There are those who like to argue because they need to be right. If one card is moved the whole house will collapse. This the ego cannot handle and they will guard it even to the extent of being intellectually dishonest. As for me I've had things that I held as truth overturned with greater truth, for which I was thankful. It's not like the belief was completely heretical but new light on the matter made what I held before untenable.
There are those who still feed at the tree of the knowledge of good and evil - The tree of the knowledge of right and wrong - The tree of the knowledge that I am right and the other guy is wrong. Our first parents partook of that tree and their offspring have been feeding from it ever since. I prefer to feed at the tree of life where Father gives me what to do daily and I don't have to judge it and I am free of judging anyone else.
The study of the incarnation and the nature of Christ has been a hotbed of argumentation. For the most part people just bang heads because they want to be right or to prove the other person wrong. I would hope I'm not that kind of person. What I have studied and understood about the nature of Christ has brought me to a place where many of Paul statements regarding "Christ in you" now shine very bright. It brought me out of a religion of failure and lifted me up to stand against the winds that blow. It has shown me that the devil is a defeated foe.
The words perfection and sinless are usually spoken with an accusation. I do not feel that anyone should claim perfection or sinlessness because to do so they would have to be looking at themselves. My experience is to keep my eyes upon the Savior for He is my perfection and my eternal life.
The one who has been brought low by seeing the true depth of their own depravity and have been delivered from it, will never look to self and claim anything but that they are one who is in total need of the abiding presence of the Son of God moment by moment.
Jesus lived a perfect life and he was sinless, no one since or before could lay claim to that. But the scriptures do say that God will keep us in the time of temptation, and will provide a way of escape and that he will keep us from falling and present us faultless. The true believer only focuses on following the will of God. When we know God as it is our privilege to know Him, our life will be a life of continual obedience. The heart refined and sanctified will find its highest delight in doing the will of God. One who is dead to sin would never consider violating their conscience.
For most of my Christian experience I was given to believe that the term, "The Body of Christ" was something like a student body.
However, I have come to believe that the body of Christ is literally my body and your body which belongs to him because he lives within our bodies. God who is a Spirit Being, created us for His habitation. We are an earthen vessel, a living temple.
This faculty with which we were created has been hijacked by dark forces and do so to control people. There are those mentioned in scripture who were possessed of demons. They actually took up residence within a human body, in the place created for God to dwell. At times they used a persons mouth to speak or caused them to do things that the person had no control over.
Would it be correct to infer that these individuals were "the body of Satan"? Even Peter spoke for the adversary when he tryed to suggest that Jesus not go to the cross. Jesus rebuked the spirit not Peter.
As to the literal body of Christ being our physical body, I want to offer some texts that lead me to this conclusion.
1) "And hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church,
Which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all." Eph. 1:22,23 AV
Jesus is declared to be the head of the body of the Son of God and you and I comprise everything from the neck down, so to speak.
2) "For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones." Eph. 5:30 AV
This text is clearly stating that our flesh and bones are actually the physical human body of the Son of God. It belongs to Him. He created it and redeemed it for His own habitation.
3) "For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ...For the body is not one member, but many...Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular."
1 Cor.12:12,14, 27 AV
Paul is comparing the human body which is made up of many different parts as an example of the body of Christ. The compelling part of this text, "... so also is Christ. " Christ has a body and it is comprised of every believer, a multi-membered body filled with one Spirit. The incarnation is God's presence on earth in our human flesh This is how He devised to save us from within. Without His Son being our life we could never turn to the Father or seek repentance. He had to tip the scales and replace what we lost in Eden with His own Son. He will be our spiritual ears and give us the power to Love and obey the Father which otherwise we could never accomplish.
He is the Seed of the woman in Gen. 3:15 which gives me cause to believe that this promise of victory and the promise in John 3:16 was actually fulfilled in Eden.
4) "Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ....And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise." Gal 3:16&29 AV
Paul makes it clear that the Seed and Christ are one in the same, and there is only one Seed. yet in the end of the chapter he says that if we belong to Christ then we are the Seed or we are Christ. At first that seemed blasphemous, but to have the son of God be our new identity that we could cling to and be kept by is not blasphemy but salvation. That is to say that there is only one Seed and only one body, it is Christ's body.
