THE KING’S BUSINESS
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the Holy Spirit forms a living Christ in us (Eph, 3:16, 17), (4) because He makes us to be Christ’s own. So it is written, “if any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of His.” (cf. 1 John 3:24). It is a very important question then, have I the Spirit of Christ? As the Spirit of Christ makes Christ dwell in us, it follows that if anyone has the Spirit of Christ, he will also have a Christlike disposition. When we have the Spirit of Christ He forms Christ in us. But even when Christ is in us, the body, i. 6 . our physical body, is indeed “dead” (i. e. the body is even in the believer in whom Christ dwells a dead thing; it is not as yet, even in the believer, redeemed and delivered from death). -Note that Paul says that our “body is dead,” not our body shall be dead. The deadness of our body is a present fact, though the full outworking of this death may still lie a few years ahead. Adam became a physically dead man the day he sinned. The process ,of death began immediately upon his sinning, “dying, he died” (Gen. 2:17). Our Authorized Ver sion and even the Revised Version trans lates the Hebrew “in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die,” but literally translated, it would read “in the day that thou eatest thereof, dying thou shalt die,” i. e. thou shalt begin to die the day that thou eatest thereof. Though death did not attain its maturity in Adam for several hundred years after wards, he became subject to death that very day.' But while in the believer the body.is indeed “dead because of sin” the Spirit who dwells in him “is life because of righteousness,” but the body itself shall not always be dead. The Spirit who dwells in the believer, i. e. .the'Holy ..Spirit, is the same Spirit who raised up Jesus from the dead, and if He dwells in us, in due time He will also make alive pur mortal bodies as He did that of Jesus. But this deliver ance of the body from death as the con text (vs. 19-23) clearly shows refers to the coming resurrection o f" our '.bodies. This verse, is .often interpreted as meaning
dent from this that to Paul’s thinking, death is not non-existence, but wrong exist ence, not unconsciousness but sin-con sciousness. On the .other hand, the mind (thoughts, affection and will) of the Spirit is life and peace. Not merely does it result in life and peace, it is “life and peace.” Here then is the simple but all inclusive secret of life and peace, a Spirit controlled mind. The reason why “the mind and the flesh” is death is “because it is enmity against God.” And of course enmity against God who is infinite life is death. Let this never be forgotten, that a mind controlled by the flesh is necessarily “enmity against God.” Not merely is it incomplete and immature, it is positive “enmity against God.” It is not subject to the law of God and it cannot be subject to the law of God. The attempt to obey God in any natural strength of our own is doomed to utter failure from the verjr out set. The result is that “they are in the flesh (all who have not accepted God’s condemnation of sin in the death of Christ and'thus received the Spirit) cannot please God.” They may do what they will, nothing that they do will please God, because it proceeds from a will that is at thé bottom at war with God. Thursday, July 12 . Rom. 8 : 9 - 11 . it is our privilege to live in another sphere than that of the flesh, to live in the Spirit. When the Spirit of God dwells in us, He takes us out of the sphere of the flesh into that' of the Spirit, ' If the Spirit of ,’Çhrist does not dwell in us, we do not belong to Christ. “We are none of His.” By the “Spirit of Christ” is meant not, as so many often interpret it, a Christlike spirit or disposition; it is rather that which lies back.of a Christlike spirit in us, viz. the Holy Spirit who indwells us and who is here called “the Spirit of Christ.” The Holy Spirit is called . “the Spirit of Christ,” (1) because Christ gives the Holy Spirit, (2) because it is the work of the Holy Spirit to reveal Christ (John 15:26; 16:13, ,14), (3) and particularly, .because
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