Series: Understanding Salvation
Lesson Introduction
Spiritual growth has different dynamics to it. Being a part of ToT you have the benefit of being at the impact of the demonstration of the power and the manifestation of the presence of God. Let’s take time and thank God for this privilege because there are those who don’t know the embrace of His presence and the magnificence of His power because it hasn’t been facilitated for them and such hasn’t been a part of their growth experience in God. This is a sad but true fact. However even for us who are at this glorious impact we should also recognize that the excitement and awe of such exciting demonstrations and manifestations don’t constitute the totality of growth.
The second dynamic Is the privilege of service. The sense of relevance and significance that comes with being a participant and contributor to the will of God in the earth is unrivaled. Such a deep sense of meaning arises from knowing that you are doing the will of God and are about your Heavenly Father’s business. Just like the first dynamic this also doesn’t constitute the totality of our growth experience as much as it is a significant part of it.
The part I want to bring your attention to as is the function of this sessions is the call to renew our minds , to meditate in the word of God and to walk in the mind of Christ.
The practices that bring about the renewal of the mind are more “quiet and personal” than the excitement that comes with ministry service and the intensity that comes with corporate worship. It’s this aspect of it that make people ignore it. Most people don’t want to quiet down their lives they want consistent engagement with immediate and visible results. It’s easier to be around people for some than to be by yourself depending on your personality.
_When you sense the tag of the Holy Spirit to spend time in His Word yield to it because there’s a work He’s doing in your mind that will make you a sign and a wonder._
WE ARE IDENTIFIED WITH CHRIST IN HIS ASCENSION.
God “raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:6).
The reason we have this identification with Christ is found in Romans 6:8–10. It is our means of living the abundant life.
“Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God.”
Our old sin nature no longer has to have control over us. We are dead to its hold over us. We no longer have to obey it. We can say “no thank you” I have a new master. We are delivered through the death of Christ. We are no longer under obligation to obey the commands of our former sin nature. _We have been resurrected and set free._ We may choose to obey the old sin nature, but we are not under obligation to do so. We are no longer slaves to that old nature. It is now a matter of choice. Christ now is free to live His life through us.
All that the Scriptures teach concerning the union between the believer and Christ, and concerning the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, proves the supernatural character of our sanctification. _Men do not make themselves holy; their holiness and their growth in grace are not due to their own fidelity, or firmness of purpose, or watchfulness and diligence, although all these are required, but to the divine influence by which they are rendered thus faithful, watchful, and diligent and which produces in them the fruits of righteousness._
‘Without me,’ says our Lord, ‘ye can do nothing’ (John 15:5). ‘As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can you, except you abide in Me’ (v. 4). The hand is not more dependent on the head for the continuance of its vitality _than is the believer on Christ for the continuance of spiritual life in the soul._
Perhaps we do not take sin seriously enough in our day. By their apostasy men lost the image of God; they are born in a state of alienation and condemnation. They are by nature destitute of spiritual life.
From this state it is impossible that they should deliver themselves as that those in the grave should restore life to their wasted bodies and, when restored, continue to invigorate it by their own power. Our whole salvation is of Christ. Those who are in the grave hear His voice. They are raised by His power. And when they live, it is He who lives in them. The main object of Romans 6–7 is to prove that as we are not justified on the grounds of our own righteousness, so we are not sanctified by our own power or by the mere objective power of the truth.
All men since the fall are in a state of sin, not only guilty of specific acts of transgressions, but also depraved, regeneration is the infusion of a new principle of life into their human form. Sanctification, therefore, consists in two things: first, gradual removal and destruction of the power of the principles of evil still infecting that human form; and secondly, the growth of the principle of spiritual life until it controls the thoughts, feelings, and acts, and brings the soul into conformity to the image of Christ (Eph. 4:22–24).
“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” (Romans 6:4).
According to John 16:7 the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost to fill the place of Christ as to His visible presence, carry on His work, to transform them into His likeness, etc.
Where the Spirit is, there Christ is; so that the Spirit being with us, Christ is with us; and if the Spirit dwells in us, Christ dwells in us” (Romans 8:9–11).
The Indwelling of the Holy Spirit thus secured by union with Christ becomes the source of a new spiritual life, which constantly increases in power until everything uncongenial with it is expelled, and the soul is perfectly transformed into the image of Christ.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………