Your New Identity (Victory Series Book #2): A Transforming Union with God by Neil T. Anderson
Authors: Neil T. Anderson
Tags: REL012120
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the mind, emotion, and will come together in holistic unity. When we allow the truth to penetrate our hearts, it immediately stirs the emotions, which drives the will. The biblical idea of knowing God and knowing the truth that will set us free involves our emotions and our will, not just our intellect. To grow and live righteous lives, we must experience God, not just have an intellectual knowledge of His attributes.
Many believers are not experiencing God’s presence or the liberating benefits of knowing Him because they have never gotten beyond an intellectual understanding of who He is. The greatest commandment is to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37). God is trying to enlarge our hearts, not just our minds. The Truth has to be incarnated and become a living Word within us, and that is possible because the indwelling Jesus is the Truth and the Word.
What does it mean to have a new heart that knows and experiences God?
According to God’s Word, what is the heart?
The goal of life is to attain a heart of wisdom. How is that different from a head full of knowledge?
What evidence have you sensed in your own life that confirms the truth that you have a new heart?
How have you gone beyond simple “head” knowledge of Christ and allowed Him to enlarge your heart?
Therefore the first commandment teaches every kind of godliness. For to love God with the whole heart is the cause of every good. The second commandment includes the righteous acts we do toward other people. The first commandment prepares the way for the second and in turn is established by the second. For the person who is grounded in the love of God clearly also loves his neighbor in all things himself. The kind of person who fulfills those two commandments experiences all the commandments.
Cyril of Alexandria (AD 376–444)
5 A New Spirit
John 3:1–15
Key Point
The Holy Spirit has taken up residence in our bodies and made them temples of God.
Key Verse
Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own.
1 Corinthians 6:19
N icodemus was a Pharisee and a member of the Sanhedrin. Not wanting his colleagues to know of his association with Jesus, Nicodemus went to see Him under the cover of darkness to inquire about the kingdom of God. He recognized that Jesus taught with authority, and he knew that no one could have performed the miracles that Jesus had unless God were with Him. He told Jesus, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him” (John 3:1–2).
Jesus turned the conversation to the doctrine of regeneration. He replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again” (verse 3). Nicodemus did not understand—he wondered how a child could again enter into the womb of his mother. However, Jesus was not talking about going through the natural birth process again; rather, He was talking about a new birth.
What distinguishes the natural birth from this new spiritual birth is its origin. “Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit” (John 3:6). The term “born again” literally means “born from above.” In regeneration, the supernatural origin is just as important as the newness of the birth. The ideas of “newness,” “regeneration,” and a supernatural origin are all joined together in Titus 3:5–6: “He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior.”
In salvation, there is a washing and a renewing—a change in the innermost attitudes and inclinations of our hearts of such a nature that it can only be compared with the generation and birth of life. Unlike natural birth, however, this
Many believers are not experiencing God’s presence or the liberating benefits of knowing Him because they have never gotten beyond an intellectual understanding of who He is. The greatest commandment is to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37). God is trying to enlarge our hearts, not just our minds. The Truth has to be incarnated and become a living Word within us, and that is possible because the indwelling Jesus is the Truth and the Word.
What does it mean to have a new heart that knows and experiences God?
According to God’s Word, what is the heart?
The goal of life is to attain a heart of wisdom. How is that different from a head full of knowledge?
What evidence have you sensed in your own life that confirms the truth that you have a new heart?
How have you gone beyond simple “head” knowledge of Christ and allowed Him to enlarge your heart?
Therefore the first commandment teaches every kind of godliness. For to love God with the whole heart is the cause of every good. The second commandment includes the righteous acts we do toward other people. The first commandment prepares the way for the second and in turn is established by the second. For the person who is grounded in the love of God clearly also loves his neighbor in all things himself. The kind of person who fulfills those two commandments experiences all the commandments.
Cyril of Alexandria (AD 376–444)
5 A New Spirit
John 3:1–15
Key Point
The Holy Spirit has taken up residence in our bodies and made them temples of God.
Key Verse
Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own.
1 Corinthians 6:19
N icodemus was a Pharisee and a member of the Sanhedrin. Not wanting his colleagues to know of his association with Jesus, Nicodemus went to see Him under the cover of darkness to inquire about the kingdom of God. He recognized that Jesus taught with authority, and he knew that no one could have performed the miracles that Jesus had unless God were with Him. He told Jesus, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him” (John 3:1–2).
Jesus turned the conversation to the doctrine of regeneration. He replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again” (verse 3). Nicodemus did not understand—he wondered how a child could again enter into the womb of his mother. However, Jesus was not talking about going through the natural birth process again; rather, He was talking about a new birth.
What distinguishes the natural birth from this new spiritual birth is its origin. “Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit” (John 3:6). The term “born again” literally means “born from above.” In regeneration, the supernatural origin is just as important as the newness of the birth. The ideas of “newness,” “regeneration,” and a supernatural origin are all joined together in Titus 3:5–6: “He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior.”
In salvation, there is a washing and a renewing—a change in the innermost attitudes and inclinations of our hearts of such a nature that it can only be compared with the generation and birth of life. Unlike natural birth, however, this
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