October 9 ~

... you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds ... darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God ... due to their hardness of heart; they have become callous and have given themselves up to licentiousness, greedy to practice every kind of uncleanness ... Put off your old nature ... old man ... old self, which ... is corrupt through deceitful lusts ... put on the new nature ... new man ... new self ... created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness ... put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof ...
Eph.4:17-24 (selected) (RSV,KJV,NAS); Rom.13:14 (KJV)

Increasingly today's degenerate
society makes clear how separate
- distinct! - must be the old life and the New:
how totally immoral in its view
is the foul-minded, fleshly, coarse "old man" ...
'Tis being elevated rather than
controlled, eschewed, spurned, crucified within,
while Freedom's deemed "The Liberty to Sin"!

Dost thou, my Christian soul, now better see
how pure by contrast is Christ's Life in thee?
-- the New Man's (New Self's) gentle, humble, meek
forgiving Spirit, which doth God e'er seek?

More obvious each day my choice becomes:
Which Self choose I -- the devil's or the Son's?

For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator ... for this reason God gave them over to degrading passions ... "He who is of God hears the words of God; for this reason you do not hear them, because you are not of God" ... "You are of your father, the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father ... a murderer ... and the father of lies" ... I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me ... my present life is not that of the old "I," but the living Christ within me ...
Rom.1:25,26 (NAS); Jn.8:47,44 (NAS); Gal.2:20 (RSV,JBP).

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