A New Life

There is a tremendous difference between you the believer who has surrendered their life to Jesus Christ and received Jesus as their Lord and savior and religious or irreligious people. It is that you are now a new creation. Old things have now passed away and all things have become new. When you received Him, His Spirit came to live inside of you! The omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient Spirit of God now lives on the inside of you! In the old covenant their dealings with God was a visitational one where the Holy Spirit comes on them and departs. In this new covenant where you now stand in Christ, you are in a habitational culture, where the Spirit of God now inhabits you and Christ in you is now your hope of glory. 2 Corinthians 5:17, 21 “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! Verse 21: “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God”. Being this new creation means you are no longer the same. You were bought with a price, the shed blood of the lamb, Jesus Christ who died to make you His own. So, you no longer belong to yourself. The scripture above in 2 Corinthians 5:15 says “And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again”. That means you can no longer be ordinary. With Christ being in you and the Holy Spirit indwelling you, all of heaven is attracted to you and the glory of God is now very proximate to you. You must come to a cognitive understanding of this. You are now never on your own because there are now two people in that earth suit you know as your body. There is you and there is the one who said He will never leave you nor forsake you! You are an awesome creature. A majestic spirit indwelled by the Spirit of God, living in a body and with a soul through which you are supposed to operate in dominion empowered by God’s Holy Spirit on behalf of your creator on earth. You are a new chosen generation of people who did not exist before Christ rose again from the dead. You rose with Him. In fact, when a third of the angels defected with Satan, they left a gap in heaven. God knew this would happen so He already perfected His plans such that Satan and these fallen angels have now been replaced by a new, awesome race of creatures, who willingly receive the dominion from God through Jesus Christ their Lord and now exercise that authority over Satan and all his fallen angels. Do you now see who you are? If so, why are you struggling to operate in this authority and new life. It is because your heart, soul, mind and strength are not aligned with God the way it is required to be.

The Great Commandment

We must unpack the part of scripture Jesus called ‘the great commandment in the law’. The scripture is in Matthew 22:34 – 40 goes thus; “Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment.

And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Mark 12:38 Focusing on His answer “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ First you need to understand what love is according to God’s Word. It is then you can understand how to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength and that you are equipped already with the ability to love your neighbor as yourself and as Jesus loved you as discussed above. Love is a decision. It is a choice you make. Love is an act of the will. It is powerful and it is generated by an act of the will or decision. That is why Jesus commanded it. John 13:34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” If it is an emotion or something else which you have no control over, He won’t command it. He’ll never set you up to fail. That’s why He said in John 14:2 “My Father’s house has many rooms; if that you are equipped already with the ability to love your neighbor as yourself and as Jesus loved you as discussed above. Love is a decision. It is a choice you make. Love is an act of the will. It is powerful and it is generated by an act of the will or decision. That is why Jesus commanded it. John 13:34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” If it is an emotion or something else which you have no control over, He won’t command it. He’ll never set you up to fail. That’s why He said in John 14:2 “My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am”. In other words, I’ll never lie to you or command you to do something I have not enabled you to do. John 14: 15- 16 “If you love me, keep my commands. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be[c] in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you”. John 15:12 “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than thione’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you”. John 15:17 “This is my command, Love each other”. Love is a Law. It is also the fulfillment of the law. Deuteronomy 7:12 If you pay attention to these laws and are careful to follow them, then the Lord your God will keep his covenant of love with you, as he swore to your ancestors. Joshua 22:5 “But be very careful to keep the commandment and the law that Moses the servant of the Lord gave you: to love the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to him, to keep his commands, to hold fast to him and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul.” Romans 13:10 Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfillment of the law. Love for God is supernatural and spiritual. You cannot love God by yourself in the flesh because it is a fruit of the Spirit. Galatians 5:22 “But the fruit of the Spirit is love.… When the New Testament was being written, there were four primary Greek words to describe the concept of “love”, according to R. Renner, a foremost Greek New Testament scholar in these excerpts from his authoritative devotional book ‘Sparkling Gems from the Greek 1. They are: 1) eros 2) stergo 3) phileo and 4) agape. These four words conveyed commands, to hold fast to him and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul.” Romans 13:10 Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfillment of the law. Love for God is supernatural and spiritual. You cannot love God by yourself in the flesh because it is a fruit of the Spirit. Galatians 5:22 “But the fruit of the Spirit is love.… When the New Testament was being written, there were four primary Greek words to describe the concept of “love”, according to R. Renner, a foremost Greek New Testament scholar in these excerpts from his authoritative devotional book ‘Sparkling Gems from the Greek 1. They are: 1) eros 2) stergo 3) phileo and 4) agape. These four words conveyed four very different types of love.