by Bishop Mark Shaw

 

 

The first thing that you need to realize as a new Christian is that you are a son/daughter of God. We have a tendency to take this lightly since we have heard it said so many times. But there is a deep meaning that many of us miss by the term "child of God".

 

To understand the totality of this condition that we suddenly become at the receiving of Christ in our lives, we must look at the totality of what or who we are sons and daughters of. For that, we must look at God, for it is to Him that we are sons and daughters.

 

Now we were not always sons and daughters, we became this WHEN we were changed by our belief in the Son of God, that is Jesus. We are also made sons and daughters of Abraham.

 

Galatians 3:26-29 So you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus. And all who have been united with Christ in baptism have been made like him. There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female. For you are all Christians—you are one in Christ Jesus. And now that you belong to Christ, you are the true children of Abraham. You are his heirs, and now all the promises God gave to him belong to you.

God is the Creator of all things. He is therefore not limited by His creation. He cannot be limited by space, time or matter. That is the divine nature of God. He exist outside of, and inside of space, time and matter. He cannot change for He is the cause of all change. He is eternal

 

He created SPACE. That part of the expanse of heaven that we see as being infinite in size. The infinite extension of the three-dimensional field in which all matter exists. 

 

Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

He created TIME. That law of entropy where everything is winding down, where we see all things having a beginning and an ending. A non spatial continuum in which events occur in apparently irreversible succession from the past through the present to the future.

 

Psalm 102:25-27 In ages past you laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. Even they will perish, but you remain forever; they will wear out like old clothing. You will change them like a garment, and they will fade away. But you are always the same; your years never end.

He created MATTER. That which occupies space, something that has mass and exist as a solid, liquid, or gas.

 

Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

So from this we can start to get an idea of the magnitude of our relationship. We begin to see just how grand we have it. If we are the children of God, and we are heirs with Christ, then we have in our beings the very Spirit of God. And if we have in our beings the very Spirit of God then we have partaken of God and we exist in and through Him. We no longer live, but God lives through us.

 

Galatians 2:20 I myself no longer live, but Christ lives in me. So I live my life in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

We have not become God, but we are being transformed into the NATURE of God. Our nature is Adamic, we got it from our father Adam. That nature is sinful and we are slaves to our nature, not that we cannot do good but that we will consistently do what our nature tells us.

 

Remember, we are not divine, to be divine is to be absolute, that is absolute power, absolute presence, absolute conscience. In other words absolute nature. You see God is a slave to His nature, God is good, He cannot sin. He is spoken of in absolutes. We are not divine and as such we are not absolute, we do not posses an absolute nature.

 

So we can look at the command 'Thou shalt not steal' and be obedient to that today, but what about tomorrow, somewhere we will slip and that is a result of our sinful nature. Our nature is not absolute, and neither are the angel's and neither was Adam's.

 

Adam was created good, the angels were created good, they did not posses sinful nature. But we see that Adam chose to sin as did some of the angels. Their nature was not absolute.

 

I don't want you to misunderstand me here. Our sinful nature is only absolute in the sense that we will sin at some time in our life, but it is not absolute in the sense that we have to obey it at all times. You see we can tell the truth or we can tell a lie... God can only tell the truth and He cannot lie.

 

Okay as children of God we have access to His nature, not the absolute part because that can only be an attribute of divinity. But we can participate in His nature, that is we can choose to allow God to work in us, which creates the nature of God within us.

 

Now as humans this new nature is not absolute, we will want to do good, but we won't always do good. But we are empowered by the Holy Spirit to live in this nature. Not by force, but by the surrendering of our will to this work.

