MAN IN THE IRON MASK
2 PETER 1:3-9 "By His divine power, God has given us everything we need for living a godly life. We have received all of this by coming to know Him, the One who called us to Himself by means of His marvelous glory and excellence. And because of His glory and excellence, He has given us great and precious promises. These are the promises that enable you to share His divine nature and escape the world’s corruption caused by corrupted human desires. In view of all this, make every effort to respond to God’s promises. Supplement your faith with a generous provision of moral excellence, and moral excellence with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with patient endurance, and patient endurance with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love for everyone. The more you grow like this, the more productive and useful you will be in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But those who fail to develop in this way are shortsighted or blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their old sins."
If you have ever seen the movie, "The Man in the Iron Mask", you may have a "leg-up" on what I want to share.
The fictional story by Alexander Dumas, goes that twins were born to the Queen of France and one of the sons was locked away with no knowledge of who he was. He had an iron mask fashioned to his head so that no one could see his face. He was the identical twin of his brother who would later sit on the throne of France.
The Musketeers worked a plan to rescue the imprisoned heir and to teach him who he was so as to work to replace his twin who turned out to be ruthless, amoral, and cruel.
At one point, after being rescued and told by all credible witness his true identity, the Musketeers looked up and saw the young heir in the window wearing the mask. It was no longer locked and bolted. It could easily be taken off, but there he was, in his seeming to be more comfortable with his old false identity, his old bondage that his true self.
Receiving the Life of God through Jesus Christ, one is given a way of living and being that they are not accustomed to. Old sinful habits still seem more normative because the Life given to the new believer in Jesus Christ is not one they innately know how to live. It is lived by the Spirit of God in them and through them. It's a New Life.
Their sins have been forgiven and utterly washed away, not merely covered up. They have been given a new heart and a new spirit. The promises of God have come and made their home in the new follower of Jesus Christ since all the promises God has ever made find their, "YES!" in Jesus Christ. The Life of Jesus Christ is being lived out in the Christian by the Holy Spirit.
Moral excellence comes by life-transformation done by and enabled by the Holy Spirit. Knowledge of the Lord, self-control, patient endurance, godliness, brotherly affection and the sacrificial Love of God are ALL described as being the fruit of the Spirit. These are life-qualities the Holy Spirit forges in the life of a disciple of Jesus Christ. This transformation of life is due to one's yieldedness to the Holy Spirit.
When you yield to the Word of God, not simply hearing it, but doing it in His power, your life begins to be reoriented toward the Kingdom of God, His rule in the whole of life. We are meant to grow and mature, to become who God has made us to be as new creations in Christ Jesus. Fellowship with God in prayer and in the worship, that flows out of gratitude for all God is and all He has done for you in Christ Jesus, changes you. It convinces you that what God done and promises to bring to completion in you is a fact, not wistful thinking.
Life is trying. Jesus told us that in the world we would have tribulation. We live in a world that is at war and that war waged against is in fueled by satanic lies. There are lies that murmur that since we do still sin, we must not belong to God, or that God has lied to us.
Sinners saved by grace through faith are made holy, blameless and beyond reproach by God's doing, not our performance. St. Paul always refers to those disciples in the churches he wrote to as "God's holy people..." or as saints. So, you find that you are a saint who still has the capacity to sin and the leftover residue of your old nature that has been cut away (Colossians 2:11-12), called the "flesh," It still works to try and collude sin to keep sin alive. Sin has no right to you; it is familiar, but you are no longer its slave. You do not have to obey the lusts of the flesh.
If worship, prayer and feeding on God's Word are not a living, active way of being for you, the enemy's lies, and your very personal struggles may seem to indicate that you are still trapped. You forget, BECOME SHORT-SIGHTED AND EVEN BLIND to the fact that you have already BEEN CLEANSED of your sins. You may even become so beaten down failings that you put back on the "iron mask" Satan forged for you to wear and identify yourself as. Our adversary wants us to believe his lies and relate to ourselves as if God is not faithful because we still struggle.
A wise man once said, "Dead men do not struggle." Before, you WERE dead in your sins and rebellion. But God has cause you to be born again, fully alive with the Life of God being lived in you. You struggle against sin and demonic whispers because you ARE alive in Christ Jesus.
The knowledge of Himself which God has revealed to you is to transform you, to cause you to grow, mature and live out of God's relationship with you. The result of prayer, worship and God's Word written being read and meditated on will do what the old hymn states, "He breaks the power of CANCELLED SIN, and sets the prisoner free. His blood can make the foulest clean. His blood availed for me." No more iron mask for you. Walk in the Spirit. Trust God's promises.
In all your ways acknowledge His Lordship over all of life. He will direct your paths, leading you because He IS your Good Shepherd.
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