We do not understand what Redemption and the New Creation have made us.
We do not realize what we are to the Father's heart and what He is to us.
Most of us are theological Christians instead of Bible Christians. We have theological experiences and are ever attempting to square the Word with those experiences.
We have been taught there is no truth beyond our creed. We lock our people in a creed, making them prisoners of the theories of men born a hundred years ago. The Creed Christian is not a Bible Christian.
Each creed must have the Bible translated to fit it.
We have discovered a Christ who is greater than the creeds, a Redemption that is greater than the creeds, a New Birth that bursts the bonds of creedal Christianity and sets the prisoners free.
We are discovering a type of Christianity that is better than the creeds, better than anything to which the creeds have given birth.
The creeds, beautiful though they may be, are largely born of Sense Knowledge.
You Are Redeemed
Romans 3:24: Through the Redemption that is in Christ Jesus whom God set forth to be a propitiation, through faith in his blood, to show His righteousness.
Our Redemption, our Redeemer, is Christ. No one can rob you of your Redemption.
If you take Christ as your Savior, He becomes your Redemption. You become independent of man.
Your Redemption was God's own work, and He Himself is satisfied with what He did in Christ.
Eph. 2:10: For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in them.
Eph. 1:7: In whom we have our redemption through his blood, the redemption of our trespasses.
If you have your Redemption, you are Redeemed.
Your Redemption was through the blood of Jesus Christ
You have the remission of your trespasses.
Notice first, you have your Redemption in Christ. It is through the blood of the Son of God.
You have remission from all that you ever did before you became a Christian.
This Redemption is according to the riches of His grace.
It is a perfect, a complete Redemption. It is not a beggarly Redemption, but a vast God-sized Redemption that glorifies God and glorifies Christ and honors every man who embraces it.
Col. 1:13 14: "Who delivered us out of the authority of darkness." That is Satan's authority. If we are delivered out of his authority, he can no longer reign over us.
Yet the great body of the Church is living under the dominion of the adversary as though it had never been Born Again. What is the matter?
The creed to which we have subscribed has no actual Redemption in it. It has robbed the Church of its own Redemption by setting stakes of limitation.
Col. 1:13: "Who delivered us out of the authority of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of the son of his love!" He delivered us out of the authority of Satan, and He translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His Love.
Put it in the first person. You are the one who has been delivered. You are the one who has been translated into God's kingdom and family. In Christ you have your Redemption, the remission of everything that you ever did.
It gives you the Nature of God and takes out of you the nature of the adversary.
The New Birth settles the problem of your sin nature. All you ever did is wiped out. All you ever were has been destroyed.
You are now an actual child of God just as Jesus was in His earth walk. You have the same standing that Jesus had, because Jesus is your standing. He has become your righteousness. God Himself becomes your standing.
Romans 3:26: "That he might himself be righteous, and the righteousness of him that hath faith in Jesus!" (Lit. trans.)
You have faith in Jesus as your Substitute. So God has become your righteousness.
When you believe this, you will come out of bondage and weakness and failure into the fulness of this new Life in Christ.
You are the sons of God. You are heirs of God and joint-heirs with Jesus Christ. You are redeemed.
I Cor. 6:20: "For ye were bought with a price." Why do we become the slaves of wrong teaching, the slaves of Sense Knowledge? That price was the blood of Christ.
There is no joint ownership between Christ and the world. You either belong to the devil or you belong to Christ. Christ purchased you with His own blood. I Pet. 1:18, 19: "Knowing that ye were redeemed, not with corruptible things, with silver or gold, from your vain manner of life handed down from your fathers; but with precious blood as of a lamb without blemish and without spot, even the blood of Christ."
It is the blood of the lamb without spot. You stand before the Father now a redeemed one, without condemnation. The blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, redeemed you.
Every claim of justice has been paid. Jesus met the demands of justice and satisfied them. You are free.
I Cor. 7:23: "Become not the bondservants of men!" That means that we are not to become the bondservants of the theories of men or the creeds of men. "Men" here means the man who walks in the senses. You crown Jesus as the Lord of your life. There is no other bondage but the bondage of love.
John 8:36: "If therefore the son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed." You are free from Satan's dominion. You are a New Creation, a child of God. You have been redeemed from the hand of your enemy. You are to take this fact seriously. You are to order your life accordingly.
Romans 6:14: "Sin shall not have dominion over you." Satan was defeated by your Master. That defeat stripped him of his ability to take you captive without your cooperation.
The two phases of Christ's ministry in Redemption are: Jesus paying the price of your Redemption, and defeating your enemy and setting you free.
Col. 2:15: "Having despoiled the principalities and the powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it!" He triumphed over the adversary. He defeated the enemy. His triumph was your triumph. That battle was your battle. He was not fighting for Himself.
Hebrews 2:14: "Since then the children are sharers in flesh and blood, he also himself in like manner partook of the same; that through death he might bring to nought him that had the power of death, that is the devil." He set you free. You are free. You are redeemed by God Himself.
You Are A New Creation
Next I want you to notice that you are a New Creation. This truth has never been given its place.
All we have been taught was that God forgave us our sins and that by a second work of grace, sin was eradicated from us. But if we did wrong ignorantly or knowingly we had to be justified again. That justification permitted us to be justified with the devil's nature in us.
Another view is that God was unable to take out Satan's nature when He gave us His Nature; so that when we were Born Again we had God's Nature and the devil's nature in us. We warred against the old nature in us. They said that we would be free when we died. Satan is the author of death. That would make Satan your savior. Far be the thought!
