Lifetime Guarantee (13 page)

Let’s take a biblical look at the sort of “raw material” this new spirit man is made of whom God has created to live with Him forever. What sort of
nature
does he have? To do this, we must not speculate, but examine the verses which speak of our being “in Christ,” “in Him,” “in whom,” etc. We must note the verb tenses to determine whether they speak of some future nature we shall acquire or if they speak of present day reality. This will then reveal your true identity.

This is who God raised up in Christ. You are not grubby. You are glorious in your nature! The
new natural
you is really someone special. You are a child of God as Jesus said in John 1:12, and as the Word repeats in many verses such as Galatians 3:26: “For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.” And
He
is now your life. He will live the same life through you that He lived through His own earthsuit when He walked the planet if you will cooperate with Him. This means a supernatural life of agape,
not a life of constantly striving to get your needs met.
Jesus Christ wants to express through you what the Father expressed through Him, bringing love and hope to a hurting world, beginning with your own house.

Earlier, I made the point that it is birth, not performance, that dictates nature. Humanity’s definition of a sinner is performance-based. If a person sins, he’s a sinner. But that is not God’s definition. His view is that a sinner is a sinner because he was born that way, and neither good nor bad performance can alter it. It’s not sins that send a person to hell; his
nature
sends him to hell. All you have to do to go to hell is be born and get old enough to be accountable. Unless you submit to God’s plan to get your nature changed, you’re sunk!

When a sinner gets saved, he does not become a sinner saved by grace. He becomes a saint who sins. The way the worldly man sees it, a saint is a person who rarely sins. We usually reserve this label for people who are too old to sin! We refer to them as “dear old saints,” but we never speak of “dear young saints.” The label is bestowed as a reward for years of good performance. If we teach a Sunday school class for forty years or serve as a church officer for thirty, we may have a chance to be referred to as a “saint” in our golden years. That’s not God’s Word, however; it’s human religious tradition.

Fifty-six times
after
the cross, the Word refers to born-again people as “saints” (mostly penned by Paul), whereas it uses the term
sinner
rarely when referring to a Christian. One definite reference, however, is where Paul proclaims that he is chief of sinners in 1 Timothy 1:15. How can we deal with this apparent contradiction?

My friend Lee LeFebre uses a helpful analogy to explain Paul’s intent. Suppose you were a high jumper in college and you broke the school record by a foot. The school placed a mark on the gym wall with your name beside it, showing the height of your jump and proclaiming you champion, or “chief.” Twenty years later you walk into the gym. There is your mark on the wall. No one has even come close to breaking your record. You’re still the chief. This is what Paul meant.

Saul of Tarsus was the number one performer of all time who ever tried to earn his way into God’s acceptance. He “jumped” higher than any of us. According to God’s Word, that makes him the most “mature,” the “gold medal winner,” the “highest,” or the “chiefest” of sinners.

Whether you accept that explanation or not, however, the fact remains that the Word gives us a fifty-six to three ratio of “saint” over “sinner.” Traditional teaching clings to the two or three because of the erroneous, performance-based definition of saint and sinner. By faith, through understanding the new creation in Christ, I’m accepting the fifty-six.

Did your old sin nature have resurrection power? Could that life walk out of a grave? No. It had no such capability. Was God interested in resurrecting
that
life? If so, then why co-crucify you in the first place? That would be meaningless and futile. Only one life has victory over death.

Tell me, will you obtain that life someday, or have you already got it (Him)? If you are born anew, you
already have
eternal life in the person of Jesus. Eternal life is a synonym for Jesus (see 1 John 1:1,2).

So now that you are new in Christ, how does the Word of God describe your
present
life? It states that Christ
is
your life. Colossians 3:3,4a says, “For you
have died
and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who
is
our life…’’ (emphasis added). Did you say that you died! Yes! Yes! When did you die? You died in Christ’s body when He died. How did you get alive again? You were made new
in
Him, and He is now
your
life. Notice that your life is
hidden,
gang. You have to discern that Christ is your true
life
through your eye of faith.

Perhaps you’re like I was, operating like a cordless drill, running on my own power all week and then attending church on Sunday to get my battery recharged. That’s not God’s plan. We’re to operate like a drill that’s plugged into the wall socket which draws its life from a great hydroelectric generator! Living like that will so fill you with gratitude and love for Christ that you’ll gather with the church each week to
release
your praise.

God’s plan is that you would cooperate with Christ to let Him express His life by filtering that life through your personality and earthsuit. Do you think
He
could hack it in your circumstances? I wonder if His life would be able to “bypass” all those old, green highways in your brain and work directly through your new spirit to empower your personality, using your body for good to minister to a hurting world?

Dear Christian, the Lord never intended you to try your best to live the Christian life. He placed His Spirit
within
you to live His life through you to bring glory and honor to Himself.
He
does His work of ministry on earth through you. The battle is the Lord’s.

Your new purpose is different from your old one of seeking to get all your needs supplied by using the old ways you learned beginning early in life. Your new purpose is to glorify Jesus. God has given you a
new
heart and has written
His
desires upon your heart and mind (Hebrews 10:14-16).

God has also placed His own Spirit within you to enable you to live out the law of love prophesied in Ezekiel 36:26,27:

Yes, this prophecy was given to the Israelites, but it is
present-day reality
in all believers. You and I are already the
spirit
-children of Abraham. Jews are the
physical
children and their time for the fulfillment of that prophecy is yet future.

No, I am not going to discuss the rapture. I’m going to speak of something that has already happened, another basic truth about the Christian life. Jesus remained on earth forty days after the resurrection, and then He ascended to the right hand of the Father. Now, if you are in Him, where are you right now? Ephesians 2:5,6 says, “Even when we
were
dead in our transgressions, [He] made us alive together with Christ…and
raised
us [already] up with Him, and
seated
us [already] with Him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus [side B]” (emphasis added). This is all
spiritual,
not physical (see Figure 5.2).

In other words,
we are already there, friend.
You say, “I don’t
feel
like I’m in heaven.” Well, rain on how you
feel.
God says you are there, and if your feeler seems to tell you that you aren’t, which is the liar, God or your feeler? Read Colossians 3:1-4, paying special attention to the verb tenses, and see where God states you are right
now
:

We
are
in heaven, but we must accept and appropriate this as factual on the basis of God’s statement, not by what our five senses tell us is true.

The old “rebel you” was crucified in Christ and buried. The “new you” was born, raised, and ascended into heaven where you are in Christ, totally accepted and loved.

Now, you can choose to simply file these truths in your existing body of knowledge as interesting facts about the Christian life, in which case they’ll do you no good whatsoever. God calls you to grit your teeth and choose to
die
(by faith) to clinging to your old techniques for living. Only then will these precious truths become yours experientially.

God’s plan was to execute the rebellious man and give birth to a new spirit-creation, one who adores Him and has His law of love written on his heart and mind.
But He placed this new man into the same old earthsuit. It has the same old brain with the same old, green highways in it.
Uh, oh! That’s going to cause a problem, because it’s going to be through those old, green highways that the Evil One, through the power of sin, will try to control the new man and get him to dance to the
old
tune (see Figure 5.3).