davidbowerkingwood

Within Each of You Dwells a Crucified but Still Living Emissary of Satan!

At the point of salvation, many wonderful things change in the life of the new Christian man or woman. Although these changes are not visible to the world, they are eternal and of vital importance!

An extremely significant change is the resurrection of our dead spirits along with the Holy Spirit taking up residence with our born-again spirits. Christians become a temple of God, the Holy Spirit, who comes into us in an eternal union!

At the point of salvation, we are baptized by the Holy Spirit into one body, the body of Christ; in 1 Corinthians 12:13 it is written:

“¹³ Some of us are Jews, some are Gentiles, some are slaves, and some are free. But we have all been baptized into one body by one Spirit, and we all share the same Spirit.”

(With today’s volatile racial climate, we would need to add; “some are black, some are brown, and some are white. But we have all been baptized into one body by one Spirit, and we all share the same Spirit.”)

Whereas we had been under the control of a fallen, sin nature, that sin nature was effectively crucified with Christ on the cross at Calvary. By the baptism of the Holy Spirit we are all joined to one body “and we all share the same spirit.”

From God’s perspective, at the point of salvation a number of very significant things happened; in Romans 6:3-4 it is written:

“³ Or have you forgotten that when we were joined with Christ Jesus in baptism, we joined him in his death? ⁴ For we died and were buried with Christ by baptism. And just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father, now we also may live new lives.”

Water baptism, by immersion, is our visible witness to what has already happened to us, spiritually, by the power of God, the Holy Spirit! In Romans 6:5-11 it is written:

“⁵ Since we have been united with him in his death, we will also be raised to life as he was. ⁶ We know that our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ so that sin might lose its power in our lives. We are no longer slaves to sin. ⁷ For when we died with Christ we were set free from the power of sin. ⁸ And since we died with Christ, we know we will also live with him. ⁹ We are sure of this because Christ was raised from the dead, and he will never die again. Death no longer has any power over him. ¹⁰ When he died, he died once to break the power of sin. But now that he lives, he lives for the glory of God. ¹¹ So you also should consider yourselves to be dead to the power of sin and alive to God through Christ Jesus.”

The Struggle Within

Your Mortal Body – An Earthly Tent

The Christian life is a life of faith, “we live by faith, not by sight!” Although our spirits have been resurrected, they still occupy a fallen, sin-cursed body of this earth. Our experience is just the opposite of Adam’s experience. Whereas Adam died spiritually in the Garden of Eden, he lived for hundreds of years in his mortal body; at the point of salvation, we are given a resurrected spirit but remain in our fallen, un-resurrected mortal bodies until our spirits are called home.

We are promised a heavenly body at a time of God’s choosing; in 2 Corinthians 5:1-5 it is written:

5 For we know that when this earthly tent we live in is taken down (that is, when we die and leave this earthly body), we will have a house in heaven, an eternal body made for us by God himself and not by human hands. ² We grow weary in our present bodies, and we long to put on our heavenly bodies like new clothing. ³ For we will put on heavenly bodies; we will not be spirits without bodies. ⁴ While we live in these earthly bodies, we groan and sigh, but it’s not that we want to die and get rid of these bodies that clothe us. Rather, we want to put on our new bodies so that these dying bodies will be swallowed up by life. ⁵ God himself has prepared us for this, and as a guarantee he has given us his Holy Spirit.

That is truly something to which we can look forward with eager anticipation! At 91 years of age, my body is showing signs of wear which are non-reversable and, by God’s grace, I am at peace with that!

God has chosen that our lives will be lived out on a spiritual battlefield; we live in a world where Satan is the prince of the power of the air and a large percentage of those in this world are the walking dead, they have dead spirits and active sin natures in living mortal bodies.

To further complicate the situation, we must also do battle with the crucified, but still active, sin nature within us. In 1 John 1: 8-10 it is pointed out:

“⁸ If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth. ⁹ But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness. ¹⁰ If we claim we have not sinned, we are calling God a liar and showing that his word has no place in our hearts.”

Confession of sin to God is the way we suppress the sin nature and let the Holy Spirit control in our lives; when we confess our sins, “he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness.” Although the sin nature is still present, it is suppressed as the Holy Spirit takes control of our lives.

Next time, “Life on the Battlefield”