THE SPIRIT OF MAN
THE SPIRIT OF MAN
Central
to the entire message of the Gospel is the nature of man and the spirit of man.
AS a parent with a new born baby you begin to search the face, the body and the
mannerisms of the growing child for the likeness of yourself in the child. You
see this trait forming and that mannerism, this expression that looks just like
mom and that one that is just like dad.
Just
so, when we are born again, our Father in heaven begins to look for His
likeness in us and the standard of measure is His Son. But what was it about
His Son that he looks for in us?
The
Bible tells us that Jesus was born in the likeness of sinful flesh saying:
“Since
then the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of
the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of
death that is the devil…” Hebrews 2:14
So the
idea here is that Jesus had to come into this world not as Adam before the
fall, but in the likeness of mankind after the fall and that God in Him would
not only conquer sin and defeat Satan, but in doing so He would also reconcile
the world to Himself and forge a pathway of salvation for us.
Being
born into this world as both God and man, Jesus was a Spirit, because He was
the Son of God, but that Spirit was housed in a body of flesh which made Him
the Son of Man. IN fact Jesus said in Hebrews 10:5:
“Therefore
when He comes into the world He says, “Sacrifice and offering Thou hast not
desired, but a body thou has prepared for Me…”
Do you
get the picture here? As God, Jesus was of the Spirit of God, but as the Son of
Mary, He was given a body to dwell in in which to overcome sin as we overcome
and then to die in the place of all of those animal sacrifices as the true Lamb
of God who alone could take away the sins of the world.
And
what was the first thing that Jesus did when He rose again and went back to
heaven? Well, first of all He offered Himself to the Father as first fruits of
the resurrection, He sprinkled His blood upon the Mercy seat in the Most Holy
Place and then sat down at the right hand of the Father and once having been
glorified with the glory that He ever had with the Father, (according to His
final prayer in John 17) He then sent down that same Spirit that was in Him, to
us so that we might overcome even as He overcame. And ever since then HE has operated
as our High Priest in the Most Holy Place. Heb. 9:6-9, for only the High Priest
could enter the Most Holy Place and that only once a year. Jesus is that High
Priest.
Jesus
had prayed in John 17:5 saying: “And now glorify Thou Me together with Thyself
Father with the glory which I ever had with Thee before the world was.” And
then in John 17:22 He then says:
“And
the glory which Thou hast give Me, I have given to them that they may be one
just as We are one, I in them and Thou in Me that they may be perfected in
unity that the world may know that Thou didst send Me and didst love them even
as Thou didst love Me.” John 17:22, 23.
To put
this in plain English the first Adam was in the image of God in the flesh. He
was a spirit who God then prepared a body for him to dwell in. God formed the
physical man out of clay, and then breathed His Spirit into Him and Adam became
a living being in the image of His Father God.
When
Adam sinned and chose another god, he forfeited his God given spirit and his
spirit died, so to speak instantly (Being separated from God) and he ceased to
be in the image of God. Notice if you will that Adam was given conditional
immortality which if he had continued to obey, he could have eaten from the
tree of life and lived forever, but he chose to sever that connection with the
Spirit of God and thus he became the father of all mortal humans. We find this
in Gen. 3:22-24.
So what
did Jesus come here to do? He came here to restore that Spirit of God in us
that Adam lost in the fall, so that living by that new spirit in us, we might
overcome as He overcame and that we might grow up bearing the spiritual traits
of our heavenly Father once again.
Remember
that when Adam sinned, he was banned from the tree of life so that he would not
become immortal as a sinner. So God in His love and according to the plan of
redemption (that He had worked out with the Father before creation), sent His
Son to restore to us that eternal spirit that Adam had lost. Jesus is that tree
of life and that is why He could say to Martha at Lazarus’s tomb: “I am the resurrection and the life; he who
believes in Me shall live even if he dies and everyone who lives and believes
in Me shall never die.” John 11:25
Jesus
said in John 10:10: I came that they might have life and might have it
abundantly.” And John said in 1 John 5:12:
“He who
has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the
life.
