NEW NATURE

by: Graham Cooke (Taken from a sermon preached at the

Mission Vacaville on 4-11-2010.)

Please read Romans 6:2-4

The paradox for you spiritually is that a part of your life is already a finished work, but another part of it is an ongoing work that’s clearly not finished. The finished part of you is the old nature: it’s dead.

Old Nature is Dead

So the finished part of the work of God in you is that you’re dead. Jesus came to deal with your old nature.

The Bible says that God dealt with sin once and for all, which means He’s not dealing with your sin anymore. It’s dead.

Old Nature is Buried

Your old nature is dead; God is not going to resurrect it. You’re not allowed to raise it from the dead in any way, shape or form. Neither is your wife or your husband. There is a part of you that is a finished work. Your old nature is dead. It’s in the ground; it’s buried; it has a personal headstone. There is no possibility of it coming back. God says to you in Romans 6:11, “consider yourself dead…but alive to me.”

He’s not resurrecting a corpse. He’s not dealing with your old nature. Why would God deal with your old nature and tell you that it’s dead at the same time? Does that make sense? That doesn’t make sense to anybody. It certainly doesn’t make sense to the Lord. Because He’s not a schizophrenic, so He wouldn’t say to you, “You consider this dead. Oh, but I’m dealing with your old nature.”

So when God puts His finger on a part of your life that’s not working He’s inviting you into the site of your next miracle. He’s saying, “We’re going to bring some life into this area.” So we’re in Christ. We’re dead. We’re learning to be Christ-like. We’re learning to be alive in Him.

The role of Jesus was to kill off the old nature. The role of the Holy Spirit is to establish your new nature. So everything that God is doing in your life, He’s not working with the old nature. It’s dead. He’s working with your new nature. So God is not dealing with your sin; He’s establishing your righteousness.

So when He puts His finger on a part of your life that’s not working, He’s not bringing condemnation into that area because He knows it’s already dead. But the thing is we don’t have a sin nature anymore. We have a sin habit. There are some things that we’ve learned over the years, and now that we’re in Christ we’re learning how to stop doing those things because we’ve done them so long it’s almost second nature.

And what God is doing is, He’s dealing with the residue. He’s dealing with the habit that we’ve had of always thinking this way, of always behaving this way, that when we’re under pressure or under threat we push back. We react, but we’re learning not to react. We’re learning to respond. So when He puts His finger on a part of your life that’s not working, what He’s actually saying to you is, “I have something for you, in this area.”

When God looks at you He doesn’t see what’s wrong with you, He sees what’s missing from your relationship with Him. And He’s absolutely committed to giving you that. He’s dealing with your new nature. He’s establishing who you really are.

Please read John 6:63, 1 Pet. 1:1-4

Therefore, when God puts His hand on a part of our life that’s not working, we’re really excited because God is saying to us, “I’ve got something for you in this area. I’m taking away from you something that you don’t like, and don’t want, and I’m going to give you something you’ve been crying out for. I’ve come to give you life.”

New Life in Christ

Jesus didn’t say, “I have come that you might have meetings and have them more abundantly.” He said, “I have come that you might have life.” So when He puts His finger on a part of your life that’s not working, He’s got some life to give you because He’s already done the death thing. Now He’s giving you the life thing.

Please read Eph. 4:22, Col 2:11

There is a part of our walk with God that’s a finished work, but there’s a part of our life that’s an ongoing work, because we’re learning how to grow up in all things in Christ. Here’s the thing, when God puts His finger on a part of your life that’s not working, He doesn’t say, “Let’s fix this.” He says, “Lay it aside.” You lay aside the old nature. You don’t work on it.

He doesn’t want to throw you a quick CD on five ways of dealing with your anger problem. He just looks at you and says, “You don’t have an anger problem, you’re dead. What you have is that you haven’t discovered yet how to be gentle.” When He’s dealing with your frustration, He doesn’t throw you a book: Fourteen Ways How Not to be Frustrated.

