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
Why is there a \”beseeching\” (a pleading) here at the juncture of resetting the settings of the old creation man? It is because as great as the salvation wrought by the LORD is, without a corresponding yielding of the whole being to the LORD, there can be no growth in the New Life. If there is no growth, eventually there will be such a loss that leads to the occurrence of spiritual death again.
So, the Spirit beseech us, pleads with us, not based on our merits (because we didn\’t have any) but based on God\’s own merits. The first issue in resetting is to revisit the mercies of God, by which we were found, bought back and saved from the slave market of sin and reconciled to God as a bonafide child of His royal family.
If you know that mercy, that you do not merit the salvation you have received and that if you were left to perish forever in the lake of fire, it won\’t make God unrighteous, then you will understand that there is no other way to live the New Life, to grow from a child to a son of the House, other than offering up your whole being (every part of your life) to God as a living sacrifice.
No patching in the New Life
There is no way for anyone to patch it in the New Life. To try to mix the old and the new together will only lead into a worse situation. It\’s just like the Scripture that says \”For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath. (Matt 13:12).
He who has not growth in the New Life even that which he hath (the salvation received initially) shall be taken away from him. These are solemn words.
21 No man also seweth a piece of new cloth on an old garment: else the new piece that filled it up taketh away from the old, and the rent is made worse.22 And no man putteth new wine into old bottles: else the new wine doth burst the bottles, and the wine is spilled, and the bottles will be marred: but new wine must be put into new bottles.Mark 2:21-22
From this scripture, it is clear that the attempt to sew a part/residue of your old life to the New Life you have received will not work. It will lead to a greater trouble. Persisting in this will only make the later end of such a person worse than the beginning (Matthew 12:43-45).
The only thing that will work is to completely remove the \”old garment\” (your old life of sin) and then offer up your bodies unto the LORD so that you can be fit to put on the \”new cloth\” of God\’s will for your life.
When you remove the old garment, you are upsetting the settings of your old life; and when you put on the new cloth of God\’s will (which is putting on Christ), you are resetting the settings your old life with the settings of the New Life.
The Old Wine of Tradition versus the New Wine of Truth
What is the old wine? What is the new wine? From Matthew, Mark and Luke where we have the issue of the new wine raised, we will notice that Jesus was giving a parable to show the emergence of a new system, which is the New Covenant, the fulfillment of the dispensation of the Kingdom of God. He makes it clear that the old system, the Old Covenant will not and cannot be mixed with the New. And that the New Wine cannot be poured into old bottles (wineskins).
That is, what God wants to do in the New Covenant cannot be poured into those who are still containers of the Old. Just as the New Life has its own settings, separate from the old life, the New Covenant has its own order, methods and settings, separate from the Old Covenant.
There are works, ministries and churches that have refused to shed the oldness of the letter (Rom. 7:6), that old wineskin of human traditions, and as a result the newness of the spirit cannot flow through them to our generation. This is an evidence that the old creation man is at work, although it is a very religious, biblically knowledgeable old creation man.
This is also the die-hard attitude of the devil at play. That when it looks like you are saved (born-again) from the kingdom of darkness, this adversary continues to work to make sure that you don\’t touch reality while you are captured in a web of powerless religion. If you will truly present your bodies a living sacrifice unto God, you will no longer struggle with complete obedience by sitting on the fence between the tradition of men and the truth of the Kingdom.
Picture Credit: wallpaperscristaos