Notice
here that John did not simply say “life.” He says that through the Son we have
THE LIFE. That is to say that He has restored to us the Spirit that Adam lost
in the fall.” This is THE LIFE that must be restored to us through the process
of salvation.
We are
born into this world as children of fallen Adam, but through Christ we are born
again into the Kingdom of God’s dear Son in order that we might be conformed to
His image (Romans 8:29) and to accomplish this He has given us His life giving
Spirit. God has planted eternity in us. He has planted His eternal Spirit in us
and if we have the Son we have THE Life.
Now to
further drive home the point Paul reminds us of a diagram of how salvation
works saying to us: “Do you not know that you are a temple of God and that the
Spirit of God dwells in you?” 1 Cor. 3:15
This is
a major clue as to the nature of our salvation, for now Paul is drawing from
the temple or Tabernacle of Moses and as David says: Thy way Oh Lord is in the
Sanctuary.” So remember if you will that when Jesus came to earth, there was
nothing in the Most Holy Place in the temple in Jerusalem. The Ark of the
Covenant was no longer there and neither was the presence of God. Ezekiel
records the departure of the Spirit of God from Israel and it did not return
again until it came back to us in the Person of Jesus Christ. He came to
restore His Spirit to mankind and that is the core issue, the main dish of what
salvation is all about.
So in
the tabernacle of Moses we see the nature of man as God intends him to be. The
outer court represents our physical body. The Holy Place represents our soul (Our
fleshly mind) mind and what it must feed on in order to be restored to Christ’s
likeness. We must have the light of the Holy Spirit (Menorah) as He sheds His
light upon the Word (The Table of Showbread) and we must have prayers that are
mixed with the incense of the Holy Spirit (thus the reason for praying in the
Spirit) for He intercedes for us with groaning too deep to be understood.
But now
in the Most Holy Place we see that God’s desire was to place His Spirit in us
once again and this is what happens in the New Birth. When we receive Jesus,
the True Lamb of God, we receive His Spirit and we become temples that are no
longer empty in the Most Holy Place (Our spirit) as the Most Holy place was
empty when Jesus came the first time.
In
Jesus Christ we have received THE LIFE and that life is eternal and cannot die
and this is the life in us that we must learn to live by even to the point of
dying to self in order that Christ might live in us. When we are born again,
our spirit is saved, our soul is in the process of being saved as we choose to
live by the Spirit, and our body will be saved at the resurrection. This is the
order of our salvation. Our spirit being instantly saved is justification, our
soul being saved as a process of living by the Spirit is called sanctification and
our body being saved at the resurrection is called glorification.
Once we
finally understand the true spiritual nature of our new birth then we can
finally understand what Paul is really saying in Gal. 2:19- 21.
“For
through the Law I died to the Law that I might live to God. I have been
crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me;
and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who
loved me and delivered Himself up for me. I do not nullify the grace of God;
for if righteousness comes through the Law, then Christ died needlessly.”
Jesus
came to replace a powerless Law with His indwelling Holy Spirit and to do this
He had to also administer a new priesthood, one which came before the Law and
that priesthood is the Melchizedek Priesthood. This is why, when we are born
again we do not become children of Moses, but of Abraham, who lived before the
Law and under the priesthood of Melchizedek.
Jesus
also came to bring us this Melchizedek priesthood in which by nature there is a
change of Law also, because what the Law could not do, weak as it was in the
flesh, Jesus did. He overcame sin and then He offered us the same Spirit by
which He overcame to us so that we also may walk in newness of life.
If we
truly understood the Gospel we would stop preaching the Law and we would begin
teaching people to live by the Spirit of Christ and we would begin to bear the
fruit of the Spirit and to love one another even as He loves us… and the love
of God is not some flimsy do it yourself kind of love, but the very foundation
of God’s Government and the foundation of all truth and when we walk in it by
His Spirit then we will begin to reflect the nature of God’s Son.
