After Jesus' Easter Resurrection, What's In It For Us?

schizophrenia - a psychotic disorder characterized by loss of contact with environment and by a disintegration or splitting of personality.
(Webster’s Dictionary)

Please don’t take offense when I say that you are schizophrenic. EVERY human being is schizophrenic! You are. I am. Every Christian is. Every non-Christian is.

We see on TV and read about stories of people with split personalities. The “Joan” part of a woman may be calm and reserved and do good things - but the “Jane” part of the same woman is wild and evil creating bad situations.

In the treatment of mental illness, the psychiatrist attempts to cure schizophrenia by trying to eliminate the bad false personality - who the person sometimes thinks that they are, and saving the one good true personality - who the person really is by nature.

In Christianity, God is the great “Psychiatrist” and His purpose for our existence is to cure His children of their schizophrenic split personalities. You may call this process “spiritual growth” or it may be called God’s “schizophrenia cure”.

After Jesus’ Easter resurrection, then what’s in it for us? Christ comes to indwell us when we accept Him as Savior and Lord. For a Christian, our true personality or nature is the Life of Christ dwelling within our human spirit. This true nature is submissive and dependent.

But within our human souls is a false personality which is a leftover remnant of our previous life without the indwelling Christ. The Bible says that unbelievers have the nature of Satan, the god of this world. This personality is one of independence and aggressive ego.

God’ s cure for His children’s split personalities is the gradual removal on a daily basis of the remnants of the false independent, worldly-attached personality and the bringing out to the forefront the understanding and function of the true personality of the Life of Christ.

The purpose of God has always been Life for His children. This may seem like a simple truth but it is nonetheless one that is often lost sight of. In His time on this earth our Lord was quite clear about this point: “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10).

Choosing the right life to live is fundamental God’s cure of our schizophrenia. We must choose between the “life” understandings of the false independent personality and the “Life” understandings of the true spirit personality Life. The first step in this process is to understand that these are not the same understandings.

The Greek uses three different words that are translated “life”. These are bios, psyche, and zoe. Bios refers to biological life. The Bible rarely uses this Greek word. New Testament scripture mentions biological life only five times of the nearly 180 times the world “life” appears. Psyche refers to the psychological, soul life. This reference to life is used only about 30 times and it is never a positive reference.

The most numerous life reference is zoe. This word indicates God’s Life or true real nature and personality of the Christian. This is the “life” of John 10:10 quoted above. In God’s word it is assumed that God’s Life is the only real life (1 Timothy 6:19).

If we take a false purely physical view of reality, we will misunderstand the issue of life. Unbelievers in the world think that because they are alive physically (bios) they have the only type of life there is. Even those unbelievers who consider the issue of life in a deeper way only come to see the soul life (psyche). Even many philosophers of the world can only get this far: “I think - therefore I am.”

While salvation brings a person under the cleansing of Christ‘s blood, this is not the central issue of salvation. Forgiveness is a benefit but the central point is the exchange of life.

At our natural birth, we have the wrong kind of life and the wrong nature in us. Everyone is born schizophrenic. Our true spirit personality is the independent self-centered personality of Satan which creates sin in our lives. Most of the time we live out through this true personality. But at times we attempt to live our false, caring for others, split personality where we may show a false, good and giving side in our life. This is the schizophrenia of the world. God uses this worldly schizophrenia for a purpose. This is why we require some crisis in our life to prompt us to turn to God. It is in crisis that our confidence in the sufficiency of our true independent choice of personality is challenged. This provides the force that causes us to seek an alternative.

In other words, we seek the Great Psychiatrist - our Creator God. We go to the “Doctor”. And what is the treatment for this worldly schizophrenia? It is something which no human psychiatrist is able to do. Before, we had a “bad” personality trying to overcome a false “good” split personality.

At salvation, GOD EXCHANGES OUR PERSONALITIES! God makes our true personality (nature) a “good” (righteous) one - BUT HE ALLOWS THE FALSE, INDEPENDENT SOUL PERSONALITY TO REMAIN. All of the remnant thoughts and memories of supposed independence remain in corners of our minds.

We remain schizophrenics - SCHIZOPHRENIC CHRISTIANS. Why, why, why does God use this form of therapy?? Why not just make us His children by the new birth and instantly remove all of our schizophrenia? The only answer can be that He wants to USE our schizophrenia for spiritual growth IN GOD’S LIFESTYLE!

Every time that we revert in some area to that false independent split personality, we have troubling consequences. These consequences force us closer and closer to an understanding of our true, dependent LIFE in Christ.

We have the Life of God in us now through Christ’s resurrection and the indwelling of the Son of God in our spirit. You can however display the characteristics of your former life through deception and misplaced focus. These lies are very powerful because they are consistent with the understandings we once had.

The growing of the influence of God’s Life in us is the process of learning to abide in the Spirit. In this we allow the Father to grow and strengthen our true, dependent personality (the nature and love of God). As this process of schizophrenic cure occurs, we are trained to subjugate the false independent personality and its views to Christ.

How many times is this split personality going to show up in a Christian’s course of God’s cure? DAILY! There are many individual remnants in different corners of our minds that must be proven false by God - there is a remnant corner of pride, a corner of lust, a corner of anger, a corner of envy, etc., etc. God is perfecting His children by a gradual removal of false independence.

We will never be completely free of the false, independent split personality while we have a physical body. We will be schizophrenics unto death! We can, however, with God’s Psychiatric resource, live most often in the true, dependent personality trusting in Christ within. As we submit to God’s cure, we can more and more show the Life of Christ and subjugate that other soul personality.

If I were to go to a “Schizophrenics Anonymous” meeting, I would say: “My name is Lou. I am a schizophrenic. When I chose to make Jesus Christ the Savior and Lord of my life, my true personality was miraculously converted to Lou/Christ. That is now my REAL name. And it will FOREVER BE my real name. But, in my Christian schizophrenia, I have this other false personality that flares up daily in different situations of life. I falsely think that I can humanly handle some area. I “do my own thing.” This false personality could be called Lou/Satan. Now understand that this is a false personality – there is no real Lou/Satan anymore. There is no true linkage there anymore with the devil, but his influence on my leftover remnants can be powerful at times. I AM being cured. Gradually. Daily. And the Great Psychiatrist has PROMISED me that He will never leave me or forsake the treatment of my schizophrenia. I am assured of my salvation in Christ. My spiritual psychiatric treatment doesn’t cost me $100 an hour, or $300, or $1,000 per hour. Or I would be bankrupt! All it costs me is my false independence!”

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