.’
The Spiritual zoe life created in us by God through new birth equips us with all the tools and capacities to grow our new life in Christ so that we can become spiritually/Spiritually mature. “A regenerate soul has its spiritual senses opened, and made capable of discerning what belongs to the spiritual world.” This quote from John Fletcher is taken from Christ Manifested which is a small book showing how scripture demonstrates by usage the spiritual senses given those who are birthed by God in Christ. We need to practice using the spiritual eyes and ears God provides in order to grow our faith. Our new personal identity is equipped by God with spiritual/Spiritual understanding.
The psuche soul of the unbeliever is no longer in control since we are established in Christ’s kingdom by new birth. We still have the habit of thinking with our old natural inclinations but we now have a new spiritual awareness with resurrection power to change what we do. This is often referred to as our old nature but this term distorts our thinking since we are given freedom in Christ Jesus and no longer slave to the flesh. We still experience its influence because it is hostile to God and continues to exists but we know longer live in the flesh since God has made us Spiritual. God’s Spirit is dwelling in us, Romans 8, but we can choose to indulge our flesh although it no longer is our “nature” since we are established in Christ.
When we enter into Christ’s zoe Life, we are spiritual babes having much to learn about walking by faith rather than sight. The Life of Christ presents us into eternity even while still wearing flesh and walking on earth’s crust in sandals or shoes. We have already become holy, righteous, sanctified and redeemed when we are born again, 1Corinthinas 1:30. We have the wisdom of Christ with access to His mind, 1Cor. 2:16. Our faith life does not rest on feelings, emotions and intellect but upon the resurrection power over death and this power is gifted in zoe Life to us because we are loved by God.