SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 4/28/2017 9:12 PM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-1 “The Position of the New Man”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Colossians
3:9b-10a
Message of the verses: “since you laid aside the old self with its evil practices, and have put on the new self.”
We begin by looking at the word “since” which is actually
in the middle of 3:9, and this perhaps could have or perhaps should have been
the beginning a new verse, at least it indicates that transition to be an
accomplished fact. The accomplished fact
is that the believer has laid aside the old self with it evil practices. When we move to 3:12-17 we will see what we
have put on. MacArthur states “It
bridges the chasm between the old self and the new self—a chasm that believers
could never have crossed unless Jesus had made them new creatures. We could safely say that Jesus Christ is the
bridge that crosses the chasm, and the chasm was instigated when Adam and Eve
sinned as seen in Genesis chapter three.”
I think we need to also look at the following quote from
MacArthur: “The relation of the old self
and the new self has been much disputed.
Many hold that at salvation believers receive a new self but also keep the
old self. Salvation thus becomes
addition, not transformation. They argue
that the struggle in the Christian life comes from the battle between the two.
“Such a view, however, is not precisely consistent with
biblical teaching. At salvation the old self
was done away with. Paul told the
Corinthians, ‘If any man is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things
passed away; behold new things have come’ (2 Cor. 5:17). To the Romans he wrote, ‘Our old self was
crucified with Him, that our body of sin might be done away with, that we
should no longer be slaves to sin’ (Rom. 6:6).
Salvation is transformation—the old self is gone, replaced by the new
self. R. C. H. Lenski writes, ‘The old
man is not converted, he cannot be; he is not renewed, he cannot be. He can only be replaced by the new man.’
“What is the old self?
It is the unregenerate self, the former manner of existence in
Adam. The old, wretched, depraved,
sinful self is ‘being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit’ (Eph.
4:22). It is that which was replaced by
the regenerate self. To argue that
believers have both an old and new self is to argue in effect that the
believer’s soul is half regenerate and half unregenerate. There is no support for such a spiritual
half-breed in Scripture.
“The new self, in contrast, is the regenerate self. It is what believers are in Christ. The new self is the new creature Paul refers
to in 2 Corinthians 5:17. It walks
differently from the world (Eph. 4:17), in divine love (Eph. 5:1), in the light
of God’s truth (Eph. 5:8), and in wisdom (Eph. 5:15), loving God’s law and
God’s Son, hating sin and pursuing righteousness.”
I have to say that I, probably along with all believers
at some time in their life have struggled with understanding this truth, and as
I was reading over what John MacArthur wrote I began to think that what we have
when we are born is a sinful body, or better yet called the flesh and the only
way to get rid of that sinful flesh is to either die or be alive when the rapture
of the church happens. Paul struggled
with this too as we can see from reading the 7th chapter of his
letter to the Romans as he stated that the things that he did not want to do,
he did, and the things that he wanted to do, he did not do and then he adds the
following concluding this struggle “Wretched man that I am! Who will set me
free from the body of this death?” He
then answers his question in the next verse:
“Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one
hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my
flesh the law of sin (Rom. 7:25-26).”
Paul then begins the 8th chapter by writing “Therefore there
is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Yes we struggle with sin, but because we are
born from above through what Christ did for us on the cross there is no
condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, and all believers are in Christ
Jesus.
4/28/2017 9:39 PM
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