Grace - God is now dealing with the believer totally apart from human merit or demerit. God deals with a believer now according to Christ’s merit and God calls that complete. That is a very huge, vital, a fundamental aspect of the Grace of God, we are complete, being in Christ.
Before the foundation of the world, God chose everyone who would believe in what his son accomplished on their behalf; to be in Christ, that is an accomplishment of God’s Grace, the glory of God’s Grace. The inevitable result of God’s Grace to the believer is true peace, because God sees us in Christ, and Christ was blameless.
Our right standing with God comes only through identification with a savior who is alive from among the dead. Paul never claimed to be a sinless saint, he claimed to be a saved saint. If you see yourself without sin, you have a sinful pride condition that is obvious to everyone but yourself.
Paul did not see himself as faultless, he saw himself as forgiven. Joy for a believer is a state of mind independent of surrounding circumstances. Rejoicing is the exhibit of that inter-state of mind, so the believers attitude need not to become victim to uncertainty or adversity.
There is a certain stability unwavering trust in God from an acknowledgment understanding and appreciation of what he tells you is true for you. A lot of people trust in God to alter the circumstances for the moment; sowing one thing and praying for another is foreign to the mind of the Apostle Paul.
We could look at the righteousness of God, in the sense of righteousness being an attribute of God, God’s righteous character is part of God’s glory. BUT NOW the righteousness of God, apart from the law is manifested; God has provided for people what people desperately lacks, God’s very own perfect righteousness.
Christendom today are praying in the hope of making their will, God’s will. Some are even claiming the power to direct God’s will today, by way of demand. Some would say if they request with enough faith, not doubting, God will grant their request. Pray was not given for the purpose of gaining God’s attention. God’s attention was there all the time.
When we pray, how many of us can be totally content to rest solely in the fact that God knows what is best for us, and then trust him in doing that very thing, even in difficult circumstances, even when we rather things turn out differently, even in the complete absence of what we often call material or physical blessing.
God actually desires that we take our cares and concerns to him. It is the avenue that God has given us believers that we might express our trust in him, but he DID NOT give us prayer as an avenue by which we can direct his hand or shape his will.
God gave us prayer as an avenue for the expression of our trusting him no matter the circumstance, no matter the outcome of that circumstance. God gave us prayer for the purpose of our peace, he knew how disparate a human mind would need peace. Through prayer a believer is able to release to God their fears, desires, inter-most anxieties while at the same time acknowledging to God that they trust God no matter the outcome of those situations.
God has only held people accountable to believe that which he was revealing to them at the time, nothing more. Justification has always been based on taking God at his Word, nothing more. We would call that faith, it’s just that the message of faith has changed.
It’s not been the same message, because things have been added and things have been changed throughout the course of human history. If you are asking God to forgive you for your sins today, what are you saying you believe about what Christ accomplished, where those sins are concerned?
See how subtle the message is today, and how many people in the world miss it, because they think God is still looking at them and judging them and evaluating them on the bases of their performance. God wants believers to all think the same way, when it comes to what is happening in this Age of Grace, what God is doing today and how he is doing it.
Paul could never preach and never preached the Gospel of the Kingdom, because the kingdom was no longer at hand. When Israel’s leadership rejected the King, that kingdom was placed on the shelf to be reserved for a future fulfillment. Peter was still operating in accordance with the earthly kingdom program, before he was made aware of the secret committed to Paul’s trust.
Jesus gave Peter the “keys” to the Kingdom. Peter had the ability to “unlock” and “open the door” to the Kingdom, he proclaimed the message they had to believe. Peter knew about remission of sins for the world, but he knew about the remission of sins for the world in relation to Israel’s royal priesthood, that Israel was to be a holy nation, a kingdom of priests, and as that holy nation and royal priesthood, a light unto the Gentiles.
You have got your good times, and your joyous times, but you have your sad times, and your bad times. You have got times when you are very low emotionally, when you seem like you are on the bottom and you do not know where to turn or what is happening next; the whole creation is suffering while we are under the curse.
The reality is, no believer is immune from the suffering circumstances that come our way. All believers suffer, we just suffer in different ways and to different degrees and at different times in our lives, but we continue to suffer. You see, it is not health, wealth, and prosperity in THIS life, as the popular money-mongering ministers of righteousness would have us believe today, it is just the opposite.
God’s purpose was to allow us to suffer, so that we can put our hope on display to those who know nothing about our hope. Romans 8:21 - So, being freed up fem all these suffering circumstances is not just liberty, it is a glorious liberty!
You see, it is not God causing bad things to happen to bad people and good things to happen to good people. God is not raining down suffering circumstances to BRING bad people in line, and he is not raining down similar adverse circumstances on good people that have gone bad to KEEP those people in line.
If we could pray these circumstances away, what hope would we need? Our hope would reside right here in praying them away. The deliverance would come now, instead of later when Christ returns in the air to catch us up to be with him, our suffering situations will forever be a thing of the past.
Was it your body or was it Christ’s body that freed humankind from the law’s jurisdiction? It was Christ’s body. The law will never work to accomplish our sanctification. How many do you suppose there are today who are working under the false assumption that they must curry God’s favor through personal behavior, if they are going to merit God’s blessings?
The human race is dead to law keeping for righteousness, they are dead to a law keeping for righteousness relationship and that relationship is gone forever, Christ took it out of the way. When Israel’s New Covenant comes into play, they will be caused to know Christ, they will all know him to the least to the greatest.
Paul was striving to know Christ and know him intimately, not as Israel’s messiah, but to know him in the power of his resurrection and in the fellowship of his suffering, Paul wanted Christ’s life to be manifest in his own life.
God’s blessing and God’s favor are there for in no way based upon how well any person conforms to a standard today; that is being married to two partners. Paul desired to be found in Christ, not with a righteous record that could be gauged as having come from Paul as the source, but with righteousness that had God at it’s source, a gift declaration of rightness before God.
No longer are we striving under a performance based merit system for righteousness before God that will never work, we can never be married to Christ that way. There are believers out there who know Christ in his resurrection power, because they are acquainted to one degree or another with the fellowship of his sufferings, one does not come apart from the other.
Know who you are from fleshly perspective? God has kept the fingerprints of the guilt worthy, off of the righteousness he designed for the guilt worthy. Know who God counts you to be once you have trusted what Christ accomplished where your sins are concerned?
When self-righteous moralizers harden their hearts and remain impenitent concerning their goodness, they are storing up to themselves wrath to be visited upon them in the day of wrath. They will one day stand at the Great White Throne Judgment where the merited righteousness they think they have will be put on display.
