Part 3 – Man Takes on the Spirit of Anti-Christ

This Article is part of a multi-part Study Series called The Nature of Man.

We have seen that at creation man was created as a nature-less container but well suited to one day receive and contain the very life of Christ (Col. 3:4, 1:27, 1John 4:13). Man was created as a container such that God’s life would have a living expression on earth. God’s intention is that Christ’s life and nature, then being multiplied in all His children… would flow out of us to bless others.

Our soul’s faculties, with its mind, emotion and will, are to be the vehicles through which God’s life would become expressed. God desires to flow His mind through our minds, His will through ours, His emotion through ours.

Today, having believed to receive “the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” into our “spirit of man,” He may flow out through ‘the conscience of our spirit,’ to our mind, emotion, and yielded will. This, as we learn to co-operate, yielding to His prompting or restraint from within us... in accord with “the word of truth” for this age of “the grace of God.” This is training for our co-reigning with Christ in heaven (2Tim. 2:12).

Note that in Scripture believers are likened to living vine “branches” (John 15) as they abide in union with the vine tree, which is Christ. We also are as to “temple” in which God dwells (1Cor 3:17). Foremost, we are the living members of “His body” of which He is “the Head of the body” (Col. 1:18). Physically, it is the Head that directs the members of the body (Eph 5:30). All these speak of us as containers for bearing His life and nature.

The Power of Believing “Words” - for the Better or for the Worse

This topic deserves a paper of its own but I’ll just touch upon its truth and importance here. Adam’s fall, along with the entire human race, demonstrates the power of the ‘words that we believe.’ Jesus said,

John 6:63 “It is the spirit that quickeneth (makes alive) … the WORDS that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.”

From this we see that words are used to ‘convey Jesus Christ’s Spirit and life.’ Some dear Christian friends of mine, Peter and Peddie Dodds of Petty’s Bay South Africa, who I had met on one of my trips to South Africa, were recently slaughtered there. I often recall Peter saying, “Words are the currency of the spirit.” I agree, words convey the unseen power of the spirit realm, they hold the power of life and death, according to what we ‘believe.’ Thankfully, one day I heard the gospel and believed the words I heard and I was regenerated by “the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus.” “God is spirit” (John 4:24), and receiving His Spirit words are vital to the real (the eternal) life. The words of “the gospel of the grace of God” have that power.

Romans 1:16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.

Conversely, the Serpent’s lying WORDS foreshadowed the power of death’ for mankind, which was conveyed to Adam as the federal head of the entire human race that followed Adam. This is because the Serpents lying words were diametrically opposed to the words the Lord had spoken to Adam. The words that we receive and believe (trusting in them… by acting upon them) are vital and effectual. From this we can see why it is that our salvation comes only by a trusting belief in words of the God-breathed Scripture as they are anointed to our hearts by the Spirit, when read or spoken.

Recall that Adam was created as a nature-less vessel, but then came the deception of the Serpent, when Eve and Adam believed the Serpents lying words that were contrary to God’s words. Adam acted upon the Serpent’s words by taking into himself the seed of rotten fruit, ofThe Tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil,” which were the word's of the Serpent as the spirit of error (1Jn. 4:6).

Why was eating of this “Tree of the Knowledge of Good & Evil” so significant?

First, that act of eating its fruit illicitly was contrary to God’s explicit instruction to them. But also, Eve believed Serpent’s lying WORDS, that partaking of “the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil” would make them wise, as gods,” to know good and evil (Gen. 3:5). By this, Adam and Eve had been tempted to consider independence from reliance upon God as their all. They expected that by gaining “the knowledge of good and evil” they could become independent from God, “as gods.” God acknowledges that this is exactly what occurred, saying “the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil (see Gen. 3:22). Now man has “the knowledge of Good and Evil” … but he of himself lacks the kind of life that is capable of living righteously.

So yes, Adam and Eve had illicitly gained that “knowledge” and it ended their innocence, evidenced by their activated conscience, thus hiding themselves from God. Now their conscience was awakened, and with that they also had received the fallen Sin-nature of Lucifer, which was contrary to true good and evil.

“Wherefore, as by one man (Adam) sin entered into the world (Gk. cosmos, the whole created arrangement, including the heaven and the earth), and death by sin;” (Romans 5:12 (KJV)

Thus, Sin came into the world from outside the world, through Adam, but Sin originated in the highest heaven, through Lucifer’s rebellion and fall. He came as the Serpent to tempt Adam and dispense his Sin-spirit into Adam; with that… all humanity being born of Adam is infected with Sin.

“Wherein ‘in time past’ ye (believers) walked according to the course of this world (Gk. aion, age), according to’ the prince of the power of the air,’ the spirit (Satan) that now worketh IN the children of disobedience: 3  Among whom also we all had our conversation (manner of living) in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others. Ephesians 2:2-

Thereby, every human or every race is born into this world in a catch-22 (trap); every man knows what is right, but has a nature contrary to what is right.

We all know by the indwelling “knowledge of good and evil” when we are going contrary to God – everyone knows (Rom. 2:15). What actually occurred was that Adam, by believing and acting upon the Serpents words, had taken into himself the Sin-nature of the Serpent, the self-for-self, self-loving spirit and nature of the Serpent that “sinneth from the beginning” the Devil.