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1912 Watch Tower - A2Z.org

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one sense of the word. As the Apostle says, "If ye berisen with Christ, seek those things which are above."Does this refer to us merely as New Creatures? Yes.Is not our flesh reckoned dead? Yes, but we are figurativelyraised from the dead. (Rom. 6:4,5; Col. 3:1.)To whatever extent our bodies fall short of perfect obedience,Christ, as the great Advocate, makes good. Soif any of us sin, we have an Advocate with the Father.No matter how trivial the sin may be, it is a sin. Godkeeps no accounts with the flesh, but holds the NewCreature responsible. It is for these weaknesses of theflesh that the New Creature goes daily to the Lord andsays, "F<strong>org</strong>ive us our trespasses." We have an Advocatewith God, and if we sin we may come to God and obtaingrace in every time of need.--I John 2:1; Heb. 4:16.THE TWO-FOLD TRIAL OF THE NEW CREATUREAs we have seen, when our Lord made His consecrationat His baptism, He was a perfect human being.When the Father accepted His sacrifice, He was begottenagain; and He was to this degree a new soul, a NewCreature--spirit. But He had this treasure of the newmind in an earthen vessel, and the New Creature wasresponsible for all that the old creature did. If the oldR5089 : page 272creature had gotten Him into trouble, the New Creaturewould have been responsible.As previously stated, our Lord was under the dominationof the Law as long as He lived. The question thenarises, How long did He live as a man? Our answer isthat in a very important sense of the word He died atthe time of His baptism; that is to say, He died so far asHis human will was concerned, but His human body didnot die. His human body, therefore, was still as liableto every Law as it had been before. He became a NewCreature in the spirit of His mind, but a New Creaturewithout a new body; and in the Divine arrangement theNew Creature accepted and used the old earthly body,with all the responsibilities of that earthly body, whateverthey might be.In other words, the flesh has its law and its responsibilities.But as a New Creature our Lord was under anadditional law. We are not to understand that as a NewCreature He was released from the Ten Commandments.In his flesh He was a perfect human being, under theLaw. As a New Creature He undertook to do more thanmerely keep the Law; and so the New Creature was ontrial--not merely to prove whether the flesh would liveup to the requirements of the Law, but whether the fleshshould be brought into subjection to the higher law ofthe New Creation. Thus our Lord more than kept theLaw--not less than kept the Law.Jesus died to the Law Covenant, but not to the Law,

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