Light and Frothy People Part 4

So what is it that makes a person light and frothy? It has to be that the life of God does not live in them. The word “life” to me speaks of charisma, joy, motivation and energy. The word “love” speaks to me of sincerity, kindness, compassion – not simply acts of charity or “works” as the Bible calls it.

The Bible is rather clear in that it contrasts two states of being: black and white, rather than in-betweens and “grey-areas”. The Bible contrasts God and devil, Heaven and hell, flesh and spirit (or love), belief and unbelief, light and dark, hot and cold, righteousness and sin, good and evil.

Therefore, if you are a Christ then you have died to sin and have been given the life of God in you. There should no longer be a need for you to suppress your emotions and put on a façade to the outside world. There is no need for people to adopt behaviour modification techniques. You can now be the genuine article, free to be yourself, as God lives His life through you. The Message translation says that we should live freely, animated and motivated by God's Spirit (Galatians 5:16).

We Have a New Nature

If a person becomes a believer in Christ then he is given a new nature and made a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17); he is made a partaker of the divine nature by faith. (2 Peter 1:4). Paul said that he was crucified with Christ, that is, his old nature was cancelled-out at the cross. I like the way in which The Living Bible puts it:

⁴ Your old sin-loving nature was buried with him by baptism when he died; and when God the Father, with glorious power, brought him back to life again, you were given his wonderful new life to enjoy. ⁵ For you have become a part of him, and so you died with him, so to speak, when he died; and now you share his new life and shall rise as he did.

Romans 6:4-5 TLB

We were given this wonderful new life to enjoy: the very presence of God abiding in us through Christ.

Foolish Galatians: Christians Reverting to the Law

The Apostle Paul admonished the church at Galatia which he had established, that they would cease from reverting back to the Jewish laws (the Ten Commandments and other Jewish customs). Paul told the Galatian church that having been born into grace, they should continue in grace.

This message is the same for us today: we should cease from rule-keeping, trying to be good in our own effort, so that we can allow God to live His life through us as we realise that we have access to the Father through Christ.

¹⁸ If I was "trying to be good," I would be rebuilding the same old barn that I tore down. I would be acting as a charlatan. ¹⁹ What actually took place is this: I tried keeping rules and working my head off to please God, and it didn't work. So I quit being a "law man" so that I could be God's man. ²⁰ Christ's life showed me how, and enabled me to do it. I identified myself completely with him. Indeed, I have been crucified with Christ. My ego is no longer central. It is no longer important that I appear righteous before you or have your good opinion, and I am no longer driven to impress God. Christ lives in me. The life you see me living is not "mine," but it is lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. ²¹ I am not going to go back on that. Is it not clear to you that to go back to that old rule-keeping, peer-pleasing religion would be an abandonment of everything personal and free in my relationship with God? I refuse to do that, to repudiate God's grace. If a living relationship with God could come by rule-keeping, then Christ died unnecessarily.

Galatians 2:18-21 MSG

Reverting to rule-keeping is bad because the Bible tells us that it is the law which causes sin to revive. Romans 7:9 says, I was alive once without the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died. The Bible says that the law, which is good and was meant to being life, actually brought death (Romans 7:10). When the Bible refers to “death” it often means separation from God’s manifest presence. This deadness of spirit manifests itself as depression, anxiety, confusion, frustration, apathy, lethargy and the like. It takes a substantial effort of the will to mask an absence of divine life.

I like the way that The Living Bible renders Romans 7 – it makes it easier to understand:

⁵ When your old nature was still active, sinful desires were at work within you, making you want to do whatever God said not to and producing sinful deeds, the rotting fruit of death. ⁶ But now you need no longer worry about the Jewish laws and customs because you "died" while in their captivity, and now you can really serve God; not in the old way, mechanically obeying a set of rules, but in the new way, (with all of your hearts and minds). ⁷ Well then, am I suggesting that these laws of God are evil? Of course not! No, the law is not sinful, but it was the law that showed me my sin. I would never have known the sin in my heart--the evil desires that are hidden there--if the law had not said, "You must not have evil desires in your heart." ⁸ But sin used this law against evil desires by reminding me that such desires are wrong, and arousing all kinds of forbidden desires within me! Only if there were no laws to break would there be no sinning. ⁹ That is why I felt fine so long as I did not understand what the law really demanded. But when I learned the truth, I realized that I had broken the law and was a sinner, doomed to die. ¹⁰ So as far as I was concerned, the good law which was supposed to show me the way of life resulted instead in my being given the death penalty. ¹¹ Sin fooled me by taking the good laws of God and using them to make me guilty of death. ¹² But still, you see, the law itself was wholly right and good. ¹³ But how can that be? Didn't the law cause my doom? How then can it be good? No, it was sin, devilish stuff that it is, that used what was good to bring about my condemnation. So you can see how cunning and deadly and damnable it is. For it uses God's good laws for its own evil purposes. ¹⁴ The law is good, then, and the trouble is not there but with me because I am sold into slavery with Sin as my owner.

Romans 7:5-14 TLB

Living According to the Divine Nature

The attributes of the divine nature grow in our lives like fruit as we learn to acknowledge Christ and surrender to His life in us. The Bible calls this the fruit of the Spirit:

²² But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, ²³ gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law. ²⁴ And those who are Christ's have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. ²⁵ If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. ²⁶ Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.

Galatians 5:2-26

When we come to understand that the divine nature has been made available to us now, apart from our efforts, we allow God to manifest the fruit of the Spirit in us effortlessly.