Rise to Your True Spiritual Nature

11 May Rise to Your True Spiritual Nature

 Blog Series:

Renew Your Mind ~ Transform Your Life

When you became a Christian, you didn’t turn over new leaf – God turned over a new life.

The old you died, and a new you was reborn, spiritually (1 Peter 1:3). You are not the same person you were before. Yet, most Christians don’t understand this. I know I certainly didn’t when I became a Christian.

The result is that most of us don’t understand who we truly are, and are therefore stunted in our ability to live like who we have become.

In this blog post, we will bring into focus who we are in Christ.

There are three steps to renew our minds and transform our lives

To set the context for today’s discussion, I remind you that we are in the midst of a “blog series.” We are looking at how we can renew our mind and transform our life. There are three steps to renewing our mind:

1. We must abandon ourselves to an eternal perspective.
2. We must rise to our true spiritual nature.
3. We must become our own brain surgeon.

Rising to our true spiritual nature

Up to this point, we have looked at the essential elements of an eternal perspective. Now, we transition to the second step, rising to our true spiritual nature. There are three steps to being able to rise to our true spiritual nature:

1. We must understand who we became in Christ when we got saved.
2. We must understand how we can be a Christian and still sin without losing our salvation.
3. We must understand how to live consistently with who we have become.

We all act consistently with our beliefs. Our deep beliefs control everything about us. Therefore, it is essential that we believe what is true.

Because many Christians do not understand who they are, they do not rise, in their behavior, to their true spiritual nature.

1. In our pre-salvation nature, we are truly sinful.

The Bible only ever represents us as having one nature… it is either lost or saved, sinful or holy. Let’s look at our lost state:

• Romans 3:10 says, “There is none righteous, not even one.”
• Romans 3:23 says, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
• Romans 6:23 says, “The wages of sin is death.”
• Ephesians 2:12 says, “Remember that you were at that time separate from Christ… having no hope and without God in the world.”

So, we see that our fallen self is cut off from God because of sin and that, left unresolved, we are destined to an eternity separated from God.

2. In our post-salvation nature, we are truly righteous.

But God didn’t leave us in that hopeless condition. The words “But God…” are two of the greatest words in all the Bible.  They are found in Ephesians 2:1-5, which says:

“And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ…”

This passage tells us that we were spiritually dead, without hope. But God did not leave us there. He made it possible for us to be made truly righteous in Christ.

In other places, the Bible gets more specific about what happened when we were made alive together with Christ.

• First, we were crucified with Christ: Galatians 2:20 – “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.”
• Second, we were resurrected with Christ: Romans 6:4 – “Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.”
• Third, we have been born again, spiritually: 1 Peter 1:3 – “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead…”
• Fourth, we are partakers of the divine nature: 2 Peter 1:4 – “For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature…”
• Finally, we were created in the likeness of God: Ephesians 4:24 – “Put on the new self which, in the likeness of God, has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.” 

So… we have been crucified with Christ, resurrected with Christ, and born again. In addition, we are partakers of the divine nature and are created in the likeness of God, in true holiness and righteousness.

Conclusion

So, this is who we are. This is who we became in Christ. We are, as the Bible says, transferred out of the domain of darkness and transferred to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins (Colossians 1:13-14).

Yet, this very explanation of who we are can raise serious questions in the minds of thinking Christians, such as “If I am truly holy and righteous, how is it that I still sin?!?” In fact, understanding who we became in Christ could persuade a person that he/she is not a Christian because they still sin.

But there is a clear and biblical answer to that apparent conundrum. We will begin to look at it next week. I look forward to seeing you then.

In case you’re new here

This blog post is part of a series titled “Renew Your Mind, Transform Your Life”, introduced on January 5, 2021. As the series continues, each succeeding post will be added to and available in the blog archives at www.maxanders.com.

If you know anyone who you think might enjoy joining us in this study, please forward this blog to them and encourage them to go to my web site (www.maxanders.com) and sign up for the free video, “Master the Bible So Well That the Bible Masters You”, available there on the home page. This will put them on my regular mailing list and they’ll receive my weekly blogs on this subject.

In addition, I am creating a new online membership site, The Change Zone, that will provide information, strategies and resources to help motivated Christians renew their mind and transform their lives. If you would like to learn more about this and get updates to know when The Change Zone will be available, click here.

I look forward to going through this life-changing journey with you.

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