Two Natures

Hello, radio friends. How in the world are you? You doing alright? Oh, I trust so. And I am praying that today God may give you some special help from his inspired, inerrant, infallible Word, the Bible. We’re in Colossians chapter 3. Said, “you’re dead and your life is hid with Christ in God.” Christ is our life. Because that’s true, there are certain areas that need to be brought by faith to the cross to share in the dying as you share in the resurrection. You follow that logic? Because Christ is your life and you died with Him and rose with Him and you’re seated with Him in the heavenlies in Christ accepted in the beloved one, a holy God looks at you not through your sin but through the righteousness of Christ because you’re trusting in your Savior. Because that’s true, he said, there are certain areas of your old life that need to be brought by faith to the cross so they can die and you can know the newness of life. You can put on, put on love and peace and the Word of Christ dwelling in you richly, and singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord and doing everything in the name of the Lord Jesus. See, there are certain areas which, by faith, you and I must bring to the cross and let them die just as God says is the fact.

So he says, “Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth.” And then he lists the various types of sins: Immorality, the misplaced affections that sin puts into our hearts and minds, the knowledge of evil, covetousness, loving things more than God, unforgiveness, wrath, anger, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth, lying and so on. Now he says, bring these to the cross, put them to death. And then there are areas, said he, that you need to work on and you put them off like you would put off a garment. I’m reaching over here to my good old Greek New Testament. The thing is just about worn out. I’ve had it ever since college days and used it and used it and used it. I go after it every day. But he says, you put these things off now, Verse 8, “Now,” he says, “You put off,” and that’s exactly what the Greek word means. Take it off, like you’d take off an overcoat. All these: Anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, evil speaking, evil speaking out of your mouth and so on.

You wanna talk with me for a little while about how you work on this? He says, “You put it off.” Now, I explained to you the last time we got together, how you deal with the matters that were mentioned in verse 5. He says, “Put them to death.” By faith, you take your stand at the cross with the Lord Jesus Christ and you face that thing which has been your defeat whatever area of your life it may be. And you say, “Lord Jesus, you died for this and I died with you, and by faith I stand with you against my own sinful nature and I trust you, blessed Savior, for victory in this area.” Will you do that in your own life? There are then other areas where you’ll have the voice of your Savior, saying, “My grace is sufficient for thee.” He stands ready to help, but it is something which you now do. He says you put this off like you’d take off an overcoat. What is that? Now he says you also put off all these: Anger and wrath and malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth. Don’t lie. And be forgiving.

What do you do about this? You wanna talk about that? He said you put it off. Now, my response just like yours would probably be, “I can’t help it.” Anger, for instance. I can’t help it that I get angry. Wouldn’t you get angry too if this and this and this and this and this happened? And the answer is yes. Now, what about anger? Well, there’s a good kind of anger. Jesus was angry, it said, at those who defamed the temple and brought commerce into the holy place. He was angry. He was angry because of the unbelief of folk who refused to exercise even the tiniest bit of faith thus enabling deity to impinge upon their own human needs. There is an anger that is a beneficial anger, but Paul says, you be angry and sin not. Be sure that your anger isn’t the sinful kind. That’s the difference. Anger in the Bible that is acceptable is anger that’s directed against sin not against the sinner. So you better be careful about this. Most of our anger has to do with the fact that we feel either put down or disappointed or passed by or insulted or our feelings are hurt and so on. Most of the anger we feel, let’s face it, has to do with something that has happened to us and because thereby our feelings have been affected, isn’t that true?

So he said you put off that. Do you have to get angry? And the answer is no. You don’t have to. Someone was giving advice to a prize fighter, boxer, and he said, “Don’t lose your cool. The minute you get angry, you lose the bout.” Well, of course everybody knows that’s true. In athletics, whether it’s basketball or football or hockey or baseball or any of these sports, if you lose your cool, as they say, if you get angry, you also lose the ability to think logically and help to outwit your opponent. Now, everybody knows that and accepts it. But you and I go placidly along our way every now and again, blowing our top as we say, and at that point, losing control of the situation. What do you do? Well now, it is a fact, isn’t it, that before you blow your top, you know you’re going to do so? There is a split second in which that little mental moral monitor in your head is saying, “Shall I let him have it or shall I not? Shall I blow up or shall I not?” You know before it happens, whether or not you’re gonna lose your temper, isn’t it true?

