We need to understand the law of heredity. When Abraham offered tithes to Melchizedek his unborn great grandson Levi was involved in it. It was as if Levi himself was offering tithes to Melchizedek. What Abraham was doing involved his grandson.
The law of heredity worked against us in the first Adam. Because Adam decided to disobey God, and step out from under the rule of God, that one act brought sin into the world. Everyone born into the human race was born with sin in their bloodstream. We were involved with and became part of that act of Adam. In the first Adam all die, we have the sentence of death at work in our human body.
That same law of heredity now works for us in Christ. God brought one race of people to a conclusion at the cross when Jesus became the last Adam. He took upon himself all the responsibility, the entire penalty and all the consequences of the first Adam and His offspring. He took into his being upon the cross the sin of the whole human race, so that there is nothing chargeable to Adam’s race.
What happens in the new birth is that God brings to an end our heredity line through Adam and begins a new hereditary line through Jesus Christ. And we receive a new nature, a new hereditary. And that which worked against us in Adam, now works for us in Christ. We were buried with him, we were crucified with him, we were raised together with him, and we were seated together with him. Because now we are a part of that line and lineage, anything that has happen to Jesus has happened to us, because we were in him, when these things were happening.
Just as Levi was in Abraham yet he didn’t exist in the natural, so we were in Christ, before the world came into existence. We were put in Christ before the foundation of the world. God so foreknew us, that he had already put us in Christ. That which worked against us in Adam, now works for us in Christ. This new life in Christ brings us into new spiritual principles that can being working within us just as relentlessly as the principle of sin that was working in our members.
This new law of heredity is called the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus. And the way it works is by grace through faith. The new creation is God’s faith working By God’s love. How does all of this happen, it happens through faith.
Faith comes as our spirit receives revelation from God. The reality of all this becomes real to us through revelation to our spirits; the understanding of it comes later after we experience it.
The truth has to hit our spirit by revelation. There is a whole great realm of understanding which comes by revelation, our spirit quickens and we can see it through the eyes of our spirit and then gradually it filters up into our mind and our mind is always trying to catch up.
We may have the best mind in the world; by we will never ever comprehend God by reason, but through revelation. We can know a thing in our spirit long before, we can explain it in words. An illiterate person who cannot understand how to read, when their spirit becomes alive in God they can understand it spiritually.
Every time we hear a truth, the lord quickens it again and again and we see it clearer and clearer.
We have to die out to something, before we can experience the fullness of resurrection.
The power and force of Jesus being raised from the dead, is not simply that he really died, and after three days he came alive. That is not the heart of the power of the resurrection, if that was all that it meant, the raising of Lazarus was a greater miracle because he was dead for four days and his body was rotting.
When Lazarus died he died bearing his sin, and then after four days he was brought to life again and the Lazarus that came to life was the same one that died. If he had a bad temper before he died, he had a bad temper when he came to life again. If he was a thoughtless person who tried other people he was the same. If he was addicted to tobacco, he still was. He was the same. There was no change in Lazarus. He died and he was brought back to life again after four days.
Rom 6: 3 Know ye not, that so many of us that were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? 4 Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death; that like as Christ was raise up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk(whole of activities) in newness (entirely new life essence, a qualitatively different experience, the new life of the quickened spirit of the believer)of life 5 For if we have been planted together (the word comes from a word that means 1-together 2-to spring up, to bring forth together, to let spring up or grow together )In the likeness (resemblance) of his death, we shall be (1-will be 2-transition) also in the likeness of his resurrection (in the Greek this verse reads-the resemblance his death, I shall be opposite also resurrection)6 Knowing (to know experientially) this, that our old (what we formerly were) man is crucified (specific point in past- never repeated, to crucify together with) with him, That the body (soma-human body) of sin (governing principle-power) might be destroyed (action subject to a condition, reduce to inactivity, render powerless) That henceforth we should not serve (servitude-bondage) sin.7For he that is dead is freed from sin. 8Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him: 9 knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion (rule over) over him. 10 For in that he died, he died unto sin once; but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God. 11 Likewise reckon (command-continuous, to occupy mind with, to rely on, to conclude, settled, mode of thinking) ye also yourselves to be dead (inactive with regard to sin, inoperative) indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through (intimate union with) Jesus Christ our Lord.
There are three things we have to know. We have to know that we have been baptized into his death, it is personal. Paul said you have to know that, he was amazed that they didn’t know that.
2corn 5:21 he who knew no sin, became sin that we might become the righteousness of God in him.
He bore not only the acts of sin but also the root of sin.