Contrary
to what some think, our goal in Christ was never to keep the Law, but to be
conformed to His image and that image is something far greater than the Law
could ever produce. The Law simply points out that we are sinners deserving
only death and we have three choices”
1.
We can try to rectify the situation by keeping
the Law more fervently. But Paul explains in Gal. 3 that the Law is not of
faith. V. 12… that Jesus came to bring us the promise of His Spirit. V. 14…
that our inheritance is not based on the Law. V. 18. That it was a temporary
tutor to lead us to Christ V. 24v and that now that Christ has come we are no
longer under that tutor. V. 25
2.
Our second choice is to go on living in sin and
then to die for our own sins. Not a good choice in my book.
3.
The 3rd option is to receive the
death that Jesus died for us in order to die in Satan’s kingdom and to be
transferred into Christ’s kingdom, where we learn to live by His Spirit under
His new Priesthood which is in the order of Melchizedek.
Today
the world lives under a blighted Gospel that has largely lost its power because
we either try to replace it with Old Covenant Law, or we simply fail to live by
the Spirit that He has placed in our hearts and so we become what is called
“Carnal Christians” who live by the flesh and not by the Spirit.
Listen
my friends; no one is going to be a part of the Bride of Christ who is not also
living by His Spirit. This is the oil in our lamps without which we will not be
allowed entrance. So the ever growing troubles of these last days is designed
by God to force the world into one spirit or the other and we are seeing this
polarization taking place right now as some are siding with Satan and His
growing global kingdom and global religion, and others are choosing to learn to
live by the Spirit of Christ.
The
deeper we get into the ever escalating troubles we now see in the world, the
more important it will be for us to have learned how to live by His Spirit and
to have put no confidence in our flesh. In this the Law cannot help us,
although as Paul points out in Romans 8:1-4 that the Law will be fulfilled in
us who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. In truth,
for instance, we think that we please God by keeping the Sabbath of the Law,
when as our tutor it is leading us to find our true and complete rest in Christ
from the works of the flesh. So the substance of the Sabbath and all
commandments is Christ and He is our true rest. Col. 2:8-17. Tis is not against keeping Saturday as a
Sabbath as long as we understand that it points forward to our true rest in
Christ. But some people have such a low
estimation of power of Christ that they think He cannot produce in us what the
Law demands and much more if we live by His Holy Spirit.
In the
Spirit we are being transformed into His likeness so that we will no longer
carry out the deeds of the flesh. In the Spirit we love our Father and we cease
taking His name in vain… we cease worshipping idols… we have eyes for only one
eternal God and not the gods of this world. In the Spirit we finally love one
another as Christ loves us and we are coming into unity in the Spirit of Christ
even as the world is coming into unity under the spirit of antichrist. Do you
see the issues?
The
devil is going to persecute and to otherwise try to force us out of our
relationship with Jesus and we must come into such close union with Him that we
would rather die than to betray Him in the slightest detail. Whatever the
details may be, we will be faithful to Jesus Christ even as we see Christians
being slaughtered in other lands right now rather than to deny Jesus Christ.
“For
all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God. (Rom.
8:14) The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of
God. (V. 16) For the anxious longing of creation waits eagerly for the
revealing of the sons of God. For creation was subjected to futility, not of
its own will, but because of Him who subjected it in hope that the creation
itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of
the glory of the children of God.” (V. 19-21)
The
entire creation is waiting for a people who will finally get it and live by the
very Spirit of Christ and to put away the deeds of the flesh and to live by the
power that Jesus bought for us on the cross and rose again to pour out His
Spirit upon us at Pentecost.
Will we
be that generation or will we wait for another? Everything is set for the end
of the world to come in rapid succession. All that is being waited for is for
the Bride to make herself ready. Selah.
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