Will you accept that God’s son paid for your sins, and that Christ’s payment has completely satisfied God’s justice where all of those sins are concerned, or will you continue to hold on to the notion that you have insufficient sins to warrant Christ’s death in the first place.
Or equally as dangerous, the religious notion that Christ’s shed blood was insufficient to have fully satisfied God where your sins are concerned, thus the continual need for something further required of you to keep God’s justice up to date.
The only reason God could say through Paul, “Grace and Peace be unto you” is because his son fully paid the price. Faith does not come in gallons and tons, faith is not something “do I have enough faith, have I believed firmly enough?” Faith is simply taking your stand where God takes his stand.
There are many who will spend an eternity apart from Christ, because they refuse to accept what Christ accomplished on their behalf. The choice is theirs, God’s given people the choice to reject or just to stand where God does. If you want to know that you have faith, just simply take your stand where God takes his.
Do you awake every morning of your life with the security you have in Christ, in your identity in him, having believed Paul’s good news? You see why Paul could say “We are complete in HIM,” everything that belongs to Christ now belongs to you.
Do you awake every morning contemplating God’s presence inside you through his energizing power from on high, and that inter-strength empowerment that God will give you, it should never be about the degree of difficulty for any grace age believer, it should always be about the extent of the supply.
What a supply we have, but very few stop to ponder, stop worrying long enough to ponder that supply, much less do we ponder it on a daily bases in our lives, so it becomes a state of mind. A labor of love, because Christian living is not about doing, it is about believing something, and when we believe something and we continue to take in God’s Word, it should change who we are, not change what we are trying to do and trying to become.
The Christian life, it is trying to understand something and then work with that understanding. Romans 6:14 - Paul is not telling us that we will no longer be inclined to do wrong things or to think wrong things, or even that believers will more often than not always choose to do the right thing. Sin shall not have dominion over you, because you are not living under the law program, you are living under grace.
You do not have to know all the theological terms involved, this is not difficult. This is simply saying, God said what his son did for you was sufficient to absolve you of your sin debt! Past, present, future, it is gone, Christ did it all, there is nothing left for you to do, God did all the giving, you do only all the receiving.
Galatians 6:7 - Believers need not ever fear separation from God, our everlasting life with him is an absolute certainty. Physical death will not halt it, or hinder it in any way. The second death is never a threat or a possibility. Paul simply refused to allow things which were not expedient or wise to take control of him, he had the clear option to choose otherwise.
Believers need not ever fear a change in attitude from God toward us. The improper choices we make do not change the direction of God’s mind toward those who have been joined to his son, because he sees those believers IN his son. Never make the mistake when it comes to improper choices, that you can continue to make improper choices and face no consequences.
We all too often plant one crop and then before we know it, the crop we have planted is growing up all around us to the extent that what we have planted can begin to get a strangle-hold on us. It happens to those who are believers and it happens to those who are unbelievers, if something comes up, it is because we have planted an improper choice somewhere, in many cases.
Your relationship with God is not contingent upon the crops you plant and the choices you make. How much more secure could you be than to be joined to God’s son, that’s reigning in life, whether you realize it or appreciate it. Reigning in life means much more than the ability to make correct choices in our lives.
As important as it is that we make correct choices, reigning in life over sin means much, much, more than making proper choices. Paul was reigning in life from a practical perspective, because those who receive the gift of God, do in fact, reign in life. But, that does not mean that improper choices have no earthly consequences, they certainly do. While they will not affect your salvation, they can indeed wreak havoc in your life.
You see, the Law of Moses had a relationship claim on every member of the human race. If the law has a rightful claim on you, God cannot have a rightful claim on you. If Christ has a rightful claim on you, the law has no rightful claim on you whatsoever.
To be joined to Christ and joined to the law at the same time would not only be bigamy, it would be adultery according to the apostle Paul. If you want to be joined to Christ, Paul gives the solution: there must be a death! As long as the law has jurisdiction over you in your mind, you are not free to be married to Christ, in your mind.
There are many people today who are doing that very thing. On the one hand, they claim to be joined to Jesus Christ, but on the other hand, who do they believe to be their husband? They continue to operate with God as though they were joined to the law, rather than joined to Christ, while claiming to belong to Christ on one hand and claiming to be operating under the dictates of the law on the other hand.
To what husband does a person belong is the question? That is what Paul is illustrating for us here at the outset of Romans chapter 7, one has to be dead in order to be married to the other. You cannot be legally bound, legally married to both at the same time, it is totally impossible! Grace and Law are polar opposites and God absolutely refuses to share those who are joined to his son with the law, with the law husband.
If you have been maintaining your relationship with the law in connection with your righteousness before God, in your mind, God would have you come out of that realm of thinking. You are either under the jurisdiction of the law, which requires performance for righteousness or you are under the jurisdiction of Jesus Christ and your identity in him is your righteousness, but you can not have it both ways.
Grace within a dispensation was one thing; a dispensation characterized solely by grace is something else altogether. How many have heard that the apostle Paul dispensed a message that the 12 apostles had not dispensed, and that message was different, and that message was geared to the Gentiles?
If you lump these programs altogether, you are going to be taking from one program and trying to make it apply to another, when Paul clearly tells us that God is working differently today. Reconciliation, God changed the status of the human race when his son, Jesus Christ paid the ransom price necessary to redeem the human race from the market place of sin.
Justification and Sanctification are only for believers and believers alone, Satan’s desire is to corrupt people’s minds, not their activities. Satan is trying to corrupt people’s minds as to what Christ accomplished and the source of their righteousness.
A person must UNDERSTAND what it is they are being asked to believe, in order to be joined to Jesus Christ. The fact is that Jesus Christ took sinful people’s place, taking the penalty of their sins upon himself, so that those believing this truth could be joined to Jesus Christ. This is what makes Paul’s good news, a glorious gospel that goes far beyond the expected and moves into the realm of the unfathomable. Satan would rather people have their minds “religiously set” on believing something different.
The earthly union of husbands and wives today are to be a reflection of the new oneness identification that all believers have with our Savior himself, Jesus Christ. Clearing the slate of the human race, as Christ became sin on behalf of the human race, was an accomplishment of unmeasurable proportions.
Justification is unfathomable to the earthly mind, that God could judicially consider you just as his perfectly righteous son. We are made to be the righteousness that belongs to God in our union with his perfectly righteous son. God married us to his perfect son, what belongs to Christ then belongs to the believers who are joined to Christ.
Marriage the way God planned it to be in the beginning, two become “one flesh” from God’s perspective. As Christ’s legal marriage partner, your name is now entered right along side Christ’s name on his account. By joining us to his son, God sees Christ’s account as being our account also.
