2Corinthians 5:16-17 (Amplified) says, "If any man is ingrafted in Christ Jesus, he is a new creation, a new creature altogether."
Paul wrote about renewing your mind in Romans 12:1-2 (Amplified) saying, "I appeal to you therefore brethren, and beg of you in view of (all) the mercies of God, to make a decisive dedication of your bodies (presenting all your members and faculties) as a living sacrifice,holy (devoted, consecrated) and well pleasing to God, which is your reasonable (rational, intelligent) service and spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world (this age), (fashioned after and adapted to its external, superficial customs) but be transformed (changed) by the (entire) renewal of your mind 9by its new ideals and its new attitude), so that you may prove (for yourselves) what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God, even the thing which is good and acceptable and perfect (in His sight for you)."
There must be a new mind set for the new creation, in order to function in the New Kingdom we've been placed into. Without a renewed mind, we continue to think, act and live like nothing has changed. When Paul spoke about not being "conformed to this world," there was much more to be gleaned from this verse than we've taken from it. Paul didn't say that we were already the way of the world, because we were a new creation. God saw us with "old things passed away, behold, all things are new." To be conformed to anything, one must first be different and then made to conform. When we were born-again, we now have the mind of Christ and we must dedicate our whole body to this new creation, in order to keep this new mindset.
If we don't learn how to think like a new creation, then our minds will return to the same pattern of thinking and our bodies will continue in the way we were before being born-again. The renewing of our minds is a things that every Christian must do to walk in God's will. Once we're born-again, we will either learn to walk in the new creation or we will be once again "conformed" back into the image of the world.
We cannot be conformed into a thing that you already are. You first would have to be something different and then become conformed. We've never seen ourselves the way God sees us. He didn't intend for us to be conformed back into that which God delivered us out of (even the sin consciousness of the old man's mind). We were to continue the new creation, starting with a renewed mind by His Word. We listened to men whose minds weren't renewed and we've allowed our new mind, the mind of Christ, to be programmed with the same image of the age or world.
When man teaches the new creation with the same mindset of the world, we fall back into the same trap satan laid for man over millennium. An unrenewed mind cannot bring about revelation knowledge, only the acquired knowledge of the world. The new creation was again again, subjected to the fall because of the lack of renewal of the mind and failed to walk in its new realm of the Kingdom.
The fallen man's mindset can never carry out the ministry of the new creation man of God. Jesus never allowed the world to influence His thoughts and actions. When the scribes and Pharisees tried entrapping Jesus with their questions, Jesus always answered with the Word. These weren't answers men had expected, but answers they knew were right.
Many new creation people still read a New Word with the old mindset and haven't received the liberty promised by the new birth. The old mind has once again been conformed back to what it once was and finds ways of explaining what God doesn't "do any longer" and why He "doesn't do them." A renewed mind thinks in terms of the new man and the mind of the Spirit. This man knows that, "All things are possible in Christ Jesus." We've mostly not understood what the Holy Spirit was speaking through Paul that he wasn't referring to thinking about nightclubs, drinking, drugging and other such sins. This isn't what He was speaking about at all. It's true that we shouldn't focus on the old life, but that isn't enough.
We haven't continued walking in and being a new creation because we only had the old thoughts to consider. Our mind is part of our soul and not our spirit, so we lacked the revelation of the full process of the new man. In Psalm 23:3 we learned that, "The Lord restores my soul." Your soul is comprised of your mind, will, and emotions. It's the part of man that makes our decisions (right or wrong). Man was made in God's Own Image and God is a Spirit. God formed a body for man to live in. He was given a sould to deal with the natural realm of the flesh, but the sould was to be led by information through his spirit, which is the Image of God.
When man was cut off from God in the Garden of Eden, his soul couldn't receive direction from on high and he was then led into corruption and decay. Since satan became the god of this world, we could only receive "education" from the world and not revelation from God.
When we became a new creation being, our soul was once again capable of receiving wisdom and revelation from God. Psalm 23:3 tells us that, "Our soul was restored," so we could be led by the spirit again. When an unrenewed mind reads the Word of God, it will always interpret it by a natural way of thinking.
And, since we make judgments and decisions through our soulish parts (our minds), we can only be led by what it tells us. This is why Paul, by revelation of the Holy Spirit, wrote about this to the Church at Rome in Romans 8:6-7 (Amplified), "Now the mind of the flesh (which is sense and reason without the Holy Spirit) is death (death that comprises all the miseries arising from sin, both here and hereafter) but the mind of the Holy Spirit is Life and (soul), peace (both now and forever) that is because the mind of hte flesh (with its carnal thoughts and purposes) is hostile to God, for it does not submit itself to God's Law indeed it cannot."
Before we can make our bodies a living sacrifice unto God, we must allow Jesus to restore our soul (our mind, will, and emotions) or we will simply be a new creation people who living in the worldly sin conscience and condemnation satan heaped upon us before we were saved. Although we are God's children, we still walk in shame and the condemnation of a soul that hasn't been restored. We've been relying on willpower to keep the body in line and even if we are successful at keeping it subjected, we never walk in the new creation being we've become.
People speak about being brain washed by others. We, though, are to be renewed by the washing of water, by the Word. We cleanse the old mind of the flesh (the old man), by renewing our mind (we have the mind of Christ) by its new attitude and way of thinking. Psalm 23 (Amplified) says that, "He leads us in paths of righteousness, for His Own Namesake." As God restores our soul, He reveals righteousness to us. He leads us. He doesn't drive us. He is the Shepherd of our soul.
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