Jehovah's Witnesses Straight Talk - Forum/Blog

Rom.8:11 But if the Spirit of him who raised up Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised up Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.

What Spirit raised Christ? Raised him where? Why did Christ die in his flesh, and what did Paul mean our moral bodies? Paul's words here are not conjecture, and/or speculation they are indeed the Christ and what he lived and died for. They are the foundation stone of our entire faith, but it is the context in which Paul places his thoughts in Roman's the eighth chapter that is important to our understanding his meaning.

Rom.7:5 For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions which were through the law, worked in our members to bring forth fruit to death. 7:6 But now we have been discharged from the law, having died to that in which we were held; so that we serve in newness of the spirit, and not in oldness of the letter.

Christ had something we don't, and what is that? Perfect sinless flesh, his body was a living sacrifice given too us because none of us could be sinless born of Adam. Thus, when Christ was hung on a stake, he took the curse of Adam off of us, but how? By replacing Adam's life with his sinless life, hence, he was now able to produce a new human race without passing onto them sin of Adam condemned by the laws of God, provided we remained him in, that is, Spirit.

1 John 3:6 Whoever remains in him doesn't sin. Whoever sins hasn't seen him, neither knows him.

1 John 3:9 Whoever is born of God doesn't commit sin, because his seed remains in him; and he can't sin, because he is born of God.

Christ was put to death in the flesh and made alive in the Spirit setting a pattern for us to follow, by being put to death in Christ and raised in the Spirit as Christ himself was, and is. Our mortal bodies live by what? Spirit, but why? Because they are accounted dead to God, I mean literally dead, we cannot live unless the Spirit of God makes us alive. If we are in flesh and its thoughts we are dead to Spirit.

1 John 4:9 By this God's love was revealed in us, that God has sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.

1 Peter 4:2 that you no longer should live the rest of your time in the flesh for the lusts of men, but for the will of God.

James 4:15 For you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we will both live, and do this or that."

Subsequently, in that state of death, and raised in Christ there is a newness of life, a new creation if you will which is sinless, why sinless? Because God does not commune with sin, nor does sin rule, and/or live in his Spiritual Temple the Christ. The flesh is dead, the body passed on by Adam's sin is buried, gone, forever in Christ life the new Adam. The law is dead, and its power towards sin is stripped, in the new life of Christ Jesus the last Adam.

1 Corinthians 4:20 For the Kingdom of God is not in word, but in power.

1 Corinthians 6:14 Now God raised up the Lord, and will also raise us up by his power.

1 Corinthians 15:56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.

2 Corinthians 4:7 But we have this treasure in clay vessels, that the exceeding greatness of the power may be of God, and not from ourselves.

Christ in his righteousness completed the law, meeting its righteous standards as a non-sinner shutting the book forever upon all its physical temple service, and became the Temple of God with his righteousness cleansing all those within his body, the temple of God.

1Cor.1:30 But of him, you are in Christ Jesus, who was made to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption: 1:31 that, according as it is written, "He who boasts, let him boast in the Lord."{Jeremiah 9:24}

John 2:19 Jesus answered them, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." 2:20 The Jews therefore said, "Forty-six years was this temple in building, and will you raise it up in three days?" 2:21 But he spoke of the temple of his body.

1 Corinthians 3:16 Don't you know that you are a temple of God, and that God's Spirit lives in you?

Now we come upon the point of Paul discussion, the problem that so many still maintain some two-thousand years later, the flesh, the pattern not of Christ in Spirit and truth, but the same old pattern of all sinful flesh in trying unsuccessfully to kill the flesh by rules and laws created to expose, convict, and punish the flesh for its sins, that is, giving power back to the law, sin! Why were they doing so back in Paul's time, would you like to know the truth?

1 Peter 3:21 This is a symbol of baptism, which now saves you--not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ,

James 2:10 For whoever keeps the whole law, and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all.

Hebrews 10:1 For the law, having a shadow of the good to come, not the very image of the things, can never with the same sacrifices year by year, which they offer continually, make perfect those who draw near.

It was because the Spirit stripped the power of our flesh, it kills its judgments, its hates, and jealousy, leaving it with no power to build and control others, its that simple. Thus, we have an everlasting war, the flesh lusting to take power through the bible to protect and build a life on this earth, and the Spirit which has no life on this earth and adds nothing to this world.

1 John 2:16 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, isn't the Father's, but is the world's. 2:17 The world is passing away with its lusts, but he who does God's will remains forever.

The Spirit is a very narrow road, and few find it, most drift off into false religion, and its pattern of flesh, because the flesh wants both worlds, and to have both worlds its needs righteous laws and judgments to build institutions, religion, governments, commerce, and a life where one can have it all in the name of God and Christ. This is the context, it is the restrain that was to be taken away, and the reason we have a world wide field of weed Christian's, warring and judging each other in flesh that Christ killed two thousand's years ago! But it much like how they catch a monkey by putting a hole in a coconut filling the coconut with with fruit enticing the lust of the beast to put his hand in the hole gabbing the fruit making a fist so he can't pull his hand back out.

James 4:1 Where do wars and fightings among you come from? Don't they come from your pleasures that war in your members?
4:2 You lust, and don't have. You kill, covet, and can't obtain. You fight and make war. You don't have, because you don't ask.
4:3 You ask, and don't receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it for your pleasures.
4:4 You adulterers and adulteresses, don't you know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. 4:5 Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, "The Spirit who lives in us yearns jealously"?

So goes those that want to be debtors to the flesh, so they can hold debts of others for payment of making people conform to their ways, without such forbidden fruit they lose all power and control of this life, and must wait upon God in faith the Spirit to make their mortal bodies alive in Christ walking in love!

Col.2:13 You were dead through your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh. He made you alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, 2:14 wiping out the handwriting in ordinances which was against us; and he has taken it out of the way, nailing it to the cross; 2:15 having stripped the principalities and the powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it.

Romans 6:11 Thus consider yourselves also to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 6:13 Neither present your members to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God, as alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.

See also: www.nu-truth.com