HOW GOD VIEWS US

1 Corinthians 15:22; Romans 8:1-14; Acts 10:9-16

It is very important for us to know and understand how God views things. It regulates us as to how we are to view things. At the very beginning of Genesis, “God saw that it was good”, Gen.1:10. If God sees certain things as good, we are to see them as good, and if God sees other things as evil, we must see them as evil. I would like to say a brief word as to how God views us and therefore how we are to respond to that.

Before I do, I should say that at one time in our lives we were in our sins, and far from God, and we were at that point viewed, as the first scripture says, “in the Adam”; we are all born that way. None of us are believers when we are born, and none of us have the Holy Spirit when we are born. We have all received the sinful nature of Adam, as a result of what he was and what he did. Adam sinned and the result of that is that we are sinners before God. Adam introduced wilfulness and unrighteousness to the human race, and as a result of that, death came in. But nonetheless God has not cast man aside because He already had the answer, that He would have men “in the Christ”. “In the Adam”, all that man can hope for or look for is death, but “in the Christ”, men are made alive and to live to God.

In the book of Romans, Paul educates and helps these dear believers in Rome as to how to understand their place now in Christ. I would like to say what being in Christ means for me. It does not only mean that, although I am a lost fallen sinner, God now views me as a saved sinner, although that is true. What it also means to me is that God now has a Man in His presence who did everything that pleased Him, and accomplished His will in its entirety, and God has entirely accepted, not only the work of Christ, but the blessed Person that sits before Him now in all His glory. God loves that Man and accepts His person. He views Him with the utmost favour and Christ has gone there not only to satisfy God, but He has gone there to take a place for me. If I was to die and go to be in the presence of God right now, I know how God would receive me. He would receive me in all the worth of that blessed Man. The measure of my great place of favour before God is seen in Christ’s place before God. I do not worry about my place before God because I know that Christ is there, and my faith and trust is in that blessed Man. If a king sends an ambassador to another country, and he is received by the king of that other country, he receives that ambassador as if he was actually the king of his country. It is a poor analogy but it shows that my reception before God is in the grace and favour of that blessed Man before God.

And more than that; “in the Adam” I was here, and I enjoyed earthly and material things, but in Christ I am a heavenly person and a spiritual person, and I have a new nature that is after Christ’s order. God views me as a heavenly person. My destiny is heaven. He will take me to heaven, and He views me now as a heavenly person, and I know that because He has given me His Holy Spirit. So Paul says “There is then now no condemnation to those in Christ Jesus”. There is no condemnation for me before God. Is there any condemnation for Christ? Does God ever feel badly about Christ? Then He never feels that way about me. He sees me sometimes acting in the flesh, but He never views me, never considers me, to be that; it is not normal. That is the portion of every believer in the Lord Jesus to whom He has given of His own Spirit. It is not merely that your sins are forgiven, great as that is, but it is that you are accepted in Christ before God forever. Adam gave you sin and death, unrighteousness and wilfulness, but every spiritual blessing we have is in Christ, in that blessed Man. And so if you want to know where your blessings are, where your enjoyment is, I can show you – it is in a Man at the right hand of God!

Now the other side to that is that God never gives us a title, a place or position without making us equal to that position. What king would make his son king, but does not give him the authority of the king or the privilege of the king? What kind of king would that be if he could not enjoy the privileges that belong to it? It would not be worth the title he had. So God has given you that blessed title of being in Christ and He gives you the ability to enjoy it. Those that are in flesh, or that which is after Adam cannot please God. “For they that are according to flesh mind the things of the flesh”, and they cannot please God because “the mind of the flesh is death”. The means of pleasing God has been given to us in verse 2; “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and of death”. The law of sin and of death means that I once was regulated by the flesh; the flesh used to make me do what I did not want to do. It used to make me do what was wrong, it was a law, it was a regulation, the flesh used to regulate me. But now as having the Holy Spirit, the Spirit is to regulate me; He is the “Spirit of life in Christ Jesus”. He is given to us to be the power and the enjoyment of life, with, and in that blessed Man. He gives us to enjoy a spiritual and heavenly life even while we are here on earth.

