Do you die or have you died?

[Churchwork]

(Do All to the Glory of God, CFP) "Although we have been preaching co-death, there will be many who still do not understand what it is. This is because co-death is a fact, not a doctrine. It is set before us as an already accomplished fact. Yet many are still seeking to die with Christ. We need to see that co-death is our starting point, not our ending point. The mystic looks at co-death as a goal to pursue, but this is not the Christian teaching. Unless we are dead with Christ, we cannot be Christians. To seek to die with Christ is an act of folly, clearly showing a lack of light. One who has light and meets the truth of co-death will praise, not pursue. It is the same as seeing the substitutionary death of the Lord Jesus; it too sets our hearts to praising instead of pursuing".

John 11.16b, "Let us also go, that we may die with him." This is looking to the cross. Once we have died on the cross with Christ, we do not go to die again. It is an accomplished fact at that point.

[Simba]

Sorry if i understand wrong, i get confused with lots of words and numbers like that :)Do you mean we die a little each day if we do not keep to our faith and sin? or mean that we die each day because we grow older and closer to death? sorry if i annoy with my ignorance

[Churchwork]

Neither.

I mean that when the sinner comes to the cross to receive Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior two things happen.

First, we accepted Jesus Christ's death on the cross as substition for our sins so that all our sins are forgiven which God makes us clean before Him by forgiving us. This is for God. We would also have no guilt or shame since all is forgiven.

Secondly, Christ brings us to the cross with Him in His death so that we are punished with Him by having died with Him. My flesh has died on the cross with Christ which renders it utterly powerless. This is an accomplished fact. I do not keep dying every day as though my death on the cross was without affect.

When the flesh has died Satan is rendered powerless to operate through the flesh. The deeper you appreciate your death on the cross with Christ, the more illuminated will be resurrection life.

[Simba]

Oh i think i may understand now!We feel free in a way because Jesus died for our sins and make us pure, but we feel guilt and die inside when we remember that he died for us and how we dirty ourselve with impure though?I feel like i shoud not get Christs body and blood when i go up to recieve it becuase i feel my life is not as pure as should be - as pure as God would want it to be

[Churchwork]

We do not feel guilt and die inside when we remember that he died for us. This is the point of the thread, that we do not feel guilt because He died for us, and our co-death with Him keeps in death the flesh and what rises up from death is that which death could not hold onto in resurrection life experienced now.

If you truly died with Christ and believed so that God could grace you with His life and forgiveness of sins, then you should end up feeling no guilt at all, because He has saved you and became sin for you. What you then feel is grateful and joyous, peace and love. However, emotion is very oscillating which is not to be trusted. So do not worry so much if the feeling is not there yet to the measure of your expectation. The feeling may not be wrong at all, but your expectation could be. This is why we are never to be introspective analyzing ourselves but keep our eye on Christ, studying His Word daily, and then grace enters because what we gave to Him in sacrificing our time in the Word, grace inevitibly comes.

If you continue to be impure, then your conscience will quickly convict you because you have entered into the new creation with a quickened spirit and new life. How could you continue to sin? Before one is saved, the conscience would not convict, because the Holy Spirit did not make the conscience new. But now once in Christ, if you do not abide in what conscience through intuition reprimands then you might be suprised how problems can mount, since you have more responsibility before God as you overcome more and more.

You don't get Christ's body. His body is His own. But at the last day, He will adorn you with a newly clothed resurrected body. His blood is for forgiveness and if you accept His atonement for you, you will be brought into the body of Christ, that is, the church through baptism of the Holy Spirit and laying on of hands which is your showing oneness with the church in harmony, showing other brothers and sisters you are a Christian also. After all, if you are saved, they still may not know about it.

All Christians are raptured together at the last day. No one is in heaven yet. Even though you may still struggle with your sin nature, if you are truly believe, you are saved, and day by day the Holy Spirit will work in your spirit to bring you to overcome self. What you put in your cooperation with God, He graces more and more each time towards perfecting you.

John 3.16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. 17 For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.

18 "He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. 19 And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. 20 For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. 21 But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God."