Moral
Consciousness
All
conscious moral activity of man is active only through
his facing and choosing between two opposites, without which a choice
may not be made. Moral choice requires conscious thought and
free will. Our day is filled with conscious thought in the face of
moral choices we must make. Where will we go; what will we say, or do?
These are choices that we must make …as a Christian. All such
choices are between evil and good, since we, as the regenerated
children of God, are to walk now in accord with His indwelling and
guiding life (Gal 5:16). We conduct our manner of living in this way.
Something not seeming evil is evil if we choose to go a way other than
that which we inwardly know the Lord desires of us (James 4:17).
Man,
who is tri-part, having a body, soul and spirit, has a three-part soul
consisting of his mind, emotion and will. Thereby man is a thinking,
feeling, and choosing being; by these faculties man
possesses the capacity to make choices when he is confronted with
divergent options.
Our
capacity to walk with, or contrary to, the Lord is in the light of our
free-will to choose. Without such a free-will choice capacity man
would be reduced to that of a robot or zombie. Our love for the Lord
could not be genuine without having free will to give it genuine
expression. If one were compelled to love it would then not be love.
We love Him because He first loved us (1John 4:19), and once we have
seen and tasted God’s love, our hearts are captured. The Apostle
Paul says we Christians, who still are free to say no to God’s will
in our day to day living, are now constrained by the bands of
God’s love, in the giving of His Son, Christ, whom He has
committed to us. 2 Cor. 5:14a For the love of
Christ constraineth us….
Man’s
First Willful Moral Choice
Man
was originally created in innocence, even if for a few days only Genesis
2:25 And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and
were not ashamed. Initially, Adam had enjoyed God’s
presence, e.g., having walked with God in the cool of the day Gen
3:8. At that time man’s will had not yet been stimulated by
facing a moral choice. Adam eventually was confronted with the
first moral choice to be made by a man. Before that time Adam and
Eve lived in pure innocence and in accord with God. Then though, the
Serpent introduced the negative possibility in contrast to
God’s words that had been spoken directly to them. Now being
confronted with divergent voices, they had to make a conscious moral
choice for the very first time. Consider the account here.
God
said - Gen 2:16-17 the Lord God commanded the
man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: 17But
of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat
of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt
surely die.
The
Serpent said - Gen 3:4-5 the serpent
said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: 5For
God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be
opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
Satan
lied by calling God a liar. Adam and Eve believed the Serpents lie
that they could become as gods through
knowledge to be gained by eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good
& Evil.
By
Adam’s choice to receive (believe) the words of the Serpent,
all Adam’s progeny have become morally conscious. This
occurred when Adam & Eve were confronted by the two trees - The
Tree of Life and The Tree of the Knowledge of Good & Evil,
and the Serpent’s lies. Adam and Eve were told not to eat
the fruit of The Tree of the Knowledge of Good & Evil.
Yet, ignoring The Tree of Life, they believed the Serpent
words; they ate and took into themselves the Serpent’s words as they
partook of the Tree of Knowledge. Here we see the result Gen
3:7 the eyes of them both were opened, and they
knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and
made themselves aprons. By eating of the wrong tree, man now had
gained an illicit knowledge and a moral consciousness. Since
then, all mankind has a conscious knowledge by which their choices are
framed, as evidenced by all mankind possessing an active conscience
(Rom 2:15).
Man
in the Image of God
Man,
as the image of God, is an empty representation of God. Man was
created as a perfect empty vessel with the capacity to receive and
express God’s life and nature. Man’s human life is but a vessel
into which God could one day deposit His “Spirit of life in
Christ Jesus.” Being humanly made alive, but yet empty of a nature,
Adam, the first man and federal head of humanity was confronted by the
first choice. That wrong choice propelled all mankind into gaining an
active moral consciousness, but he also gained a fallen nature
that prevented his living in accord with the knowledge. Ephes.
2:3…we … were by nature the children of wrath,
even as others.
The
Fire of Desire Is In God & Man
Man
is fundamentally made in God’s image, in that they both have a sort
of fire that burns within them. Hebrews 12:29 For our
God is a consuming fire. God burns as fire with desire to
give – to outflow. “Desire” is as a fire burning in man and
God. Mans desire is to have his vessel filled, to quench his
thirst for satisfaction, for completion. Only God can and does
fulfill that desire of man. Psa. 145:16 Thou (God)
openest thine hand, and satisfiest the desire of every living
thing. Man, who was made to be as God in His capacities to
receive and express God’s life and nature, had these capacities
along with that inward burning, a fire of desire in his soul – a
burning desire to become complete. Paul tells us that our
completion comes by literally receiving Christ into our being. Col.
