Christ is the Head of This New Body of Christ: Page 84

Christ is the Head of This New Body of Christ
 

18 And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence. 

 

19 For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell (Colossians 1:18-19).
 

22 And hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, 

 

23 Which is his body the fulness of him that filleth all in all (Ephesians 1:22-23).
 

9 For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. 

 

10 And ye are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power (Colossians 2:9-10).
 

Christ is the head (Ephesians 5:23) of this new mystery body, this new Grace Church, this new called-out assembly. 

 

Our lives are hid with Christ in God (Colossians 3:3). 

 

As members of the Body of Christ, like Paul, we can learn these new truths when we study the Bible in a dispensational manner. 

 

6 For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ (II Corinthians 4:6). 

 

We can focus on Christ and the glory of God. We can be a reflection of God’s eternal nature—love. 

 

We can reckon this knowledge to be true, understanding that this new nature that God has spiritually given to us, is no longer under bondage, but free from the power, the dominion, of sin and death (Romans 6:9, 14; 8:2). 

 

Now with this new nature, we are...

 

16 strengthened by might by His Spirit in the inner man (Ephesians 3:16). 

 

We are promised that...

 

16 though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day (II Corinthians 4:16).
 

We can now choose to yield to the Holy Spirit and align our thinking and attitudes and perspective to the righteous character of Christ, our head (Romans 6:13, 19). 

 

5 Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus (Philippians 2:5). 

 

3 Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves (Philippians 2:3). 

 

13 Forbearing one another in love (Ephesians 4:2) and serving one another in love (Galatians 5:13), 

 

9 that our love may abound yet more and more (Philippians 1:9). 

 

7 God has given us the spirit of love and power and a sound mind (II Timothy 1:7) and we can exhibit these characteristics of God in our lives. Because of His love and His grace and His coming, we have hope and can stand in spiritual battles. We are motivated to 

 

13 yield ourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and our members as instruments of righteousness unto God (Romans 6:13). 

 

We can be strong in who God has made us, who we are in the Lord. 

 

18 But 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 (II Corinthians 3:18).
 

These thoughts were foreign to the apostle Paul. 

 

He had to go through a major metamorphosis in his mind. 

 

He needed to put off thinking like the old man (Romans 6:6-8; Ephesians 4:22; Colossians 3:9-10), 

 

and put on the new man, which God created in righteousness and true holiness (Ephesians 4:22-24). 

 

He needed to reckon that God did approve of this chief of sinners (I Timothy 1:15). 

 

After all the damage generated by Paul toward the Kingdom Church, because of Paul’s faith, God would now give him a full stamp of approval in this new mystery grace program. 

 

In Christ Jesus, we, too, like Paul, can renew our minds and learn these principles of grace from the scriptures, reckon them to be true (Romans 6:11), and serve God, walking by faith and not by sight (II Corinthians 5:7).
 

1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. 

 

2 And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God (Romans 12:1-2).
 

We should look at ourselves from the same vantage point God does. 

 

He has given every soul a conscience (Romans 2:15) and they are without excuse from not seeing their need for redemption. 

 

23 For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). 

 

9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? (Jeremiah 17:9) 

 

10 As it is written, there is none righteous, no, not one. 

 

11 There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God (Romans 3:10-11). 

 

6 But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6). 

 

6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all (Isaiah 53:6). 

 

23 The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life though Jesus Christ our Lord (Romans 6:23). 

 

8 But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8). 

 

God prepared a perfect sacrifice, a perfect penalty payment, for our atonement, His sinless Son, our Savior. God trusted His Son to remain a humble and righteous redeemer while on earth and Jesus trusted that His Father would receive His atonement as a full payment for man’s sin and raise Him from the dead.
 

When we receive Him as our Savior, God gives us His Holy Spirit, the earnest, the down payment of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession (Ephesians 1:14). 

 

He lives in us and through us, guiding us and revealing to us when we err in our ways. 

 

When we do not yield to the Holy righteous ways of God, it grieves the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 4:30). 

 

When it becomes a habit to walk in the flesh, we may develop a callous resistance to His leading, and we may even come to reject that we ever believed in the Gospel of Grace. 

 

But God’s Spirit never leaves us. God will never deny that we belong to Him (II Timothy 2:13). 

 

When we yield to the leading of the Holy Spirit, become restored to a right relationship with God and His guidance, a believer may still see himself in the fallen Adam, and guilt and shame are magnified. 

 

God the Father continues to see him in His Son, in Christ, through eyes of mercy, grace, and forgiveness. 

 

God says, 

 

11 “But ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God (I Corinthians 6:11). 

 

We tend to still see ourselves in our fallen state, in the first Adam, but God sees us in our risen state, in Christ the last Adam. 

 

22 For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive (I Corinthians 15:22). 

 

God is pleased with His workmanship (Ephesians 2:10), and He is pleased with us. We are to be to the praise of His Glory (Ephesians 1:12). 