All this teaching belongs to Sense Knowledge's interpretation of the Word.
Spiritual things are spiritually understood. I Cor. 2:12: "That we might know the things that are freely given to us of God."
The first thing that is given to you after Redemption is a New Nature. II Cor. 5:17 must ever stand as the key to this wonderful truth: "Wherefore, if any man is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. And all these things are of God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ, and gave unto us the ministry of reconciliation; to wit, that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself."
You are a New Creation. The devil's nature has been taken out of you. God's Nature has taken its place.
You are reconciled to the Father. You are brought into fellowship with the Father. Everything you were before, stopped being. All you were in Satan stopped being.
The old things of weakness and failure are passed. This New Creation has no memory of the past creation. You are newly born. You are a new species. You are a New Creation in Christ Jesus.
The Jew was blood-covered because his nature was antagonistic toward God. We are not blood-covered. We are made New Creations. We are cleansed by the blood. We need not be covered. We can stand free of sin-consciousness in His presence. just as Jesus did in His earth walk.
The Holy Spirit has given birth to us. We are born of God. James 1:18: "Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures." I John 4:4: "Ye are of God, my little children." Eph.2:10: "We are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus."
All this drives us to this conclusion: that this New Creation is something that God Himself has wrought, and that we are just what He says we are-the very sons of God.
Romans 6:6 tells us that the man of sin is done away in the New Creation: "Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him. that the body of sin might be done away that so we should no longer be in bondage to sin." The sin nature is gone. So many of us have tried to get rid of this old nature. We did not know that it was put away.
The thing called the Adamic nature is spiritual death which has possession of our spirits. When we are made alive, made New Creations, that nature is done away.
We are tempted, and in our babyhood state do foolish things. That is because our bodies have never yet been brought into subjection to our spirits. Desire may dwell in your physical body, but it is not sin until you have consented to an act that is forbidden in the Word. There is nothing wrong in your body. Sin lived in your spirit and in your mind. It does not abide in your body.
When it says "sin in the flesh" it means sin in the senses. It is when your senses have gained the dominion over your spirit and mind.
Romans 12:1, 2: "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God which is your spiritual service. And be not fashioned according to this age; but be ye transfigured by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God."
He desires that these senses shall be dedicated to Him after we are Born Again. It is an unseemly thing for your senses to rule your mind and your spirit. You know that if you have a sore foot that that foot rules all the rest of your body. That disease has gained the mastery so that your spirit and your mind become absolute slaves to the pain in the foot. The same thing is true if you have an unclean appetite, a habit. That habit gains the mastery over your whole being, if you do not hold it in subjection.
The thing you should say to that foot is, "By His stripes, you are healed. In the Name of Jesus become well!" (from Isaiah 53). You say to the habit that has gained the mastery over your body and mind, "You have no right to hold dominion over me any longer. In the Name of Jesus Christ, depart!"
You will be free.
There is only one place for sin to actually reside, and that is in our spirits. Our spirits have been recreated. The sin nature has been taken out. I John 3:14: "We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren!" Satan's nature is gone. God's Nature is in us. This New Creation is of God. We know that we are His own.
Nothing will cripple one so quickly as to deny this truth. Nothing will establish you and build your faith as quickly as to confess it. Confess it in your heart first. Confess it out loud in your room. Say it over and over again: "I am a child of God. I have God's Nature. I am the righteousness of God in Christ!" Say it until the words become familiar to your spirit. Say it until your spirit and your words agree, until your whole being swings into harmony and into line with the Word of God.
That miraculous passage in Hebrews 5:13 says, "For everyone that partaketh of milk is without experience of the word of righteousness; for he is a babe!" They have never sounded the depths of righteousness. They do not know what it means to have God justify them and to have a standing with the Father just like Jesus' standing. They do not seem to grasp the significance of the reality of the New Creation.
That New Creation is a part of God. It has partaken of God's Nature. It has been made out of righteousness and holiness of truth. The New Creation is not a man-made thing. It is not a mental thing. It is a thing of God. Just as the angel said in Luke 1:35: "That holy thing that shall be born shall be the Son of God." The Holy Spirit has given birth to you and you are one of the holy ones of God.
You are that separated thing that belongs absolutely to the Father. You are now His very child. You can say, "My Father!" He whispers, "My child!"
Romans 8:15: "For ye received not the spirit of bondage again unto fear; but ye received the spirit of adoption whereby we cry, Abba, Father." This is your continual confession of your relationship to Him and His to you. That will build faith into you.
Romans 8:1: "There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus!" God is your Father, your Protector, your Caretaker, and your Lord. You are in His family. Take your place. Play the part of a son.
Let the world hear your confession. Every time you confess your sonship rights and your sonship place, you defeat the adversary. Sickness has no dominion over you. Disease has no dominion over you. Want and hunger and need have no dominion over you. You are now in the family of plenty.
You are in the family where you lie down in green pastures and you are led by streams of sweet water. Your soul is restored from calamity, fear, and doubt; and fellowship and communion with Him is quiet and beautiful. You are walking, now in the paths of righteousness, taking advantage of your righteousness. You are doing the works of a righteous man. You are praying the prayers of a righteous man. James 5:16: "The supplication of a righteous man availeth much in its working."
You are praying for the sick. You are casting out demons. Mark 16:17,18.
You are living a life of victory because you are the righteousness of God in Christ.
This in part is what Eternal Life gives us in Christ.
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