So what God looks for is fulfilled in us who “do not walk according to flesh but according to Spirit”. When we do the things that we do here, and we speak the things that we speak, what governs us is not what our wilful flesh wants to do, and wants to say, but we act under the power of the Spirit. We seek the Spirit’s help to walk and to act rightly. But what it says in verse 9 is definite “But ye”, that is all believers “are not in flesh but in Spirit”. That is, not only do you have a place before God in Christ, but you are to have the inward feelings and affections formed by the Spirit according to God. God sees you not in the flesh, even though you may sometimes act in it, but He sees you in Spirit; He sees that you have a spiritual nature inside you. A beloved servant of the Lord once said something very, very simple – he said that no man has two natures. He was saying to the dear saints, you do not have a fleshly nature and a spiritual nature; you are “in Spirit”¹. Your nature is given to you by God and how God views you is spiritually. Do not think of yourself as a fleshly person, think of yourself as a spiritual person and desire the Holy Spirit’s help to act in keeping with that. To put it simply, if God views you, if He sees you, in Christ and in Spirit, then you should view yourself in that way.

I am not saying that we do not sin; John says that if anyone says he does not sin, he deceives himself (1 John 1:8); and also “we all often offend”, Jas.3:2. But if we were walking in the Spirit, we would immediately recognise this sin that we did and we would immediately go to God about it in repentance and keep ourselves in right links with God. So it says “but if anyone has not the Spirit of Christ” – that is the Holy Spirit known in that way – “he is not of him”, that is, of Christ. A believer having the Spirit is of Christ and Christ is in him; “if Christ be in you”. By the Holy Spirit of God, features of Christ and the character of Christ are actually in the believer, who acts like Christ and is like Christ. So “if Christ be in you, the body is dead on account of sin, but the Spirit life on account of righteousness”. Life there is in the sense of power. The Spirit gives us the power to live righteously before God. He is the only power that we have to do that.

We spoke in the reading of Jacob, about how the angel touched his thigh and disabled him, and how God then changed Jacob’s name. That is what Jacob arrived at; he was not going to walk in the power of his flesh, and try to please God in his natural strength, power and intelligence, because he could do nothing in the flesh that would please God. He recognised that natural power would not do, he needed God’s power, the Spirit of God. God says in effect, ‘You are not the old Jacob, you are a new man’, and in principle, typically speaking, He placed him in Christ. God said to Jacob ‘Not only have you a great position, a great status before Me but you will walk in My power and in keeping with that place’.

The apostle goes on to tell the dear Roman believers that the reception of the Holy Spirit in our mortal bodies is so great a matter that God will not leave your body behind; He will quicken it at the rapture because it has been a vessel of His own Spirit. He will quicken our mortal bodies on account of His Spirit which dwells in us. See how greatly God thinks of you, dear believer. God values even your body because it has been a vessel of His own Holy Spirit and He will not leave it behind. God will quicken our bodies and change them, change them to be like the glorious body of Christ. Not only will we be spiritually like Christ but our bodies will be actually like Christ eternally. These are the greatest thoughts that God has had in mind, that man should be before Him eternally with Christ. These thoughts are so amazing that they are difficult for us to take in and understand, but God gives us the Spirit to do so.

I read about Peter because he had difficulty in understanding these things. Peter was on the housetop in Joppa and he was praying at about the sixth hour, midday, and as they were making ready an ecstasy came upon him. God was about to use Peter to introduce the Gentile nations into the greatest family, the greatest vessel that ever would be on this earth. Peter was a Jew and was accustomed to thinking that the Jews had all the privileges, all the promises, the law, the oracles of God, and that they had all the blessings. But before Peter went to lay his hands on Cornelius and the Gentile nations, God gave him this vision of the great sheet bound at the four corners, let down from heaven, full of every type of animal. He did not tell Peter in straight terms, He showed him this vision and Peter was to be spiritually dependent on this. He asked, What does this mean? What is God telling me about this great sheet? And the voice said to him “Rise, Peter, slay and eat”. Peter said, I have never eaten anything unclean or of any of these animals that were not allowed by the law, but God said to him, What I have cleansed, “do not thou make common”. God says, as it were, I have cleansed, I will bring the Gentile nations in as clean people and form Jew and Gentile into one body. There is going to be one people on earth, a heavenly people and that is the assembly. It took place three times. “And this took place thrice”; God was saying to Peter, Open your eyes, see what great things God has done and do not go against what God is going on with.

Dear brethren, we need to open our eyes and see the great things that God has done for us. Do not count yourself out of this; God is saying to you that you are not in Adam, you are in Christ. You are not in flesh, you are not a fleshly, wilful person; you are in Spirit. You have a spiritual nature given to you by God which you must nurture in the power of the Holy Spirit. God has taken you up as a heavenly, spiritual person and that is what believers are in the sight of God. Peter learned his lesson and he was able to help others. He was able to bring the whole locality of Jerusalem into the great knowledge that the Gentiles were blessed along with Israel.

These things are very great, but they are not too great for us because God has given them to us. May we be exercised to read about these things, go in for them and enjoy them, each for ourselves, for His name’s sake.

Address at Secunderabad, India

4 December 2016

N.C. McKay