These new creatures in Christ Jesus know each other not according to the flesh but according to the spirit. In each other's spirits or new minds there are the noblest sentiments, the highest aspirations, that which is good, true, noble, pure, whatever may be their weaknesses according to the flesh. They love each other from the new standpoint of intention, will, harmony with God, and their friendship for one another grows increasingly as they perceive each other's energy in fighting the good fight of faith against the evil influences of the world, the flesh and the Adversary. Nor tongue nor pen can properly express the love, the friendship, which subsists between these new creatures in Christ Jesus, to whom old things have passed away, and all things have become new.
To be in Christ Jesus implies deadness to self and aliveness to God, as a member of the Body of Christ. Such a one is a new creature, because spiritual capacities have been given to every organ of his brain, fitting him to exercise his various faculties of mind and heart on appropriate spiritual objects. Therefore he detaches his affections from the things prized by the natural man and attaches them to the things prized by the spiritual man. Accordingly his former ambitions, desires and aspirations are given up. He now has a new set of desires, ambitions and aspirations, and he bends all his powers, physical, mental, moral and religious to attain the things on which these are fixed, and he finds them decidedly superior to the former objects of his affections.
2 Cor. 5:16; Gal. 5:6, 16-24; 6:1, 2, 7, 8, 14-16; Col. 3:1-17; Rom. 8:4-16; Heb. 12:1, 5, 9-16; Rom. 12:2, 9-21; 1 John 2:15-17, 20, 27; 5:4, 5.
