TWO NATURES

Everyone born into the human race has the nature or personality they inherited from Adam.

It is a nature that is in total rebellion to the things of God. Romans 8 calls it an enemy of God. It is subject to the ruler of this world, Satan (II Corinthians 4:4).

Even though many good people have refined this old sin nature and kept it under control, it is still the personality that Paul describes in Romans 1 and Ephesians 2. But, that personality has to die the death of crucifixion (Galatians 2:20 and Romans 6).

Though God reckons it as dead, in our experience, he, the old Adam, is still alive and operates opposite the New Divine nature of new person God created in us the moment we believe the Gospel. Hence, the Christian is in a constant battle. The old nature leading us into rebellion and the new nature leading us into obedience to Christ.

The old nature can do nothing good, and the new nature cannot sin. So, which one has the upper hand in our daily life? The one we feed the best. Feed the old Adam and you will be a defeated, miserable Christian. Feed the new, or Spiritual, and you will be victorious and joyful.

A DELIGHT IN GOD

"Delight thyself also in the Lord." Psalm 37:4

The teaching of these words must seem very surprising to those who are strangers to vital godliness, but to the sincere believer it is only the inculcation of a recognized truth. The life of the believer is here described as a _delight_ in God, and we are thus certified of the great fact that true religion overflows with happiness and joy. Ungodly persons and mere professors never look upon religion as a joyful thing; to them it is service, duty, or necessity, but never pleasure or delight. If they attend to religion at all, it is either that they may gain thereby, or else because they dare not do otherwise. The thought of delight in religion is so strange to most men, that no two words in their language stand further apart than "holiness" and "delight." But believers who know Christ, understand that delight and faith are so blessedly united, that the gates of hell cannot prevail to separate them. They who love God with all their hearts, find that His ways are ways of pleasantness, and all His paths are peace. Such joys, such brimful delights, such overflowing blessednesses, do the saints discover in their Lord, that so far from serving Him from custom, they would follow Him though all the world cast out His name as evil. We fear not God because of any compulsion; our faith is no fetter, our profession is no bondage, we are not dragged to holiness, nor driven to duty. No, our piety is our pleasure, our hope is our happiness, our duty is our delight. Delight and true religion are as allied as root and flower; as indivisible as truth and certainty; they are, in fact, two precious jewels glittering side by side in a setting of gold. "'Tis when we taste Thy love, Our joys divinely grow, Unspeakable like those above, And heaven begins below."

Morning and Evening by C. H. Spurgeon