Dead in Adam or Alive in Christ, Part 4

Romans 8:6: “For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.

Spiritual Life
What is spiritual life? What does it mean to be alive in Christ? We have seen that spiritual death means separation from the life of God. God is the source of life. We can only have spiritual life in union with God. Separated from God we are dead. Spiritual life is, of course, the opposite of spiritual death. When we are spiritually dead we are under the dominion of sin and controlled by self, the world, the flesh, and the devil. When we are made spiritually alive in Christ we can live unto God in righteousness and holiness.

We read in Romans 6:11-12: “Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts.”

Since to be in the flesh is to be spiritually dead, we become spiritually alive when we are born again of the Spirit. According to Jesus, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (John 3:6). “For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.” When we are spiritually alive we are no longer in the flesh. We read in Romans 8:9: “But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His.” In other words, we cannot claim to be Christians or to belong to Christ without having the Spirit of Christ in us and being spiritually alive and not in the flesh.

The Bible refers to spiritual life as a newness of life. This, therefore, implies it is a life completely different from our existence in the Adamic nature. For instance, we read in Romans 6:3-4: “Do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.” Spiritual life is not just the improvement, rehabilitation, or renewal of our former life in our old nature in Adam. To be made spiritually alive involves death or an effective end to our former nature in Adam and a resurrection into the life of the Son of God. This resurrection life in Christ is entirely a newness of life to mankind.

Spiritual life is also abundant life. It is living fully according to one’s God ordained purpose and destiny. This is the life Jesus has come to give to us. Jesus declares in John 10:10: “The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.” As it was in Garden of Eden, so it is today. The devil comes to rob, cheat, steal, and kill those who are under his control. Spiritual life in Christ lifts us up into a fullness of life that is powerful and fruitful. Paul asserts in Philippians 4:13: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”

Our natural existence without spiritual life, as famous, wealthy, educated, or religious as it may be, is an unfulfilled existence that leaves us in constant discontentment and coming short of the glory of God for our lives. But when we are made alive in Christ, we enter into a state of completeness in Christ. Paul admonishes us in Colossians 2:8-10: “Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ. For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; and you are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power.” So science, religion, culture, or worldly pursuits do not lead to a fulfilled life. But spiritual life, the newness of life in Christ, brings us completeness in living. David states it well this way in Psalms 16:11: “You will show me the path of life; In Your presence is fullness of joy; At Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”

Finally, spiritual life is the life of Christ. To be made spiritually alive in Christ is to have the Son of God living in you. John tells us in 1 John 5:11-12: “And this is the testimony: that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.” Eternal life is not living a long time or even endlessly in our natural existence. Eternal life is the life of God who is eternal. We partake of eternal life in Christ, by entering into union with Christ in God when we are born again or made alive in Christ. After we are made alive in Christ, we may still remain in our natural human bodies which are mortal. But when death comes to our mortal bodies we continue on to live in the heavenly realm because of the eternal life we share with Christ in God. “For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” (2 Corinthians 5:1).

Natural birth brings us into our natural existence in the old Adamic nature. The new birth brings us into spiritual life in Christ. Our new birth is the beginning of our spiritual life. It is the life of Christ transferred into us by the Spirit of God. We begin to live spiritually, overcoming sin and death, with an abundantly fruitful life through the life of the Son of God in us. This is the life that every believer in Christ shares in union with Christ. This is the life into which God raises us up from our natural state of death in Adam to live victoriously, abundantly, and eternally in the second Adam, Christ.

We may not come suddenly into the realization of the full glory we have examined of being alive in Christ, not because God has not given us this fullness of life in Christ, but because there are forces bent on blinding us from knowing and experiencing who we are and what God has given us in Christ. These forces use vestiges of our past spiritual death experiences to persuade us that we are not fully alive in Christ. But in faith let us rely on God’s faithfulness to have made us to be what He has promised us. Let us pray that we would let the Holy Spirit reveal to us, enlighten our spiritual understanding to comprehend and experience, all the fullness of whom we have become when God made us alive in Christ.

We recall the admonition in Colossians 2:8-10: “Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ. For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; and you are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power.”

Someone once lamented, I lived so long as a caterpillar, now I am a butterfly I do not know how to fly. But the Holy Spirit will renew our thinking, demolish the strongholds of the contrary arguments and thoughts that seek to blind our minds, and bring us steadily to the realization of what it is to be no longer dead in Adam but alive in Christ.

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