When God steps in, everything changes. We are all very consciously aware of ourselves, but we are not as conscious of the presence of God in our lives. When we invited Jesus Christ into our lives, He came with all of His goodness and glory. He came with His righteousness and His holiness. He came with His power and ability and has given them to us. He came into every dimension of our lives, spirit, soul, and body, to empower us to live as He lives. What we may fail to do is to recognize that He dwells in us. Yes, we still see with our eyes and hear with our ears. We deal with temptations and challenges, yet a conscious awareness that we are God’s house will cause us to make the right decisions. When we are tempted, we can turn and look to Him and be in awe of Who He is. Our lives are the dwelling place of God, and we should have the greatest appreciation and respect for them. We cannot allow unholy things to invade God’s house. We are each individually responsible as God’s watchmen to guard our lives, His dwelling place.
Christ Jesus accomplished for us what we could never do for ourselves. He ransomed us from our sins and delivered us from the dominion of Satan. He brought new life to us through His resurrection from the dead, and by the Holy Spirit He now dwells in us. He empowers us and perfects everything about our lives. Righteousness by faith is the righteousness that He gives to us by the miracle of union with Him. He dwells in us through the miracle of salvation, and we dwell in Him.
Many today do not realize what God actually did for them when they were born again. Others, having heard, refuse to believe the glorious liberty that has been given to us through the free gift of salvation. Unfortunately, many doctrines of men refuse to bow their knee to the message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. They continue on in a struggle encouraged by the philosophies of men and their own human experience. We will endeavor in this book to present the Gospel as supplied to us directly from the New Testament. Each person will have a choice to tear down those things added by the ideologies of an altar shaped by human hands.
“Beware that you are not spoiled by philosophies and vain deceits, according to the traditions of men, according to principles of the world, and not according to Christ.” -Colossians 2:8
Sin made man’s nature opposed to God. That nature had to be changed in order for the sons of Adam to return to fellowship with God. Man became sinful and bent on rebellion from the time of Adam’s disobedience. Throughout every generation, from Adam until John the Baptist, man was bound by a nature of sin that nothing could cure. Adam’s sin brought upon all mankind a slavery to the power of sin and death (John 8:34, Romans 5:12-14, 6:16). Adam died because of disobedience. He lost the spiritual life that made him a true son of God. Death began to reign, and sin became man’s taskmaster. Because of sin, men came under the judgment of God, “the soul that sins, it shall die” (Ezekiel 18:20). God has not changed His mind concerning sin – it’s the enemy of life. Yet the wonder and the glory of the Gospel reveals that God so loved the world that He sent His only begotten Son, Christ Jesus, to reunite us with Himself. Through His death on the cross, He made a way to impart His life into us.
The first section of this book reveals who we are in Christ and what God has said about those He redeemed. The Bible reveals what salvation has provided – we can choose to accept it in full or not. (Just remember the miracle of salvation and the ability to live it comes by the faith produced through God’s Word.) God has given us a free gift, something far beyond what anyone could ever do through their own abilities and religious observances. Through Christ Jesus, God brought forth the miracle of change that makes us His sons and daughters. Christ Jesus gave us His own righteousness and holiness when He created us anew in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 4:24).
Although the Lord had pronounced judgment on the disobedience of man, He made a way to bring all who were willing back into His family. God could not have fellowship with sinful man, so He provided a means to take away the sin and to free men of the condemnation of guilt and shame that separated all those who would receive His great salvation. Therefore, for man to live in unity with God, man had to be made a new creation. He had to make a way for man to become a “new creation” with a new heart and spirit.
Through Adam’s disobedience, every person came under the dominion of sin. Mankind was spiritually blind and in darkness without God. Therefore, God made provision to purge man and make him new through the blood of His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ – through His death on the cross He destroyed the power of sin (Ephesians 2:15, 2 Timothy 1:10). He provided a new kind of circumcision: one in which the body of the sins of the flesh would be removed (Romans 6:6, Colossians 2:11). God sent His Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to condemn sin in the flesh, that the righteousness of the Law might be fulfilled in those who would believe (Romans 8:3-4). The Father brought forth the new creation by the miracle birth of the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit (Titus 3:5).
God, the Creator of all things, gave us the opportunity to become a new creation. By the death of Jesus Christ, His resurrection, and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, we received His life in full. He raised up a new creation, a new race in Christ Jesus. Those who have been recreated in Christ Jesus have the Spirit of His Son dwelling in their hearts – the midst of their lives. Our hearts became the dwelling places of the almighty God – a new kind of Holy of Holies – and our bodies His holy temple. He wrote His laws and commandments upon our hearts and minds and filled us with His knowledge and His ways (Jeremiah 31:33, 2 Corinthians 3:3, Hebrews 8:10, 10:16). The new creation that God has made is the habitation of the Father, Christ Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. God now dwells in us and walks in us, and we live and move and have our being in Him (2 Corinthians 6:16, Acts 17:28). The new creation is a place wherein only righteousness and holiness dwell because God dwells there.
The second part of the book presents practical doctrines on walking in this newness of life. The spiritual man is the new man who lives and walks in the Spirit. By knowing the promises of God and holding fast to those truths taught in the Word, we are empowered by the Spirit of Holiness to walk in this newness of life. Jesus is our example: He walked through life in perfect obedience, doing the will of the Father. Now we are to follow in His footsteps and succeed through His obedience. He Who did no sin and neither was guile found in His mouth has supplied us with His overcoming power.
Now we are to walk even as He walked and be just as He is in this present world (1 John 2:6, 4:17). God has not left us without the power to walk in the ways of His life! He has given us of His life and the fullness of it by the Holy Spirit. All we have to do is be willing to make the transition to live our present lives in His Kingdom rather than as a person subject to this world. God will bring us, His sons and daughters, to maturity if we will trust Him and yield our lives to the working of the Holy Spirit. Through union with Christ Jesus, we will mature and develop in His righteousness and holiness that we have received as a free gift from Him. He, Who by His own power destroyed the works of the Devil and made us new, will also protect, perfect, and establish us in all His will and ways. God patiently and persistently teaches us to walk in the Spirit so that every evil thing and satanic desire will have no power over us.
Everyone must consider the reality that if somehow your salvation is not complete in what Jesus Christ did, then you have failed to believe and are seeking it by works. The apostle Paul rebuked those who attempted to earn by works a place or position before God, He said, “you have fallen from grace.” It is God Who works in us and He will both do and will of His own good pleasure (Philippians 2:13). It is His power that works in us right now. He will bring about all the amazing glory of His fullness which He has given us (Ephesians 3:20). We now live by Him and by His working in our lives. We must participate with His Word and His Spirit. We have His Spirit of Obedience so that we can do everything we read in the Bible. We have been given His Holy Spirit so that everything that He does we can do also. His righteousness, His purity, His Holiness came into our lives when He came in.