The Spirit Delivers From The Power Of The Flesh, The Spirit Gives Sonship, The Spirit Assures Of Future Glory, The Spirit Assures Of Final Victory

[1stCenturyLady]

but not this flesh body of sin and death which has not yet completed the race, or rather the wages of sin.

I have more to say on this topic, dear friend. Romans 8:1-2 Open your mind to the wonder of the God and Creator of the Universe and everything that was made on them. Look up and try to imagine where it ends. Is there a wall? What is on the other side. It just keeps going on and on and it is Jesus who did all that. He, not us, is the Author and Finisher of our faith. He does not leave things half done. Can you see that?

There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. Now, if it was up to us, we could not be free. But Jesus in John 8:36 makes us FREE INDEED.

Scott, tell yourself the absolute truth about the Gospel. It is the POWER OF GOD. That is more power than a million atom bombs. I know what it is like to be cleansed of all unrighteousness. But I didn't for 30 years before that evening, when I thought I had to do all the struggling and straining to be a good girl. It was when I came to Him with total integrity of heart and told God I was too weak to stop loving my married lover, and I didn't want to stop, so I wasn't going to. If He wanted it to stop, He was going to have to cause my lover to break up with me, and give him the strength to stay away from me when I tried and tried to get him back. One week later I received the first answered prayer of my life, and it broke my heart. There was no turning away from sin, the normal definition of repentance. True repentance is recognizing sin had crippled me, and I was turning it all over to God to do all the struggling and striving on my behalf. I had no idea then of how powerful God really is. But I learned when my new nature had no desire to sin anymore. I didn't create that power over sin - God did. And He doesn't leave what you call "this flesh body of sin and death" behind. I'm still afraid you've been taught to believe it is our body of flesh and blood and not spirit and soul. If that is what you believe, start reading the Bible on your own and start helping your pastor see the truth. (That's what I'm doing, but it is because God gave me the Office of Teacher in the Arizona desert, and added gifts. I can read a Scripture and see it like a movie with all the behind the scenes. Like the fact, that the thief on the cross was already baptized and a follower of Christ before he had to pay for his previous sins. No one with more faith than any of the Apostles could have said what He did to a man that was dying next to him.)

Start reckoning yourself free from sin, because if you don't believe it, you will always sin. For as a man thinks in his heart, so is he.

 

[ScottA]

Why are you saying that the old man of sin and death doesn't fully die until after the body dies. At least, that is what I understand by the phrase "fully passes." If so, then you are wrong about the power of Christ and the meaning of crucifying the old man. It is dead. And what is resurrected in us is a nature that does NOT SIN. Your belief that the old man of sin and death is somehow alive in a born again Christian is not implied in Scripture when it says it is crucified, but in the mind of church fathers that have a cockeyed notion of what grace is. Grace is the power of God, not a license to sin that overlooks willful sin.

All born since Adam are born of flesh, of that "skin" that God gave to cover Adam and Eve, the children of death, and are technically dead from birth. This would-be life is not life at all, but the revealing of the man of sin (unlike "everyone born of the Spirit"), of form...which is to say, with "shadow of turn", evil. Technically, biblically, this evil form of flesh body, is a mere "image" of things unseen in God, made manifest outside of God, in this world.

So, biblically, the man of flesh doesn't die when born again or at what we would call the death or passing of the flesh, but is born dead (into death) "the day" Adam and Eve ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil--since the beginning. Meaning, you (or however) you came to believe that our sin nature that dies when we are born again...does not know whose children we first are.

What occurs when we are born again, is that within our technically already dead flesh body, a new and different spirit of God body is born. Which then remains unseen as God is unseen within the dead body of flesh (in heavenly places in Christ) in this world to live out the full sentence of "to die once." Wherein we are counseled to "reign with Christ" and "bring [our flesh body] into subjection." So, technically, we are taking "captivity captive" with Christ--not burying it in the annals of the dead, just yet. But persevering through the passing and revealing and complete death sentence, and running the race, to the end.

Which is not what I merely "believe", nor was I taught, except directly from God.

 

[ScottA]

Scott, when you speak of body of sin and death, are you thinking that our body of muscles, organs, blood, and skin and bones produces sin? No where does it say that, only that because of Adam's sin will our body that is dying day by day until it dies completely does not produce sin. That is why it is not born again now. There is no need for it to, because sin only resides in man's nature, our spirit and soul. THEY are the puppet masters of the body that is nothing more than a floppy puppet, that is controlled by the masters. The race is won on the inside of us, not the outside.

