◄ Subtle Self ►

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me" (Ps. 51:10).

A healthy spiritual birth results in the falling away of many of the more obvious works of the flesh, often causing the new believer to claim 2 Corinthians 5:17 or Galatians 2:20 as his testimony. However, for the Lord Jesus to be fully manifested, it is going to involve a lifetime of the Holy Spirit's deep dealing with the more subtle and deadly characteristics of the self-life "always delivered unto death" (2 Cor. 4:11).

"By the daily supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ' (Phil. 1:19), the believer united to his Risen Lord grows continually to a more perfect knowledge and likeness of his Creator,' and grows up after the image of Him that created him, in the sphere where Christ is all, and in all.' "The child naturally grows up in the likeness of his father, and the new life communicated to the redeemed grows up in the likeness of Him who is the Creator of the new creation if so be that the death with Christ is unflinchingly recognized, and old things' are truly allowed to pass away to make room for the growth of the new man, which is after God . . . created in righteousness, and holiness of truth' (Eph. 4:24)."

"How many earnest and religious people belong to the Old Adam Improvement Society.' It is the recognition of the Christ-life, it is union with the Risen Christ, that men need instead of the culture of the religious self-life." -E.H.

"Unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ" (Eph. 4:13).