Breath Of Life Online Ministry
 

"...our old man was crucified with Him (Jesus), that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin." Romans 6:6

Of the many images that express what it means to be born again, the Bible uses our following Jesus in His death, burial and resurrection more than anything else. But there are a couple of important extremes being taught on this subject that we ought to be aware of and avoid.

The first is that its all finished in Christ. It is true that Jesus has done all the actual work for us. However, we have a part to play in comprehending and aprehending the full benefit of His work in our lives. Once we're saved, we don't jump onto an automatic "Bless Me" cloud that will escort us through life while we eat bon-bons.

The second extreme is one of works to earn blessings and keep our salvation. We have to keep crucifying the old man. God is unhappy with our failures and so we must work very hard to gain and keep His approval.

No, no we need to realize that Jesus is our High Priest. He stands between us and the Father with His hands raised up. When the Father looks at us, He sees us through the nail pierced hands of His Son. He can't even see our failures, He sees the perfection of the sacrifice given to redeem us from them.

"And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins" Ephesians 2:1

To demonstrate this with a little more clarity, have a look at John 11. Let's use the record of Lazarus' resurrection as an analogy.

We follow Jesus in His death, burial and resurrection. Just as Lazarus was dead and buried, so were we in our trespasses and sins.

When Jesus stands before the open tomb of our heart and calls out to us, it quickens us to come out of this death and rise up in newness of life. It is just as miraculous when we are born again as it was when Lazarus was raised from the dead.

Once the miracle was accomplished, Lazarus stood in the doorway of an empty tomb completely ALIVE! And its the same with us, once we're born again, its just like standing in the doorway of our own empty tombs...completely ALIVE!!

But that's not where the story ends, even though this is where our typical methodology tends to break away from the analogy.

After Jesus performed the miracle, he commanded the others to take his grave-clothes off, to LOOSE HIM AND LET HIM GO!!!

Why is this so critical? Well naturally speaking, its pretty obvious. Lazarus was bound hand and foot, wrapped in grave-clothes and his face was covered with a linen death mask. A fellow can't do much living dressed up like that.

And so it is the same with us. Beneath our death mask and grave-clothes is a living, breathing new creation! He has been miraculously quickened, resurrected to live in abundance of life! Now its time to take off that false appearance of death to reveal the fullness of Jesus' life giving power of resurrection.

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Now that we understand how the devil exploits us to lead us into temptation, we need to turn to the appropriate alternative, the new and living way in Christ Jesus!

There is much debate over how we make a practical application of this new life. So before we try to explore this, let's look at it in its simplicity.

Jesus told Nicodemus "You must be born again." Nicodemus was confused so he asked the Lord how to do this. Jesus told him that we need to be born not only of the flesh, but of the Spirit as well. We can't DO born again. By the Spirit of the Living God, we must BE born again.

The simplicity of living the Christian life is not in doing, but in being born again.

Consider the apple tree. It doesn't do anything, it simply exixts in its being as an apple tree. From this existence, the apple tree naturally bears fruit. It doesn't fret about how to bear fruit, the apple tree produces apples simply because that's what it was created to do.

So it is with us. As a new creation in Christ it is only natural for us to bear fruit. Yes, our minds need to be renewed, but the new man doesn't need to be taught how to bear fruit, he just needs to be freed to be himself so he will naturally be fruitful.

This is pretty simple. But for some of us, like Nicodemus this is a huge paradigm shift. We ask, "What must I do?" and Jesus answers, "You must be." It doesn't compute so we ask again, "What must I do?" and Jesus answers, "You must be."

Until we see this paradigm, the rest can be a painfully miserable experience. We don't DO to BECOME. In Christ, we already have BECOME and all our DOING is the fruit of who we have become. 

Hopefully this helps to settle this basic understanding. It isn't deep but its not as obvious to many of us, especially if we've had plenty of training in the old kingdom ways. It can be like a puzzle picture hidden within a picture. You may stare at it for hours until you finally see it. But from then on, the picture will never be hidden to you again.
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Let's continue with our look at repentance. So far we've identified some important issues that we need to turn away from. Its good to have some clarity and turn away from our sin. But keep in mind, anyone can jump out of the frying pan, the wise man doesn't land in the fire in the process.

The general problem most of us face as new believers is knowing where to begin. And the general answer our Churches provide is some kind of denominational indoctrination. While sound doctrine is incredibly important, we must keep in mind that we are being conformed to the image of Christ, Himself ... NOT a denomination!

Now I don't mean to rant for or against denominations. They describe divisions in the Body of Christ. Jesus is not divided. But denominations do describe certain differences in how we understand the application and practice of our Christianity. It can be very helpful to know what branches of the Church practice sound doctrine and which ones may not.

With that said, let's explore the target destination of our repentance. As we said in Part 3, we need to understand and come into agreement with God's Primary Will for our lives. God wants us to be in His Image, after His Likeness and have dominion in all our affairs of life.

We are re-created in His Image when we are born again. But we need to see how that effects our being holistically. It is the Spirit that is regenerated in perfection. This effectively restores our ability to interface directly with God.

The soul is not instantly fixed. The mind, emotions and will remain as they were and the progression that some people call sanctification is the development of our soul under the new way of living in direct concert with God.

The body is considered corruptible, it can, will and eventually must be replaced. But this doesn't happen when we are born again. God has made some awesome promises regarding our interim health. But in the end, we need to understand that full redemption of the body does not happen until Jesus returns.

So our real focus needs to be on the development of the soul and that's going to be the main subject of our study from this point forward.
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