Different

This week, Michael writes that the "Sermon on the Mount" is about Kingdom living. Jesus Christ was the King from Heaven. Jesus had cast seven demons out of Mary Magdalene. When asked what had happened to change her, she simply said, “I was one way but now I’m different.” The kingdom of Jesus Christ is different in every way from the kingdoms of this world.  

Oswald Chambers said that only the Holy Spirit can expound the teachings of Jesus Christ. Before we can understand His teachings, we must first be "born again" of God’s spirit. We cannot see from God’s perspective, with Christ’s eyes behind our eyes, unless we are born from above of God’s Holy Spirit.

Jesus’ teachings from the Sermon on the Mount are diametrically opposed to the teachings of this fallen world. The Beatitudes are the beautiful attitudes of Jesus’ disciples who have allowed the Holy Spirit to have His way with them. These heavenly attitudes take us away from this world and into the moral frontier where the spirit works in us and through us to will and to do of His good pleasure.

Poverty in spiritual things is the prerequisite for receiving the beautiful attitudes of the beatitudes. God works best with nothing. In order for God to fill us, we need to enter into His presence with empty hands. When God reveals that we are lacking in spiritual things, then He can fill us with His Spirit. Once we have received God’s Spirit, we can know that there is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus ... those who walk according to the Spirit of life in Christ. Poverty of the Spirit leads to hungering and thirsting after the righteousness of Christ.

Romans 12:1-2 says, "I beseech ye therefore (because of the Doctrine from Romans chapter 8) brethren by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God which your reasonable act of service of worship." The ultimate sacrifice is praise to God ... according to Hebrews, bring the sacrifice of praise into the house of the Lord.  

When we offer ourselves up as an approach offering to God, then we can sacrifice every worldly choice in order to live to the praise of the glory of God’s grace ... for He alone is worthy. You love what you value. What is it that you value most?  When we love God above all, He alone is worth my sacrifice, my giving up of everything else.

Romans 12:2 says, the result of becoming a living sacrifice unto theLord is to be not conformed to this world, squeezed into the world’s mold. But instead we will be transformed (passive voice) by allowing ourselves to be renewed by our renewing ... the upward renewing of our minds according to God’s heavenly calling. Transformed is complete metamorphosis. The renewing of the mind according to God’s word transforms us from the world’s mold into His mold ... for we are His workmanship, His poetry in motion .... His great work of art created in Christ Jesus unto good works which He has foreordained that we should walk in them. The renewing of the mind means that morning by morning new mercies I see. Each moment is a fresh and new opportunity to walk in the newness of life in Christ.

Life is a series of choices. Saying yes to the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus separates me from the sin of the world’s carnal calling. Romans 8:3 says, what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin condemned sin in the flesh that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. A person of God transformed by the renewing of his mind, walks with an awareness and acknowledgement of the presence of God. When we walk in the spirit, he will open the eyes of our spiritual understanding.  

A person of God sees from God’s perspective, instead of the secular world’s. Jesus said, don’t worry about what we shall eat or what we shall drink, consider the lilies of the field, they toil not neither do they reap, yet even Solomon in all his glory wasn’t arrayed like one of these. Therefore, take no thought for tomorrow, for tomorrow shall take care of its own cares, sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.  

We are sufficient unto all godly things overcoming all worldly things through Christ who infuses us with His strength. I can co all things through Christ who strengthens me, that we may live to the praise of the glory of His grace!

Your brother in Christ, Michael