2:10 And ye are complete in him (Christ), which is
the head of all principality and power:
Col.
1:27b Christ in you, the hope of glory: Rom 8:9b …Now
if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.
How
is it that Christ Can Indwell Man? It is as the Spirit of Life!
Christ
is received as “the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus”
(Rom 8:2a), into man’s human spirit where they become one
spirit. 1 Cor. 6:17 But he that is joined unto the
Lord is one spirit; Zech. 12:1 …the Lord…which
… formeth the spirit of man within him; Job 32:8 But
there is a spirit in man
The
Voice of Conscience
From
the time of the Adam’s fall, mankind possesses a restraining voice
within; this by a co-perception that is of God – speaking into
man’s soul mind via man’s human spirit. That co-perception is what
the New Testament calls the conscience. This voice of
conscience is likely to be contrary to the voice of the Evil One in
man’s flesh and who speaks into man’s soul/mind. Though the Evil
One had implanted his nature in man’s body and usurped man’s soul,
man also had the voice of conscience by which God speaks to every man
– saved or not. Romans 2:15 Which shew the work of the law
written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and
their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one
another. The conscience, a faculty of man’s
human spirit, may be likened to an antenna, by which man may hear the
Lord. The conscience of the human spirit of all men is as a Trojan
horse in man. By it God speaks within man to convict man of His
impoverished and helpless condition, and therefore his need of a
righteous life and nature to replace the fallen nature that has
usurped and corrupted mankind.
God
is a Self-For-Others
All
mankind has desire burning in him – desiring to be quenched or
satisfied. God’s innate desire is as a giver, a lover, a
self-for-others; and man, being created “upright” (Eccl 7:29)
also had that same innate desire, that is before the fall when his
self-being became transmuted into a self-for self, a self-getter,
and a manipulating taker. By the fall in the garden, mankind
became a twisted self. The image of God, the one who flows outward,
was within man’s capacity, but it had become distorted and turned
inward, becoming self-love and self-serving.
Note
that when I refer to man’s “capacity” I do not mean
to say that a man has a self-nature to express. I only mean man was
created with the soul organs capable of giving expression to a nature
– man was created ready to receive a nature and manifest that
nature. Man was created as a perfect, upright, clean vessel capable of
giving expression to a nature; but he in his own self was nature-less.
Man was created ready to receive a spiritual guiding nature. Man
(Adam) was as a car without a driver. Man in his own self only has the
capacity to be an expresser of another superior (spirit) life in him.
The first superior spirit that entered man, and to whom man became
subservient, was the Serpent (also called, the Evil One Lucifer,
Devil, Satan, and the Dragon). Sin, as a nature, came into and abides
in the flesh of all mankind. Romans 5:12 Wherefore, as by
one man sin entered into the world … Romans 7:23 But I see
another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind,
and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my
members. Like it or not, all mankind since that time has the Sin
infection – the fallen nature of the Evil one.
Man
is Always a Servant (“Slave”, see “Living Unto Christ”
by the author)
The
truth is that every man is always a servant. Romans 6:19
(KJV) I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of
your (sinful) flesh: for as ye have yielded
your members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto
iniquity; even so now yield your members servants to righteousness
unto holiness.
All
men are the servant of Sin before regeneration, but after
regeneration, we have a freedom to make choices day by day and moment
by moment, as to our walk. The question is “Will we choose to yield
to the sinful impulses emanating from our flesh (Rom
7:17-24) and be Sin’s servant (slave),
or will we yield to “the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” who
indwells and reigns in our spirit? Christians need to know that
Christ’s righteous Spirit of life and nature is spontaneously
working within their spirit, having the power to overrule the
operation of Sin, if we will trust and yield to Christ in us. Being
regenerated, we live under a new paradigm; we have the operation of
Christ’s life within us. Romans 8:2, 13 For the
law (normal operation) of the Spirit of life
in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law (normal
operation) of sin and death. 13For if
ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the
Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.