"And if Christ be in you, the body (our mortal body) is dead because of sin; (for it died by sin in Eden) but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you." Rom. 8:10,11
We were created with the ability to love and obey our Creator, to hear Him and think His thoughts after Him and own those thoughts as our own. We would them be obeying from the heart His divine will. Also there was placed within us a desire to reach out to Him. However, something did die in Eden on that fateful day. Love and all that followed in its train died and it was replaced with fear, hostility and fleshly desire. If we consider all that the scriptures say about the condition of the carnal mind and heart, that it is at war with God and filled with an intense hostility (emnity) toward God, then it must be so that we were lost without any hope of returning to God of our own accord. That is why God gave us His Son to replace that which was lost.
He laid off His power, His knowledge, His intellect, everything that was His prerogative as God to be. However, He did bring into the soul some gifts to love and seek the Father in repentance, hating sin. He provides us with the ability to hear Him when He speaks to our heart and obey His will.
Consider the amazing gift that the Father promised in Gen. 3:15 and John 3:16. It was ready and available for our first parents. As soon as there was sin there was a Saviour. Does it not say in Revelation that He was the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world?
The plan of redemption was not an after thought but was established before the creation of this world. In this divine plan the Son had covenanted to lay down His life and become helpless and dependent upon the Father for everything in order to give us His divine life to replace what we lost through disobedience.
Without this gift our first parents and all of humanity would be totally under the control of Satan.
Therefore I had to accept that Adam and Eve were the first members of the human body of Christ, the Son of God.
"And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life." 1 John 5:11,12
We can clearly see that eternal life is not some quality or substance that God doles out to those who are saved. Eternal life is a quality only found in God. The eternal life that is promised is in the Son and those who are dead to self and yielded to Christ will live eternally through His life for He will remain within for ever.
Here is a thought to ponder. The Son sacrificed His life to live only within the redeemed forever and the only place the Father will ever see His Son again is when He looks into the eyes of those who have been redeemed from the earth, for it is within these souls that He has taken up an eternal residence. The gift of the Father to a fallen world and the voluntary sacrifice of the Son to be our life was an eternal gift and sacrifice for both of them. The intimate union and relationship that existed between the Father and the Son will be the never ending pursuit, and ceaseless approaching unto the Father through the Son who dwells within. The Son within will draw each soul closer and closer throughout eternal ages to that intimate oneness that only He and the Father knew.
Like a multifaceted gem stone reflects a different part of the light, so each soul may express only a small part of the Son's eternal beauty, and for every soul that is lost that persons aspect of the Son will not be revealed. That is why God takes no delight in the death of the wicked.
There are those who still feed at the tree of the knowledge of good and evil - The tree of the knowledge of right and wrong - The tree of the knowledge that I am right and the other guy is wrong. Our first parents partook of that tree and their offspring have been feeding from it ever since. I prefer to feed at the tree of life where Father gives me what to do daily and I don't have to judge it and I am free of judging anyone else.
The study of the incarnation and the nature of Christ has been a hotbed of argumentation. For the most part people just bang heads because they want to be right or to prove the other person wrong. I would hope I'm not that kind of person. What I have studied and understood about the nature of Christ has brought me to a place where many of Paul statements regarding "Christ in you" now shine very bright. It brought me out of a religion of failure and lifted me up to stand against the winds that blow. It has shown me that the devil is a defeated foe.
The words perfection and sinless are usually spoken with an accusation. I do not feel that anyone should claim perfection or sinlessness because to do so they would have to be looking at themselves. My experience is to keep my eyes upon the Savior for He is my perfection and my eternal life.
The one who has been brought low by seeing the true depth of their own depravity and have been delivered from it, will never look to self and claim anything but that they are one who is in total need of the abiding presence of the Son of God moment by moment.
Jesus lived a perfect life and he was sinless, no one since or before could lay claim to that. But the scriptures do say that God will keep us in the time of temptation, and will provide a way of escape and that he will keep us from falling and present us faultless. The true believer only focuses on following the will of God. When we know God as it is our privilege to know Him, our life will be a life of continual obedience. The heart refined and sanctified will find its highest delight in doing the will of God. One who is dead to sin would never consider violating their conscience.
For most of my Christian experience I was given to believe that the term, "The Body of Christ" was something like a student body.
However, I have come to believe that the body of Christ is literally my body and your body which belongs to him because he lives within our bodies. God who is a Spirit Being, created us for His habitation. We are an earthen vessel, a living temple.
This faculty with which we were created has been hijacked by dark forces and do so to control people. There are those mentioned in scripture who were possessed of demons. They actually took up residence within a human body, in the place created for God to dwell. At times they used a persons mouth to speak or caused them to do things that the person had no control over.
