“Thenceforth begins Jesus to be heralding and saying, Repent! for near is the kingdom of the heavens!” Matthew 4:17 concordant
It is said sinners out in the world must repent, yet anyone who is following the Lord, allowing His reign within their inner being, most certainly has been repenting constantly along the way. The Lord directs repentive action in bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. Thoughts of a devoted disciple actively recognize His mind in every matter. Awareness of His intentions and His spiritual instructions are directing us into new paths of awareness within, to be spiritually enlightened of mind and knowing the correct image of the firstborn Son.
To be fully aligned with the mind of Christ in this time of opportunity is every true disciple’s aspiration. Those faithful to the call of sonship have been repenting the most, changing readily within their being by allowing Christ to reign within their lives. WE WILL BE CHANGED AS WE REPENT EVERY TIME CHANGE IS BROUGHT INTO OUR LIVES. Our thinking changes DAILY. We are adjusting, flexible, in rest, yet being conformed to His image. When we listen to His directives in order to do them, His precepts are proven to be written within our heart.
Repentance causes fast growth. Further repentance takes us beyond being nominal Christians, beyond those who are seeking Him for what they can get, beyond gifts of healing, and beyond grasping for ministry with a following, beyond grasping for positions of authority, way beyond worry about getting into heaven when we die. We are humbled and poor of spirit when repenting to take on Christ’s mindsets (spiritual viewpoints) about the things we experience. Being renewed into recognition of Christ, we are attentive and aware to practice putting on the mind of Christ in every matter we face:
"...be seeking that which is above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. Be disposed to that which is above, not to that on the earth, for you died, and your life is hid together with Christ in God. Whenever Christ, our Life, should be manifested, then you also shall be manifested together with Him in glory. Deaden, then, your members that are on the earth: prostitution, uncleanness, passion, evil desire and greed, which is idolatry, because of which the indignation of God is coming on the sons of stubbornness among whom you also once walked, when you lived in these things.
Yet now you also be putting away all these: anger, fury, malice, calumny, obscenity out of your mouth. Do not lie to one another, stripping off the old humanity together with its practices, and putting on the young, which is being renewed into recognition, to accord, with the Image of the One Who creates it, wherein there is not Greek and Jew, Circumcision and Uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, slave, freeman, but all and in all is Christ. Put on, then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, pitiful compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, bearing with one another and dealing graciously among yourselves, if anyone should be having a complaint against any. According as the Lord also deals graciously with you, thus also you.
Now over all these put on love, which is the tie of maturity. And let the peace of Christ be arbitrating in your hearts, for which you were called also in one body; and become thankful. Let the word of Christ be making its home in you richly, in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing yourselves; in psalms, in hymns, in spiritual songs, singing, with grace in your hearts to God. And everything, whatsoever you may be doing, in word or in act, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, giving thanks to God, the Father, through Him. Wives, be subject to your husbands, as is proper in the Lord. Husbands, love your own wives and be not bitter toward them. Children, obey your parents in all things, for this is well pleasing in the Lord." Colossians 3:1-20 concordant
We are being changed into the image and likeness of God's firstborn Son. Some are being made priests of God after the order of Melchizedek. This is an order of endless life that is connected by spirit to the right hand of God. As His ambassadors, kingdom priests minister the same endless Life as Jesus to those loved ones around them. Eventually They will be holding out the same LOVE to the masses of humanity who will be delivered from sorrow, suffering, and death itself in times to come.
Kingdom LIFE is working in the spirit of overcoming believers. These are the ones who truly learn how to change (repent) from what rules their soul. They change as the Father actively quickens their inner spiritual man. Those born of the spirit are continually raised by repentance as new measures of truth and worship are formed within them.
Jesus came proclaiming the kingdom. He didn’t say, “Repent because you have been sinning.” No! He said repent because SOMETHING BETTER is within reach:
“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!” Matthew 4:17
Sinning is not the issue. The issue is allegiance to an order of spiritual LIFE. Repentance means to repudiate some thinking you have clung to in order to believe in and cling to something new. Repentance is a call to change the attitudes and mindsets that are ruling us so as to dominate our inner depositions and thought lives. Repentance is hearing the call to something better, a release that changes our INNER STATE OF BEING for the better.
The King of heaven clashes with the king of the flesh in every disciple in order to dislodge worldly ideas that try to rule over His people. God’s kingdom is empowered to take dominion in this battle. The spirit of Christ Jesus does bring peace into our inner man even while going through tumultuous earthly situations. This is where we battle with that “man of sin” who sits in the Lord’s temple and declares himself king.
