Walk after the Spirit Part 2
“Walk After The Spirit” Pt 2
Where do the works of the flesh spring from?
Are they another nature in me?
Do I have two natures warring inside me?
Does my ‘flesh’ have its own nature?
Welcome…..
… to a message that will tell you what you have IN Christ through His Death, Burial & Resurrection.
The purpose of His Redemptive work was to bring into existence a New Creation that would succeed where Adam failed.
If you are a New Creation, that means you!
Presented by
Ann Windsor
On a personal note:
I am set for the defense of the New Creation against damnable doctrines that dilute his uniqueness, awesomeness, overcoming-ness, his peace, joy, love and new quality of life.
I will fight for what Jesus died to produce…the New Man.
I will fight your unrenewed mind, wrestle thoughts contrary to who God has made you to be in Christ.
I will fight emotions that hold your soul in bondage to the old creation that you were.
I will ‘fight the good fight’ to lift up the New Creation, for he is CHRIST IN YOU!
The New Creation….
“If any man be in Christ, then he has become a new creation, old things are passed away, behold all things are become new.”
2 Cor. 5:17
Our foundational verse:
Galatians 5:16: This I say then, walk in (habitually after, by) the Spirit and you WON’T fulfill the lusts of the flesh.
Gal. 5:19-23 gives us two lists:
The works of the flesh.
The Fruit of the S(s)pirit.
Galatians 5:16 tells us straight out, that if we (you and I) will ‘walk in, after, by’, the Fruit of the S(s)pirit, then WE WILL NOT perform the works of the flesh.
This is an “I guarantee you” statement from Paul!
Notice the order of statements Paul is making in Galatians 5:16:
1. walk after the Spirit
2. then you won’t fulfill the lusts of the flesh
When you are saved, (born again, refathered from above), only your spirit is born again.
For review (this is a football):
You are a spirit.
You possess a soul.
You live in a body.
What kind of spirit are you?
According to 2 Corinthians 5:17, if you are in Christ then you are a new creation, the old moral and spiritual condition has passed away, the fresh and the new has come. And Vs. 18 tells you, that in that new creation all things are OF GOD.
According to Galatians 2:20, WHO is that new creation in you?
Christ: “It is no longer I that lives, but Christ that lives in me, and the life I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God Who loved me and gave Himself for me.”
What about the soul?
It is renewed: Romans 12:2.
With what? The Word of God.
What about the body?
It is presented to God as an instrument of righteousness, a living sacrifice: Romans 12:1 & Romans 6:12 & 13.
Only the spirit has a ‘nature’.
If the soul can be renewed, and the body can be ‘presented’, then that means that they have no ‘nature’ of their own, but they must obey the wishes of the one doing the ‘renewing’ and ‘presenting’.
Who is the one that ‘renews’ and ‘presents’?
The real you…the recreated spirit.
i.e. YOU (the spirit) renew your (possessive pronoun, shown ownership) your mind.
YOU present your body.
Again, the mind and body are shown to be a ‘possession’.
Possessions have no independent will.
Think about these things.
What is ‘renewal’?
I like to picture it as ‘pouring in the clean water’ and ‘flushing out the dirty water’.
The soul (mind, will and emotions) is like a glass of water that is filled with dirty water when we get born again.
As we ‘pour in’ the water of the Word, the ‘dirty water’ (old thoughts, emotions, choices) are flushed out and the Mind of Christ comes to dominate our thoughts and decisions. The Fruit of the Spirit come alive in our emotions.
Thoughts are not another nature if they can be ‘renewed’.
Emotions are not another nature if they can be subdued/replaced.
Choices are not another nature if they can be changed by renewing the mind with the Word of God.
Accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative in your soul, in other words.
The more the soul is renewed with the Word of God, the more the body has peace, life, wellness, youthfulness, as it is yielded to God more and more.
The very word ‘yield’ shows that the body does not have its own nature, as someone is in charge of the yielding of it.
Looking at our foundational verse again:
Walk (notice this word, it is an action word, a life-practice word) AFTER THE SPIRIT, and you WON’T fulfill the lusts or works of the flesh.
What to grow up spiritually the easy way?
WALK AFTER THE SPIRIT in your situations of daily life.
Make this your daily goal.
You will begin to go to bed at night with more and more days of victory.
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In Lesson 2, I would like to delve a little further into the:
The ‘Dual Nature’ Doctrine (theory)
Many Bible versions state in Vs. 16: “walk in the Spirit then you won’t fulfill the lusts of your sinful nature.”
Statements such as: “I’m just a sinner saved by grace”, and “well you have to sin a little bit every day!” reinforce this mentality that the believer still has the sinful nature.
An excuse to sin?
