Romans 8:16 The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: 17 And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ;
If we are ever to lay claim to and enjoy our inheritance as children of God, an inheritance which includes everything that God has (“all that I have is thine”—Luke 15:31; 1Corinthians 3:22–”Everything belongs to you”), we must know without a doubt that we are not flesh and blood (see Born of Spirit)—for “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God” (1Corinthians 15:50).
When we believe that we are “made of a woman,” we are “under the law” and “in the flesh” where the law activates “the motions of sins” “in our members to bring fruit unto death” (Romans 7:5). That’s what Paul is telling us in Romans 7—that it is in our humanity (“flesh”) that “sin” dwells, not in the spiritual being that we are in reality, the being that is “born of God” and “cannot sin” (1John 3:9).
Romans 7:20. . . it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.
This is the all-important distinction that we must always make, the distinction between the “I” that is born of God and the humanity that we have thought ourselves to be by believing that we are born of a woman.
That is why God Himself descended in the form of Jesus—”to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons”:
Galatians 4:1 Now I say, That the heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all; 2 But is under tutors and governors until the time appointed of the father. 3 Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world: 4 But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, 5 To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. 6 And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. 7 Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.
We have always been “sons” of God (and therefore heirs of God) but have been blinded to this truth by our belief that we were separated from our Father and had to do something (hence the law) to regain His favor. God made us “lord of all” by giving us dominion over all of creation (Genesis 1:26), but, like the prodigal son illustrates, we took our “inheritance” and “wasted” it “with riotous living” (Luke 15:13), or, as Paul puts it, “sin. . . wrought in me all manner of concupiscence” (Romans 7:8), the “works of the flesh” (Galatians 5:19-21) rather than “the fruit of the Spirit” (vv 22-23).
The point is that the “flesh” (humanity that believes itself to be flesh and blood) can only produce that which “I” (Spirit) “would not”; it is incapable of producing “the fruit of the Spirit.” It can never be “saved” or improved; it has to die. And that’s what Jesus did on the cross. He took His own Hebrew humanity, as well as the humanity of every one of us, to the death. When his “old man” died, ours died with him—but we also were raised with Him into our spiritual being which is the Christ:
Galatians 2:20 I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.
In order to allow the Christ that I am in my true identity to live Its life as me, I must receive the free gift of righteousness since “the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God” (1Corinthians 6:9). When I know that I am righteous with God’s righteousness, not depending on a righteousness of my own which is by the works of the law, I know that I have been “made free from sin” (Romans 6:22) (see Realm of Spirit):
2Corinthians 5:21 For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.
And when I am free from sin, I become a “servant to God” and “have fruit unto holiness” (Romans 6:22). I have “become dead to the law’ (trying to produce good fruit) and “bring forth fruit unto God” (the fruit of the Spirit) (Romans 7:4)—naturally, without trying—because I am “delivered from the law” and now can “serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter [law]” (v 6).
Galatians 5:16 This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.
Only when I know who I am in relationship to my Father (begotten of Him and an heir to all that He has), will I begin to experience the abundant life that I am heir to, the life of one who is “lord of all.”
Until then, I continue to live “in bondage under the elements of the world” “differing nothing from a servant” because that’s what I remain, a servant of sin (the belief that I am flesh and blood rather than spirit).
It is only the “flesh” which is “under the law” that even attempts to abstain from “the works of the flesh” or produce “the fruit of the Spirit.” That is what it means to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, trying to do good and abstain from evil to gain God’s favor. The “flesh” believes that our inheritance comes to us as God’s reward for our good behavior. But Paul tells us that
Ephesians 2:8 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: 9 Not of works, lest any man should boast.
God loved the world so much that He gave Himself to be us. He Himself is our reward (“I am thy . . . exceeding great reward”—Genesis 15:1).
The spiritual being that you are in your true identity knows that you can put no confidence in the flesh (Philippians 3:3), that you must rely entirely on the Christ in you to be your righteousness.
That is the only possible way to enter the “rest” that is for “the people of God” (Hebrews 4:9) (those who realize that they are “sons of God” because they are “born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God”—John 1:12-13). They enter the rest because they have “ceased from their own works” (Hebrews 4:10) and depend totally upon the work that Jesus finished at the cross, the work that made us “the righteousness of God in him” (2Corinthians 5:21).
That is the righteousness that inherits the kingdom of heaven that it is our Father’s good pleasure to give us, the kingdom of heaven (Luke 12:32) where there is no lack of any sort—only righteousness and peace and joy (Romans 14:17), the life abundant that is given freely to the “heir of God.”