Life Matters - January 10. 2024
“Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the spirit of God dwelleth in you?”(1 Corinthians 3:16) That the apostle Paul wrote this, by the inspiration of God, to the church at Corinth in the form of a question several times (also, in 6:19) seems to indicate his approach to them being without personal judgement. Whether by judging them lost or saved. What that searching question clearly indicates is a trust and belief in the spirit of Christ infilling and then sanctifying each believer from the inside out. Laying the groundwork for Paul’s judgement of their numerous actions that were in “cognitive dissonance,” (discord between beliefs and attitudes) and his giving of direction for their purifying. What that question also clearly indicates is Paul’s steadfast belief in the promise Jesus left us, before His ascent into the heavens, of making His abode in us by the comforter, the Holy Spirit that he would send in His physical absence, and in the keeping of that promise after His ascension.
If the above appears complicated to us at times, we do well to consider the alternative, an alternative intrinsically complicated because of our fallen human nature that Jesus died and rose again to replace. A fallen nature that no amount of religious ritual, ceremony, nor organizing, can repair, supersede, nor replace. As satan cannot cast out satan, so the fallen human nature cannot, will not, cast out fallen human nature. Not out of ourselves nor out of others. Not that we never try. Is that not the cause of a major portion of mankind’s struggle with itself? Is not this struggle for inner peace, for inner freedom, the strongest, most desperate, the most devastating and finally, the most comforted desire of the human heart?
The apostle Paul, by the inspiration of God, in Romans chapter seven gives a vivid description of this inner struggle that he, again, by the inspiration of God, finds to be the common human experience, that of struggling to be somebody we are not. He then concludes the chapter with a most devastating conclusion about the inner struggle of his mind to overcome the law of sin in his members, even as he consents to the goodness of God’s law. He writes, “ So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.” (Romans 7:25)
When he writes the above, the apostle Paul has already found deliverance. He has already seen and accepted his wretched condition. He has turned to God and found deliverance, peace, and freedom, “through Jesus Christ our Lord.” So he speaks here of a fixed principle as pertains to our natural, our first birth, as in, “I myself.” Paul continues in Romans chapter 8, “There is now therefore no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit. For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh. That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit.’’ (Romans 8:1-4) It is worthy of note that the law was not the problem, but the weakness of his flesh was, and is. It is also worthy of note that he speaks of the righteousness of the law being fulfilled in the believer and leaves out the ceremonial. For the ceremonial pointed forward to this time, to this fulfillment, of “Christ in you, the Hope of glory.” (Colossians 1:27) It hailed the coming of the Messiah. He is here.
Abraham had two sons, the first by a bondwoman, and the second born of the free, his wife. The first was a result of Abraham and Sarah looking to themselves and to the flesh for answers to God’s promise, but the second was a miracle. Conceived and brought forth when, in the flesh, Abraham and Sarah were old and tired. This son of promise went on to procreate the nation through whom Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God was brought into the world.
This account of two sons is given as an allegorical object lesson (in Galatians 4:22-5:1 and Romans 9:7-8) on how to find peace, freedom, and spiritual liberty, even in the face of the failing flesh of our first birth. By being born the second time, by being changed from the inside out, as in 1 Corinthians chapter three, by becoming the temple of the living God.
Life Matters!