This
remedy appears when man is again confronted with a choice; this time
to receive God’s free salvation that is in Christ, or not. God sent
His Only Begotten Son into the world so that twisted man might be made
straight. This comes not through man’s self-effort, but only
through simply receiving God’s reconciliation that is in Christ
Jesus, and simultaneously receiving the resurrection life of the Son
of God, who bears the Father’s life and nature, plus Jesus’
resurrected humanity (Rom 1:3-4) – to be man’s new
straightened life and nature within man’s spirit. This life has the
power to renew man’s soul and make man an expression of God’s life
and nature. This then would be man as God intended.
The
Fruit of Two Trees
As
previously stated, Scripture places Adam before the two fruit trees in
the garden. Fruit is something you eat to take in; it becomes part
of your being. Every tree has its seed by which it may reproduce
itself, after its own kind (Gen 1:11). The first tree, The Tree of
Life, represents the possibility of man taking into his self God’s
life and nature – this would make man dependent upon God’s life
and nature to nourish him spiritually and to guide him from within.
The second was the Tree of Knowledge of Good & Evil, which may
better be termed as a Tree of
Independence
. This knowledge that is independent of God would make man think
he does not need God to guide him. This is a wrong view because this
knowledge of what is good and evil good and evil, without a life that
could live it, only ends in failure and the frustration of Rom
7:17-23.
Hence,
man faced a moral choice for the first time, he could eat of either
tree; The Tree of Life and live in dependence upon
God as his all, or The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil,
which he thought would make man as a god, “apparently independent”
of God. – thinking he could then be wise in his own self. Genesis
3:6 And when the woman saw that the tree was good
for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be
desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof,
and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.
Liberty
Lost
By
eating of the Tree of Knowledge of Good & Evil, Adam and Eve had
gained the knowledge of good and evil, yet, man could never live in
accord with that correct knowledge (Rom 7:7) due to the inherent Sin
infection that was transmitted to man by his believing and receiving
the words of the Serpent. This is the basis of the dilemma Paul
describes in Rom 7:17-24. Man, in himself, “knows” good
and evil, but lacks the kind of life adequate to live in accord with
that very knowledge (Rom 7:17-9). Man had thought he could make
himself wise and thus independent of God, as a god (Gen
3:4-5, 3:22) by gaining this knowledge, but actually he had been
trapped into receiving the fallen, spontaneous operation of the
Sin-nature of the Evil One.
The
infection of Sin in Adam has since past from Adam to all generations
of mankind. Sin now rules every man that comes into the world, being
located within man’s own Sin infected flesh Romans 7:23 But
I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind,
and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my
members. This infection spontaneously brings the expressions
of the Sin nature, ending in physical death (1Cor 15:56b).
Only
the man who has been redeemed by the death and regenerated by the life
of Christ can become as God intended, according to God’s “eternal
purpose that He purposed in Christ Jesus (Eph
3:11)”. Jesus’ blood was shed for man’s
sins. Jesus’ life was given on the cross also to be the death of
man’s Sin infected Old Self (Rom 6:3). Christ’s
resurrected Spirit of life is literally given to
us at regeneration when we receive Him, equipping us with the
identical life and nature of the resurrected Christ. This then is the
deposit of fruit of The Tree of Life Himself – Jesus Christ.
In
this way, the Sin nature in man has been negated, “made of
none effect” (Rom 6:6-7). This is effective in the lives of
believers so long as they continue to believe in (trust in,
cling to, and rely upon) the Christ who indwells their human
spirit as their new person and nature.
The
Usurping Nature
All
men since the time of Adam enter the world with the life and nature of
the Evil One in them, as a “sort of father”. Satan is not a real
father, but he is as the usurping one, one who stands in the place
of a father. Confirming this, Jesus plainly told the religious
leaders of
Israel
their father was the devil. John 8:44 Ye are of
your father the devil, and the lusts (desire) of
your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the
beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in
him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a
liar, and the father of it.
Paul
confirms this tyrannical rule by Sin over mankind by writing in Ephes.
2:2-3 Wherein in time past ye walked
according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the
power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of
disobedience: 3Among whom also we all had our
conversation (manner of living) in times past in the lusts
of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the
mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even
as others.
A
New Nature for Man – Light
Ephes.