In my own mind, this damnable doctrine just gives people a mentality for weakness, gives place to the devil in our lives, and keeps the believer striving ‘for’ the victory over sin instead of living ‘from’ their position of victory over sin in Christ.
Without a revelation of the new creation though, my defense against this dual nature doctrine will be just do much wood, hay & stubble to you.
2 Cor. 5:16 says, “henceforth know we no man after the flesh”, or the natural realm.
What other way then do we know man? After the spiritual realm.
You may know all about yourself as a ‘sinner’, but do you know about yourself as a ‘new creation’? This is what this verse means: henceforth (or since you have been born again), you must come to know yourself ‘after the spirit’, or the new creation.
When you really ‘know’ yourself this way, you will realize the fallacy of this dual nature doctrine.
Here is another verse that is used with believers all the time: “For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies”, etc. etc.? (Mt. 15:19)
Do you realize that this verse was stated BEFORE THE REDEMPTIVE WORK, before people could be born again and have the ‘evil heart’ taken out of them.
The word ‘heart’ is used in several different ways in Scripture, but usually when this verse is used with believers, stress is laid upon the fact that they may be a new creature in Christ but they still have the ‘lower’ or ‘sinful’ nature.
Why is a man born again?
TO GET RID OF THE SINFUL NATURE!
Remember: you ARE a spirit.
The nature of the devil (an evil heart) WAS YOUR NATURE, the substance of spiritual death lived in you.
When YOU are born again, YOU get a new nature.
This is the purpose of the NEW BIRTH.
The New Nature is the Spirit of Christ in you!
Paul states that the flesh (body) does NOT HAVE ITS OWN NATURE……
Your body is just an amoral instrument…..
Romans 6:13
…neither present ye your members instruments of unrighteousness to the sin, but present yourselves to God as living out of the dead (spiritual), and your members instruments of righteousness to God; (YLT)
…and no longer lend your faculties as unrighteous weapons for Sin to use. On the contrary surrender your very selves to God as living men who have risen from the dead, and surrender your several faculties to God, to be used as weapons to maintain the right. (Weymouth)
“Reckon yourself dead to sin, but alive unto God!” Romans 6:11.
The key to being master over any sin (which includes all the works of the flesh), is to
ENFORCE YOUR DEATH TO IT!!!!!
“Lust I am dead to you.”
“Anger I am dead to you.”
“Jealousy I am dead to you.”
Your new birth was also your death…the death of the old you, the one with the sinful nature.
2 Corinthians 5:17: If anyone is in Christ he is a new creature altogether, the old moral and spiritual condition has passed away. (KJ: behold all things are become new and all things…in that new creation…are of God),
2 Cor. 5:19: for He (God) has made Him (Jesus) to BE SIN for you, and He (God) has made you the righteousness of God IN HIM (Jesus).
Living: “God took the sinless Christ and poured into Him your sins, and He (God) took His (Christ’s) righteousness and poured it into you!”
God made Christ Sin, and made you His righteousness, so sin would not have the dominion over you……but you would have dominion over it just as Jesus did, Who lives inside you NOW.
SIN & sin
Let’s talk about the difference between
Sin & sin:
Sin: nature (capital S)
sins … acts proceeding from that nature. (lower case s)
You were born again so that Sin (capital S), the nature of the devil that produces the works of the flesh (sin), would be eradicated from you!
You were born again so that….
Satan, Sin, sins and all the works of the flesh would no longer be your master and you their servant.
That is WHY the Greater One is in you….to be in dominion over them, (Rom. 6:14)!
Again:
What are you? A spirit.
What kind of spirit? A recreated spirit
Who is that recreated spirit? Christ in you.
And if the body is just an instrument, as Paul has said (Romans 6:12 & 13), how can it have its own nature?
You may ask:
“Well, then, what is that I ‘feel’ stirring in my flesh from time to time, it certainly isn’t righteousness!”
IT IS TEMPTATION!
And there is no temptation taken you but such as is common to man and God WILL with the temptation make a way of escape.
Think with me along this line for a little bit.
A question to consider in the light of my statement that you do not have a dual nature:
“Does temptation come from without or within?”
I can hear you now quote your tradition teaching: “Well, didn’t Paul say that he had the problem of two natures? He didn’t do what he wanted to do and he did do what he didn’t want to do?”
Ahhhh……Romans 7.
Paul was describing the fate of a man UNDER THE LAW!
At the end of Romans 7, he says: “this fateful dilemma has now been resolved: Christ has appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself”, ( which the book of Hebrews states also).
Romans 8
He goes on in Romans 8 and says that Christ has set us free from this low lying black cloud of sin and death, for what the Law could not do (conquer sin in the flesh), God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, accomplished the will of God and so condemned sin from operating in the flesh. And, WHO IS IN YOU? So….the conclusion would then be that you can also ‘master sin in the flesh’.
