From Flesh to Spirit - amazing journey!
God’s command to worship Him in a special way during Sabbath not only signifies our obedience to our Lord, it plunges us into the framework for experiencing Him: sanctification.
Bible Study Points: SCRIPTURE’S LIFE-CHANGING SIGNIFICANCE
THE POINT: THE NEWLY-SEEN TRUTH AND REALITY ABOUT GOD. As we continue in obedience to God’s commands and claims on our lives he brings us deeper into relationship with Him. One key change that happens in us moves us from experiencing our lives through self and flesh to experiencing our changing lives through Him and His spirit.
THE SIGNIFICANCE: THE STUDY AND INSIGHT
A Word for me. In Exodus and Deuteromony’s Sabbath commands I see that worship forms part of the continuum of a life of obedience. Sabbath worship is a special illustration of our heart of obedience and its love response. This response that God asks of us really can be seen as a guide for sin-blinded humans to know how we should relate to what he is like and what he really wants - respectful, focused time together! Not so unreasonable...
This life of obedience can be also understood as the ongoing experience of sanctification. Sanctification then becomes the framework for the heart of my Christian experience, my daily experiences with God. Paul clearly points to this journey of obedience in 2 Corinthians 5 in: the movement from “flesh” to “spirit.”
Bible Study Points: SCRIPTURE’S LIFE-CHANGING SIGNIFICANCE
THE POINT: THE NEWLY-SEEN TRUTH AND REALITY ABOUT GOD. As we continue in obedience to God’s commands and claims on our lives he brings us deeper into relationship with Him. One key change that happens in us moves us from experiencing our lives through self and flesh to experiencing our changing lives through Him and His spirit.
THE SIGNIFICANCE: THE STUDY AND INSIGHT
A Word for me. In Exodus and Deuteromony’s Sabbath commands I see that worship forms part of the continuum of a life of obedience. Sabbath worship is a special illustration of our heart of obedience and its love response. This response that God asks of us really can be seen as a guide for sin-blinded humans to know how we should relate to what he is like and what he really wants - respectful, focused time together! Not so unreasonable...
This life of obedience can be also understood as the ongoing experience of sanctification. Sanctification then becomes the framework for the heart of my Christian experience, my daily experiences with God. Paul clearly points to this journey of obedience in 2 Corinthians 5 in: the movement from “flesh” to “spirit.”
The passage. Paul’s 2 Corinthinans discourse describes the view of the Christian who has learned to live spiritually. Verse 16-17 shows the outcome: Christians who no longer relate to each other “after the flesh” or an outward human point of view. “Yea, even though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more.” “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature.”
The Context. This creature is new - transformed. How? In our steadfast looking to Jesus Our Savior, we experience the spritualization or sanctification process only experienced through focusing on Him, that can move us from living enslaved to “fleshly” concerns to being daily focused on looking for pathways to heaven in all experiences.
As Paul illustrates, whether the Christian actively ministers or sleeps in death, the aim has been to serve God faithfully (6-9). And he further emphasizes, “whether we be beside ourselves (crazy) it is to God: or whether we be sober it is for your cause,” which continues to give service to God (13).
The outward concerns, even of preserving their human life, become less important than serving God faithfully. This Christian has plunged deep into the experience of sanctification and moving from fleshly to spiritual living: even death becomes but a threshold to an ultimate resurrection and being with God.
*May God's Spirit Be With You As You Study – And Experience His Guiding You Into His Will*
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