I know it sounds negative and ominous.  A double life is mostly associated with lies, trickery and pretext.  A spy would necessarily lead a double life, lying about his real intentions, identity, motives and goals, living in fear of being caught.  His success would depend on his own skills of deception.  Cheating on a spouse or partner implies a double life in which dishonesty and deceit become a lifestyle likewise accompanied by the fear of being caught out and having to face the humiliation of discovery.  

For a believer a double life is implied by his faith in an unseen God.  Faith is based on the acceptance and open surrender to a belief-system that cannot be perceived with the natural eye.  We belong to an invisible Kingdom established by Jesus and explained to Nicodemus, the Jewish scholar who visited Jesus in the night . (John 3)  Our “citizenship” makes us part of the realm of heaven with a unique order of government and laws written on our hearts in the language of love from a Father that rules over us and cares for us by redeeming our hopeless sinful nature by the Blood of Jesus, shed for us on the cross.

This is the ultimate “double” life that affords us a life of excellence on earth.  Our submission to the Law of Love and acceptance of the work of the Cross elevate our normal, mundane, earthly existence and fight for survival against dreadful odds, to a life of abundance with a hopeful vision of the future, drenched in the guarantees of the promises of God.  Our life in the unseen, while living in the seen, is the result of a miraculous transformation to understand the Christian mystery of how things in the universe truly work under the rule of our King, Christ Jesus.  By seeking the revelation of Christ in our lives is to grasp on a deeper level of comprehension the nature of his person and life on earth.  Life in the Kingdom is truly life in the fullest sense of the world that enables us to live to the full in the visible world.

Knowledge of Jesus will enable us to transcend the ordinary to become extraordinary.  Revelation knowledge shapes our perception to identify with the person of Jesus and stir our deep desires for so much more.  The promise of knowledge is vivid and real.

 ‘Call to Me, and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things, which you do not know.’ (Jeremiah 33:3)

The call, the invitation to greater things, is the most exciting aspect of our unseen reality.  God invites us to knowledge, that would exalt earthly life into the heavenly sphere.  In the realm of the unseen we live by anointed senses.  

• We “taste” that God is good (Psalm 34), 
• we “see” his handiwork around us (Psalms  19:1), 
• we “hear” his Word in our ears and recognize his voice (Isaiah 52:6), 
• we “feel” his love and grace over our failures and mistakes (Ezekiel 16:1-14) and
• we “smell” the sweet fragrance of our worship in Creation every day as we enjoy nature in all its glory (Ephesians 5:2; Philippians 4:18).

This is our “double” life – a life in a greater reality than what we experience with our physical senses.  

Living in the awareness of God’s revelation to man is a life of excellence.

There is a story of the healing of a blind man in Mark 8 that underlines the importance of anointed senses.  Read the four verses with me please.

²² Then He came to Bethsaida; and they brought a blind man to Him, and begged Him to touch him. 

²³ So He took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the town. And when He had spit on his eyes and put His hands on him, He asked him if he saw anything.

²⁴ And he looked up and said, “I see men like trees, walking.”

²⁵ Then He put His hands on his eyes again and made him look up. And he was restored and saw everyone clearly.   (Mark 8:22-25)

To understand the full impact of these verses, one needs to dig a little deeper, as with so many truths in the Bible.  Things are not always clear in a first reading. 

People are often symbolized by trees in the Bible. 

He shall be like a tree
Planted by the rivers of water,
That brings forth its fruit in its season,
Whose leaf also shall not wither;
And whatever he does shall prosper.  (Psalm 1:3)

“Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord,
And whose hope is the Lord.
⁸ For he shall be like a tree planted by the waters,
Which spreads out its roots by the river,
And will not fear when heat comes;
But its leaf will be green,
And will not be anxious in the year of drought,
Nor will cease from yielding fruit.  (Jeremiah 17:7,8)

People are unique and individual and so are trees, each one growing according to the precepts of its kind.  Imagine the world without trees.  Just think of the amazing qualities of trees and the shelter and shade they provide.  The quality of life in a forest compared to that in the desert vastly differs.

It is indeed a pleasing concept for a person to be described in terms of a thriving tree like David and Jeremiah do.  When our lives give the shade and fruit our environment need, we live godly lives – the life Paul describes in one of his typically long sentences.

for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, 

¹³ till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; 

¹⁴ that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting,

 ¹⁵ but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ— (Ephesians 4:12-15)

Glorious, large trees and perfect men?  Sure.  Perfect does not mean what we think.  Perfect means mature.  The Greeks used the word teleios as a depiction of something that is whole, perfected, coming to an end, consummate soundness, to reach a conclusion.  It does not imply spiritual perfectionism or faultless living.

Back to the blind man and his first vision of men like trees.  The process of his healing was not a “failure” on the part of Jesus that He, the Son of the  Most High God, had to pray twice before the healing was completed.  The blind man seeing men like trees, was the restoration of his spiritual insight.  His “eyes of understanding was enlightened” first, before his physical sight was healed.  (Ephesians 1:18)

Spiritual insight is more important than physical sight.  The process and timing of your miracle to fulfill your need is more important than the physical healing.  Your “process” will transform you and give you revelation-knowledge.  This is more important than the “answer” to your need.

We look into the heavenly realm on earth in our godly, everlasting “double” life.