Live Like Jesus by Putty Putman

Author:Putty Putman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Charismatic;REL079000;REL099000
ISBN: 9781493411689
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2017-09-02T04:00:00+00:00

From this drawing, we can see that when our mindset is aligned with our righteous nature, we can expect to experience godly desires. The fruit of these godly desires will be godly actions. This is the way God designed us to live. This is what the Christian walk is meant to look like.

Paul ties all of this together and explains this process in Ephesians 4 (with my clarifying notes in brackets):

They [unbelievers] have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. [Note the context here: sinful actions.] But that is not the way you learned Christ!—assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self [putting off the old self means not “wearing” an old self of sinful actions over the new self underneath; the word he chooses here is the word for taking off a coat], which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires [our desires leading to sin are deceitful—they are based on a deception in our mindset], and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds [these desires are dealt with by allowing the Spirit to renew our minds and to bring us out of a mindset of deception into truth], and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness [this allows us to “wear” the new self, instead of the old self, resulting in the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness, as revealed in our outer actions].

Ephesians 4:19–24

Our journey is meant to be one of allowing the Holy Spirit to renew our minds and bring us into a mindset of truth. The problem is that we are spending time and energy battling “ourselves,” which renders us stagnant and unproductive, since that is not what God would have us do. In reality, the Holy Spirit is trying to speak to us and grow us up. But we are focused on ourselves instead of what God is saying.

It is a sad reality that many of us spend more time shadowboxing an old, dead nature than hearing the living God as He is working to grow us up in Christ. Paul described the correct pursuit we ought to have in Philippians 3:

Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. Only let us hold true to what we have attained.

Philippians

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