Greetings in the Name of Jesus and welcome to the PLN Bible Study Community!
According to the Word of God, it is relatively easy to become a Christian. All you have to do is change your thinking about Jesus and submit to His authority (Romans 10:9). Previously we were nonbelievers who were resisting His standing invitation to join Him in the Kingdom of God. But there came a day when we simply decided to stop resisting. What’s more difficult though is becoming one of His “disciples” because that requires effort and commitment and dedication and the pursuit of knowledge. Current research does indeed confirm that out of the more than 70 percent of Americans who identify as Christians, less than 10 percent fulfill the biblical definition of actual DISCIPLES. Oops!
In previous articles we’ve already seen that a disciple is a follower of Christ who becomes a student of His Word (John 8:31-32). That’s important because Scripture says that pursuit of the Word of God is the ONLY way available to us for understanding the Truth. Indeed, it’s the absolute, immutable, eternal and never-changing Truth, and ONLY the Truth, that sets us free. Free from what? Free from sin and from the world and from the devil and from the fear of death. The fact is, it’s hard to be a good disciple and the more we learn about the things of God, the more we realize how much more we still have ahead of us to learn.
Other than Satan himself, there are two major things that stand in the way of effective discipleship: religious tradition and natural complacency. Traditions are manmade ideas that aren’t accurately grounded in Scripture and complacency is a human character-flaw that we bring with us into the Kingdom of God. Part of discipleship is a process of overcoming our complacency enough to confront traditions in the Body of Christ so that we can find the truth and be set free from the bondage of spiritual ignorance. Understanding the Word sets us free so that we can bear fruit and reach our God-given potential in His Kingdom.
Changing Our Predisposition
In recent articles (available in the Archives) we have discussed the idea that Christians have two natures keeping in mind that “nature” is defined as a predisposition for doing something. According to Scripture, we‘re ALL born into this natural world with a predisposition to sin and we inherited that from Adam. We didn’t do anything to deserve being born that way but a sin nature we’re born with nonetheless and what that means is that mankind is NOT intrinsically good even though that’s what the world and certain church denominations teach. In sum, the Word of God plainly says that we’re ALL born with a sin nature which means that on our own, we’re absolutely incapable of being able to stop our sinning.
Fortunately, the Word also clearly says that in the process of being born again, we put that old nature to death and take on a new one. We don’t keep the old nature so that in the afterglow of Christian life we wind up with two natures. It’s impossible to be predisposed to two opposite natures so the old one has to be replaced by a new “creature,” a new nature that is predisposed to righteousness instead of sin. Read it for yourself in the following scriptures:
Romans 6:6-7 = “…our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin.”
2 Corinthians 5:17 = “…if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.”
There is nothing that we did to deserve the new nature. Christ did that for us. But we also didn’t do anything to deserve our prebirth disposition of being ruled by sin. We just inherited it. Even the Planet Earth itself was cursed by the presence of sin and that all happened before we were born (Genesis 3:17-19 and Romans 5:12). We did no bad deeds to cause us to have the initial sin nature nor did we do any good deeds later to deserve the divine nature that we received when we decided to stop resisting Jesus.
We are Three Part Beings
It was never intended that these things would be easy to understand. For sure nonbelievers don’t understand it and they aren’t particularly interested in it anyway. But the Bible says in numerous places that after being born again we are righteous and that we no longer sin. How is that even possible? It’s important for believers to pursue the understanding of these things because If you don’t know the answer to this question, then you’re going to have difficulty knowing who you are in Christ. You see in the Bible that it says that you are righteous but you know that you DO sin and you still have trouble sometimes not sinning. What then happens to most Christians is that they throw up their hands in frustration realizing they’re going to have to study some in order to understand how these things could be. And for some reason (complacency) they don’t want to study. So, they hide their sins, watch TV and stay spiritually ignorant.
