If you’re child of God, you belong to a new life that will outlive the one now.
You need to renew your mind to adapt yourself to thinking with an eternal perspective.
I illustrated this point on my dad’s TV broadcast by pointing at his gray hair. Okay, it may have been a little personal, but I wanted the viewers to grasp the understanding that the life around us is dying.
Because of our sin, us and the world as a whole is decaying to the point of death. We will all die someday as the consequence of our sinful nature. We can dye our hair, conduct plastic surgery all we want, but the truth is our body is degrading. Bible describes man’s life as “his days are like grass” (Psalms 103:15 NKJV).
But we who belong to God shouldn’t fret at this because we understand life here is temporary. Rather we anticipate a new life where we will enjoy new glorifying bodies according to what Christ has promised us.
“And since we have the same spirit of faith, according to what is written, ‘I believed and therefore I spoke,’ we also believe and therefore speak, knowing that He who raised up the Lord Jesus will also raise us up with Jesus, and will present us with you.” 2 Corinthians 4:13-14 NKJV
We enjoy a shared faith in Christ that we “believe” and we profess to others, because we know that God who raised Jesus will raise us up as well someday.
1 John 3:2 advertises us the new bodies we will all enjoy:
“Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.”
When we will unite with Christ, we will be like Christ. We enjoy a glorious body that has yet to be revealed and is so marvelous to describe. We won’t need to exercise and diet to modify and maintain it. It is an eternal body.
“Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day.” 2 Corinthians 4:16 NKJV
We shouldn’t running around like the world, anxious to “immortalize” themselves with the latest cosmetics, because we know that we can’t preserve this body. Our focus is on the man who is being renewed within us.
This man is the new man who Christ has raised from spiritual death and made alive to walk in newness of life. This body is transformed into a new creation in Christ. The body is actually our human soul that is actually the true body. We are not body with a soul, but a soul with a body.
Being made alive to a reality that observes eternity, we “put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him” (Colossians 3:10 NKJV)
Our focus in life should be to nourish, build, mature, shape the new body to conform the wants of Christ and to be content in the pursuit of glorifying God. We understand that we are not our own because we belong to God in Him making us*, and in Him choosing us to become like Him.** And at salvation, we became doubly owned when God purchased us by Christ.***
We need to escape the world’s thinking. It’s still depraved to sin and it’s blinded from beholding eternity.
“And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God” Romans 12:2 NKJV
Renewing our mind pretty much is changing our appetite. I once hated celery. I had to change my mind to understand that celery is good for my body. Now I eat celery, not because it tastes good, but because I know it does good for my body.
Once we build towards eternity, problems don’t bring us down.
For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory,
while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal. -2 Corinthians 3:17-18 NKJV
The world doesn’t bog us down, because we are setting our eyes in eternal perspective. Quickest idea that comes to mind is a passenger given a parachute during his flight. The stewardess comes to him and informs him that the plane will eventually crash, and that he needs to take the parachute in order to survive. The passenger immediately takes the parachute and prepares himself for the jump to come. Let’s say during the course of the flight, the plane experiences turbulence, and a passerby spills hot coffee unto the lap of the passenger.
The passenger does react in pain, but he doesn’t mediate on it. He observes the coffee burn as a light affliction compared to the crash that would have incinerated him had he had not a parachute.
We don’t involve ourselves in the moans of this world, because we know that all our sorrows will all be evaporated one day in eternity. Instead, we run towards God against all odds, because we walk in faith on the promises of God that mark the path for us to walk against any logic that denounces it.
Faith is the eyes that beholds the visible against the invisible and moves out already in sheer confidence towards what he believes in his heart.
We are running towards God. We live by faith that all His promises in the Word are true to the ultimate extent that we act upon them.
But to do this, we need to be renewed in the spirit of [our] mind (Eph 4:23).
Don’t become so adjusted to the culture around that you fit right it. It’s dying! Set our eyes on heaven. It’s eternal! It’s real!
“If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God.
Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth.
For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory.” Colossians 3:1-4 NKJV
*Genesis 1:27:
Then God said, “Let Us make man in our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over allthe earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”
**Ephesians 1:3-4 :
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, 4 just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love…”
***1 Corinthians 6:20:
For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your bodyand in your spirit, which are God’s.
Germans love their German. Living in Germany for nearly a year, I learned quickly that Germans weren’t as tolerant with non-German speakers as most other countries were. I don’t blame them of their national pride. I have been asked since I lived in Germany for so long, why didn’t I learn German. Even among the volunteers I lived with, there were some who learned the language.
FOLLOW THE SON 