To be gathered to God’s King, we must recognize this subtle man of sin. A spiritually minded person has changed their perspectives by hearing His divine messages that provide insight into human and divine life. God’s light exposes the false ideas coming from the soulish spirit of the world. God establishes His clear spiritual mind within us in the simplicity of Christ that teaches us how to let God the Father dwell within us in truth.
Those who know repentance from sin have gotten to first base in God, yet Godly repentance covers the whole vast sea of human mental states. It supersedes every false way of thinking about the Kingdom of God. When we are focused to recognize the proper image, we can find entrance into new ways of perceiving His Word and Spirit. We change our outlook about our existence, where we came from, what is happening to us. The mind of Christ will enlighten us from within, so we know what our purpose is, how we can live, and what our destiny will be in Him.
Many of the religious concepts taught to Christians today about heavenly and earthly realities need to be adjusted. They need to be changed to something better than focusing on our own our ability to minister and do good works. Mature repentance changes our deluded attitudes of hardness, pride, and impatient complaining within our carnal mind about the seeming emptiness of life and the corrupt lifestyle of others. Oh, yes, we are called to repent until we are made DISPOSED TO WHAT IS ABOVE, not to what is on the earth.
Those who are disposed to what is above find they are in the midst of a battle between two kingdoms. WE are the battleground! More particularly, the major focal point of this battle is our mind. There is an inner battle raging of great intensity within those disposed to spiritual things above. This warfare struggles for our heart’s allegiance, the loyalties that determine what we love! The unregenerative souls of men and women love themselves.
Our fallen soulish nature was formed within our ancestors long ago when God gave dust to be the serpent’s meat. The earthiness of man is the rightful food for the serpent spirit. The man Adam was supposed to rule the world in righteousness. Now his descendants have that same hateful spirit ruling them too. Every unregenerate man is now a liar. Every brother or sister in Christ who says they love God, yet hates their brother, is also a liar and can still be ruled and used by the serpent.
Every Christian person is not to be motivated by natural reasoning or give place to worldly oriented thinking of selfish natured people. Selfishness is wherein the serpent finds his great base of operation in us all, keeping us thinking like fallen human beings in the carnality of natural reasoning. Here we are given to selfish motivations of the soul, void of spiritual understanding that has the spiritual mind of Christ.
The serpent's desire is to use as dust bags those that lie and kill the truth in each other by thoroughly mixing his thoughts and behavior into men and women on every level. When the serpent feeds his thoughts into a Christian soul, he reeks havoc with hatred and strife. Some develop an appetite for the power in killing the influence of others, for spreading gossiping lies that gratify their devilish desires to be the center of attention among their Christian fellowship peers.
But in doing so, they are usurping Christ with their own dark imaginations. The serpent, now the great dragon of Revelation before God’s people, is very efficient at His job of deceiving by lying in order to kill any favor of truth. Breathing out curses is actively devouring the best ideals God presents to His people:
“Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walks about seeking whom he may devour.” I Peter 5:8
Our adversary devours us by planting overwhelmingly conclusive thoughts that set boundaries within our thinking to keep us eating on carnal-minded conclusions. All efforts to build ourselves up in the eyes of others comes from our soulish man of sin, common among God’s people who attain considerable power and position. That adds “a little leaven” to the whole “lump” with false devotion to false standards in false religious manners governed as in former days. This is causing men to serve God in many fleshly ways.
The adversary bites to devour us until our being becomes consumed with earthly viewpoints and wrong conclusions that hold us in dark falsehoods of death. The carnal mind should not be ruling among the Lord’s people in high celestial places. We battle for spiritual life by repenting from every childish and devilish way that appears within our thinking so our commitments lead us into God’s promised Life.
Life from death is available now as Christ comes to quicken our spirit, instructing us how to put on Christ. He teaches us to become spiritually minded people who dislodge every sorrow, distress, “dis-ease”, and every other power which would rule over our spirit. His Spirit is joined to our spirit. Joined to God, we are becoming ONE spirit with His Son.
We cast off the rule of our own soulish thinking and recognize every devilish thought, attitude, and selfish way that works within us UNTIL our soul is saved and sealed, victorious in word and deed. We are written upon by the Father until His Life springs up within our spirit, making us strong. We are becoming flawless with other just men who are being perfected. Those who qualify by victorious battle in their inner man stand tall in spiritual Mount Zion even now.
