(Audio)
We know that anyone begotten by God does not sin;
but the one begotten by God he protects,
and the Evil One cannot touch him.
What does it mean that we go on sinning? It means that we haven't entered fully into union with the the only one truly and completely begotten by God, Jesus Christ. Only he is God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made. We are united with him in baptism. The Holy Spirit is given to us and makes us adopted sons and daughters in the Son. Yet although this new and transformed self is a reality, indeed, the deeper reality, yet the old self persists.
Do not lie to one another, since you laid aside the old self with its evil practices, and have put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created him-- (Colossians 3:9-10).
We have put on the new self. But this must become a stable habitually disposition if it is really to set our lives in order.
that, in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth (see Epheisans 4:22-24).
John the Baptist helps us to see this in practice.
You yourselves can testify that I said that I am not the Christ,
but that I was sent before him.
He is not so invested in his old self that he insists on it when he sees God doing something new here and now. He is ready for all that he is, all he has until know understood himself to be, to be lost in order that the new might increase.
He must increase; I must decrease.
To us perhaps this might sound dour. But to John it is precisely here in this exchange of self for Jesus that he expects and finds complete joy.
The one who has the bride is the bridegroom;
the best man, who stands and listens for him,
rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice.
So this joy of mine has been made complete.
I can be so for us as well. Let us decrease that Jesus may increase.
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