The Quick and The Dead – Part 1

This week, Michael asks, What is our greatest struggle?  Is it our marriage, our work, our finances, our relationships with our family? The bible says, in this world we will have tribulation. But be not dismayed, Jesus said, “Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.”

The battle is not against others or against circumstances. The battle is a “spiritual battle”, for we wrestle not against flesh and blood but against spiritual wickedness from on high. The battle is for our hearts and lives. As men and women of God, we have been called to be counter-secular-cultural. We're in, but not of this sinful world: this is not our home. From God's perspective, we're already seated in heavenly places with Christ as citizens of Heaven.

Romans 8:33-39 “Who shall bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written:

“For Your sake we are killed all day long; We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.” Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

The church in Ephesians battled the guilt and condemnation of this world.  According to Ephesians 2:1-3 “And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others.”

When we accepted Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, we were "quickened", we were made alive in Christ. Our spirit is regenerated and we're no longer dead in our sin nature. We're no longer tied to a “dead in sin” body. Paul exclaimed in Romans 7:24, "O wretched man that I am.  Who shall deliver me from this dead body?" This is a picture of one of the worst forms of capital punishment. The executioner would strap a dead body to the condemned man to rot with the decaying body on his back. Paul cried as he struggled to do the right thing, "who shall deliver me from the body of this death?"

The answer is in Romans 8:1, "There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus who walk not after the flesh but after the spirit.  For The law of the spirit of life in Christ has made me free from the law of sin and death." 

We have a moment by moment choice to walk after the desires of our flesh nature we inherited form Adam or the walk in our spirit nature of Christ that we inherited from God when we were born again.

Let's continue Michael's message on the Quick and the Dead in the next post.

In Christ, Brian