5:8 For ye were sometimes (aforetime) darkness,
but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light: As
stated, God burns as fire with desire to give – to outflow. This is
best seen by His eternal begetting of His Son in His likeness; God’s
“fire-self” was eternally transmitted as being God’s “Light-self”,
the Self-for-others, in the person of His Only Begotten Son, with
whom He is one. God’s burning desire to flow out to others as
love and life was expressed in His giving his only begotten Son
for the Sins and Sin of the world – if men will simply receive Him,
His death and His life as their death and new life. It has been said,
“Where fire burns, light blesses” – Jesus is
the light expression of God’s fire, being called “the light
of life”. John 8:12 Then spake Jesus
again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that
followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light
of life. This then is the Eternal God, the Lover of others,
the God who burns with desire to give. He is light, as John writes, 1
John 1:5 …God is light, and in him is no
darkness at all. We also are now light by the deposit of
Christ (the light of Life) in us.
Lucifer
Is Used of God
Lucifer
was originally created to express the out-flow of God’s
love-for-others, but with his choice-capacity as an angelic being,
Lucifer chose to burn as a self-for-self, thus he was cast out
of heaven, “having great wrath (Rev 12:12)”. Lucifer, like
man, was created, not birthed of God; he did not
possess the kind of life that could never emulate God. But this is not
the end of Lucifer – with God nothing is wasted and “all is
working for the good (Rom 8:28)”. Lucifer became used of God
as God’s negative agent in the world. He is used today to confront
the God’s created humankind with becoming morally conscious persons,
originally by the choice between the trees in the garden shortly after
man had been created. Lucifer then was also used to release “the
Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus” to the world by
crucifying the Lord Jesus Christ. It is by the death of the cross that
Jesus “became the life-giving spirit” (1Cor 15:45)
Galatians
5:16 (NIV) So I say, live by the Spirit, and you
will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. Galatians
5:25 (NIV) Since we live (have life in) by the
Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Even
today, Sin in our flesh remains resident in order to propel us to
choose Christ who is our life as our new and overcoming life. to live
by and according to the overcoming Spirit of life. Each time we choose
to yield to Christ in us we make the cross seen as being effective –
thus making and open shame of the Devil. Lucifer presents every
Christian with daily choice, to walk according to the Sin infected
flesh or, to walk in accord with to the Spirit.
Mankind
Deluded
That
first deluded choice was made by Adam and Eve, although it was
not totally deliberate on their part, as was Lucifer’s choice.
Lucifer’s choice established him as false deity with his
self-for-self nature. Adam’s choice placed mankind within
Lucifer’s grasp. By this, Lucifer could and did infect Adam and Eve
with his false-self, joined to their soul-selves.
Lucifer is “that (evil) spirit who works in us
the children of disobedience.” Eph. 2:1-3. Man was
the one 2 Cor. 4:4 In whom the god of this world (the
Devil) hath blinded the minds of them which believe
not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is
the image of God, should shine unto them.
By
now I hope you can see that all humans are born under a delusion,
thinking of our selves as being self-acting persons, when in
actual fact we are expressing another life and nature. We are “driven”
to express the nature of an indwelling spirit who is “working”
within us. This delusion is the huge lie that prevents
Christians from enjoying the life and power of the indwelling Christ
as their life with rest in their souls. When we were sinners we
thought it was “just us.” There never was a “just
us.” It was formerly “Sin” as us, and now, now being
regenerated, it is “Christ” as us.
The
Sin-spirit himself – the Devil, was the first to occupy man’s
being, and he is at work in all “the children of disobedience”.
Therefore, the plain and simple outcome is that, through the fall,
mankind became spontaneous expressers of Lucifer’s self-for-self
nature (“in sin did my mother conceive me” Psalm 51:5), yet
at the same time we are deluded into thinking it is just we who
are failing and having a hard time trying to be like Jesus of
Nazareth. The truth is that we are not to be “like” Jesus; we
Christians have Christ alive in us, desiring to live His life through
us as the new us.
No
Longer I
Paul
ultimately saw through this delusion saying Romans 7:17
Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. Paul
saw that an indwelling nature, Sin, had usurped mankind and him. Yet,
Paul also came to see the remedy that is the Christian’s via the
cross. The remedy is ours when we see Christ’s death as our death to
our “old man” (Rom 6:6-7), and receive His indwelling life
and nature as our new life and nature in place of that old, fallen
nature of Sin. Gal 2:20 I am crucified with Christ:
nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ
liveth in me. This is man made alive by
Christ, just as God purposed in Christ Jesus.
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