You can find men and women who loudly claim in church meetings to hate the devil and all he stands for, yet no man ever hated his own flesh, instead nourishing and cherishing it. What a paradox, for in so doing he gives potential place for the devil. The fleshly nature of men OPPOSES the operation of God’s Spirit. It is “anti-Christ”! One must be born again of God’s quickening spirit which is but a start in this battle between our outer flesh natured man and our inner spiritual man.
Christians are instructed to rule over their selfish soul by their revitalized spirit. We are instructed to let our inner spiritual man grow to be the ruling factor within our entire being to conquer the very nature of man’s flesh. This is a war we fight as the Life given of Christ grows to maturity within us. Much more does the King distribute God’s nature, God’s LIFE, His abundant love and kindness, as SPIRITUAL ARMOUR that strengthens us to maintain victory on the battlefield.
Just as some religious Jews cried, “We will not have this man to rule over us,” so our flesh — your flesh and my flesh — desperately strives to perpetuate that same message. This rebellious corruption has worked within every man’s life. It knows how to push and oppose the ruling of Christ by diverting us into man’s natural way of thinking.
Many Christians are asleep. They are at peace, deceived with things as they are. They do not allow personal confrontations with truth or any warfare that uproots their religious man of sin having the right to sit enthroned within themselves. In doing their own thing in their own way, they are comforted by the apostate darkness they are supporting.
The ancient serpent of Eden, now a great dragon, is yet crawling craftily upon his belly, restricted to feeding on the dust realms of man’s earthiness. He can easily speak into the thoughts of carnal minded men. Multitudes of Christians do not see or understand God’s spiritual secrets and mysteries. But a few are matured and they are given much and are skilled in proclaiming His truth. They have KEYS to the kingdom. His truth has set them free in so many ways. Yes, the sacred mysteries of God are being revealed by the Holy Spirit of Truth.
The early church at Ephesus fell, like Adam, into a dusty earth consciousness. They left their first love, unaware of and unconscious of missing it, yet they were still counseled to repent of that error. Overcoming Christians have learned to repent, to keep subject to the King’s domain, to eat His bread daily, to maintain strength within their spirit, having Christ guiding them within continually.
He teaches us not feed on serpent's meat, to cast off the prideful ambitions that divide God’s people in the lust for power and position over others. We are not drawing others to ourselves by crawling around in all that earthly head knowledge! We should resist dried up dust bags of serpent’s food, feedings of religious pride that puff up man’s vain imaginations to build churches like in former days. We resist giving ourselves to passing heavens as we are looking for new heavens that bring His righteousness into full functioning victory. We are delivered from every heaven leavened with mixtures of religious hatred, for we seek to be ruled like Christ Jesus.
We proclaim the kingdom of God is near too. It’s WITHIN US, where the thoughts of fleshly minded people are rejected. Religious minded devils are cut off — those dogs who love you when you feed them, but can’t help biting you when dissatisfied. Those who are close to us, yet are natured as dogs, are still on the outside of His city, outside the rule of Christ. We must all shake off the dust of unbelief whenever it gets on the feet of our understanding. We won’t let anyone’s words keep us from trusting Christ, even while He causes us to bless and curse not.
God is the judge of the brethren. To Him, we live or die. Religious and worldly foolishness will never make us true witnesses who have the testimony of Jesus. Spiritually connected, mature sons are raised to realms where love of righteousness reigns supreme within them. Yes, we are continuing to repent and are making progress. Disposed to the things above, we are moving, even battling, because the realities of Christ operate freely within us to bring transforming power! The King is coming, showing us by Word and Spirit the correct image of sonship!
Many deep spiritual truths of scripture remain locked up to natural minded people. God’s Word cannot be understood with the natural mind of man. The only call to repentance in the book of Revelation is on the part of the Christian churches — GOD’S PEOPLE — who are represented in chapters two through three of Revelation. On the part of God’s redeemed from the earth, the firstfruit company are brought to Mt. Zion in a completed measure of mature stature. These are men grown to full stature in Christ Jesus, as in chapter 14 of Revelation.
While it is true that every disciple of Christ must repent, it is also true that there is a part of each of us that cannot repent and will not repent. Revealed truth shows that carnal minded human beings do not understand of what spirit they are. They are unaware, incapable of discerning what spirit rules them or even dictates their impressions. They judge incorrectly and cannot inherit to enjoy the kingdom of God. The word of the apostle Paul is incontrovertible:
“The carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.” Romans 8:7
Man’s soul is earthly, a dust bag of serpent’s food that is readily available to everyone’s carnal reasoning mind, yet we must learn to PUT IT OFF. Carnality is dethroned within us as our spirit is quickened by God. The carnal mind is death and will not be subject to God. A spiritually minded life can be centered in being redeemed from the carnal mind of man. A carnal minded man can be locked up in the wrong mindset of a deceiving, lying spirit that eats on them like serpent's food, so much so that they cannot grasp to understand correctly the spirit that is operating within them.
