My friend, Christ came to this earth in the likeness of sinful flesh, which had been degraded over the centuries, yet He held on to His divine nature. He was fully human and yet He was divine as well. His divine nature was clothed in Humanity. In His humanity He was subject to temptation, and all of the weaknesses of man, while in His divinity He laid hold of the power of God.
While Christ came to this world in the likeness of sinful flesh, He retained His divine nature, His divine being. Some believe that Christ came with the same sinful fallen nature of man, to show us how we can overcome sin, but had He done this He would have yielded to temptation just as readily as men do today. His divine holy and righteous nature connected Him with heaven and is the way of our salvation.
Some believe that man has the ability to overcome sin in the flesh by laying hold of the same power that Christ had. They believe that Christ is our example and as we emulate Him, we will become righteous. But this is not so. It stems from a misunderstanding of what sin truly is. It is a belief that sin is only an action that we commit, while the Scriptures reveal that sin is a condition of the heart. We commit sin because we are sinful by nature. As such all of our good deeds are tainted by our sinful nature. "But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags;" (Isaiah 64:6). As an orange tree can only produce oranges, so too are we who are sinful produce sinful actions.
Our true problem with sin is not that we have sinned but that we are sinful by nature. Thus the remedy for our sin is to change our nature. This is the new birth that is offered to all that would believe. "A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh." (Ezekiel 36:26). Righteousness is not right doing but is right being.
Christ came in the likeness of sinful flesh with the divine nature of God, and overcame sin in the flesh, and He offers His victorious divine life to us. In and of ourselves we cannot produce righteousness, but with the righteous life of Christ living within us, we are cleaned from all unrighteousness.
My friend, how long will you struggle to do the impossible; how long will you in your own strength struggle to overcome sin in your life? Will you not yield your life to Christ that He may come in and cleanse you from all unrighteousness today?
God bless,
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