 

Galatians 4:1-7 Think of it this way. If a father dies and leaves great wealth for his young children, those children are not much better off than slaves until they grow up, even though they actually own everything their father had. They have to obey their guardians until they reach whatever age their father set. And that's the way it was with us before Christ came. We were slaves to the spiritual powers of this world. But when the right time came, God sent his Son, born of a woman, subject to the law. God sent him to buy freedom for us who were slaves to the law, so that he could adopt us as his very own children. And because you Gentiles have become his children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, and now you can call God your dear Father. Now you are no longer a slave but God's own child. And since you are his child, everything he has belongs to you.

So you see we have received His Spirit as a true child of His. This is His sign that we are true children, and if we are true children we will display the new nature that this Spirit displays. We will have power over the flesh in ways that we never did before.

 

The difference is in the desires of your hearts. You now desire to live after the law of God. It is CHISELED into the heart of the one that receives Christ. So there is a lifestyle change that comes with Christ. It is NOT by force but by nature.

 

Romans 8:12-14 So, dear brothers and sisters, you have no obligation whatsoever to do what your sinful nature urges you to do. For if you keep on following it, you will perish. But if through the power of the Holy Spirit you turn from it and its evil deeds, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.

Ah, so the old nature can be defeated through being led by the Spirit. This is important to understand. Being led means that I have given up my free will to the person leading. I have submitted myself wholly to following Christ.

 

This is where we see a problem with sin, that is we do not submit our lives to His leading. Do you want to overcome sin in your life? Then all you have to do is give up control of your life to Him. We have a tendency to let God lead part of our lives but we are afraid or not willing to give our whole life. We are afraid of what He will require of us, or we are afraid to be out of control of ourselves, or both.

 

Romans 8:15-17 So you should not be like cowering, fearful slaves. You should behave instead like God's very own children, adopted into his family—calling him "Father, dear Father." For his Holy Spirit speaks to us deep in our hearts and tells us that we are God's children. And since we are his children, we will share his treasures—for everything God gives to his Son, Christ, is ours, too. But if we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering.

Dear children of God..... we are not called to fear!! We are called to boldness, we have God as our Father...... Jesus as our Brother...... and the Holy Spirit as proof. His Spirit BEARS witness with you that you are His child. Everything that God gives to Jesus...... He gives to us also, because we ARE His children, we are heirs with Jesus our Brother. 

 Our life as Christians should be different then our life as a pagan. As Christians we have been given access to the nature of God.

 

Galatians 5:22-26 But when the Holy Spirit controls our lives, he will produce this kind of fruit in us: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Here there is no conflict with the law.

Those who belong to Christ Jesus have nailed the passions and desires of their sinful nature to his cross and crucified them there. If we are living now by the Holy Spirit, let us follow the Holy Spirit's leading in every part of our lives. Let us not become conceited, or irritate one another, or be jealous of one another.

As a Christian you have access to love that passes all understanding!

These attributes are supernatural, they are such that they supersede any possible like attribute that you can experience strictly in the flesh. This kind of love, loves your enemies.

We have access to the supernatural attributes of God's nature. And the way we access it is through surrendering our life to the work of God in our life.

 

Ephesians 2:10 God has made us what we are. In Christ Jesus, God made us to do good works, which God planned in advance for us to live our lives doing.

Romans 8:12-14 So, my brothers and sisters, we must not be ruled by our sinful selves or live the way our sinful selves want. If you use your lives to do the wrong things your sinful selves want, you will die spiritually. But if you use the Spirit's help to stop doing the wrong things you do with your body, you will have true life. The true children of God are those who let God's Spirit lead them.

So dear children of God, the only way we can have TRUE life is to let God's Spirit lead us. This is the true key to a wonderful Christian life, that is...... we LOSE our life, we GIVE UP our will, we SURRENDER to His will. This will produce TRUE LIFE in you... you want to gain your life? LOSE IT!!!

 

What we are in God is TREMENDOUS! We are the children of the most infinite, magnificent, powerful, loving being...... God. We have access to His wonderful, supernatural nature. The way to this nature is through giving ourselves up to the will of Him who is able to do ABOVE and BEYOND all that we could ever ask or hope.

 

 

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