Christ’s righteousness as God has your name attached to it, his account become you account at the point of your belief. Therefore, his righteousness became your righteousness. That is a phenomenal blessing that belongs to every believer during this age of grace. God is now able to view every believer as though we are as perfectly righteous as Christ himself.
The righteous of Christ has our name on it, because we are married to the perfectly righteous Christ, and it was God, through his energizing power from on high that consummated that union the very instant we first believed that Christ, to have resolved God’s justice for our sins. We are now joined to him, what belongs to him now belongs to us.
The body of doctrine Paul taught renews our thinking, because in this dispensation God is not giving us experiences to look at, he is giving us doctrinal truths to learn. It is the Word of God, that does the work of God, because it contains the living water whereby people have their minds renewed today.
The Word of our salvation washes away any notion of self-cleansing for righteousness as an approach to God. Paul’s writings rinses any notion of people’s production as the basis of a right standing before God right down the drain and leaves the believer standing only in the purified state of Christ’s righteousness.
Only when the truth of reconciliation achieved through Jesus Christ is believed, does a new creation become a reality as far as that individual is concerned. The new creation hinges upon the acceptance of Christ’s sacrifice, that it accomplished reconciliation. The new creation is who you stand to be in Christ. A new creation is your new identity in Jesus Christ.
The new creation is not how you perform in a different way, or make commitments to perform differently, it all has to do with your being placed into Christ, that is the new creation. When a person believes in the reality of reconciliation, that person becomes an instantaneous member of the new creation called the Body of Christ; joined to him.
Cease attributing your righteous standing before God to your performance and keep your mind focused solely on how God views you in Christ. That is what grace life is all about, and you will be victorious in that God can now produce his fruit in your life. If your flesh could perform sufficiently, Christ’s sacrifice would never have been a necessity.
Superstition falls under the deception heading of the religion of our last days, Satan has as much a field day with superstition as he does with counterfeit miracles. How do we know what is not so? It’s not so much the things we do not know that get us into trouble, it’s the things we know that just is not so.
Superstition is all that is required for many people to come to believe that supernatural events are actually taking place, they believe the Holy Spirit is involved. There is a tendency of people’s preconceptions to bias their interpretations of what they see, superstitious mind set can make something out of nothing, in order to validate a belief.
People will tend to engage in a search for evidence that is bias towards confirmation of their beliefs. They engage in evidence that tends to confirm their previously held belief, not fully utilizing all the information that is out there. Only searching out that which agrees with their cause, avoiding information that might dis-confirm their cause.
The tendency of the human mind is to seek out information that supports their belief and attribute a great deal of weight to that when they find it, while they discount or ignore evidence that goes contrary to the belief they hold. If they expect to see Mary make an appearance on a grill cheese sandwich, they will see the outline of Mary; setting their criteria so broadly that their preexisting beliefs is validated no matter what the outcome.
Colossians 2:8 - Not about to give up their traditions, because previous held beliefs, especially superstitious beliefs, are a most difficult thing to discard. The bias effect of second hand information. “They say” secondary experience, testimonial seasoning of superstition, the story validated the point someone wishes to promote.
Ephesians 5:30 - Nowhere in the Word of God are we told that we are joined to God, of his flesh, and of his bones, because God’s body is composed of a substance called spirit. We are members of Jesus Christ’s body, because we have been joined to him through the identifying work of God through his energizing power from on high.
That energizing power from on high is in all who have taken God at his Word, as to what Christ accomplished when it comes to the resolution of God’s justice where our sins are concerned. It is because of Adam’s transgression, sin entered into the human race, but following right on the heels of sin entering into the human race, death by sin.
The issue for life everlasting is not what church you attend or to which denomination you belong or how religious you are or even whether or not you are a good person in the worldly sense of the word “good.”
The issue in eternity will not be how many sins you have committed or how many sins you have promised God you will abstain from committing. It will not be whether you have walked an aisle, recited a particular prayer, or asked Jesus into your heart.
The issue in eternity will be to which MAN are you related?Do you have your identity in the first Adam, or do you have your identity in the second Adam, Jesus Christ, you cannot be identified in both. When Paul talks about a new creature, old things being past away, all things become new, he is not talking about sin in an individuals life, he is talking about all that we were prior to salvation in the first Adam.
Once saved, we are no longer in the first Adam, we are at the initial point of our belief in the second Adam, Jesus Christ. In God’s eyes we are no longer who we once were, we are now the new creation being forever joined to our savior.
We have things happen in our lives, we have negative things happen in our lives as believers, but the same negative things happen to non-believers. There is no testing, no temptation taking place today such as is not common to all the human race.
Forgiveness is all upfront, it covers all and you stand in the eyes of God having trusted in what our Savior accomplished on our behalf. You stand more than forgiven, you stand JUST in God’s eyes. Too many people are trying to Christianize the flesh, we are suppose to change our thinking, it all starts with our thinking.
Love, the behavioral glue that binds together the believer to other members of the Body of Christ, that is how God designed the new creation in Christ to operate. Love is the attitudinal adhesive God intends to keep the Body of Christ functionally smoothly and operating efficiently and effectively. Love is the bond that both unifies and edifies the members of the Body of Christ.
Satan would have you think your salvation is not complete. Satan would have you believe, Yes, Jesus died for your sins. Yes, he was buried. Yes, he was raised from among the dead, but your justification was not complete. So Satan would have you believe there is still forgiveness that must be obtained from time to time on the installment plan.
That is Satan’s gospel. Some people go weekly to get absolution for their sin, some groups do that nightly. Some people wear that forgiveness belt around them all day long, less they cross that imaginary line they have got in their mind, where they might cross that line and God changed his mind and cast them away. You are justified because of Paul’s good news, but what gospel have you believed? God would say, “You are already forgiven, why you coming for forgiveness?”
Maturity is all about the degree to which you participate in the increase of the Body of Christ unto the deifying of its self in love. The degree to which you participate in that which brings unity to the Body of Christ and edifies the believer to that degree you can consider yourself to be mature.
It is much more than taking in knowledge, it is a renewed mind, it is taking in that knowledge, that knowledge might be put to use. Doctrine governs the intellect; the intellect governs the will; the will governs the emotions. There is one basic principle we can apply to every situation in our life, will Christ be magnified in my choice.
Give up serving self and that will be the best service to self you could ever give yourself, you will find true freedom and joy to be the ultimate result. We serve others today motivated by appreciation in the fact that God loves them, we are intricately joined to them, just as we are joined to Christ.