 

Our relationship with God has been restored, and God see us like the moral Adam He created in His image (Genesis 5:1), the one He walked with and shared thoughts with in the Garden of Eden before Adam fell into sin. 

 

Now God wants us to listen to what He is telling us through our study in the Holy Scriptures and He wants us to share all our thoughts with Him through prayer. 

 

Our eternal life with God begins at the moment we believe the Gospel and eternal life is forever, eternal.
 

Presently God is no longer the angry God that we sometimes met in the Old Testament (Isaiah 5:25; Numbers 11:1; I Chronicles 13:10). 

 

He offers mercy, grace, peace, love, salvation, hope, and eternal security to everyone. 

 

He preserves us for His heavenly kingdom (II Timothy 4:18). 

 

He has delivered us from the consequences of sin and from the wrath to come. 

 

He has made peace with man through Christ’s finished work on the cross and offers the gift of salvation, the gift of eternal life to everyone, Jew and Gentile alike (Galatians 3:28; Colossians 3:11). 

 

We are bought with a price (I Corinthians 6:20), the blood of Christ, a substitutional atonement. 

 

Christ paid for our souls with His life, suffering for us the consequences of our sin so that we could eternally belong to Him and be identified with Him through the work of the entire Triune Godhead. 

 

Our lives are hid with Christ in God (Colossians 3:3) and kept there by the Holy Spirit until They takes us home.
 

10 And ye are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power: 

 

11 In whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ:

 

12 Buried with him in baptism , wherein also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead.

 

13 And you, being dead in your sins and the un-circumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses;

 

14 Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross; (Colossians 2:10-14).
 

God is not interested in fixing our circumstances as much as He is interested in fixing us. 

 

He hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love (Ephesians 1:4). 

 

When we trusted in the work of Christ, our Savior, who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification (Romans 4:25), the Holy Spirit spiritually baptized us into His death, His burial, and His resurrection (Romans 6:3, 4). 

 

Our old man is dead. We have been raised from the dead with Christ through the faith of the operation of God (Colossians 2:12) to walk in newness of life (Romans 6:4). 

 

17 Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new (II Corinthians 5:17). 

 

We have been forgiven all trespasses (Colossians 2:13), and God has accepted us in the beloved (Ephesians 1:6). 

 

He has made each of us a new creature, a new creation in Christ. 

 

Through the study of the scriptures and by yielding to His indwelling Holy Spirit we can now let the mind of Christ (I Corinthians 2:16), the servant nature (Philippians 2:5-7), operate in us and through us so that we can align our earthly walk with our heavenly calling, overcoming evil with good (Romans 12:21).

 

14  He has called you by our Gospel, to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ (II Thessalonians 2:14) 

 

12 that ye would walk worthy of God, who hath called you unto His kingdom and glory (I Thessalonians 2:12).
 

During Jesus’s earthly ministry we learn of His hypostatic union. 

 

He said in John 10:30, I am my Father are One. 

 

He also found His identity with man, calling Himself the Son of Man, caring for the sick and hungered. 

 

God identifies us with His Son and we find our glorious identification in Christ. 

 

We are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones (Ephesians 5:30). 

 

We are dead, and our life is hid with Christ in God (Colossians 3:3). 

 

We are the temple of the Holy Spirit (I Corinthians 6:19-20). 

 

We have been renewed, regenerated (Titus 3:5) by the Holy Spirit and He has sealed us into and baptized us into the Body of Christ. 

 

We have a sure standing with our Triune God. 

 

We have our own promises, our own hope which is laid up in heaven (Colossians 1:5), and our own ministries. 

 

We have our own Grace Gospel and our own Grace Covenant. 

 

Before the foundation of the world, God, who cannot lie (Titus 1:2), promised to Himself, that He would impute Christ’s righteousness to all who would place their trust in the Gospel of Grace and give every believer eternal life. 

 

And God would secure this covenant with the blood of Jesus Christ.
 

We are to 27 stand fast in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the Gospel (Philippians 1:27). 

 

We are to be 17 set for the defense of the Gospel (Philippians 1:17). 

 

58 We are to be steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord (I Corinthians 15:58). 

 

We are to let our...

 

6 speech be alway with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man (Colossians 4:6). 

 

We are to 5 walk in wisdom toward them that are without, redeeming the time (Colossians 4:5). 

 

We are called to be soldiers, to 11 put on the whole armor of God (Ephesians 6:11), to be a living sacrifice, serving our living God. We are to yield our members as instrument of righteousness unto God and holiness (Romans 6:13:19). 

 

We are told to 12 cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light (Romans 13:12). 

 

5 We are to watch in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist and make full proof of our ministry (II Timothy 4:5). 

 

We have been given the ministry of reconciliation (II Corinthians 5:18). 

 

We are 20 ambassadors of Christ (II Corinthians 5:20). 

 

We are 2 to live a quiet and peaceable life in all Godliness and honesty (I Timothy 2:2), 11 study to be quiet (I Thessalonians 4:11), and 17 pray without ceasing (I Thessalonians 5:17). 

 

8 Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things (Philippians4:8).