ENEMIES TO FAITH (1)

Today, we are going to share on “THE ENEMIES TO FAITH!” Failure to understand what it means to be a new creature in Christ is the first enemy to your faith. 

In First Timothy 6:12 the Bible says, “Fight the good fight of faith…” 

In Ephesians 6:12 the Scriptures say, “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” 

The only fight the believer is called to fight is “the good fight of faith.” If there is such a fight, it implies that there are enemies or hindrances to faith. Those things that prevent you from exercising your faith are called “the enemies to faith.” 

Failure to understand what it means to be a new creature in Christ is a major enemy to your faith. You can’t effectively exercise your faith unless you have a proper understanding of what it means to be a new creature in Christ.

In 2 Corinthians 5:17 the Bible says, “Therefore if any man BE IN CHRIST, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”

In the New Birth, your spirit man is completely re-born by the Holy Spirit.

Jesus said, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (Jn. 3:6).

Your unregenerate spirit is completely replaced with a brand new spirit man, a spirit that never ever existed before. The literal Greek says you are a new species of being which never existed before.

It is true that God the Father is the Creator of all mankind, but you must be Born Again in order to become a child of God – a new creature. Your spirit has been recreated, not your body. You have the same physical body that you always had, but there is a man that lives on the inside of this body. Apostle Paul calls this new man “the inner man.” He calls the physical body “the outer man” (2 Cor. 4:15). In 1 Peter 3:4 Peter calls this inner man “…the hidden man of the heart…” It is called hidden because it is hidden from the physical eyes.

No person can see you. Someone thinks he is seeing you, but they are only looking at the house you live in.

As well as you may know someone, you have never seen him. You only see the house he lives in. When that house is decayed, the real man still lives on. The real man is eternal. It never dies. It is this inward man which becomes a new man in Christ – a new creation. He is a child of God and he is in perfect union with the Master, Jesus Christ.

After you are Born Again, the man on the inside of you, the inward man, the hidden man of the heart, your spirit man, has become a new man in Christ. You then need to allow this inward man to take the upper hand, and not the outward man. You are to present your physical body to God as a living sacrifice (Rom. 12:1).

This new man on the inside of you, which is your regenerated spirit through which God the Father will speak to you, has become a new man. The old things that were in this old man, are gone now. Spiritual death was in there before. The nature of the devil was in there. Hatred was in there. Lying was in there. Lust was in there. Envy and jealousy were all in there. But now, the former things are replaced by the love of God, the nature of God, the life of God.

On the inside of you, you have a new nature. You’ve become a new man in Christ Jesus, and old things have passed away. You are to listen very attentively to this new man, because it is through this new man that God will guide you. This new man has a voice, and we call that voice conscience. Sometimes we call it intuition or guidance.

Now know this, if your spirit has become a new man in Christ Jesus, then your conscience is a safe guide because your conscience is the voice of your spirit man. It is by your conscience, or the voice of your spirit man, that God the Father guides you.

The Holy Spirit dwells in your spirit man from the very moment you accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and personal Saviour. Do you know that it is your spirit man and not the Holy Spirit that condemns you when you do things that contradict God’s Word? The Holy Spirit does not convict the sinner of sin. Jesus made it clear that the only sin the Holy Spirit will convict the world of is the sin of rejecting Jesus Christ (Jn. 16:8-9).

It is your own spirit man that knows when you have missed it. The moment you miss it, you’ll know on the inside of you. If you don’t know it, then you are not just right with God.

One thing I noticed in the Bible is that Apostle Paul always obeyed his conscience, and this was because his spirit man was a new man in Christ. Of course the spirits of those who are outside Christ, who have never been Born Again would be unregenerate. With the nature of the devil in it, they couldn’t follow the voice of their spirit man. Their conscience would permit them to do anything. But when you have the nature and life of God in your spirit man, your conscience won’t permit you do say or do anything that is contrary to the will of God.