He says to you, “You’re not frustrated. You’re dead. What I’m dealing with now is your patience. If you had patience, you wouldn’t be frustrated, so I don’t want to deal with your frustration. I want to give you some patience.” Always He’s dealing with our new nature: who we really are in Jesus. He’s dealing with your true self, your real self, in Christ. So the Holy Spirit is always energized when He talks to you because He’s only dealing with what is good. He’s looking at you thinking, “Brilliant, let’s deal with this next.”

So when He puts His finger on something and says, “I want to deal with this,” You’re going, “That would be so cool!” It’s like somebody coming to your house and saying, “I want to remodel your kitchen for free.” Of course you’re going to sit there and say, “Well, I’m not really sure about that. A new cooker, brand new fridge? I don’t know. I don’t know. What? New countertops? A new floor? New everything? I don’t know.

. I’m going to have to pray about this.” In a pig’s eye you’ll think like that. You’ll be saying, “Here’re the keys to my house.” When God comes to your life and touches a part of your life, He’s saying, “I’m absolutely committed to remodeling this area and making it completely new.

And no, we’re not just going to change out a few things.” God doesn’t want to fix you because you were too bad to be fixed. You had to be destroyed. You were too bad to cleanse; you had to be crucified. He ain’t trying to fix you. He’s already killed you. He’s not resurrecting your old man. So neither are you. This is where we become Christ-like

That’s who you are right now in Jesus. There’s a finished work in you that’s already done, it’s already complete: no possibility of resurrection. We ain’t bringing that sucker out of the ground. But you’re a new creation. All the old things have passed away and everything has become new. You’re a new man. And what you’re learning is how to stay a new man. You don’t become a new person by changing your behavior. You discover the person you already are in Christ and you behave accordingly.

Nobody makes you angry. You chose that all by yourself. You could have been loving. You could have been kind. You could have been generous. You could have been merciful. You could have been faithful. But no, you chose to get angry. At least have the decency to take responsibility for your own choice. Nobody makes you angry. You choose it all by yourself.

And here’s the thing, if you are constantly getting angry, what that means is, God is bringing people into your life, and these people could be saints, and you’re getting angry because anger is in you, and it’s coming out all the time.

Your old nature is dead and you have no excuse. You have no reason for behaving like that other than you made a choice to. And you know what maturity is? Facing up to that and saying, “Yeah, I know.” Maturity is when you can say, “That’s me. That’s what I’ve been doing.” The Bible says you need to lay aside your old self.

Because when you allow your flesh to live, you are demeaning the sacrifice that Jesus made on the cross. You’re making it of no effect. You’re saying, “it has no meaning for me, my anger is more important.” Do you understand the paradox here? Your old nature is a finished work, but you keep bringing it back. And all the time you allow it to come back you are not getting on with the ongoing work of developing who you really are in Jesus.

If you want to grow and grow quickly, can we just leave the old nature in the ground? The whole point of pastoral ministry is that we let the dead lie. We’re not dealing with our old self. The whole point of pastoral ministry is that to deal with the new self, your true self.

Everything that’s in your life right now is about you establishing your real identity in Christ. When the Holy Spirit connects with a person’s life He starts to separate you from your carnality, and He does that by telling you who you really are. “You don’t have to do this because this is who you are. This is dead. Do you realize this is dead , but this is what you’re really alive to?” And He wants to show you what you’re alive to because it contains all the possibilities of God.

“All things are possible,” Jesus said, “You just have to believe.” And He said it like, “oh, you just, all you gotta do is believe. It’s, like, simple. Just believe.” Believing is easy. We are actually believers. So could we start believing something? Could you start by believing that your old nature is dead?

Beloved, it is time for us to focus on our true self on our real nature. When God looks at you, He doesn’t see what’s wrong with you; He puts you into Jesus for goodness sake.

