We Don’t “Do” Being

2014-02-20

In my thought processes, my writings, my words and my actions, I have often written, I/we need to be like this or that. We need to do this to be more godly, more Christlike, more such-and-such.

That’s what we think, right? Now that we are saved, we somehow need to get to work. We need to do spiritual activities. We may not be under the Law, but there is some sort of rulebook we need to conform to. We may have made up this new rulebook. Maybe our church wrote the rulebook. Maybe our culture did. But let me tell you something: if we do this, we are wrong.

But we need to give Christ our best, right? Shouldn’t we work hard for Jesus in this life? No, this is wrong too.

It is not Christian to do these things. As people saved by grace through faith, we return to the weak and beggarly elements of the world. We are in the flesh all over again. What makes a difference is being a new creature (Galatians 6:15).

For years, I have been asking myself, how can I “do” what the new creature does? How do I walk in the Spirit (Galatians 5:16)? This is the problem... you don’t “do” being the new creation.

So if you don’t “do” being, how do I do... oops... how do I expect to be ANY different as a person who does not know Jesus Christ?

Well, first, as born again believers we ARE a new creation. We are declared righteous by God, and by the blood of Christ, we have received that atonement. I understood that correctly before. But surely, there is something else, right?

Yes, there is! The cross.

Romans 6:6: “Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.” The old man, the old nature, was crucified. Yes, it is gone. “But why do I still sin? Why am I still a miserable sort?”

Romans 6:11: “Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” By FAITH we appropriate the FACT that the old man is crucified, and it is gone. He has given us the deliverance already; we must consider ourselves dead to sin. “For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin” (Romans 7:14). All the other rulebooks are fleshy; it is the Spirit that keeps driving us to the Cross, where we can have experiential deliverance in Jesus Christ.

Then what? Then the resurrection life found in Christ can work in us. Remember the famous verses:

Galatians 2:20: “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.”

Colossians 3:1-3: “If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.”

I am reading The Complete Green Letters by Miles J. Stanford (Zondervan, 1975, 0-310-33051-3). It is blowing me away. I read each chapter twice before I proceed.

Do I expect that I will be without sin? Do I think this is some magical formula? Never. But I do know this is how I yield to God, and allow him to perform his perfect work in a very weak and fragile being such as myself.

It is like being saved all over again.