The law had apprehension as a motivation factor. Our labor of love under the Age of Grace has had the apprehension aspect removed entirely. We are to serve others today based on how God expressed his love to others through Christ and what he accomplished for them, who he made them and us to be in our savior by joining us to our savior.
Self is that which stands in the way of growth completeness, the idolatrous mind-set of people. Every believer has a part to play when it comes to that which edifies and unifies the Body of Christ, but attitude is that which instigates action. When it comes to maturity, Paul begins with the inter thought life, never with the outward action.
There is a difference in what the Bible calls the flesh and what it calls the old man, these are not the same terms. The flesh, we all have that bent towards satisfying the lust of our flesh toward serving ourselves. We all have the flesh to contend with, it is alive and functioning in everyone us, none excluded.
Paul would have us understand while we still contend with our flesh, our sin bent, God eradicated our identity with it as far as our righteous standing before him is concerned and our identity in the Bible calls that the old man, that is gone, crucified.
So, while we continue to have and will continue to have to contend with the flesh, God no longer sees us in our identity with the flesh. God’s sentence on the flesh was not reformation, it was total eradication. That sentence was carried out when we died with Christ. God had no intention of repairing the old man.
Christ had to crucify our identity with the flesh, the old man. Paul wants us to agree with God to reckon our identity with our flesh as dead and gone. God has no plan to clean the old man up and make the old man more presentable, his intention was to kill the old man.
Every believer is standing in the gift degree of righteousness, the very perfect righteousness as God’s perfectly righteous son. If your life is hid with God in Christ then how does God view you? God views you in his son. If God’s energizing power from on high resides in every believer, no believer out of the loop, then how many believers are in the flesh? None!
Knowing you are complete in Christ, how would love operate? God’s will for you is to be mature not only in the knowledge of his Word, but in the application of that knowledge through the avenue of love. Knowledge finds expression through our behavior. To serve Christ today, you must serve the earthly manifestation of Christ’s Body.
Knowing you have perfect righteousness in the son, how should you operate positively on behalf of others? Knowledge and love application of that knowledge is the idea behind growth, one without the other is entirely useless. Separation from the world means, growth requires something where the believer and the world is concerned.
A coin accomplishes nothing till it is spent, practical holiness is the hallmark of maturity; maturity demands it, you can not be mature apart from it. Practical holiness is that which will get you rewarded at The Bema Seat of Christ. Love will never show up empty handed where Bema Seat rewards are concerned, love always edifies and unifies.
To worship at the altar of the flesh, is to allow experience to trump truth, and to allow experience to trump truth, is to allow emotion to trump truth, and when experience becomes king in a person’s life, experience is determining that person’s doctrine, rather than that person’s doctrine determining the validity of their experience.
The dispensing of the grace of God. You see, God does not bring armies of insects on people today, he is not sending calamity of any kind on people today, whether it be by climate disaster, financial upheaval, or whatever else might be attributed to God’s hand of judgment on a Christ rejecting world. Why?
God is NOT imputing people’s sins unto them today, because he imputed them to somebody else. Why all the turmoil and distressful circumstances in the world today? It is the age of sin, it is sin in the world, and sin playing itself out; the natural consequence of the sin of the world.
The apostle of the age of grace, delivers to us the truth that God is not bringing special judgments on the world today. The things that are occurring in our world today come as a natural result of the sin-cursed world in which we live, not from special judgments.
God is not trying to get even with people today because of their sins, and he is not calling down some special bad thing; some adverse situation, in order to teach certain individuals a lesson. God does not teach through special judgments during the Age of Grace, he teaches us through his written Word today.
Paul says, “It stablished us.” It stabilizes believers today, it is the Word that does the stabilizing work of God, so that we are able with the Word, hold up under what is happening today. God has given you what you need to endure whatever you face in this life, whether it be best circumstances or worse circumstances from our perspective. We take it in, it sustains us and builds us up, it fortifies us.
2 Corinthians 7:1 - Why in the fear of God, because we have the Judgment Seat of Christ to which all those sealed in Christ will be present. This is every believer’s responsibility, we should conduct ourselves in a manner conducive to the job that God’s given us. It is our ambassadorship of the message of reconciliation, how am I to conduct myself given my ambassadorship?
Ephesians 4:1 - Your calling has not changed, it cannot change, so conduct yourselves in accordance with your calling. We are called to peace, this is how believers are to relate to other believers, but walk worthy of the vocation that belongs to you, because God has freely given it to you. How can those who have been justified freely, sanctified in Christ, how should those people be conducting themselves?
Colossians 3:14 - Agape is action love. There is a difference between upon and addition to, because when you put on love, you have simply taken all the seven states of mind listed in Colossians 3:12-13, and you have put movement to the attitude. Agape is the functional life of underlying attitude. Paul is saying I have given you the attitude, now let’s put feet to the attitude, grace attitude in action.
God never intended subjective feelings to be a replacement for objective truth, that is why he’s given us his Word. Only when inner peace lines up with the written Word of God Rightly Divided are we headed in the proper direction. Philippians 4:6-7, so when it comes to the peace department, God does NOT lead independently of the Word. So, we not only have peace with God, we can enjoy the peace of God, who shall keep our hearts and minds through Christ in every circumstance that we face.
Romans 8:1 - There is THEREFORE NOW, the Now pointing back to the reality of our justification and our sanctification. Based on justification and sanctification, Paul often uses that word “therefore” which means he is ready to draw a conclusion. Paul took us through justification through faith, telling us how God has dealt with that problem of sin. And, then he took us through sanctification, the issue with sanctification is not about sin, but about perfection; God perfected us, made us as equally righteous as God himself.
Now, Paul draws it all together, based upon the fact that you are already sanctified, already IN Christ, there is now no condemnation for you. If God sees you IN Christ and he sees you as being complete in your identity with Christ, totally identified with Jesus Christ in every aspect of Christ’s life and relationship with the Father, to condemn you who are IN Christ, would be the same thing as to condemn Jesus Christ. Colossians 2:10
There are those who say the final portion of Romans 8:1 where it says, “who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit” should not be there at all. However, the thought of not walking after the flesh, but after the spirit does indeed appear down in Verse 4 and is in the manuscript of the Majority text, so that idea is a valid idea. So, rather than ignoring them altogether, why not just explain them.
Walking after the flesh is not talking about committing sins, but with placing one’s confidence in the capacity of their flesh to provide righteousness through performance. Rather than having Christ’s righteousness freely imputed to their account, the person who is walking after the flesh is the person laboring under the false notion that they can earn their righteousness through their performance. They are laboring under the false notion that there is capacity in their flesh to be right before God, that is precisely what Israel was doing.
