Listen to what God says: My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. Isaiah 55:8-9. God is saying, “You and I don’t think alike. I don’t do things like you do. What seems logical to you is not logical to Me, and what is reasonable to Me is not reasonable to you.” Nevertheless, man continues to interpret the Scriptures according to the ways and reasonings of man. Then in Malachi 3:6 He says, I am the Lord, I change not. Do you understand what that means? It means that we will have to do the changing. We will have to learn His ways; we will have to learn how He thinks. What we think is logical is not logical to God. What seems reasonable to us is not reasonable to God. That is why Paul said, Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus. Philippians 2:5. It is our responsibility to learn the ways of God.
If we drew on all the scriptures that deal with this subject, we could fill up hundreds of books. Yet, many Christians are constantly trying to captivate the Almighty God into the ways and thinking of man. And those same Christians are usually opposed to anything that is really of God. Man is so arrogant, thinking his ways are right. There is a way which seems right unto man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. Proverbs 14:12. Paul tells us in Colossians 3:9,10 to put off the old man and to put on the new man. The new man, of course, being Christ, for only in Him can we learn what is truly reasonable according to God. We must become a new man. That is what is meant by being born of God.
Isaiah prophesied that the ministry of Jesus Christ could make us trees of righteousness (Isaiah 61:3). The old tree like the old man has to be put away that we might become a new tree. John the Baptist said, Now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees; therefore every tree which brings not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Matthew 3:10. Do you want to become a new man in God? Then you must put off the old man with his deeds (Colossians 3:9). Do you want to become a new tree, a tree of righteousness? Then you will have to put the axe to the root of the old tree. What does that mean? It means being born of God.
My son Jonathan works evenings so he usually sleeps later in the day. Yesterday he came downstairs early and I said to Him, “Jonathan, you’re up early. Are you turning over a new leaf?” “No,” he says, “I’m becoming a new tree!” Only a new tree can be fruitful in God.
Copyright © 2007 by Henry DuBose