YOU WERE BORN AGAIN TO REMOVE FROM YOUR LIFE THAT NATURE THAT WAS SIN AND CAUSED YOU TO SIN AND MADE SIN YOUR MASTER.
NOW, THE NEW NATURE IN YOU MASTERS SIN!
So, back to our question:
Does temptation come from WITHIN or WITHOUT?
What is the purpose of temptation?
Why does the devil want you to sin?
Where does temptation originate?
Where is the devil (and his sinful nature)?
Let’s go back and review the basics before going on to answer these questions, (back to our ‘Gentlemen, this is a football’ statements):
What are you?
A spirit, you possess a soul and you live in a body, but you ARE A SPIRIT.
When you are born again (you the spirit, the real you), the sinful nature leaves and God’s nature fills you.
Your soul and body have no nature of themselves. You can tell your soul and body what to do. Back to Paul in Rom. 6…yield your body as an instrument of righteousness to God.
One nature….
Your recreated spirit isn’t still half devil and half God. Half dark and half light.
You are single natured…just as you were single natured before you were born again: Sin.
Because you are single natured you DO NOT HAVE TO FULFILL THE temptations that want to COME AGAINST the instrument which is your body….or your mind or emotions for that matter.
Speaking of the mind….
Romans 12:2: “And do not follow the customs of the present age, but be transformed by the entire renewal of your minds, so that you may learn by experience what God’s will is–that will which is good and beautiful and perfect.”
Note:
the mind has NO NATURE…it is RE-NEWED not re-created as your spirit is!
Speaking of the emotions….
Eph. 4:24: ‘clothe yourself with the new man’…. put on the Fruit of the S(s)pirit…the new emotions of the new you!
It’s all about choice….you choose to clothe yourself with the Nature of God which is in your NEW MAN.
Do you still have the ability to sin?
Absolutely!
But you don’t have the right!
Why?
….because He loved you and gave Himself for you.
Tell yourself:
I DON’T HAVE THE RIGHT TO SIN BECAUSE OF WHAT HE’S DONE FOR ME!
So….in conclusion:
You have a single nature, the Nature of God which came into you and caused you to be born again.
Your body is just an instrument that can be yielded to righteous use or unrighteous use.
YOU ARE IN CHARGE NOW of what force uses your body. The New Birth, the New Nature, put you in charge!
“If I make the choice to sin, doesn’t that mean that I still have a sinful nature?”
A choice is not a nature. It is a choice.
Yes, your soul and body feel the contamination and condemnation of a sin you choose to commit, but they can be cleansed from all unrighteousness by asking forgiveness. Their sense of rightness with God is restored.
A helpful definition of the word ‘flesh’: 5-senses…they are the sensory gates through which all temptation comes.
Don’t fall for the doctrine of the Saducees & Pharisees…..
You don’t have a dual nature.
Your flesh has no nature of its own.
In the believer, the works of the flesh don’t originate from inside you….
You don’t have an ‘evil heart’.
How to deal with temptation…
Make a choice to recognize that the force coming against you is coming from without and not within.
Recognize that your new creation (Christ in you) has more than enough power to deal with any temptation.
Begin to walk after the S(s)pirit, in the S(s)pirit and serve God right at that moment WITH YOUR SPIRIT (Romans 1:9).
AND YOU WILL BE
SHOUTING THE VICTORY!
Why don’t you sing it right now…
“Victory in Jesus, my Savior forever, He sought me and He bought me with His redeeming Blood……
He loved me ere I knew him
And all my love is due him
He plunged me to victory
Beneath the
Cleansing flood………
Another important fact for you to take note of:
Serve God with your spirit, first: Rom. 1:9,
then: renew your mind,
And present your body.
Greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world!
Don’t settle for less than a demonstration of Satan’s defeat in your life!
Jesus’ redemptive work was to produce this.
Upcoming topics: the ‘lusts’ of the flesh.
“Lusts”….
We’re going to take a good look at this word in an upcoming lesson. This word needs to have a proper definition especially in relation to the new creation. How about this verse in relation to ‘lusts’:
‘They that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affection and lusts’
…Galatians 5:24.
Don’t hear much on that do we?
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This is a companion series to our previous video class: “Victory over Sin”, Pts. 1-3.
Taken from a phrase by Dr. John G. Lake: “every university needs to have a Chair of Pneumatology,” (the study of the things spiritual).
All of my classes are a product of New Life International
Apostolic Ministry School of Pneumatology
Contact information:
Facebook: Ann Windsor
Email: [email protected]
Blog: [email protected]