Estudo | Glenio Fonseca Paranaguá - The substitution of life
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The substitution of life
He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life. (1John 5:12)
We are all born with a life contaminated by sin as well as not properly for sanctification. for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,… Romans, 3:23.
Sin is certainly the incredulity before the person of Christ Jesus. We are an unfaithful race by nature. The main work of the Holy Spirit in the world is to convince about the sin. When he comes, he will convict the world of guilt[a] in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment: in regard to sin, because men do not believe in me; John 16:8-9.
Sin is the unbelief that separates us from the glory of God and kills us from our own glory. The sinner is an adventurer investing with all his will in his glorification throughout his own rise and looking for peaks of fame and celebrity.
Life after Eden sets itself in the impossibility of the relationship among Aba family, because of its own needs of greatness and recognition. Ego sees itself full and fat. Fat and painful. It hurts for nothing, mainly when it is questioned. It likes to show off his performance as a trophy of conquer and acceptation. Selfish life is opposite to spiritual life.
There are lots of people who have a just life before law, but they are unfaithful to-wards the person of Christ. They have an honest and worthy life to human admiration, but this life is cetic and without any spiritual value for God. It’s Adam’s life polluted by sin, the one that will not be accepted in the Kingdom of God, first it has to be substituted by the life of resurrection.
Adamic life has no way to correct. It’s completely selfish. Natural man can only think of himself, even if he is being good for other people. The human kindness is interested, it demands recognition from others. Behind philanthropic actions remain desires of consideration, prestige and show.
Selfish is a trademark of old Adam’s life. Even his spirituality comes together with selfishness and all its sanctified styles on a very noticeable stage, like the ones shown on parade and fancy dresses. The Pharisee stood up and prayed aboutª himself: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’ Luke 18: 11-12.
Ego with its selfishness are both useless for the kingdom of God. Selfish life is an existence without future and must be substituted by the eternal life of God Himself. The new born involves the change of this selfish life of Adam for the correct life of Christ.
This life has no human rights. It doesn’t have a labor union. It doesn’t take advan-tage of its growth in sanctity, even feeling hurt with the ostracism and the neglet that is found. It’s life of freedom and liberty.
The old man has to die. There’s no medicine to cure him, there’s no education to teach this rebel nature of the sin. Christ incarnated in historical Jesus so he could crucify Adam’s life that we inherited as race, to give us new life of resurrection, eternal life, through faith in his person and work.
Without the substitution of Adam´s life by Christ´s life there is no salvation. It´s true that the old creature can pretend to be a new creature. One of the characteristics of the old man is lie, cheating and deceit. This way, hypocrisy is the coloured robe that the Adamic caste uses, trying to mask himself of new creature.
According to Jesus, the religion of Adam´s descendants only worries itself with the appearance. It is an existence of peel or . "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed toms, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within they are full of dead men´s bones and all uncleanness!" Matthew 23:27.
To be an Adamic religious is to get untruly dressed, using an unsuspected mask of esquisite idealization trying to be accepted. With this myth that reality is on the shining of the varnish, the pseudo sanctity is practiced on the muscle and the sophistication of this allegory, mess and celebration of contentment on the intimacy. The unbeliever dressed up of believer is a cruel trick and a hallucinating schizophrenia.
The created life, but contaminated by sin, became inadequate to the composition of God´s family. For more educated and for more religious that we may be it gets impossible to have an existence of Abba’s children transporting Adam’s psychological life. The selfish soul has to die. "The soul that sins shall die". Ezekiel 18:20a
The life of the soul descendant of Adam was created, it’s human and it’s contami-nated by the sin of unbelief or selfishness. There is no salvation to the ego and its selfishness. This life of selfishness has to die, because it is of no use at all to the essential condition of God’s children. The life of the soul has to be, absolutely, substituted by the resurrected, spiritual and eternal Life of God’s Son. In the opposite, everything is lost.
Abba just treated with two men here on earth. The first Adam and the last Adam. The first one, in the Eden, and with the last one in the Calvary. From the first one we inherited, naturally, the soul’s life infected by sin. We are interested people. From the last one we inherited, by faith, the spiritual Life of His Son brought from the grave, in order to make us children of God. This is the life that saves us eternally. "The first man Adam became a living being"; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit". I Corinthians 15:45.
Christ had to incarnate Himself in Adam’s race, in order to die as the last Adam, it means, as the last one of the Adamic race and resurrect as the second man, head of a new creation, to take us to die and resurrect together with him, and, in so doing, to substi-tute the life of the Adamic soul by his eternal Life. A Killed ego is an overthrown ego.
Without the exchange of the soul’s life for the Life that vivifies the spirit, there is no regeneration. Nobody can become God’s children bringing Adam’s life. The selfish life is irreconcilable with the spiritual reality of God’s family.
Between the first Adam and the last one there is the death of cross shared as the sign that shows the end of the psique life of the Adamic race. Between the last Adam and the second man there is Christ’s resurrection as the guarantee of the substitution of the psique life by the zoe Life that makes us new creatures. This doesn’t mean to be a mem-ber of a church.
The psychological life descending from Adam doesn’t have a spiritual evolution. It can become a polite existence, trained by religion, rich in theological knowledge, but it will never be a spiritual reality coming from Christ’s Life. It can grow in religious know-ledge, never in sanctification. A person who was educated in the church, without a new birth, can become a theologian, yet never a son of Abba.
The death of the ego on its selfishness is required by faith on God’s Word. In order to exist Life in Christianity it’s needed to die with Christ to one’s ego. Christian is someone who died with Christ, so that Christ may live His life through him. Salvation means: no more in Adam, but in Jesus Christ. "Not me anymore, but Christ" is the final result of the saving work done by our Lord Jesus Christ.
Paul understood this very well. Speaking about his apostolic ministry, he said to have worked more than all other apostles. This seems mere arrogance. It seems, but it isn’t. Paul´s life reflected and spread Christ´s sufficiency from his interior to everywhere he walked by. Paul was a dead one at the cross, vivified by Christ’s life. "But by the grace of God I am what I am, and the grace toward me was not in vain. On the con-trary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God which is with me". I Corinthians 15:10.
Before anything else the Christian life is the substitution of the natural life of selfishness by the supernatural life of Christ. If we are directed by our ego, on a natural way, then we won´t be able to be governed by Christ’s Life in the person of the Holy Spirit, on a supernatural way. The life of the ego is struggling with the life of the Spirit and, besides that, there is no sanctification of ego. In order that I may live in the spirit, by the power of the Holy Spirit, it’s needed that I may die to my ego and that I may be born again with Christ’s Life.
Thanks to God that I already have died at the cross with Christ. I don´t have to kill myself. If selfishness is the reason of my problems, now it was crucified with Christ. "Not me anymore, but Christ" is the only reality that transforms the old Adam into a new crea-ture. Haleluyah, for this work already was totally consummated in Christ’s person. Amen.
That the Holy Spirit may reveal us this fact.