Romans 6:16 - If sin leads to death, obedience would lead to life is what we would conclude, but that is not what Paul said. Paul did not use life in opposition to death. Is it possible for a believer to sin and have those sins lead to death? Yes! We know that an unbeliever’s sin leads to death, so the universal principle that sin leads to death is true.
How then can a believer die? They can die physically, death can come in many different ways. If you decided every morning to drink a fifth of whiskey, what are you going to do to your body? A believer can die functionally in that they can serve no further useful purpose here on earth, no heavenly purpose on earth to those to whom they become an ambassador.
Galatians 6:8 - We can take this as a general principle. Life, in the physical sense, comes from making proper choices. Death, in a physical sense, can come from making improper choices in our lives. If we continue in a sinful lifestyle, and we continue not bringing the flesh into subjection, we can count on that lifestyle to take a toll on us.
Choices have consequences. The choices we make with serving self have an effect on others which will affect us. Death can take place in so many ways, it could be emotional, it can be relational. We do not need to start pointing at particular sins, but if we are a slave to sin, whatever sin we are serving, the sin that has us in bondage will exact its toll on our flesh.
You did not free yourself from sin, God did that in response to Christ’s faithfulness and your faith in Christ faithful sacrifice to have resolved God’s justice where your sins are concerned. You became a servant to the righteousness that is already yours, but some of us servants do not do a very good job of serving, do we?
Romans 6:11 - We need to be focusing on our new identity. Where do you reckon? In your mind. Take an inventory of the facts, to count it up and consider all of the facts and then to come to an appropriate conclusion based upon those facts. Paul is going to great lengths here in Romans Chapter 6 to make his case, that people who fail to conduct themselves properly, fail to understand properly.
That is Paul’s point here in Verse 11, he places the emphasis when it comes to grace behavior on helping us to perceive ourselves in the new identity that is our right now, being IN Jesus Christ. Paul wants us to see ourselves as God already sees us. We need to be focusing on our new identity.
You have to know something, to count up the facts before you can come to an appropriate conclusion based upon what you know to be true. That is why knowledge is absolutely essential. If you have drawn an improper conclusion, Paul would say it is because you have failed to properly consider all of the facts.
Anyone who teaches that God accepts you or blesses you on the basis of how well you dress up the old man up in Christian clothing, or on how well you make the old man perform, that person fails to properly understand that the old man no longer exists in the eyes of God. They spend all of their time trying to perfect the old man.
Reckon ourselves to be now and forevermore alive unto God, we cannot lose it. Behavior did not put us there, behavior cannot take us out of there. Christ will never again have to die for our sins and likewise, we can count on the fact that we will never die for our sins. When Paul tells us to put on the new man, he is not asking us to dress up the old man, he is simply asking us to recognize that the old man no longer exists in the eyes of God. See yourselves as God sees you.
Romans 12:10 - A synonym for the word “preferring” is the word “deference.” Showing deference means putting another person’s interests above your own interest. If preferring others above self is the measure of our love for God, how many of us can truly say we love God with ALL our heart, ALL our soul, ALL our mind? How many of us love others more than we love ourselves?
We do not show deference, we show preference, and the problem is that the one most often preferred in the life of everyone with a sin nature, is self. Whose love was it that restrained our apostle? Was it his love for God, or was it God’s love for Paul? Isn’t serving one another love?
Love is serving others, but notice here in Galatians 5:13, “by love serve one another.” In other wards, by love we are to love, does that make sense? Isn’t that an interesting construction? Through the instrumentality of love, we are to love others. Through the instrumentality of who’s love, is it our love for God that helps us love others or is it God’s love for us that helps us to love others?
Our reasonable service is a reflection of our appreciation for the fact that the sin question was forever settled. The root cause of our sin is that we love our self and we will not allow anyone to taint that self view. We interpret everything through the sieve of self. We relate what others do, we relate what others say in accordance with their actions and their words substantiate the way we desire to see our self. This is the idolatry mind-set.
Maturity is all about the degree to which you participate in the increase of the Body of Christ unto the deifying of its self in love. The degree to which you participate in that which brings unity to the Body of Christ and edifies the believer to that degree you can consider yourself to be mature. It is much more than taking in knowledge, it is a renewed mind.
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teachmevp
I like to reason out of the word, the way and their chapter and verse attitude was a stubbling block for me, how does one chapter and verses a figure of speech. These posts are just thoughts.
Tzaia
Definitely an improvement over what it was. Thanks to Raf for the suggestion. Thanks to TeachmeVP for being nice enough to comply. The achingly hard to read part stems from the content, not the format
teachmevp
The only ones who can take up any piece of God’s armor, and the only ones who are involved in this struggle against Satan and his forces, are those who have been placed into Christ. The fact that the
teachmevp
Grace - God is now dealing with the believer totally apart from human merit or demerit. God deals with a believer now according to Christ’s merit and God calls that complete. That is a very huge, vital, a fundamental aspect of the Grace of God, we are complete, being in Christ.
Before the foundation of the world, God chose everyone who would believe in what his son accomplished on their behalf; to be in Christ, that is an accomplishment of God’s Grace, the glory of God’s Grace. The inevitable result of God’s Grace to the believer is true peace, because God sees us in Christ, and Christ was blameless.
Our right standing with God comes only through identification with a savior who is alive from among the dead. Paul never claimed to be a sinless saint, he claimed to be a saved saint. If you see yourself without sin, you have a sinful pride condition that is obvious to everyone but yourself.
Paul did not see himself as faultless, he saw himself as forgiven. Joy for a believer is a state of mind independent of surrounding circumstances. Rejoicing is the exhibit of that inter-state of mind, so the believers attitude need not to become victim to uncertainty or adversity.
There is a certain stability unwavering trust in God from an acknowledgment understanding and appreciation of what he tells you is true for you. A lot of people trust in God to alter the circumstances for the moment; sowing one thing and praying for another is foreign to the mind of the Apostle Paul.
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teachmevp
We could look at the righteousness of God, in the sense of righteousness being an attribute of God, God’s righteous character is part of God’s glory. BUT NOW the righteousness of God, apart from the law is manifested; God has provided for people what people desperately lacks, God’s very own perfect righteousness.
Christendom today are praying in the hope of making their will, God’s will. Some are even claiming the power to direct God’s will today, by way of demand. Some would say if they request with enough faith, not doubting, God will grant their request. Pray was not given for the purpose of gaining God’s attention. God’s attention was there all the time.
