Lee and LC: Home Runs and Strikeouts

[Drake]

Originally Posted by Igzy

I knew you were going to say that...

But, see that doesn't really work. Because in reality there is still a you. There is still the "nevertheless I live" part.

If you take that Christ is the new man too far then, how to account for the fact that Drake is still here, too? Is your personality just an illusion? Like I said, we don't vanish, we still exist. So "not I, but Christ" just means that Christ now is our spiritual center.

Doctrine has to hold up to experience. .

Igzy,

There are many divine facts concerning us, the believers, that would seem in contradiction to our "experience". For instance, Ephesians says:

"And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus,.." Ephesians 2:6

If you or I look around as we write or read this post do you see that you are seated with Christ in the heavenly realm? Maybe you see Texas, or California, or Florida out your window but the divine fact declares that the believers are seated with Christ in the heavenly places.

Again God's Word declares this fact:

"But ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, 23To the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, 24And to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel." Hebrews 12

If you look around are you on Mount Zion, in the company of myriads of angels, to God the Judge and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the Mediator, etc.? No matter what you see with your physical eyes the divine fact says otherwise.

So then another fact according to God's Word is that we, the believers have been crucified with Christ... and the life we now live.. what life? His life not the old crucified life, not the self you were born with because it was crucified. Christ is the new man we live. But you ask, what of Drake or what of Igzy.... we are not illusions as you say. But the fact does not follow the experience. The fact is not dependent on experience. Experience follows the divine fact but only by faith.

"and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me." Galatians 2:20

Not unlike when we first believed in the Lord. We read or someone preached the gospel to us and His salvation was applied to us by faith the moment we believed. And at that very moment we passed out of death into life. Maybe we didn't know we were dead already but the Bible says we were dead in our offenses and sins. In the same way, by faith the experience of the fact of having been crucified with Christ is ours. There is the experience of Romans 7 (wretched man that I am) and then there is the experience of Romans 8 (For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.).

So, by these verses we can see that we first must stand on God's fact according to His Word, the Bible... and then by faith those facts are applied to our experience.

Drake