Would it be correct to infer that these individuals were "the body of Satan"? Even Peter spoke for the adversary when he tryed to suggest that Jesus not go to the cross. Jesus rebuked the spirit not Peter.
As to the literal body of Christ being our physical body, I want to offer some texts that lead me to this conclusion.
1) "And hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church,
Which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all." Eph. 1:22,23 AV
Jesus is declared to be the head of the body of the Son of God and you and I comprise everything from the neck down, so to speak.
2) "For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones." Eph. 5:30 AV
This text is clearly stating that our flesh and bones are actually the physical human body of the Son of God. It belongs to Him. He created it and redeemed it for His own habitation.
3) "For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ...For the body is not one member, but many...Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular."
1 Cor.12:12,14, 27 AV
Paul is comparing the human body which is made up of many different parts as an example of the body of Christ. The compelling part of this text, "... so also is Christ. " Christ has a body and it is comprised of every believer, a multi-membered body filled with one Spirit. The incarnation is God's presence on earth in our human flesh This is how He devised to save us from within. Without His Son being our life we could never turn to the Father or seek repentance. He had to tip the scales and replace what we lost in Eden with His own Son. He will be our spiritual ears and give us the power to Love and obey the Father which otherwise we could never accomplish.
He is the Seed of the woman in Gen. 3:15 which gives me cause to believe that this promise of victory and the promise in John 3:16 was actually fulfilled in Eden.
4) "Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ....And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise." Gal 3:16&29 AV
Paul makes it clear that the Seed and Christ are one in the same, and there is only one Seed. yet in the end of the chapter he says that if we belong to Christ then we are the Seed or we are Christ. At first that seemed blasphemous, but to have the son of God be our new identity that we could cling to and be kept by is not blasphemy but salvation. That is to say that there is only one Seed and only one body, it is Christ's body.
"And if Christ be in you, the body (our mortal body) is dead because of sin; (for it died by sin in Eden) but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you." Rom. 8:10,11
We were created with the ability to love and obey our Creator, to hear Him and think His thoughts after Him and own those thoughts as our own. We would them be obeying from the heart His divine will. Also there was placed within us a desire to reach out to Him. However, something did die in Eden on that fateful day. Love and all that followed in its train died and it was replaced with fear, hostility and fleshly desire. If we consider all that the scriptures say about the condition of the carnal mind and heart, that it is at war with God and filled with an intense hostility (emnity) toward God, then it must be so that we were lost without any hope of returning to God of our own accord. That is why God gave us His Son to replace that which was lost.
He laid off His power, His knowledge, His intellect, everything that was His prerogative as God to be. However, He did bring into the soul some gifts to love and seek the Father in repentance, hating sin. He provides us with the ability to hear Him when He speaks to our heart and obey His will.
Consider the amazing gift that the Father promised in Gen. 3:15 and John 3:16. It was ready and available for our first parents. As soon as there was sin there was a Saviour. Does it not say in Revelation that He was the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world?
The plan of redemption was not an after thought but was established before the creation of this world. In this divine plan the Son had covenanted to lay down His life and become helpless and dependent upon the Father for everything in order to give us His divine life to replace what we lost through disobedience.
Without this gift our first parents and all of humanity would be totally under the control of Satan.
Therefore I had to accept that Adam and Eve were the first members of the human body of Christ, the Son of God.
"And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life." 1 John 5:11,12
We can clearly see that eternal life is not some quality or substance that God doles out to those who are saved. Eternal life is a quality only found in God. The eternal life that is promised is in the Son and those who are dead to self and yielded to Christ will live eternally through His life for He will remain within for ever.
Here is a thought to ponder. The Son sacrificed His life to live only within the redeemed forever and the only place the Father will ever see His Son again is when He looks into the eyes of those who have been redeemed from the earth, for it is within these souls that He has taken up an eternal residence. The gift of the Father to a fallen world and the voluntary sacrifice of the Son to be our life was an eternal gift and sacrifice for both of them. The intimate union and relationship that existed between the Father and the Son will be the never ending pursuit, and ceaseless approaching unto the Father through the Son who dwells within. The Son within will draw each soul closer and closer throughout eternal ages to that intimate oneness that only He and the Father knew.
Like a multifaceted gem stone reflects a different part of the light, so each soul may express only a small part of the Son's eternal beauty, and for every soul that is lost that persons aspect of the Son will not be revealed. That is why God takes no delight in the death of the wicked.