God reveals light in our inner spirit by His Word. Our spirit is turned toward Him like lights turned on. Then as we can bear the truth. Then a repentance can come by which we hear what His Spirit says. The truth of His Word is being deeply etched on our heart until we are free from identifying with our old carnal minded self, that outer fleshly man who is dead. Soon we can see through the King’s eyes right through any selfish way of man that has tried to rule over His house.
We consciously identify and line up with our King in our inner spiritual man to say “YES, I am alive, my quickened spirit is conformed to the Lord of heaven.” We have been repenting as we practice putting off the old grooves cut into our thinking by past experiences. New heavens are coming to those learning to look for the newness of the mind of Christ to be operating effectively within our spiritual mind.
THE UNREGENERATABLE PART OF US — OUR CARNAL MIND — WILL NOT REPENT ON ITS OWN ACCORD, THEREFORE WE HAVE STOPPED TRYING TO REFORM BY THOSE METHODS. We are actively deposed to being raised up in our inner spirit as Christians quickened to know God’s Life as Christ reveals it to them. Christ is coming to us by the spirit to cause us to change (repent) deeply within until the King appears. When He appears, then we are changed into that same image. Thank God, that's how He makes us into His priests:
"That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit." John 3:6
TO WORK AT REPENTING OR TRY HARDER TO CHANGE OR IMPROVE IN ANY RELIGIOUS MANNER IS AN EFFORT IN FUTILITY. Man, the man of dust, can be made to appear to other men to be something as great as Pentecostal heavens, but perfection in God has not been accomplished this way. What great truth and deep mystery is revealed when Jesus told us:
"It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life. But there are some of you who do not believe." John 6:63-64 concordant
And Paul taught:
“…in Adam all die.” I Corinthians 15:22
By the word '‘Adam” Paul means every natural human being, men of every race on earth, earthly minded men — his history, his institutions, his works, his hopes and dreams, his abilities. Over Adam hangs the inevitable sentence of death. The life of all Adamic men comes to an end, because “in Adam all die”. We have borne the image of our earthly father, Adam, and still carry that mortal image about if we have soulish expressions capable of hating, lying, revenge, cursing others, bitterness, or even being religiously good.
Adam's carnal mindedness can still be very much a part of ruling over some in celestial realms regardless of all their protestations and confessions to the contrary. Adam's hypocrisy is not hid from God, so let us be honest, without boasting lies! The nature we were born with in our natural life is not heavenly disposed. It is, instead, contrary, corrupted by a degenerated nature capable of beastly and devilish works that are detestable things coming right out of the HEART of man.
Whenever Christians yet use carnal mindedness, it is a detestable thing. With crying travail, we are asking our Father to completely change our attitudes. Grant each of us patience to wait on Him! Make us to know repentance that delivers us from rash head knowledge that only leads to judgments, divisions, and strife over the carnal standards of laws. This “puffs up” religious men, making them look good and right in the outer appearance, yet inside they are bitter, biting beasts. Can these bones live?
Some think and say perfection is impossible and cannot be accomplished, “No one can be perfect in this life," man says all the time. Yet, I tell you that it has been accomplished in one ....OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST. Because of that, perfection is now being attained in people who are following Him. He teaches them how to put off the old beastly man with his deceitful lusts and how to put on a new inner man who is created in the image of God, created in righteousness and true holiness.
This great spiritual work is being fully accomplished within some overcoming believers now, as part of God’s great purpose for His creation. Nothing can prevent a perfect people from appearing with an accomplished work of perfect godly character, perfectly ruled by Christ, without fault before His throne. These ranks are indeed standing tall.
Our heavenly Father is in the process of raising us up, granting us the spirit of “living creatures." The spirit of new creatures is not a revamped church model, not remodeled law-keeping, not renovated old Adam, but ONE RULED BY CHRIST BEING ENTIRELY ALIVE WITHIN THEIR SPIRIT. This one is changed of mind and quickened of body. It is the newness of Christ ruling within our life that brings us out of the darkened consciousness of the carnal mind of man. The newness of resurrection Life is placed within our inner spiritual man, giving us light. This light gives wisdom to understand that God is raising us from every dead thing, just as God raised Jesus from the dead:
“Behold, I make all things new…” Revelation 21:5
“And I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away.” Revelation 21:1
“For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth; the former shall not be remembered, nor come to mind.” Isaiah 65:17
God has found it is necessary for us to actively repent in order to qualify for a quickening in our spirit that overcomes the state of Adamic man. Part of every man and woman does not please God, still lifting up the flesh and boasting in itself. No flesh is to glory in His presence at all. IT IS AN ATROCIOUS THING!
