Christianity Oasis Forum

[Netchaplain]

After being saved, increasing our walk in Christ’s image (Eph 4:15; 1Jo 2:6), which is by the Spirit through His Word, is the primary work concerning everything so that we can “draw close to God” (Jas 4:8) in our earthly fellowship with Him, and therefore be used more effectively by the Lord Jesus to reach the lost and strengthen the saved, thus glorifying God commensurate with the light (understanding) He puts in each of us! The more we learn of the continued presence and effect of the “old man,” the more we see our need of spiritual growth in the Christian walk.

The essential doctrines of salvation (teachings related to receiving salvation) in Scripture are easier to understand than those of nonessential doctrines (teachings not related to receiving salvation but rather growth in our walk from salvation). Thus patience, prayer and continued Word-study is all the more necessary for sufficient understanding and guidance of the Spirit concerning the growth truths in the Scriptures (esp. the Pauline Epistles). Misunderstanding or being ignorant of the implications and applications of salvation can delay spiritual growth in those reborn (saved).
NC





Comes the Dawn


I cannot imagine anything more calculated to fill an honest conscience with despair than the New Testament, if you leave Christ out. You may wonder why I state it thus, but indeed, this is just what men do with the New Testament. They make Christ a Law-giver greater than Moses, and the New Testament a book which gives us more of the mind of God than the Old Testament; and all the precepts of Christ and the exhortations of the Epistles are taught as a superior kind of law.

All this is taken up in self-sufficiency by man, as if he could carry it out (in his own power—NC); or, on the other hand, where there is honesty of conscience, the soul is filled with misery and despair (“who shall deliver me”?—NC). Now, this is leaving Christ out. We have to learn that God has established every thought of His heart in His beloved Son. Everything that the law required has been established in His Son.

What a relief to be able to turn to one Person by whom the whole claim of God upon man in the flesh has been fully rendered (solved—NC). It was due to God (because of His love for us—NC) that there should be a Man in flesh and under law able to fill up the whole compass of man’s responsibility with perfection. How differently we should read the law, and everything in the Old Testament which expresses the claim of God upon man, if we started with the knowledge that God has secured it all for Himself in His Son. In this way the law would set before us the perfection of Christ.

How could God’s purpose for man be carried out in the face of man’s complete breakdown, and the apparent triumph of sin and death in the world? Our total ruin as under sin and death could not be ignored. All the questions raised by the fall and sin must be righteously settled. God must be glorified as to sin and death, and by the complete removal from before Him of man in the flesh—the corrupt irretrievable man in whom not one of God’s thoughts could ever be established (as concerning our nature, the old man - Rom 8:7—NC). This is the work of the Cross (Ro 6:6—NC). God has been glorified about sin by One who has borne its full judgment, and by the man in whom sin is ended before the eye of God in the death of His only begotten Son.

Many a justified man might describe his experience in words like these: “I fully recognize, and rejoice in the fact, that I am righteous before the Father according the risen and glorified Lord Jesus; and this being so, nothing but Himself can be my standard of holiness or rule of life. If I could only walk up to it I think I should be a perfectly happy man. But it is one failure after another; and when I think I have gotten on a bit, something turns up, and I find myself as bad as ever, and the thought of this damps all my spiritual joy.”

In this stage of spiritual experience (Romans Seven) there are continued discoveries of the old man which make him more and more repulsive, and there is also the presentation of the Lord Jesus again and again in which the soul finds increasing delight. It is a kind of John the Baptist experience—“He must increase, but I must decrease.” Christ is increasing, and the old man is decreasing in the estimation of the believer’s heart (decreasing in its effect, but not in its presence—NC).

This repulsion and attraction go on together until the soul accepts with God the reality of the incorrigible evil of the flesh (the old man is used in causing us to be ever mindful of our faith in Christ’s expiation—NC). Then comes the dawn (Rom 7:24, 25)! We see that our death with Christ unto sin severs us from our old man (“ye are not in the flesh” - Rom 8:9—NC), and that now Christ is our Life (Col 3:4). We are free by the Cross from the old man (its guilt and dominion nullified—NC) who is so repugnant to us, and we discover with untold delight that the One who has so attracted our hearts is our very Christian Life.


—C A Coats (1862-1945)



Miles J Stanford’s online daily devotional for June 23
http://www.abideabove.com/hungry-heart/