Many believers today ascribes more to a quasi-Judaic leftover of old covenant theology than they do true New Testament Christianity. What I mean by that is that the good news is that Christ has given you all your Christmases, birthdays and Disneylands in one fell swoop on the cross! He has opened the House of Wine to you; He has opened the treasuries; He has opened complete communion with Himself. In fact, He has held nothing back from you at all. On the cross, your old sinful nature was completely, once-and-for-all circumcised away (Col. 2), and you were given access to a glorious new world. Everything that held you back from God was dissolved. Eliminated. All of your problems really were solved on Golgotha’s hill. It seems too good to be true. That’s why it’s called good news.
To often however, in the charismatic movement today, as with any stream of modern Christianity, the yeast of Judaic religion still holds strong. For instance, people still pray and beg for holiness. They plead to be “purged.” This alone is a telltale sign of absolute unbelief in the finished work of the cross. Religion wants you to kill yourself to earn holiness. There is a straining and a striving that is not suggestive of true faith. Jesus died to give you what you could never gain on your own. Religion gives us reams of books, keys and formulas for trying to get something that we already have as a free gift.
Colossians 2 tells us that we already possess the fullness of God through our union with Christ. But somehow, pop theology tells us that the attainment of this fullness is a lifelong process of struggle and self effort. The problem is that most people are not manifesting, or outwardly showing forth the fullness of God. And so, they lower their theology to the standard of their experience, or lack thereof. They claim that holiness is a result of a lifelong process of trials, experience, or whatever the latest trend tells them it requires.
As it turns out, the perfect sacrifice of Christ was actually good enough to get the job done. God happened to have this crazy notion one day that He could actually pull the whole thing off by Himself! If you are not manifesting a holy life, it is not because there is somehow more effort required on your part. If you are not manifesting a holy life, it is simply because you do not believe that you are made holy. This may sound harsh, but in truth, it is a relief. Stop striving for perfection, and rest in the fact that you have it. The nature and flavor of true faith is rest (see Heb. 4). As I rest and trust that Christ has completed His work in me 2000 years ago, before I even got started – then I begin to act and live life like a completely different person. A person always manifests what he believes. If you believe you are holy, you will live holy. If the truth is your standard, the truth will experientially shine forth in your life. If you believe, on the other hand, that you are still a sinner, you will always be wrestling with sin. You manifest what you believe.
As simple and childlike as this sounds, perhaps you have been a Christian for 25 years, and no one ever told you the basic reality that you are not a sinner anymore. Most religionists are great at explaining how your efforts are still needed in this salvation plan, because you are somehow still a saint-sinner hybrid. They tell you that you are some gross concoction of light and darkness. But the reality is that light and darkness do not coexist in the same temple. Maybe no one ever told you that you are the righteousness of God, but you are. Maybe no one ever told you that it’s unnecessary to struggle with sin the rest of your life, or even for one more day.
The gospel is a mystical message. You have to believe it before you see it. You must believe it before it bears tangible substance in your life. Faith (belief) does have a tangible substance according to Hebrews 11:1. There is positive and negative faith – and depending what we expect, whether good or bad – that is the outcome we will receive. Rest assured that what you believe will surely be demonstrated in your life. True believing always involves demonstration. The kingdom of Heaven is not a matter of mere talk, but of demonstration of power (1 Cor. 4:20).
Whatever you believe, you will demonstrate. If you think you are not yet capable or equipped enough to work miracles, you never will. If you believe that Christ’s work was not enough, and somehow you need to help Him, then you will continue to struggle with sin, poverty, sickness and powerless living. But if you believe the good news, that Jesus took care of every single problem in the universe – then you’re going to be quite the happy camper. You will begin to appropriate these riches. You will believe what the Bible actually says, that you already have fullness in Him. It’s not a process. It’s a gift.
We must have our minds renewed to believe the truth. The truth that Christ has opened the Heavens already. He did away with our old Adamic nature. He has brought us into a glorious new existence in the family of God.
The church has for centuries taught a heretical notion that Christians still have a sin nature. Furthermore, they say it is somehow our responsibility to die daily and attempt to put this sin nature to death on the cross, this is what Jesus did! This is perhaps the greatest theological error in the history of Christendom. According to scripture, you no longer have a sinful nature. According to the scriptures, death to self is not a lifelong process, but was a singular, mystical transaction that already took place on the cross 2,000 years ago.
"Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin— because anyone who has died has been freed from sin" (Rom. 6:3-7).
You are unable to kill yourself. He did it for you. You were mystically in Christ when He died on the cross. On the cross, the old sinful you was eradicated. The old depressed you – the old fearful, anxious self died. Your critical, religious, hateful nature was put to death. Every lustful, addictive and impoverished aspect of your old man was killed with Christ. You don’t need a million years of inner healing, counseling and self-help programs. You don’t need more deliverance classes. All of your generational curses of the Adamic nature were put to death with the Last Adam. Everything about the old nature was put to death. Again, we read that the sinful nature (the carnal appetite with its passions and its lusts) has been cut away once and for all in the following verse:
"In him you were also circumcised, in the putting off of the sinful nature, not with a circumcision done by the hands of men but with the circumcision done by Christ, having been buried with him in baptism and raised with him through your faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead" - (Col. 2:11-12)
Your old nature simply does not exist anymore. A dead man does not continue to operate in sin. Why try to continually kill something that is already dead? To many new covenant christians practice necromancy (communing with the crucified adamic nature) Many people still view the cross as a place where they need to suffer – and so the cross seems depressing to them. We’ve been hoodwinked! Sanctification is not a lifelong process. It’s a Person. The cross is the most blissful place in the universe! It was there that you were actually set free from suffering, because Christ did it for you. It was there that He took the bullet for you, in order to give you delight. It was there that Heaven’s riches were spilled out for you. It was there that you were delivered from sin, delivered from depression and delivered from boring religion! Do you struggle with something today? I tell you friend that you are shadowboxing a lie. That old nature doesn’t even exist. Consider that part of you dead, or non-existent. It has no more hold over you – it never did. Maybe a religionist told you that you constantly have to fight these old lusts, but this is simply not true. The cross is the foundation for a joy-filled life! It is the source of the intoxicating wine of the New Covenant. It was there that the old wretched you died.
You do not have to continually kill your “flesh” (carnal fleshly nature) because it doesn’t exist anymore. When Paul spoke of dying daily, it was in context of the continual persecutions he faced (I face danger every hour, he said at the start of the verse). He literally faced death every day! It had nothing to do with a morbid act of internally killing his fleshly nature. It had to do with this radical grace message propelling him to preach and offend people with its simplicity all around the world. But religion has misapplied this verse, telling us we have to continually beat ourselves up. Many scriptures have been twisted to conform to this concept of a lifelong process of killing oneself. Why would Paul try to kill something that’s already dead? Once and for all, your heart has been circumcised – the old you was cut away. Aren’t you glad that circumcision is not a daily process? Ouch! Live what you believe and start by really believe the Good News!