This is what the flesh is, what we were/are made of, and also the elements of this world and old earth:

Genesis 2:7​

And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.​

Genesis 3:21​

Also for Adam and his wife the Lord God made tunics of skin, and clothed them.​

Galatians 4:3​

Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world.​

2 Peter 3:10​

But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat; both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up.​

As for flesh being sinful:

Romans 8​

There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. 3 For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh, 4 that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. 5 For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. 6 For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. 7 Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. 8 So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God.​

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But--that is not what I was saying, but only associating sin with the flesh, which the scriptures also do.

The general thrust of the scriptures regarding the flesh vs. the spirit, is the natural (flesh) is first, and afterward the spiritual (1 Corinthians15:46). Each person is born of the sinful flesh, and then either dies naturally and is raised up in the spirit, or is born again of the spirit before natural death and thereafter maintains two completely different body (according to scripture) until their body of sinful death dies in natural death.

 

[ScottA]

I have more to say on this topic, dear friend. Romans 8:1-2 Open your mind to the wonder of the God and Creator of the Universe and everything that was made on them. Look up and try to imagine where it ends. Is there a wall? What is on the other side. It just keeps going on and on and it is Jesus who did all that. He, not us, is the Author and Finisher of our faith. He does not leave things half done. Can you see that?

Before I read further--yes, there is a wall of sorts, a gulf where "He placed cherubim at the east of the garden of Eden, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life."

What is on the other side is God and the kingdom of God.

And I never said, Jesus did not finish or leave things half done. On the contrary, I have been speaking from God's perspective, where the times you have considered important, have got in the way...and therefore what I have been saying is foreign to you. As I said, and what is written, is that it was all "finished" before the foundation of the world"--except the revealing of in, wherein we are only last to know. So--no--there is a revealing of Christ "in the middle of the week"--but no new life when one is born again in the midst of history...except the revealing of it--as it were (before the world began).

Can you see that you have greatly misunderstood?

 

[ScottA]

There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. Now, if it was up to us, we could not be free. But Jesus in John 8:36 makes us FREE INDEED.

This again, just defines the shared walk of two different bodies, one born of the flesh (natural), and the other born of the Spirit (spiritual). It does not say the flesh sins no more, is no more, or is transformed into some hybrid glorified flesh that can inherit the kingdom of God.

"Free indeed" means the matter "is finished"--even though the flesh is not finished, and therefore needs to be taken into "submission" to walk according to the spirit rather than the flesh that still "remains."

 

[ScottA]

Scott, tell yourself the absolute truth about the Gospel. It is the POWER OF GOD. That is more power than a million atom bombs. I know what it is like to be cleansed of all unrighteousness. But I didn't for 30 years before that evening, when I thought I had to do all the struggling and straining to be a good girl. It was when I came to Him with total integrity of heart and told God I was too weak to stop loving my married lover, and I didn't want to stop, so I wasn't going to. If He wanted it to stop, He was going to have to cause my lover to break up with me, and give him the strength to stay away from me when I tried and tried to get him back. One week later I received the first answered prayer of my life, and it broke my heart. There was no turning away from sin, the normal definition of repentance. True repentance is recognizing sin had crippled me, and I was turning it all over to God to do all the struggling and striving on my behalf. I had no idea then of how powerful God really is. But I learned when my new nature had no desire to sin anymore. I didn't create that power over sin - God did. And He doesn't leave what you call "this flesh body of sin and death" behind. I'm still afraid you've been taught to believe it is our body of flesh and blood and not spirit and soul. If that is what you believe, start reading the Bible on your own and start helping your pastor see the truth. (That's what I'm doing, but it is because God gave me the Office of Teacher in the Arizona desert, and added gifts. I can read a Scripture and see it like a movie with all the behind the scenes. Like the fact, that the thief on the cross was already baptized and a follower of Christ before he had to pay for his previous sins. No one with more faith than any of the Apostles could have said what He did to a man that was dying next to him.)

Start reckoning yourself free from sin, because if you don't believe it, you will always sin. For as a man thinks in his heart, so is he.

I am glad that God has delivered you from your former sins. Hallelujah!

But you have misunderstood me. I am not one who fits the description you have given or speculated. Nor do I make any claims of my own doing, except that as a last resort I cried out to a God I never before knew. When I did He answered--and now I and Paul share bookend experiences of these times of the gentiles, in Christ Jesus. His was the beginning, and mine is the finish. I was caught up to the third heaven and heard words not lawful to utter, and returned with a task, as I said, the finish, put to an end the mystery of God as He declared to His servants the prophets. You don't have to believe it--but I have lived it--and give witness to things promised, sealed, and only now revealed, as that is what I have been assigned to do--by God.

Blessings to you, and to God be the glory!