We see that the serpent spirit is enthroned in the expressions of earthly minded viewpoints among Christian brethren. They are lifting up their soulish ideas and selfish aspirations as acceptable worship to God. Among the Lord's people, we tried to DO BETTER for years in all of the things that we were supposed to do to be acceptable to God. But when we WORK at making ourselves conform to the standards set by the scriptures and the standards set by our peers, it leads some to become frustrated with the desolations of all the abominations.
That serpent spirit in religious men and women creates religious efforts to WORK AT better molding ourselves in outward behavior, but never leading us into God’s perfection. Oh, we can make ourselves look better, we can wash and dress up. We can quit smoking and drinking. We can go to church. Yes, we can improve the outer man by great measures, but religious men become blinded men that don't seem to need any further perfection by repentance in the heart.
The only true revelation of God is manifested through His Sons. Jesus reveals the Father to His many brethren who make up His body. The only valid image of God is the LIVING REPRODUCTION OF HIS CHARACTER AND ATTRIBUTES. Every Christian man is to reflect the King he serves. Which king is being served when a man delights in spilling blood? Here is a brutal, vicious, hard man at heart. Which kingdom is served as saints gossip against saints? Who worships a holy King yet lacks faith by settling for imperfect rituals and ceremonies, as is the church norm?
It is blasphemous to practice a religion centered on external pomp and pageantry. Church leaders can become tyrants who are lording it over other men’s lives. They are laying heavy burdens upon them, enforcing upon them the bondage of external laws with its pedigree of traditions backed by the elders. But we are coming OUT OF BONDAGE to know God as a loving Father. He becomes a source of unconditional love, mercy, reconciliation, goodness, blessing, and redemption for our whole man, starting right within our spirit. The Holy Spirit has faithfully instructed us that carnal minded ministers cannot stop paying homage to idolatrous images of God.
There is a tremendous distortion of deity made in the producing of literal applications and natural minded interpretations of scripture. Distortions of carnal minded men always come forth in the likeness of earthly thinking and reveal the bestial nature of man yet to be conquered by Christ. God’s truth makes us free of such false viewpoints by unlocking the mysteries of the spirit to save our soul to the uttermost. We can see the error of fleshly ways and see the need to repent of these errors:
“And the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues [dealings of God] yet repented not of the [religious] works of their hands, that they should not worship devils, and idols…” Revelation 9:20
“Neither repented they of their murders…” Revelation 9:21
Repentance has not been found by those killing each other’s influence. This is the bloody murder found in backbiting circles of church folk, that low-lying fault finding that keeps seeping out of people who proclaim loudly their love for God. This proclamation is made while breathing out condemning hatred for others still bound in prison:
“We are aware that we have proceeded out of death into life, for we are loving our brethren. He who is not loving is remaining in death. Everyone who is hating his brother [wife, mother, uncle, friend, and so on] is a man-killer, and you are aware that no man-killer has life eonian remaining in him at all.
We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loves not his brother abides in death. Whoever hates his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.” I John 3:15
Many Christians are still given to enhancing their standing in the eyes of other Christians by whispering untrue lies behind people’s backs, repeating negative reports, engaging in cruel gossip. They will assassinate the character of any brother who appears to threaten them or whose place they may wish to usurp. That is the way the serpent nature works. His throne is found in the candlestick church of Pergamum, and his ministers are trained in the ways of church that cannot, will not, repent of spiritual murder!
All the noble philosophies, science, education, vocation, entertainment, social work, business, government, and other esteemed pursuits of professionals of this world have their place. One and all, however, are in the end going to be found to be thieves and robbers if, for them, men fall short of God’s glorious life. The natural minded man continues on pursuing and promoting the fleeting things of this world, including the use of carnal religious realms of all sorts that are robbing good people of gaining the more excellent rewards in Christ.
Every disciple called by the Father to feast on paradise in this great hour is daily repenting, taking on the mind of Christ. A new mind adopts them into gaining a new lifestyle ruled by Christ within. This is bringing PEACE and REST to our individual life. We are taking on the whole armour of God, battling with a shield of faith to defend that which saves our WHOLE Man: spirit, soul and body.