Daily Word

“Eternal life” is the Spirit-life of Christ in me, imparted to me as I continually “hear” His Words, that are “Spirit and life” and live in continual faith, i.e. in constant total dependence on Jesus Christ.

Then I have passed out of spiritual “death” into “life”: the Spirit-life of Christ and am free from “judgment”.

But there is a death-sentence that we cannot escape from: the death to our independent self-life.

This death is also something continuous. Paul says about himself: “I die daily.”

In other words, when I stop dying to myself, Christ stops living in and through me.

By this it is clear that having “eternal life” is not something static, but a dynamic ongoing process, as we keep on hearing and believing and dying to ourselves.

In other words, the moment we stop hearing, faith starts to die and together with it also eternal life.

And the moment I refuse to die to myself, Christ cannot be revealed in me.

Only in this ongoing process is Romans 8:9 my reality: “You are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His.”

When “the Spirit of God” continuously invades me and forms the disposition of Christ: “the Spirit of Christ” in me, I am no longer “in the flesh”.

I am no longer living my independent self-life, satisfying myself, but “in the Spirit”: living in spirit-union with Christ to manifest Him in order to satisfy my heavenly Father, being “led by the Spirit” as a true “son of God”.

Jesus Christ, the Son of God, lived every step of His life here in the flesh according to “the Spirit of God,” and in doing so transformed “the Spirit of God” into “the Spirit of Christ”: the victorious spirit-disposition of the Man Jesus Christ.

Through His death and resurrection, He made His own triumphant spirit-nature available to us so that we can live the same eternal life as Christ in continuous fellowship with Him.