Romans 6:12-13
Therefore do not let sin
reign in your mortal body that you should obey it in its lusts. And do not
present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present
yourselves to God as being alive from the dead and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.
When I am born-again, my
human nature is not different; it is the same as before; I am related to life
in the same way; I have the same bodily organs, but the mainspring is
different, and I have to see now that all my members are dominated by the new
disposition (see Romans 5:13,19). There is only one kind of human nature, and
that is the human nature we have all got; and there is only one kind of
holiness -- the holiness of Jesus Christ. Give Him “elbow room” and He will
manifest Himself in you, and other people will recognize Him. Human beings know
human beings too well to mistake where goodness comes from; when they see
certain characteristics, they will know they come from the indwelling of Jesus.
It is not the manifestation of noble human traits, but of a real family
likeness of Jesus. It is His gentleness, His patience, His purity, never mine.
The whole act of spirituality is that my human nature should retire and let the
new disposition
have its way in me.
As we go on, we find every
place God brings us into is the means of enabling us to realize with growing
joy that the life of Christ within us is more than a match, not only for the
enemy on the outside, but for the impaired body that comes between. Paul urges
with passionate pleading that we present our bodies a living sacrifice and then
realize, not presumptuously but with slow, sure, overwhelming certainty, that
every command of Christ can be obeyed in our bodily life through the Atonement.
Excerpts from Oswald
Chambers
Daily Devotional Bible,
Reading 216 (8/4)
From If Thou Wilt Be Perfect
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