When we pray, how many of us can be totally content to rest solely in the fact that God knows what is best for us, and then trust him in doing that very thing, even in difficult circumstances, even when we rather things turn out differently, even in the complete absence of what we often call material or physical blessing.
God actually desires that we take our cares and concerns to him. It is the avenue that God has given us believers that we might express our trust in him, but he DID NOT give us prayer as an avenue by which we can direct his hand or shape his will.
God gave us prayer as an avenue for the expression of our trusting him no matter the circumstance, no matter the outcome of that circumstance. God gave us prayer for the purpose of our peace, he knew how disparate a human mind would need peace. Through prayer a believer is able to release to God their fears, desires, inter-most anxieties while at the same time acknowledging to God that they trust God no matter the outcome of those situations.
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teachmevp
God has only held people accountable to believe that which he was revealing to them at the time, nothing more. Justification has always been based on taking God at his Word, nothing more. We would call that faith, it’s just that the message of faith has changed.
It’s not been the same message, because things have been added and things have been changed throughout the course of human history. If you are asking God to forgive you for your sins today, what are you saying you believe about what Christ accomplished, where those sins are concerned?
See how subtle the message is today, and how many people in the world miss it, because they think God is still looking at them and judging them and evaluating them on the bases of their performance. God wants believers to all think the same way, when it comes to what is happening in this Age of Grace, what God is doing today and how he is doing it.
Paul could never preach and never preached the Gospel of the Kingdom, because the kingdom was no longer at hand. When Israel’s leadership rejected the King, that kingdom was placed on the shelf to be reserved for a future fulfillment. Peter was still operating in accordance with the earthly kingdom program, before he was made aware of the secret committed to Paul’s trust.
Jesus gave Peter the “keys” to the Kingdom. Peter had the ability to “unlock” and “open the door” to the Kingdom, he proclaimed the message they had to believe. Peter knew about remission of sins for the world, but he knew about the remission of sins for the world in relation to Israel’s royal priesthood, that Israel was to be a holy nation, a kingdom of priests, and as that holy nation and royal priesthood, a light unto the Gentiles.
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teachmevp
You have got your good times, and your joyous times, but you have your sad times, and your bad times. You have got times when you are very low emotionally, when you seem like you are on the bottom and you do not know where to turn or what is happening next; the whole creation is suffering while we are under the curse.
The reality is, no believer is immune from the suffering circumstances that come our way. All believers suffer, we just suffer in different ways and to different degrees and at different times in our lives, but we continue to suffer. You see, it is not health, wealth, and prosperity in THIS life, as the popular money-mongering ministers of righteousness would have us believe today, it is just the opposite.
God’s purpose was to allow us to suffer, so that we can put our hope on display to those who know nothing about our hope. Romans 8:21 - So, being freed up fem all these suffering circumstances is not just liberty, it is a glorious liberty!
You see, it is not God causing bad things to happen to bad people and good things to happen to good people. God is not raining down suffering circumstances to BRING bad people in line, and he is not raining down similar adverse circumstances on good people that have gone bad to KEEP those people in line.
If we could pray these circumstances away, what hope would we need? Our hope would reside right here in praying them away. The deliverance would come now, instead of later when Christ returns in the air to catch us up to be with him, our suffering situations will forever be a thing of the past.
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teachmevp
Was it your body or was it Christ’s body that freed humankind from the law’s jurisdiction? It was Christ’s body. The law will never work to accomplish our sanctification. How many do you suppose there are today who are working under the false assumption that they must curry God’s favor through personal behavior, if they are going to merit God’s blessings?
The human race is dead to law keeping for righteousness, they are dead to a law keeping for righteousness relationship and that relationship is gone forever, Christ took it out of the way. When Israel’s New Covenant comes into play, they will be caused to know Christ, they will all know him to the least to the greatest.
Paul was striving to know Christ and know him intimately, not as Israel’s messiah, but to know him in the power of his resurrection and in the fellowship of his suffering, Paul wanted Christ’s life to be manifest in his own life.
God’s blessing and God’s favor are there for in no way based upon how well any person conforms to a standard today; that is being married to two partners. Paul desired to be found in Christ, not with a righteous record that could be gauged as having come from Paul as the source, but with righteousness that had God at it’s source, a gift declaration of rightness before God.
No longer are we striving under a performance based merit system for righteousness before God that will never work, we can never be married to Christ that way. There are believers out there who know Christ in his resurrection power, because they are acquainted to one degree or another with the fellowship of his sufferings, one does not come apart from the other.
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teachmevp
Know who you are from fleshly perspective? God has kept the fingerprints of the guilt worthy, off of the righteousness he designed for the guilt worthy. Know who God counts you to be once you have trusted what Christ accomplished where your sins are concerned?
When self-righteous moralizers harden their hearts and remain impenitent concerning their goodness, they are storing up to themselves wrath to be visited upon them in the day of wrath. They will one day stand at the Great White Throne Judgment where the merited righteousness they think they have will be put on display.
Will you accept that God’s son paid for your sins, and that Christ’s payment has completely satisfied God’s justice where all of those sins are concerned, or will you continue to hold on to the notion that you have insufficient sins to warrant Christ’s death in the first place.
Or equally as dangerous, the religious notion that Christ’s shed blood was insufficient to have fully satisfied God where your sins are concerned, thus the continual need for something further required of you to keep God’s justice up to date.
The only reason God could say through Paul, “Grace and Peace be unto you” is because his son fully paid the price. Faith does not come in gallons and tons, faith is not something “do I have enough faith, have I believed firmly enough?” Faith is simply taking your stand where God takes his stand.
There are many who will spend an eternity apart from Christ, because they refuse to accept what Christ accomplished on their behalf. The choice is theirs, God’s given people the choice to reject or just to stand where God does. If you want to know that you have faith, just simply take your stand where God takes his.
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teachmevp
Do you awake every morning of your life with the security you have in Christ, in your identity in him, having believed Paul’s good news? You see why Paul could say “We are complete in HIM,” everything that belongs to Christ now belongs to you.
Do you awake every morning contemplating God’s presence inside you through his energizing power from on high, and that inter-strength empowerment that God will give you, it should never be about the degree of difficulty for any grace age believer, it should always be about the extent of the supply.
What a supply we have, but very few stop to ponder, stop worrying long enough to ponder that supply, much less do we ponder it on a daily bases in our lives, so it becomes a state of mind. A labor of love, because Christian living is not about doing, it is about believing something, and when we believe something and we continue to take in God’s Word, it should change who we are, not change what we are trying to do and trying to become.
