“He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love.”
(Col 1:13, NKJV)
At the end of the last teaching we concluded that secularization is a mindset, a worldview which all people are exposed to and influenced by from their very first moments on earth. This worldview is founded on judging the world guided by our senses, or in essence, our soul. This conditioning brings about a denial of any reality outside the material one, where people believe what we can see is all that exists. There is no acceptance of a different, spiritual reality, with its own laws, principles and manifestations. “Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world.” (Gal 4:3). This results in our inability to live as spiritual beings, born again into a different reality from the world we’ve always known, because our mindset is still fixed to the old world. As Paul despondently writes to the church in Corinth – “And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual people but as to carnal, as to babes in Christ.” We remain carnal Christians, thus rendering us as little children in the kingdom of God, who ultimately miss out on their inheritance (Gal 4:1).
This Scripture in Galatians clearly states that once we are saved we are BROUGHT OVER into the kingdom of the Son, after we have been redeemed from the kingdom of darkness. Often believers do not make this transition – they are no longer in Egypt, but Egypt remains in them.
This is the case because the old, conditioned mindset has not been renewed, and as long as one’s thoughts remain the same, one’s behaviour cannot change. As Scripture states – “For as he thinks in his heart, so is he.” (Prov 23:7). Therefore Paul makes his case clear in Rom 12:1, stating that the first step, the fundamental origin of this transition, is changing one’s way of thinking. The Good News Bible aptly translates – “Do not conform yourselves to the standards of this world, but let God transform you inwardly by a complete change of your mind.” (Rom 12:2). The Message paraphrases it beautifully: “Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking … Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.”
You need “the eyes of your mind having been enlightened” (Eph 1:18, LITV) to truly function in the kingdom of God. If these are missing, the horns of culture from the natural world (Zech 1:19-21) will ensure that you are kept in a position of spiritual immaturity, where all your spiritual efforts are disrupted, rendering you as little more than a slave, unable to claim your inheritance as a son of the kingdom of God.
- Sela: Take a truthful look at your level of spiritual maturity.
- Read: 1 Kings 13; Ecc 9; 2 Tim 4
- Memorise: 2 Tim 4:5
- For a deeper understanding: Read Chapter 1 of Gordon McDonald’s book Forging a
real world faith.
