A New Beginning

If we would consider the bottom line of our Christian experience, we would have to say that it is altogether related to our knowing Christ. He is the center and circumference of all God desires and all we experience. And that experience begins with the regeneration of our spirit.

John 3:6 says that the Spirit gives birth to our spirit. When that happens we are regenerated and have received the diving life. In addition to our natural life we now have another life deep within the depths of our being. We now have Christ as life in our spirit. We are born again.

We have not been simply given a ticket to heaven nor has our natural life been made everlasting. These are both natural concepts. What has happened is that we have been given another life which is actually Christ Himself as our life. (Col.3:4)

This life is totally different from our natural life. It likes and desires only the things of God. It abhors sin and the world. It has already overcome these things and defeated the devil. It doesn’t have to attain to victory over the flesh, self, sin and the devil. This life has already defeated all the above.

This means that we too do not need to get the victory. The victory has already been given to us in His life. “Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Cor. 15:57) We simply believe what the Bible tells us. We are already victorious.

Regeneration is altogether a matter of the divine life coming into us. When we receive that life we are saved. That life is the eternal life of God. It is not only everlasting but has the quality of eternity. Nothing can damage or hurt His life. It can even go through death and not be harmed. The more you attempt to kill it the more it will rise in resurrection for it is itself the resurrection life.

Death cannot hold the resurrection life,
The life of God eternal manifest;
‘Tis uncreated, indestructible,
‘Tis Christ Himself, unconquerable, expressed.*

This is the life that Jesus lived when on the earth. The more He was attacked and mocked, the more that life in Him lived in victory overcoming every obstacle. When we received Him and were born again, we received that same life. Now, if we remain and abide in that life we too overcome anything that presses us down, even death.

By receiving His life we enter the kingdom of God. That kingdom is one of life not of rules and regulations. From that moment God intends that we live not by right or wrong but by the life that He imparted into us when we believed in His Son, Jesus Christ. We become people of the life of God not people of religion.

* Hymns, # 639, The Stream Publishers, Los Angeles, CA