I’M so tempted to just have us go back and reread the previous posting without comment before proceeding to the close of this chapter. A few comments back I said rather tersely that this “all may seem so tedious,” as we seem to plow the same ground over and over, line upon line. But these things are important, so easily forgotten, and often never rightly established in the first place.
PAUL Tripp and his brother Ted have written several excellent works in the area of Christian parenting. Paul’s latest book simply titled Parenting, is quite interesting in that it is not necessarily a manual in child training as it is a big picture overview as to what God is doing – or intends to do – both in the child and parent’s heart coming to conformity to Christ. He even uses the word process! …I love that! As he says in the introduction, traveling about conducting parenting conferences he found something missing, the big picture parenting worldview that motivates all things that God calls us to do and be. As I read the book three thoughts came to mind: 1) Mike Mason’s premise in his work “The Mystery of Children” – that we don’t raise children so much to change them, as they are used to change us; and 2) Tripp’s new book could easily be retitled and refitted to any topic of difficultly we face that God uses to change us, so that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again 2Cor 5:15.
THE third thing that came to mind, is that all we have been studying here regarding our Position in Christ and our reckoning upon the finished and ongoing process of the Cross unto “Not I, but Christ” (Gal. 2:20), is being repeated and worked in real world confrontation with self, and all that that means.
WELL, I could say more here, but we need to get to it and prayerfully consider how our author closes this chapter unto our advance in Christ.
In the inexorable riches of Christ,
Joe
Neh. 8:10, Isa 30:15, Jas 1:2; Prov. 21:30
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Chapter 43 —Spirit-applied Reckoning – Part 3, conclusion
How is He glorified in redeemed sinners? Our new birth means that each one of us is a new creation in Christ, at which time the Comforter enters our spirit to abide forever (John 14:16). Spirit to spirit joined, we are “partakers of the divine nature.” At birth we are “babes in Christ,” but as we grow in Him we develop in likeness of life—thus glorifying the Son.
The Holy Spirit receives the life of Christ and brings Him into our regenerated spirit. For that life to develop within, He reveals to us the Lord Jesus in the Word. Thus, feeding on Him in the Scriptures under the illumination of the Spirit of Truth, the new life in Christ grows and is made manifest in our mortal body. We grow in Him as we allow the Holy Spirit to show Him to us. “We all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2 Cor. 3:18).
In the midst of finding out about ourselves, we are to be especially aware of what we are in our Lord Jesus. While the Spirit must cause us suffering in the crucifixion of the self-life, He comforts us in our growth in the new life. “Take, my brethren, the prophets, who have spoken in the name of the Lord, for an example of suffering affliction, and of patience. Behold, we count them happy which endure. Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord, that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy” (James 5:10, 11).
As we turn from the old man by reckoning upon the work of the cross, we turn to the new man in Christ by reckoning upon the work of the Spirit. Gradually, as we grow, there are less and less “works of the flesh” evident, and more and more of the “fruit of the Spirit” manifested in our daily walk (Gal. 5:19, 22).
What comfort there is in the faithful work of the Comforter! In the natural realm, a worm is changed into a butterfly—a different creature, but of the same order of life. In the spiritual realm, a believer is reborn—a totally “new creation in Christ Jesus” (2 Cor. 5:17, margin). Therefore we “yield ourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead,” and in dependence upon the Comforter we “walk in newness of life” (Rom. 6:13, 14).