It is the nature of an apple tree to bear apples. Trees don’t struggle to bear fruit, it come naturally. At harvest time they don’t strive and struggle to produce fruit. You don’t hear all this groaning in the orchard. They produce apples they can’t help it.
Math 7 a good tree bears good fruit, it cannot produce bad fruit. And a bad tree cannot produce good fruit.
We often try to deal with the fruit instead of the root. We have a bad temper so we try to pluck off the bad temper fruit, but the root is that there is a self life still thriving. It is not until that is put to death that the fruit ceases. Sin and the heart of all sin is simply self life.
Everything else flows out of that root. The root is that we decide with our forefather Adam that to some degree at least we are going to run our own lives.
This is all that we have to decide. And immediately we do that, we can guarantee, that there will be a harvest of sin .Sin finds its opportunity in the flesh. The flesh at heart is just simply the self life. I will have my way. I may decide that I will be a very good Christian. But if the root is in self effort, I still cannot produce the fruit. This is why religion is useless.
All religions are the same; they are all useless, including Christianity. Because the human view of a Christian is someone who believes in Christ and try to be good by following the teachings of Jesus, trying to live a good Christian life or be a good Christian it is useless in the sight of god. What we are saying is that by my own effort and strength I can produce fruit which is acceptable to God and God says we can’t. It is impossible.
What we have to do is to slay the tree. Cut it off at the root and then start again with a new root that will produce new fruit.
Jesus not only took upon himself the fruit of Adams race, but he took upon himself the root which is the thing the bible calls the sin nature.
We will find this progression through Romans. Up to Romans 5 we are dealing with sins or the fruit, the plural.
When we come into Romans 6 it now becomes singular, it is almost as if sin has become personified. It is like a person because it is an expression of the nature of Satan just as righteousness is the expression of God.
Jesus became sin; he took into himself, upon himself the root and fruit of Adams race. And as a result he became loaded down with sin more than any man. It wasn’t his sin, it was the sin of all of Adams race, and this is what the cup was all about. He looked into the cup and shuddered. A foul, filthy, obscene, desperately dark cup-let it pass from me. Yet not my will but thine be done. It came upon him the sins and the sin of Adam’s race.
We speak in limited human terms in dealing with this mystery. Jesus, the son of God , in his body resided all the fullness of deity, yet he was truly human, as he became Gods lamb he took upon himself the sins and the sin of all of Adams race and in that condition he went to the cross.
John 19 Jesus crying out from the cross, my God, my God, why have your forsaken me. There became a gap a barrier between the father and the son. That moment on the cross was not a moment of communion, not like a martyr who found God’s presence and power so wonderful that they could die burnt to a stake, that God was so present with them that they could find grace to go through that experience.
At that moment when Jesus identified with us, there was in his heart a great anguish, why have you forsaken me? It was because of sin. The father could not look upon the son because he became the Lamb of God who took upon himself the sin of the world that he might in himself take away the sin of the world.
Psalm 22 was a prophetic psalm written a 1000 years before the events took place in time .We need to understand what the cry of the spirit of Christ was as he hung upon the cross. The revelation of this psalm will bring us to hate sin as much as God does to some degree. We begin to hate sin when we see what it has done.
Then as we come to the end of the psalm we see the ascending cry of faith, I will praise thee in the midst of my brethren, already he has gone through the cross by faith and out the other side to see this vast company of men and women of every tribe and nation who were going to be released from sin and part of this new race, he can see it even before he has descended into hell and he is holding on to it by faith. Talking about praising God in difficult circumstances, He was praising the father on the cross.
He was laying hold by faith that which was on the other side of death and resurrection. Heb 2:9 he tasted death on behalf of every man. Tasting death is not dying physically. Death has lost its sting, because the sting of death is sin. Death is now a door of anticipation and opportunity.
Jesus tasted the bitter sting of death which is sin. When he died he was bearing more sin, a million times more than any other man so the sting was greater. The travail and agony of death was infinitely more than anyone has ever experienced.
In his death Jesus, was the greatest sinner the world had ever seen. In his resurrection he was priest and king.
The disciples could not stop preaching on his resurrection.
We have to know that we are baptized into his death. We have been buried with him through baptism into death. Just as his baptism was identification with us in our need, so our baptism is identification with him in his supply of that need. We are immersed into all Jesus is and did.
He completely died to sin once for all that the sin problem was removed. It was finished in one act. Baptism means to be immersed, so saturated, plunged in, overwhelmed with; his death needs to have this effect upon us.
We are baptized into death in order that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the father, so we may walk in newness of life.
