Simplicity 0f Christ,( Part 1)
When we consider the entire world and our little portion of the world called our household, we can’t help but wonder why is mans history so complex? Divisions, differences, and options are like a cancer that has no cure. Yet, we read:
2nd Corinthians 11:3, “But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.”
We see from this teaching that the problem of divisions, differences and opinions reside in the mind. God had warned Adam not to take of the tree in the midst of the Garden but Satan was a good salesman, for Eve heard Satan say that she would not die, her eyes would be opened and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil, Genesis 3:4-5.
So all of mankind have followed the same lie, they did die. Her eyes were opened and can see only the physical aspects of God’s creation. Also, if you were to ask any man or woman about knowing good from evil, I’m sure everyone would have an opinion. So such is the history of man.
God has HIStory also.God is not so foolish to not know, that what ever He brings into existence needs to be tested. Adam and Eve failed their test in the Garden of Eden so God closed the Tree of Life never to be opened again until we read about it in the Book of Revelation, 22:1-2. If Adam and Eve had taken of the Tree of Life, God’s Life, then they both would have been raised to a life higher than the life of man to the very life of God. The Adam that we read about in Genesis 2 was made in God’s image. Meaning that Adam had the appearance of God as we view a two demential photograph but he lacked the inward filling of the nature of God and he would have been like a three demential photograph, able to walk and talk. God knew that Adam and Eve might fail Him so He had a backup plan with someone who would be tested, with the in-ward filling already in place, His own Son.
Genesis 3:15, ” And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her Seed; it shall bruise thy head and thou shall bruise His heel.”
This prophesy occurred sometime in the past. Jesus Christ was crucified on the cross and by doing so, Satan who is death, was defeated by the resurrected Christ, Hebrews 2:14.
Jesus Dying For Our Sins
When Jesus paid the ransom price on the cross, the sins of all mankind, which were judged by God’s law, were transferred to Him and the result was death. Death is one of Satan’s names and we read in Hebrew 2:14 that Jesus defeated death.
1st John 2:2, “And He is the propitiation for our sins: and not for our sins only, but also for the sins of the whole world.”
So far, this article is basically what we all learned in Sunday school. This is the part God and His Son has done for us. We don’t need to do anything but believe the gospel, John 3:16. A Biblical portion that is overlooked or never mentioned by many is the subject of what the Bible says concerning the old man.
The Old Man
We can read of our old man in the Book of Romans:
Romans 6:6, “Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.”
We were all born according to the similitude of Adam. Meaning, that when we came into this world through our parents, we were all flesh as Adam was flesh. Adam and Eve took on the nature of Satan because of Adam’s and Eve’s failure in the Garden. Since that time, all men took on the nature of Satan, and in so doing, we were sin just as Satan was sin. Satan was our head and we were a member of his body.
Ephesians 2:2, “Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worth in the children of disobedience.”
This was a time in our lives, before believing in the Gospel and transformation, we are referred to as our old man. What we need is a complete transformation from our old man to a new man.
Ephesians 4:22, “That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man which is corrupt according to deceitful lusts; 23, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind: 24, And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.”
Our sins, committed consciously or unconsciously are our doing. These are the sins Jesus paid for. But our corrupted mind, inherited from Adam and Eve, the same corrupted mind Eve had as stated by the Apostle Paul in 2nd Corinthians 11:3, needs to be re-educated. We need to be willingly transformed from our old man into Jesus Christ and become a new man.We can’t hold on to any part of our old man and gain the victory that God wants us to have.
We Are Vessels To Be Filled With God’s Righteousness
We read in the Gospel of John about the marriage of Canna, John 2:1-10. This is the event where Jesus changed the water held in the clay pots into wine. We need to keep in mind that we are all made of the dust of the ground and when the dust of the ground is mixed with the earnest of God’s Holy Spirit, we become clay as the pots were clay. Jesus through a miracle, changed the water in the clay pots into new wine. The old wine was good but the new wine was better, verse 10.
The same subject is taught concerning new wine into old wine skins or bottles.
Matthew 9:17, “Neither do men put new wine into old bottles: else the bottles break and the wine runneth out, and the bottles perish: but they put new wine into new bottles and both are preserved.”
The changing of water into wine is the conversion of our old serpentine nature of Satan we inherited through Adam and Eve to our new nature through Jesus Christ. We are the bottles or wineskins to be filled with new wine. When we believe in the Gospel, a new beginning through a new covenant was established.
From the very beginning, God wanted Adam and Eve, as vessels, to be filled with Jesus Christ as the Tree of Life. This was and still is the intention God has for all mankind.
2nd Corinthians 4:7, “But we have this treasure (the earnest of God’s Holy Spirit, 2nd Corinthians 5:5) in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be God and not us.”
The time when we believed the good news of the kingdom of God, the leading of God’s Holy Spirit, to the washing of the word, we become a new creation.
2nd Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore if any man be in christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. 18, And all things are of God, Who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ.”
There is a simplicity in christ if we are being led by the Spirit of God. A problem arises for God when we, along with the interest and the pulls of the world and its teaching, interfere with the work of the Holy Spirit. this is what the Apostle Paul is referring to concerning Eve in the Garden.
God, Who is Spirit, John 4:24, is creating children, male and female, to look like Him and to have the same inner qualities within ourselves, called the righteousness of Christ, 1st Corinthians 1:30. This is the law of Kind after kind.