Receiving Christ...the way it should be.

  Let me get right into it...

¹⁷ So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. ¹⁸ They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. ¹⁹ Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, and they are full of greed.

 ²⁰ That, however, is not the way of life you learned ²¹ when you heard about Christ and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. ²² You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to *put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; ²³ to be made new in the attitude of your minds; ²⁴ and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. 

- Ephesians 4:17-24

*To me.. this sums up what Christ opened up for us. We put off our "old man" of  and put on the "new man." 

Let me throw out an analogy to you. 

 A friend and great man had recently been diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia. For those interested in reading his blog and don't know him. 

Anyways...he just went through chemotherapy to kill all of the leukemic cells in his bone marrow. 

They are looking at doing a bone marrow transplant as soon as he has a "clean" biopsy. Which he has now. 

Okay. Fun part. 

In the beginning, God created man. He made us to walk with him and to be with  Him. 

 When Sin entered our hearts...it was like leukemia in our cells. It fed off the functions of our being. It corrupted what God had made sacred. 

 So the great physician sent a piece of Himself to us.  Jesus Christ. 

He came to heal us from our illness.

The cure was inside of Him. 

The catch was.. we had to die.

The "good" along with the bad.  

  Many have tried to just inject their old self with this new  life.They say that all you  need is a little of Him to heal you.

Trying to have Christ but never change.

They convince others that they can do the same, going on with their lives, but they remain sick.

  

And often unless they become truly crucified and buried with Christ( kill all of their being), the sickness will be rampant throughout them. 

 Our DNA has to be completely destroyed (clean biopsy)and His DNA (like a bone marrow transplant for a patient) replaces ours. We cease to be... completely, apart from Christ. This is not to say that the old self will try hard to fight even to the end, but we would be Christ in the earth!

 We would be healed from our sickness...what's more. WE COULD HEAL OTHERS!