Hopefully you are different. Last week we discussed that the best way to explain how all these things work together is to accept the idea that when we decide to stop resisting Jesus, the Word comes to help us make that decision (1 Peter 1:23). In the ensuing process, the Word splits the dead spirit-part of us away from the soulish part (Hebrews 4:12) leaving us with three parts instead of two. We were two parts, physical and non-physical and we become three parts: spirit (now revitalized), soul and body (1 Thessalonians 5:23). It is the spirit part of us, and it alone, that has been born again and is predisposed to righteousness with a divine nature. It is the spirit part of us that has been redeemed (Galatians 3:13).
Becoming a mature Christian is a process. There is no way around the process even though there is a way (complacency) to slow it down which is what most Christians are involved in. Indeed, the soulish part of us including our mind, our will, our emotions and our conscience, is set on a course of transformation by the Holy Spirit soon after a new believer is born again (Romans 12:1-2). The eventual objective of the transformation is nothing less than achieving the image of Christ (2 Corinthians 3:18). Our soulish and physical parts have been purchased by Christ but redemption will come later. That leaves the physical part of us which will have to be renewed when Jesus returns because it’s too corrupted by sin to be transformed in this present dispensation. When Jesus was resurrected, He had a glorified body and we will be resurrected in the same manner (Philippians 3:20-22). Meanwhile, your regenerated spirit is redeemed and perfect and wall-to-wall Holy Spirit.
What about the Flesh?
But even after all of that, we still commit sins and sometimes we do that even when we don’t want to, even when we’re trying not to. What has changed then? Isn’t that the way we were before we got born again? The answer is NO, we are NOT the same. Before, we were RULED by sin. Now, we’ve been empowered to not sin. In fact, we desire to overrule it, to decide against it and we can call on the Holy Spirit for help. The old nature has been crucified and is dead-and-gone! It’s been replaced by a new divine nature: we’re disposed now to righteousness and we must learn to insist that the soulish and physical parts of us submit to the rule of our new nature which resides in our regenerated spirits with the Holy Spirit. That redeemed spirit-part of you is His temple and from there He teaches and comforts and empowers everything we invite Him to be involved in.
The Bible says that what we’re now having to deal with is a FLESH issue. Is that some other nature? NO! It has nothing to do with your “nature.” Your predisposed nature has been changed. But the soulish and physical parts of you need more work. They were programmed to act a certain way by your old nature which is why you’re having to go through a process of transformation. They can be trained to be increasingly responsive to the authority of your regenerated spirit but they aren’t right yet and they won’t be right until Jesus returns.
Consequently, your FLESH can be defined in biblical terms as the remaining parts of you that are still closed to the things of God. Their function is limited to the five physical senses (seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and feeling) and they aren't able to operate in the supernatural where God is. The King James Bible uses the word “carnal” to describe the things of the flesh. In other words, carnality is simply the act of living and seeing things in the natural limited to the five physical senses instead of being led by the Holy Spirit. Why is this important? It’s important because the Bible says that if your thinking (your mind) is after the flesh, whatever you do is subject to failure (death) whereas if you can get your thinking over to the things of the Spirit, you have an opportunity for success and life. Here is the related scripture:
Romans 8:6-7 = “…the mind (thinking) set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.”
You do not have to be ruled by your flesh. It isn’t another nature. You aren’t predisposed to the flesh. Your perfected spirit has authority over it and the Holy Spirit is ready, willing and able to lead us out from our flesh so that we make our choices and decisions in consultation with Him (Romans 8:14). As already point out, our mind is going through a process of transformation and day-by-day we become less carnal and more spiritual in our thinking. The speed of that transformation is up to us: pursuit of the Word leads to accelerated transformation which produces better choices and decisions which produce life and greater fruit for the Kingdom of God. Faith operates totally outside the five carnal senses and if you want to please God, that is where you will want to be.
Sorry that this article had to be a bit longish but it covers some really important ideas. Thanks for reading it!
Click HERE for a FREE article: Why Some Christians Resist Covid Vaccination
___________________
