A Covenant of the Spirit

John 4: 24, God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth." NKJV

Why did God, the Creator of man, create us with flesh instead of allowing us to be spirit beings... seeing that He is Spirit? After all, didn't He tell the Word (Christ) and the Holy Spirit (on earth), "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness?" Fortunately, for us the mystery can be solved by simply looking at the transformation of a seed. When a seed is planted into the ground, it begins to take on a metamorphosis. As the seed goes into the ground and dies, it gives life and way to the sprout, which becomes the new life above the ground. From that point on, the seed is never seen again. However, we know that it existed because we can see the fruit or evidence of the seed.

We know through the Word of God that God is Spirit, and that He created us as living beings with flesh. Even so, the flesh (us) is just a "temporary seed," if you will, that awaits the season in which the Farmer (the Father) plants it in the new Soil (Jesus) of His Kingdom.  When man sinned and decided to partake of the Tree of Knowledge instead the Tree of Life, all of us were cut off from becoming partakers of God's life. Had Adam decided to eat of the Tree of Life, He would have given us the power to be transformed from flesh into spirit beings. However, since there was no life in us, but rather sin, we had no power to be transformed from living in the flesh into walking in the spirit.

Mankind lived in this fallen state until the Seed of God (Jesus) came and was buried in the earth for three days in order to redeem fallen man from sin. Jesus spent three days in the earth and rose again; this was a foreshadow of how He would afterwards enter the soil of man's heart and resurrect us into the "new creation" in Him, thus fulfilling God's original plan for those who believe.

Now that we have seen and known the disastrous results that stemmed from man's sin, let us not walk according to our fleshly desires, but let us walk after the Holy Spirit and live. To gain a fuller understanding of my final thoughts today, I encourage you to read Romans 5: 1 - 8: 5.

In these chapters, Paul takes us on a journey of how man died in sin, but has now been given the opportunity to choose life in Christ and become born again. Even though Paul is speaking to believers, both then and now, he exhorts us to walk according to the Spirit, not rely on or live after the lusts of our flesh.

In Romans 5 and 6, Paul gives us many analogies in which he shows what will happen to believers if we should decide to abuse saving grace for the opportunity to go back under the flesh and sin. When you read chapter 7, you will see that Paul tells us that if we don't choose to die (in Christ) to our old man and become alive unto God, we won't have the power to become changed into the image of Christ (the Seed buried in us). Finally, he tells us that if we continue to neglect Christ's life in us and His will for us to die to the flesh and sin, and we choose to live in our old ways, we will also live under the condemnation of the Law.

In Christ, we have died to the old man who was under the power and penalty of God's Law. When we choose to live by faith in Christ, the Law of God loses its hold on us because we are living in the spirit and not in our flesh. After we have chosen Christ as our savior, God (the Farmer) requires us to live by faith and die to self so that the life of Christ might transform us into His glorious image. If you're a believer in Christ, but remain in bondage to self and sin, yield your heart completely to God, and He will live His life through your humility. 

My Life Is Hidden in Christ,
Pastor Asa Dockery