His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.
– 2Peter 1:3-4.
We have been talking about what we look like as a person after being re-birthed by Jesus into a Spiritual person. This above passage is an excellent summation of the why and how “to be” whom God has created us to be in Christ Jesus. The hinge point, in this above summation, is our knowledge of Him. Through this portal are granted all things that pertain to life and godliness. This is the one portal that should be at the top of our to do list!
We will all agree knowledge of Jesus comes through His written word and prayer. But perhaps a fuller understanding of this thought is the Spiritual interaction within us, and, or the participation of our Spiritual engagement in this dark world. We need to involve Jesus in our daily setting of priorities of both time and energy. We might call this activity, fellowship! Afterall, we are engaged to Him as a bride; we are to be practicing oneness with Him in everything we do!
Some things, we know about our new-born self because our evangelical church tells us, but some of these same things do not pass the scriptural test of Truth. One of these “teachings” is that in Christ we have two natures. This is one of those half-truths distorting reality. I really like Paul’s term “a jar of clay.” “A jar of clay” really helps visualize the reality of our dead “old nature.” Scripture defines our “in Jesus” identity, our inside identity, with divine resurrection power!
The person birthed in Christ is newly created a spiritual person. God has erased the power of sin in this new person through Jesus’ gift of Life with resurrection power. This same resurrection power is living within our jar of clay; our body contains the Holy Spirit of God; we are in Him as His holy children; He is in us!
We operate our new life in Jesus by faith because we are now in the grace culture of divine providence. Now, we need to learn by doing Spiritually. Now, we learn living within God’s grace culture, penetrating into our physical world, rescuing us “from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.”
Oh, we still have sinful desire, but now, we also have Jesus’ “divine power.” We are now in His category of “overcomers” and are “friends” of Jesus. Allowing God’s grace to penetrate our finite, temporal culture with His agape fellowship, is priority one!
Faced against His resurrection power, sin is squashed! We are operating in God’s grace by faith. The “old nature” is alive, for sure, but as the scripture says, it is Spiritually dead! It has no power over us … unless we choose to operate our life in this flesh rather than His Spirit! This is foolish and can be very costly!!!
We must learn Spiritual living, being overcomers of fleshly distractions. The Spirit of God is mindful of our “fleshly needs,” like eating, drinking and, oh yea, …breathing; He is on top of it! He is our strength… as we consume His grace!
If we continue operating in our own strength, we prevent His resurrection power. This is what sin is; it distorts, it deceives, it compromises, it tarnishes, making white turn into dark grey and negates our personal resurrection power in Christ Jesus! This is the exact opposite of what Peter reveals in the above scripture because we are in the Spirit if Jesus lives within us! Jesus has begun a “good work” in us and will continue working His resurrection power until the “day of Jesus Christ.” Faith is the victory that overcomes the world. Faith is up to us!
Faith is intentionally living in the Spirit, trusting completely in our union with Jesus and God our Father. We live in God and God is living in us! Sin will have no dominion over us when we are in God’s culture of grace. We are His children!
“You, however, are not in the flesh but in the spirit, if in fact the spirit of God dwells in you. – Romans 8:9a.
Spiritually discern and practice living in the Spirit of God! We have become so used to dwelling in distant heaven, in our mind’s eye, as a future hope! We tend to serve our flesh in this spiritual way by not being the overcomers whom we are called and equipped to be! We already are equipped with a spiritual soul and resurrection power within our jar of clay; grace provides spiritual eyes and ears!
It is thru faith we see, hear and possess the land! Our land is Spiritual in Christ; how can we not possess what God puts into our Hearts and hands? Have we no Spiritual integrity? Do we NOT believe Jesus and His Father’s word!
Our American culture tells us to take care of our own self! “If we don’t, who will? Our early fathers believed in hard work and this is how we built today’s America. We need to follow their example spiritually! We need to consume God’s gift of grace, His agape love and resurrection life, while in flesh; we are still being called to do so!
As we approach this Christmas season, let’s focus on the cross in the context of His Life In Us. The cross is about dying and being redeemed thru His sacrifice but the Gift He is breathing into us every day is the GIFT of His Resurrection Life.
God’s agape love to us is being expressed in grace so that we may glorify God in the flesh we are wearing here on this earth. But on top of this, He creates within us the capacity to participate in His divine life. Not only does He pay for our sin, He invites us to enter into His divine LIFE and become like He is with His glory and excellence … while in our flesh!
His death made possible our sin debt payable but His gift of life and godliness leads us into His divine nature by His divine power; it is eternal life! His desire is for us to live in His fulness, of His fullness He gives us, grace upon grace.
Our knowledge of Him comes thru our fellowship with Him; it is this He implores from us in Revelation 3:20:
“Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into Him and eat with him, and he with me.”
Jesus is speaking to the church at Laodicea in this passage. We are His church! He is asking us to open our heart’s door for fellowship with Him, one on one! We have already received His forgiveness and justification. Now, He is knocking on each individual heart door to receive Him in fellowship, so that, we will get to know Him and the fellowship of His sufferings, thereby granting us all things
pertaining to life and godliness.
Our self-attempts easily corrupts our faith, killing our spiritual discernment. We still have a lot of flesh in our person after being gifted with God’s eternal life. Some of it is on the surface, in our behavior, but most of it is deeply rooted in the unconsciousness of our soul-self. Those sinful prejudices contained in our soulish person rise to the surface as Jesus begins His spiritual work within our fleshly container but, the law of the Spirit of Life has set us free from the law of sin and death.
In order to grow into Spiritual maturity and provide for a future, we need to be assertive and put in place those things serving our long-term Spiritual interests! This is necessarily true, but we can too easily rely on our own strength.
Spiritually, our task is trusting in God thru Jesus who is our only open door. Physical work disciples our soul just as wisdom leads to a knowledge of God. Faith enables our knowledge of God by allowing Him to do His work in us. He has already done His work on the cross and His resurrection from the dead. Now, Jesus wants to take His work into us, applying it to our own personal soul.
The Bible says, reckon yourselves dead unto sin and alive unto God because the law of the Spirit has set us free from the law of sin and death! We are to walk within the law of the Spirit so that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
He is in heaven right now, making intercession for us as our High Priest. This is the sovereign God of the universe offering to finite mankind the gift of His ongoing Life … as we walk by faith!
We will conclude this discussion of being whom we are created to be, “to be or not to be,” next time as we review Jesus washing of Peter’s feet in the upper room.
What is the “Law of the Spirit?” Why did Jesus wash the disciple’s feet?