For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God. Romans 8:6-8.
Today your LORD (יהוה) God (אלהים) says:
Whom do you consider to be an enemy or adversary to you? I talk about putting the enemies of My Son under His feet and the last enemy is death.
How do I define an enemy? The word “hostile” defines an enemy. They are hostile to you and all you stand for or do. You cannot please, placate, compromise or win with one who is hostile to you. No matter how much truth you show them or how much you justify your motives and intent, they refuse to agree or see it but continue to oppose you and find fault with you. The spirit of hostility will block all meaningful conversation or reconciliation with the one to whom they are hostile. Those who are hostile to another hate, covet, have jealousy and envy, greed, suspicion, and attribute evil intent to the other. They constantly oppose and hinder the one to whom they are hostile. Hostility is the ultimate hardened heart.
Those living according to the flesh are hostile to Me.
For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God. Romans 8:6-8.
This may surprise you, but the vast majority of the Israelites I redeemed out of Egypt were hostile to Me. Why? They were too self-centered, their minds were set on their own flesh. Thus their minds was set on death and not the abundant life I was trying to lead them to, they instead attributed evil intent to Me. All they saw was death. They talked about it constantly.
What is the answer that takes down the hostility that separated you from Me from the time that Adam separated himself from Me and took you out of the spirit into the flesh? Open your heart to allow My Spirit to dwell in you. You must get out of the flesh mindset of death to the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus.
Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. Romans 8:1-4.
What conquers the hostility? Faith in My love for you. My love poured into you by the gift of the Holy Spirit resolves, or should I say “dissolves,” all hostility.
But to understand this and to totally overcome that hostility, that spirit of disobedience, that lawlessness that comes from Adam’s corrupted seed that put the devil’s nature in him from which you are born in the natural and puts that nature in the natural man, you must get back into My image and likeness and become partakers of the divine nature from which you were created in the beginning. It takes the work of a whole new creation in you. Which I give you by faith in Christ Jesus who is My Word made flesh. But this all comes only one way: Repentance. Unless you repent you will all perish. But most people do not know what it means to repent.
But let Me first talk about faith, and you will see why when we get to defining “repent.”
The victory that overcomes the hostility that is in you from the world, the flesh, and the devil is your faith. Faith in what? When you come to know and believe in the love I have for you as manifested in what I did for you in Jesus. I accounted all your sins to Him and gave you My righteousness in exchange.
For whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. Who is the one who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? 1 John 5:4-5.
Faith is a force, a substance.
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence (title deed) of things not seen. Hebrews 11:1.
Now faith comes by what you hear and take into your heart. If you are hearing and speaking My Word it will plant in your heart and grow there. It will produce a picture of the promise in you. You do not see words as letters in you, they produce pictures of the things the words describe. Also, when you get ideas or inventions they come as pictures in you that you then express to another in words trying to describe them accurately so they see within themselves what you are seeing in your mental picture that you call imagination. However for the words to become a reality, i.e., become the invention, song, artistic creation that you are seeing and describing there must be a substance the produces it in the world.
Words are the blue print (the plan of the thing is in the seed) and faith is the substance and title deed. The Holy Spirit takes the substance of your faith and brings the words spoken into existence. I watch over My Word to perform it but for it to manifest requires your faith in it.
There is a caveat here, My Spirit will only do that with words that agree with My Words, I watch over My Words to perform them in your life, NOT the words you speak contrary and stout against My Words. Those the devil performs using your dominion authority. Fear is the substance of things dreaded and the title deed to calling those into your life by the destroyer.
Now let us go back to hostility and repentance.
But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day. The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance. 2 Peter 3:8-9.
I do not want any to perish but all to repent.
You only get past hostility if you reconcile, but for one who is hostile to truly reconcile (not just the appearance to beguile another to take what is theirs) there must be an inner change of mind first. And that was the opening invitation Jesus called to all people when He began His public ministry on earth: “Repent and believe in the good news for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!”
Without repentance you will stay hostile to Me and perish for I so loved the world that I sent you My Son so that all who believe in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. The word translated as “repent” in the language of Greek in which the New Testament was written is “metanoeó (μετανοέω)”, it is from the words meta and noieo and it means to change one’s mind and purpose, to think differently after a change of mind.
Without repentance you will perish because the inside is not right because it has not reconciled with Me. There is no truth in the inward parts. David wrote that a humbled, broken, contrite heart I do not reject, even though sin has been committed. Why? The wall of hostility that Adam raised up in you by his separation from Me by sin is knocked down by a change of mind from the flesh to the spirit.
But hostile people who are trapped by that spirit of separation unto disobedience are powerless to do this without My divine life coming into their heart. And that is grace. You are saved by grace through faith.
To repent then is to change your mind and you do this by changing the image (picture) you have of yourself and of Me in your mind. You see where you are wrong. You then turn away from Adam (the old mindset of hostility, separation, and suspicion) to Jesus (the renewed mind of oneness, love, and agreement). You turn from the spirit of disobedience that is destroying you to death to the spirit of obedience leading to life and peace. The concern of the flesh is hostility toward Me because it is selfish and all about you, taking everything you can grab before you die to satisfy your lusts. It does not submit to the law of love to regard others’ interests as more important than its own, it cannot do this trapped in the flesh. All it can do is seek itself and that will bring you to ruin. You will never be comfortable or have true happiness separated from Me for I am you source.
Once hostility is in the heart it is a hard heart and there can be no reconciliation without true repentance, without metanoeó, that is, a complete change of mind and focus that makes the hard heart soften and open up. Your attention must be off self onto Jesus to reconcile with Me.
A hostile spirit is easily recognizable. It is fault finding, complaining, judging others, never pleased and always sees evil. It is proud and unteachable. It will not admit when it is wrong. A repentant spirit is easily recognizable as well, it is humble, teachable, and filled with love and joy.
But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy. And the seed whose fruit is righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. James 3:17-18.
Never overlook the importance of repentance, both John the Baptist and Jesus preached repentance, without it people perish.
Now on the same occasion there were some present who reported to Him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. And Jesus said to them, “Do you suppose that these Galileans were greater sinners than all other Galileans because they suffered this fate? I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or do you suppose that those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them were worse culprits than all the men who live in Jerusalem? I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” Luke 13:1-5.
And then Jesus told a parable about repentance. Repentance should bear fruit, that is get you back on the vine so you can produce fruit that will endure.
And He began telling this parable: “A man had a fig tree which had been planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and did not find any. And he said to the vineyard-keeper, ‘Behold, for three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree [d]without finding any. Cut it down! Why does it even use up the ground?’ And he answered and said to him, ‘Let it alone, sir, for this year too, until I dig around it and put in fertilizer; and if it bears fruit next year, fine; but if not, cut it down.’” Luke 13:6-9.
A hostile heart will not attach to Me or receive My teaching, it is unfruitful, just cluttering up the ground.
But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Therefore bear fruit in keeping with repentance; and do not suppose that you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham for our father’; for I say to you that from these stones God is able to raise up children to Abraham. The axe is already laid at the root of the trees; therefore every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Matthew 3:7-10.
And what was the answer? Get full of the Holy Spirit and the fire of My love.
As for me, I baptize you with water for repentance, but He who is coming after me is mightier than I, and I am not fit to remove His sandals; He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. Matthew 3:11.
A heart ablaze cannot stay hostile. That was what happened to Paul on the Road to Damascus. And encounter with My glory can open even the hardest heart. Light be.
I love you. I made you from Myself and I created you anew in Christ Jesus. Repent for I have forgiven you.