The Christian life, it is trying to understand something and then work with that understanding. Romans 6:14 - Paul is not telling us that we will no longer be inclined to do wrong things or to think wrong things, or even that believers will more often than not always choose to do the right thing. Sin shall not have dominion over you, because you are not living under the law program, you are living under grace.
You do not have to know all the theological terms involved, this is not difficult. This is simply saying, God said what his son did for you was sufficient to absolve you of your sin debt! Past, present, future, it is gone, Christ did it all, there is nothing left for you to do, God did all the giving, you do only all the receiving.
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teachmevp
Galatians 6:7 - Believers need not ever fear separation from God, our everlasting life with him is an absolute certainty. Physical death will not halt it, or hinder it in any way. The second death is never a threat or a possibility. Paul simply refused to allow things which were not expedient or wise to take control of him, he had the clear option to choose otherwise.
Believers need not ever fear a change in attitude from God toward us. The improper choices we make do not change the direction of God’s mind toward those who have been joined to his son, because he sees those believers IN his son. Never make the mistake when it comes to improper choices, that you can continue to make improper choices and face no consequences.
We all too often plant one crop and then before we know it, the crop we have planted is growing up all around us to the extent that what we have planted can begin to get a strangle-hold on us. It happens to those who are believers and it happens to those who are unbelievers, if something comes up, it is because we have planted an improper choice somewhere, in many cases.
Your relationship with God is not contingent upon the crops you plant and the choices you make. How much more secure could you be than to be joined to God’s son, that’s reigning in life, whether you realize it or appreciate it. Reigning in life means much more than the ability to make correct choices in our lives.
As important as it is that we make correct choices, reigning in life over sin means much, much, more than making proper choices. Paul was reigning in life from a practical perspective, because those who receive the gift of God, do in fact, reign in life. But, that does not mean that improper choices have no earthly consequences, they certainly do. While they will not affect your salvation, they can indeed wreak havoc in your life.
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teachmevp
You see, the Law of Moses had a relationship claim on every member of the human race. If the law has a rightful claim on you, God cannot have a rightful claim on you. If Christ has a rightful claim on you, the law has no rightful claim on you whatsoever.
To be joined to Christ and joined to the law at the same time would not only be bigamy, it would be adultery according to the apostle Paul. If you want to be joined to Christ, Paul gives the solution: there must be a death! As long as the law has jurisdiction over you in your mind, you are not free to be married to Christ, in your mind.
There are many people today who are doing that very thing. On the one hand, they claim to be joined to Jesus Christ, but on the other hand, who do they believe to be their husband? They continue to operate with God as though they were joined to the law, rather than joined to Christ, while claiming to belong to Christ on one hand and claiming to be operating under the dictates of the law on the other hand.
To what husband does a person belong is the question? That is what Paul is illustrating for us here at the outset of Romans chapter 7, one has to be dead in order to be married to the other. You cannot be legally bound, legally married to both at the same time, it is totally impossible! Grace and Law are polar opposites and God absolutely refuses to share those who are joined to his son with the law, with the law husband.
If you have been maintaining your relationship with the law in connection with your righteousness before God, in your mind, God would have you come out of that realm of thinking. You are either under the jurisdiction of the law, which requires performance for righteousness or you are under the jurisdiction of Jesus Christ and your identity in him is your righteousness, but you can not have it both ways.
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teachmevp
Grace within a dispensation was one thing; a dispensation characterized solely by grace is something else altogether. How many have heard that the apostle Paul dispensed a message that the 12 apostles had not dispensed, and that message was different, and that message was geared to the Gentiles?
If you lump these programs altogether, you are going to be taking from one program and trying to make it apply to another, when Paul clearly tells us that God is working differently today. Reconciliation, God changed the status of the human race when his son, Jesus Christ paid the ransom price necessary to redeem the human race from the market place of sin.
Justification and Sanctification are only for believers and believers alone, Satan’s desire is to corrupt people’s minds, not their activities. Satan is trying to corrupt people’s minds as to what Christ accomplished and the source of their righteousness.
A person must UNDERSTAND what it is they are being asked to believe, in order to be joined to Jesus Christ. The fact is that Jesus Christ took sinful people’s place, taking the penalty of their sins upon himself, so that those believing this truth could be joined to Jesus Christ. This is what makes Paul’s good news, a glorious gospel that goes far beyond the expected and moves into the realm of the unfathomable. Satan would rather people have their minds “religiously set” on believing something different.
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teachmevp
The earthly union of husbands and wives today are to be a reflection of the new oneness identification that all believers have with our Savior himself, Jesus Christ. Clearing the slate of the human race, as Christ became sin on behalf of the human race, was an accomplishment of unmeasurable proportions.
Justification is unfathomable to the earthly mind, that God could judicially consider you just as his perfectly righteous son. We are made to be the righteousness that belongs to God in our union with his perfectly righteous son. God married us to his perfect son, what belongs to Christ then belongs to the believers who are joined to Christ.
Marriage the way God planned it to be in the beginning, two become “one flesh” from God’s perspective. As Christ’s legal marriage partner, your name is now entered right along side Christ’s name on his account. By joining us to his son, God sees Christ’s account as being our account also.
Christ’s righteousness as God has your name attached to it, his account become you account at the point of your belief. Therefore, his righteousness became your righteousness. That is a phenomenal blessing that belongs to every believer during this age of grace. God is now able to view every believer as though we are as perfectly righteous as Christ himself.
The righteous of Christ has our name on it, because we are married to the perfectly righteous Christ, and it was God, through his energizing power from on high that consummated that union the very instant we first believed that Christ, to have resolved God’s justice for our sins. We are now joined to him, what belongs to him now belongs to us.
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teachmevp
The body of doctrine Paul taught renews our thinking, because in this dispensation God is not giving us experiences to look at, he is giving us doctrinal truths to learn. It is the Word of God, that does the work of God, because it contains the living water whereby people have their minds renewed today.
The Word of our salvation washes away any notion of self-cleansing for righteousness as an approach to God. Paul’s writings rinses any notion of people’s production as the basis of a right standing before God right down the drain and leaves the believer standing only in the purified state of Christ’s righteousness.
Only when the truth of reconciliation achieved through Jesus Christ is believed, does a new creation become a reality as far as that individual is concerned. The new creation hinges upon the acceptance of Christ’s sacrifice, that it accomplished reconciliation. The new creation is who you stand to be in Christ. A new creation is your new identity in Jesus Christ.
The new creation is not how you perform in a different way, or make commitments to perform differently, it all has to do with your being placed into Christ, that is the new creation. When a person believes in the reality of reconciliation, that person becomes an instantaneous member of the new creation called the Body of Christ; joined to him.