Every Born Again believer really needs to understand the New Birth thoroughly. Some people think that we were just justified when we got Born Again. Thank God we are, but we are more than justified. We’ve become a new man, a new creature in Christ.

“Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:1).

Many others do not really know that they are new creatures. Such Christians think that all that God did was to forgive them their sins. If all that God did was to forgive you your sins, then it is not enough because you will still go to hell at the end of the day because you have not been Born Again. If you are not Born Again, you are still a child of the devil, and there is no place for the devil and his children in heaven.

The truth is that God not only forgave you all your sins, but in addition gave you a completely new nature – God’s nature, when you repented of your sins and received Jesus into your life as your Lord and personal Saviour.

2 Peter 1:4 says, “Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.”

Therefore, you as a believer are not just a sinner whose sins have been totally forgiven. You are a new creature, created by God the `Father in Christ Jesus, with the very life and nature of God in your spirit man (2 Cor. 5:17). You are a child of God, a son of God, an heir of God – a joint heir with Jesus Christ. 

Romans 8:16-17 says, “The Spirit Himself beareth witness with our spirit (spirit man, and not our physical bodies), that we are the children of God: 17 And if children (of God), then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ…..”

In 1 John 5:13, the Scriptures assure you that you are saved. It is up to you to believe it or not. “These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God.” 

But salvation starts from inside, in your spirit man. It has nothing to do with your feelings. It has everything to do with your accepting [and acting on] what God has said in the written Word. Eternal life is a gift from God. 

Romans 6:23 says, “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is everlasting life.”

In 1 John 3:14 the Bible says, “We KNOW that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love his brother abides in death.” What does it mean to know? 

For instance, I am Pastor Ifeanyi Madubunyi, whether I feel like it or not. If I am asleep I don’t think about it, but I am still Ifeanyi Madubunyi. Even if I suffer from loss of memory, my identity remains the same, Ifeanyi Madubunyi. I am still me. There is a birth certificate, which states that I am who I am, and that settles it. So it is with the Word of God. If you have received the Lord Jesus as your Lord and personal Saviour, you have been born into the family of God (Jn.1:12; Rom 10:9-10). Beloved, the Bible is your Birth Certificate! If you can’t believe that, then you won’t know who you are.

In 1 John 3:2 the Bible says, “NOW are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be.” What we shall be we do not yet perceive, but we know WHO we are. We are children of God. 

In John 5:24 the Bible says, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth My Word, and believeth on Him that sent Me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.” 

The above Scriptures say, if you have repented, and have received Jesus as your Lord and Saviour personally, then you have everlasting life, and have crossed over from DEATH to LIFE. Hallelujah! 

To effectively exercise your faith, you must know that you are a new creation created by God the Father in Christ Jesus, with the very life and nature of God in your spirit man. When you receive Jesus Christ as your Lord and personal Saviour, and confess Him as Lord, you become a New Creation. Your Old Man ceases to be and your New Man in Christ takes his place. You become the bone of His bone. God has been reproduced on the inside of you.

Adam was born of God. God created the body and then breathed into it the breath of life and he became a living soul (Gen. 2:7). 

When God created the body, it was completely lifeless until God gave it life by breathing into it the breath of life. Adam’s life came from the inside of God, and essentially the same thing occurs in the New Birth. 

You were dead in sins and trespasses until God re-created your spirit man (re-gened your spirit man) and gave you His own life. When you accept Jesus as Lord and Saviour, the Spirit of God hovers over your body and a new spirit-life, which had never existed before will be produced inside you. 

In 2 Corinthians 5:17 God said, “Therefore, if anyone is (be) in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” 

It is now your responsibility to renew your mind with the Word of God so that your faith can grow (Rom. 10:17). 

Conclusion: Your understanding of what it means to be a new creature in Christ makes you more than a conqueror. It helps you to have a very sound opinion of yourself – a positive self-image. It will help you to effectively exercise dominion over the devil walking in total victory everyday of your life. 

Watch out for the next edition of Good News from the Pulpit!

Your friend: I. I. Madubunyi (Senior Pastor)  12.01.2020