Purify Your Mind Series (Part 3) by Joe Kirbyنموونە

Two Classes of People

"For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit." (Romans 8:5)

After the Titanic sank in 1912, the White Star Line put a big sign outside its ferry office listing two classes of people: “Known to be saved” and “Known to be lost.”

That couldn’t be more true. There are only two camps of people in this world—those who are “known to be saved,” who live according to the Spirit, and those who are “known to be lost,” who set their minds on the things of the flesh. All through the Bible, this picture continues in different forms: sheep and goats, wheat and tares, good trees and bad trees, the narrow way and the broad way, and those written in the Lamb’s book of life and those who are not. (see Matt. 25:31–46 and Matt. 13:24–30).

Which class are you in? This verse is clear: Those who live according to the Spirit have been radically changed; they are not perfect, but those justified by faith in Christ do not live as they once did. As Christians, we can’t live with one foot in the world and one foot in the Kingdom. We can’t sit on the fence, nor can we live like a believer Monday to Friday and unregenerate on the weekend. Why? Because we are no longer taken up with the things of this world. The carnal live like a tree that has for many years been bent by the wind: their appetites have focused them in one direction. But we are like the tree in Psalm 1 with roots nourished by the rivers of grace, and we spread upwards with our eyes on our Maker above.