Now, what do you do then? You just let it… Let the fuse keep on sputtering and let the explosion come? Well, if you do, then you’ve got a lot of damage to repair, interpersonal damage to repair after a while. Far better, when you know that your own spirit is rising and anger is rising within you like a flood, like the lava in a volcano coming to the top and ready to spew out in a fiery explosion, you know you feel that coming in your heart. When you know that’s happening, far better then to turn to the Lord Jesus and say, “Lord Jesus, control me now.” That’s the way you do that. He’s not saying you have to do this on your own, you put off all these. He has told us that we’re complete in Christ. He’s told us that what we do, we do through faith in the Lord Jesus. The Bible has taught us elsewhere as well that all that we do in relationship to God is based upon dependence upon God in faith. So what we do here is to face these areas determinedly with the Lord Jesus.

Let’s assume that you don’t want to get angry. You don’t want to lose your temper and thus lose control of the situation. You do want to keep cool and calm and collected and sweet. Alright, if that be so, take your stand by faith with the Lord Jesus Christ and say, “Lord Jesus, keep me now.” Here again, anything I tell you I’ve been there. I’ve been through situations where I could feel resentment and anger rising up within me like the rising of a, well, like a volcano about to erupt you know. You can just feel it, the pressure mounting, mounting, mounting. And you thought to yourself, “If this keeps on I’m gonna scream or bite somebody.” [chuckle] You know how it is? I guess you do. Well, I wanna tell you, on some occasions such as that, I have bowed and I have prayed down deep in my spirit, “Lord Jesus, you control me now. Hold me now, keep me now, give me love for this person instead of resentment.” And I have to tell you that a prayer like that has always been answered and my Lord Jesus is faithful. God is faithful who will not suffer you to be tested above that you’re able, but will with the temptation also make a way to escape that ye may be able to bear it.

You don’t run away from these situations; you go through them victoriously. And so things that you ought to work on such as, said he, anger, lose your temper, wrath. That’s being so mad that you start attacking the other person. Malice, that’s desiring that something evil happen to someone else so that you will benefit. Blasphemy, you know what that is, swearing. Filthy communication out of your mouth, dirty talk of any kind. Lie not one to another. You know what lying is. Alright, he says, you put these things off. You work on this. You work on it by faith. You take your stand with the Lord Jesus and you turn the control over to him. Now, there have been two things that he told us to do then. One was in verse 5, mortify, put it to death, bring it to the cross, be done with it. Take your stand by faith with the Lord Jesus against these aberrations, these areas of your old nature that need to be dealt with. And then he says, put off. That is, by faith you work on these areas and you submit them to the Lord Jesus, alright? Would you try that for yourself? Would you try that for yourself?

First of all, bring these things that have to do with your old nature, bring them to the cross and say, “Lord Jesus, by faith, I stand with you against my old sinful nature. I stand with you by faith. You handle this. You run my life.” I can promise you that He will never disappoint you. And every time you submit to him, you will find him working in your heart and life. He says, “Yield yourselves unto God as those that are alive from the dead, and your members, that’s the members of your body as instruments of righteousness unto God as you have yielded your members instruments of unrighteousness and iniquity and the result was more iniquity. Even so now,” said he, “Yield your members instruments of righteous… Servants to righteousness and the result will be holiness.”. It’s what you give up to Jesus that counts. Would you remember that, beloved? Give up. Surrender is built into your bones. Give up to the Lord Jesus, bring these things to him, and stand with him by faith. I find benefit in saying out loud, “Lord Jesus, I confess you as Lord of this area in my life, Jesus is Lord, now prove your lordship to me.” I talk to Him out loud. And I tell Him about the areas that I want Him to handle, and He does.

Now this is a continuing process because every day you’re up against the stimuli of the world around you, and you’re up against the old sinful nature that you’ll have until you get to glory. Every Christian now has two natures. You’ve got the new nature and the old nature. And you bring that old nature to Jesus by faith and let him handle it. Will you do that, beloved, and get the victory that is so sweet? Oh, I’ll tell you, there’s nothing sweeter than to realize that the Lord Jesus saw you through a situation where otherwise you would have collapsed and failed. What a precious, wonderful source of thanksgiving that is when you realize that Jesus brought you through.

Lord Jesus, today keep us by Thy power, Amen.

Till I meet you once again by way of radio, walk with the King today and be a blessing!