among who you also all once lived in the desires of your flesh, doing the will and thoughts of the flesh and existing naturally children of wrath also like as everyone else (Ephesians 2:3)
We once lived this way, we were dead in trespasses and sin, but God was rich in mercy through his great love he made us alive, by grace being saved. We were living in a natural body and had a soul, but we were dead, the walking dead, like everyone else who is not born of the Spirit. This is how the world lives, in the sinful nature, according to their nature they live, in fleshly desires and they do the will of the flesh, also influenced by the prince of the power of the air (the devil) who energizes the children of disobedience and wrath. What we do is governed by our nature, external influences, and the mind.
... doing the will and thoughts of the flesh... (Ephesians 2:3)
Notice those of a sinful nature do the will and thoughts of the flesh. The word thought is διάνοια (dianoia) (from diá, "thoroughly" which intensifies noiéō, "to use the mind," from noús, "mind"). This word speaks of thorough reasoning and critical thinking. So those of the flesh live according to the mind of the flesh, their reasoning and thinking are fleshly and can be nothing more. But God made us new, spiritually alive,
raised us, and seated us in the heavenly places in Christ to demonstrate to the age to come the incomparable riches of his grace in loving-kindness to us in Christ. For by grace, you have been saved through faith, and this is not from yourself, but a gift from God, it is not of works so no man can boast (Ephesians 2:7-9)
We were walking around dead but God made us alive. What was dead if not our spirit? Salvation and new birth go hand in hand. When we heard the gospel of grace and believed through faith we were sealed of the Holy Spirit who is a guarantor of our inheritance (Ephesians 1:13-14). So when taken in context, we see that his workmanship speaks of what God has done, not our works (Ephesians 2:7-10). God made us alive, we are his workmanship, a new creation in Christ, and his work continues in us so that we walk in this world as Christ (christ-like) until the day of Christ.
Now, we know that all things work for our good for those loved of God, the one existing called according to purpose, because those he foreknew, he predestined to conform to the image of his son... (Romans 8:28-29)
Those loved of God know him as he abides in them and he has revealed his love to them.* God saved us from this physical body which is under the law of sin and death. He did not give us a new body, but a new birth of the Spirit of Life which frees us from condemnation and this body of death, one that will die as sin dwells in it. Thus the body is under the law of sin and death but we are freed by the new birth of the Spirit. We await the fullness of our salvation, "We ourselves who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly awaiting our adoption, the redemption of our bodies. In this hope we are saved..." (Romans 8:23-24).
that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his suffering being conformed to his death, if by any means to attain the resurrection from the dead (Philippians 3:10-11)
In this body, we suffer. But if we see the purpose of suffering in the right way (which only the Spirit and Word can reveal to us at the proper time) as to having fellowship in the suffering of Christ then to suffer is to experience more of his life, or our glorification. Suffering is seen as being conformed to his death, so to be conformed to his life and image, now, at the present not some future event when my body dies though the fullness of this I will receive. What rises from the fire of affliction, of suffering, is the Spirit putting to death the flesh so the new man is transformed to have the mind of Christ.
""... now, we have the mind of Christ. But I brothers could not speak to you as spiritual, but rather as fleshly, infants in Christ" (1 Corinthians 2:16; 1 Corinthians 3:1-3). Paul calls them brothers but infants in Christ which implies being a new creation, spiritual, but they still have a fleshly mind. Correct doctrine being taught in the church matures the infant or child, renewing the mind so that we have the mind of Christ."*for you did not receive a spirit of slavery leading back to fear but you have received a Spirit of adoption in who cries out Abba Father, the Spirit himself testifying that we are children of God, and if children then heirs, heirs of God and heirs with Christ, if it be so, we suffer with him so that also glorified together with him (Romans 8:15-17)
"If it be so," if we are children of God then we are called to suffer with him. If our ultimate goal is not glorification together with Christ then we have lost our purpose, what God eternally purposed in Christ before he created the world. He chose his children to be holy and blameless in his presence in love, predestining us for adoption as his own, sealing us with the Spirit who is a guarantor of our inheritance until the redemption of his own. The Spirit testifies we are his children, this is what separates us from the world, being a new creation in Christ. What God purposed in the church is to fill all in all, to bring us into the fullness of God, to grow into mature adulthood, the measure of that being the stature of the image of His son.*
to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving behind an example, so that you might follow in his footsteps (1 Peter 2:21)
So in the suffering, we are called to bear it for a purpose. "He bore our sins in his body on the tree so that living, dead to sin, living to righteosuness, of his wounds healed" (1 Peter 2:24). This word for healed speaks not of the physical body, though God can heal the body. But of the spiritual, of restoring us from a dead state of sin and condemnation, to become partakers of his divine nature. The body will die one day, so what is the healing of the body in the time of eternity? If we gain all of this world and live a long life without suffering and lose our souls, what have we gained from his healing wounds?
through whom he has freely given to us his honorable and effective promises, so that through them you come into existence, escaping the corruption that is in the world in sinful desire, coming into existence, fellowship with God, God's nature (2 Peter 1:4)
In suffering comes glorification, we become imitators and have fellowship in His divine nature. We are renewed in the spirit of our minds to have the mind of Christ. We go from being children of God to sons of obedience as it is our new nature. No longer are our will and thoughts governed by the old sinful nature but we have put on the new man, created according to God's divine nature, we are his workmanship, in righteousness and holiness of divine truth revealed to us (Ephesians 4:24). This is the word of God, spoken inwardly through his Spirit to the inner man, though the outer fades away.