He looks at you through the lens of Jesus, and Jesus has always been brilliant. “This is my beloved Son with whom I’m well pleased” So the Father puts you into Christ so He can say about you, “This is my beloved Son with whom I’m well pleased.” The Bible says in Ephesians 1:6, “You are accepted in the beloved.” You’ve got an identity in Jesus.

But the Holy Spirit is Lord inside the church and His specific job, the ongoing work of God, is to deal with your new self, your true self, your real nature, your Christ-likeness.

You don’t become a new person by changing your behavior. You discover the person you already are in Christ and you behave accordingly. You have all the patience you’re going to need. It just needs to be activated. You need to be confessing who you are. “I’m a new creation. The old things have passed away, everything’s become new and all things are of God.” This is who we are. At some point, we have to grow up in Christ, in all things.

That means we have to lay aside…God never says, “Well, let’s deal with this.” He says, “No you lay it aside because it’s already been dealt with. Jesus dealt with it. It’s a finished work. You’re finished. Dead.”

The Bible says, “Make no provision for the flesh.” You’re dead. The Holy Spirit is dealing with your new nature. We’re learning how to walk in our new nature, our real self in Jesus. Here’s the thing, if we will agree with God that our old nature is dead, consider ourself dead and alive to God, then we are alive to all the possibilities of what the Holy Spirit is doing.

I was talking to a guy at a church I was at recently, we were just having coffee, and I said to him, “So how are you doing?”

And he just said, “Well, you know, I really hate myself I can’t think of anything good about me.”

So I said, “OK. Can I ask you a question?” He said, “Sure.” I said, “Which self are we talking about?

Which self are you listening to?” He said, “What do you mean?”

I said, “Well, if you were listening to your true self in Jesus, you wouldn’t be using the word “hate” and you would be able to think of half a dozen things you liked. Because your new self acts according to Philippians 4:8, ‘Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there’s any excellence, if there’s anything worthy of praise, dwell on those things.’” That’s your new nature. So I said to him, “You hate yourself, you can’t think of anything good. Which self are you listening to?” He’s listening to his old nature.

And he sat there and he looked at me and he went, “Oh my God, I’ve been doing this for twenty years.”

I said, “Dude, that voice belongs to a corpse. You’re listening to the dead.”

He said, “Well, so what do I do about that voice then?”

I said, “You ignore it. You listen to the true voice.” You want to know what the voice of God sounds like? It sounds like this: the voice of God sounds like love, it sounds joyful, its full of peace, its full of patience, it’s really kind, it makes you feel good about yourself, it’s faithful, even if you know you’re behaving like a plank, the Lord has a way of talking to you that really ties you into His ongoing commitment to you. It’s a voice of gentleness. That’s the voice of the Lord. It’s the fruit of the Spirit. You know what God sounds like? He sounds like the fruit of the Spirit.

Here’s the thing about God, He has this weird thing about Him, He doesn’t want to ask you to be something that He is not already. He’s not a hypocrite. He says, “This is the way I want you to talk because it’s the way I talk.” So I said to him, “You need to ignore that voice. You need to listen to the new voice, and this is what it sounds like.”

It’s your old nature is dead, you don’t have to deal with it, you only have to deal with your new nature. And everything that God is doing is to establish who you really always have been in His eyes. This is our moment, when we throw off the shackles of religion, and we can say, “I’m done with all of that, this is who I am, and I’m going to learn to be this. It might take me a few weeks or a few months, but I’m going to enjoy the learning.”

This is the moment when you need to face up to who you really are. And you’re not the person that you’ve always thought of. You’re not the person everybody’s always reminded you about. You’re a whole new creation. All the old has passed away. Everything’s become new, and all things are of God. You are a new creation in Christ. It is time that we only focused on the real you, the true you, the new you.

Credits

 New NatureGraham Cooke(Taken from a sermon preached at the

Mission Vacaville on 4-11-2010.)The Bible Reading ProjectSermon Jam and Transcription : New

NaturePosted by Jonathan AmmonEditor: Jim UrreaTo God Be the Glory