REDEEMED, Present
/Work hard to show the results of your salvation, obeying God with deep reverence and fear. (Philippians 2:12 NLT)
For the believer being REDEEMED is being saved from our sin through the atonement of Jesus at the Cross. That happened in the past. The moment we accepted His Gift of Salvation by confessing our sins and accepting the reality of what He did for us on that Calvary hillside, is also in the past - our past.
That ONE MOMENT OF BELIEF - stepped us into life.
I tell you the truth, those who listen to my message and believe in God who sent me have eternal life. They will never be condemned for their sins, but they have already passed from death into life. (John 5:24 NLT)
If our moment of redemption is in our past, what is present redemption about?
Look back at Paul’s instructions to us in Philippians 2:12 . . . working hard so that we can show results of being saved!
What we know is that our spirit has been redeemed through His Spirit – and in our inner-being, we are totally righteous. But for the time being we are living this earthly life in the flesh!
The FLESH represents all that is natural to this earthly world – our human self.
The spirit holds all things supernatural and divine. God, through the mouthpiece of Paul is instructing us to work out our divine nature through our flesh. Now, that’s quite a challenge, right?
Peter also talks about this continual fight with the flesh.
Dear friends, you are foreigners and strangers on this earth. So I beg you not to surrender to those desires that fight against you. (1 Peter 2:11 CEV)
This “fight of the flesh” will be with us our entire earthly living days. But there’s HOPE in the battle! Let’s look at a couple of other scriptures:
In 2 Corinthians 10:5, Paul talks about “casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.”
EVERY THOUGHT includes worry, frustration, guilt, shame, exasperation because of lack of time, angst in relationships, and every single thing that is an impediment to your peace.
CASTING DOWN these burdensome mindsets, in the Greek definition, means taking them down by force – dethroning them!
Is negative thinking sitting on the throne of your mind?
YOU ARE NOT YOUR MIND! But you do have a mindset. And YOU are the one who “sets your mind.”
As Believers, we can be victorious by grabbing hold of God’s Spirit living within us to dethrone ALL that keeps us occupied in ways that are NOT THE THOUGHTS OF CHRIST.
Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit, says the LORD Almighty. (Zechariah 4:6)
We can choose – with each and every thought – “how” to think. We either choose to think like “the flesh thinks” or we choose to defer to His Spirit to help us think in Jesus ways. IT’S A CHOICE.
We can be determined to move in God’s command given to us in His Word.
Set your mind and keep focused habitually on the things above – the heavenly things, not on things that are on the earth which have only temporal value. (Colossians 3:2 AMP)
The command “Set your mind and keep focused habitually. . .” in the Greek is written in the imperfect tense – meaning that it is an ongoing continuous action that started in our past.
In other words we were set free when we trusted in Jesus as our Lord and Savior. Now; we get to choose to “flesh out” our freedom in our present walk and our talk.
Yep, we ARE “freed-up” from all those negatives that the enemy throws our way; we just have to remember that we're free and choose to walk in our freedom.
Dear Father, thank You for redeeming me. I - the REAL ME, am no longer held hostage by sin. You paid the price for my sin nature and for every sin I have ever committed or will commit. Help me to honor You by remembering that You can help me walk in the righteousness that You have given me. Help your pure love work its way “up and out of my spirit” affecting the way I think, speak, and behave. I love You Lord Jesus. Amen.
Christ has liberated us to be free. Stand firm then and don’t submit again to a yoke of slavery. (Galatians 5:1 HCSB)
Cindi
www.frazzledfemale.com/blog
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