If we have been united in the likeness of his death, certainly we shall be also his resurrection. If we do not have the full assurance of faith that we are his resurrection we deny ourselves the power there of, the power of his resurrection. God must reveal to us that we are his resurrection. In the original Greek language it is just like a newspaper boy declaring some fantastic news. Any man in Christ-new creation, old things passed away, all things new!
Jesus went through all of that that we might come to fullness of life. Why was he made sin?
2corn 5:21 he who knew no sin, became sin that we might become the righteousness of God in him. He went through the suffering to bring us to glory. Our old man was crucified that the body of sin might be destroyed.
There is a condition in verse 5, if we have been united with him in a death like his, we certainly also shall be his resurrection. There is always a condition, in the promises of God there is always a condition. And the condition here is if we have been united in a death like his. What was his death?
There were two aspects to it. The finial aspect we see in Hebrews 6, he died to sin once for all.
There was a period, there was a point when he became God’s great lamb bearing the sin of the world, but he lived a life of death, and what was the heart of that death?
He would not tolerate for a moment any manifestation of the self life. He never did his own will. Although he was a son, yet he pleased not his own self. Although he was a son he learned obedience through the things that he suffered. It is easy to obey God went he tells us to do things that we like. When he tells us to do things that we don’t like that is where the test of obedience is. Jesus lived utterly and totally a life of denying himself. He would not allow self for a moment to live, and manifest itself in him. This is the death that he died.
2 corn 4: 6For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. 7But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us. 8We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; 9Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed; 10Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body.
Here is Jesus’ death in a daily continuous way. He was always going into situations which caused that life of self, whether body or soul or both together to be continually put to death. And as a result the life of Jesus could shine forth.
It is not possible for us to live and the resurrection life of Jesus to also be manifest at the same time. It is like an earthen pot which has to be broken for the life and light inside to shine out.
God brings us into many situations which are opportunities to die that we might find the death of Jesus working in us, so that as a result we might know in reality all the power of his resurrection.
If we are united in a death like his, we shall experience his resurrection. Suddenly all these aggravating circumstances become meaningful, they become opportunities for the self life to be put to death so that there is only room for Gods life to shine. There is the continuous aspect to it as well as the moment of it.
2 Corinthians 4:11For we which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh. 12So then death worketh in us, but life in you. 16For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day. 17For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; 18While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.
We have to decide basically and then we have to decide continually whether we want it to be this way. To the degree that we are united with him in his death, to that degree we will know the power of his resurrection.
Paul said this is the one thing I want to know. I want to know his resurrection and this means fellowship with his sufferings being made conformable to his death. We cannot have one without the other. What power is there is in that resurrection?
When Jesus rose up from the dead all that sin and all the sins which were the fruit of that sin had vanished from him. And this is how we can live.
With great power the disciples gave witness to the resurrection of Jesus Christ and it was primarily by the way they lived, because they were themselves resurrection and life. And this is what the world is waiting to see.
2 Corinthians 4:15For all things are for your sakes, that the abundant grace might through the thanksgiving of many redound to the glory of God.
For all things are for you sakes for the grace which is spreading to more and more people may cause the giving of thanks to abound to the glory of god.
There is not only a personal benefit here, but also a benefit for all mankind. As we go through this and that life is released, it will result in multitudes coming into the same life. It is something that we come into by faith, we don’t doubt anymore, we have been buried with him in his death, and certainly I shall be his resurrection.
You have to know that it is personal, that it means you. Secondly you have to know that it is past verse 6, our old man was crucified with Christ. And thirdly we have to know that it is permanent.
We don’t keep dying every day. We count on the fact that it has happened. We reckon ourselves dead. We have to know and then we can count on the fact of it.
The only condition of resurrection life is that we have to be ready to hate the self life as much as Jesus did. When self crops up, we look to God to take it away.
Irritability has a root of pride. There is a working together with God against self. Then all the circumstances of our day become not things to fight with, but things to rejoice in God with. We humble ourselves in doing whatever the lord leads in the dying of self.
The lord deals with areas of our pride. As we learn to humble ourselves something dies within us. When we are embarrassed doing things we rejoice in the lord.
The lord may have to deal with a hundred things, all the little roots of self, all the areas of self-consciousness, A hundred manifestations of self that have to die.
In the early church there was such grace upon them all, that with great power they bore witness to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. There is an abundance of grace available to us through faith.
We can lay hold of it by faith and each day get more firmly into this death that as a result the life of Jesus will increasingly be manifested in our mortal bodies. The power that lifted Jesus out of a horrible death can lift us out of this inheritance of sin and all the other things which pull us down. If we are united together in a death like his we certainly will be his resurrection.