Cease attributing your righteous standing before God to your performance and keep your mind focused solely on how God views you in Christ. That is what grace life is all about, and you will be victorious in that God can now produce his fruit in your life. If your flesh could perform sufficiently, Christ’s sacrifice would never have been a necessity.
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teachmevp
Superstition falls under the deception heading of the religion of our last days, Satan has as much a field day with superstition as he does with counterfeit miracles. How do we know what is not so? It’s not so much the things we do not know that get us into trouble, it’s the things we know that just is not so.
Superstition is all that is required for many people to come to believe that supernatural events are actually taking place, they believe the Holy Spirit is involved. There is a tendency of people’s preconceptions to bias their interpretations of what they see, superstitious mind set can make something out of nothing, in order to validate a belief.
People will tend to engage in a search for evidence that is bias towards confirmation of their beliefs. They engage in evidence that tends to confirm their previously held belief, not fully utilizing all the information that is out there. Only searching out that which agrees with their cause, avoiding information that might dis-confirm their cause.
The tendency of the human mind is to seek out information that supports their belief and attribute a great deal of weight to that when they find it, while they discount or ignore evidence that goes contrary to the belief they hold. If they expect to see Mary make an appearance on a grill cheese sandwich, they will see the outline of Mary; setting their criteria so broadly that their preexisting beliefs is validated no matter what the outcome.
Colossians 2:8 - Not about to give up their traditions, because previous held beliefs, especially superstitious beliefs, are a most difficult thing to discard. The bias effect of second hand information. “They say” secondary experience, testimonial seasoning of superstition, the story validated the point someone wishes to promote.
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teachmevp
Ephesians 5:30 - Nowhere in the Word of God are we told that we are joined to God, of his flesh, and of his bones, because God’s body is composed of a substance called spirit. We are members of Jesus Christ’s body, because we have been joined to him through the identifying work of God through his energizing power from on high.
That energizing power from on high is in all who have taken God at his Word, as to what Christ accomplished when it comes to the resolution of God’s justice where our sins are concerned. It is because of Adam’s transgression, sin entered into the human race, but following right on the heels of sin entering into the human race, death by sin.
The issue for life everlasting is not what church you attend or to which denomination you belong or how religious you are or even whether or not you are a good person in the worldly sense of the word “good.”
The issue in eternity will not be how many sins you have committed or how many sins you have promised God you will abstain from committing. It will not be whether you have walked an aisle, recited a particular prayer, or asked Jesus into your heart.
The issue in eternity will be to which MAN are you related?Do you have your identity in the first Adam, or do you have your identity in the second Adam, Jesus Christ, you cannot be identified in both. When Paul talks about a new creature, old things being past away, all things become new, he is not talking about sin in an individuals life, he is talking about all that we were prior to salvation in the first Adam.
Once saved, we are no longer in the first Adam, we are at the initial point of our belief in the second Adam, Jesus Christ. In God’s eyes we are no longer who we once were, we are now the new creation being forever joined to our savior.
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teachmevp
We have things happen in our lives, we have negative things happen in our lives as believers, but the same negative things happen to non-believers. There is no testing, no temptation taking place today such as is not common to all the human race.
Forgiveness is all upfront, it covers all and you stand in the eyes of God having trusted in what our Savior accomplished on our behalf. You stand more than forgiven, you stand JUST in God’s eyes. Too many people are trying to Christianize the flesh, we are suppose to change our thinking, it all starts with our thinking.
Love, the behavioral glue that binds together the believer to other members of the Body of Christ, that is how God designed the new creation in Christ to operate. Love is the attitudinal adhesive God intends to keep the Body of Christ functionally smoothly and operating efficiently and effectively. Love is the bond that both unifies and edifies the members of the Body of Christ.
Satan would have you think your salvation is not complete. Satan would have you believe, Yes, Jesus died for your sins. Yes, he was buried. Yes, he was raised from among the dead, but your justification was not complete. So Satan would have you believe there is still forgiveness that must be obtained from time to time on the installment plan.
That is Satan’s gospel. Some people go weekly to get absolution for their sin, some groups do that nightly. Some people wear that forgiveness belt around them all day long, less they cross that imaginary line they have got in their mind, where they might cross that line and God changed his mind and cast them away. You are justified because of Paul’s good news, but what gospel have you believed? God would say, “You are already forgiven, why you coming for forgiveness?”
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teachmevp
Maturity is all about the degree to which you participate in the increase of the Body of Christ unto the deifying of its self in love. The degree to which you participate in that which brings unity to the Body of Christ and edifies the believer to that degree you can consider yourself to be mature.
It is much more than taking in knowledge, it is a renewed mind, it is taking in that knowledge, that knowledge might be put to use. Doctrine governs the intellect; the intellect governs the will; the will governs the emotions. There is one basic principle we can apply to every situation in our life, will Christ be magnified in my choice.
Give up serving self and that will be the best service to self you could ever give yourself, you will find true freedom and joy to be the ultimate result. We serve others today motivated by appreciation in the fact that God loves them, we are intricately joined to them, just as we are joined to Christ.
The law had apprehension as a motivation factor. Our labor of love under the Age of Grace has had the apprehension aspect removed entirely. We are to serve others today based on how God expressed his love to others through Christ and what he accomplished for them, who he made them and us to be in our savior by joining us to our savior.
Self is that which stands in the way of growth completeness, the idolatrous mind-set of people. Every believer has a part to play when it comes to that which edifies and unifies the Body of Christ, but attitude is that which instigates action. When it comes to maturity, Paul begins with the inter thought life, never with the outward action.
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teachmevp
There is a difference in what the Bible calls the flesh and what it calls the old man, these are not the same terms. The flesh, we all have that bent towards satisfying the lust of our flesh toward serving ourselves. We all have the flesh to contend with, it is alive and functioning in everyone us, none excluded.
Paul would have us understand while we still contend with our flesh, our sin bent, God eradicated our identity with it as far as our righteous standing before him is concerned and our identity in the Bible calls that the old man, that is gone, crucified.
So, while we continue to have and will continue to have to contend with the flesh, God no longer sees us in our identity with the flesh. God’s sentence on the flesh was not reformation, it was total eradication. That sentence was carried out when we died with Christ. God had no intention of repairing the old man.
Christ had to crucify our identity with the flesh, the old man. Paul wants us to agree with God to reckon our identity with our flesh as dead and gone. God has no plan to clean the old man up and make the old man more presentable, his intention was to kill the old man.
Every believer is standing in the gift degree of righteousness, the very perfect righteousness as God’s perfectly righteous son. If your life is hid with God in Christ then how does God view you? God views you in his son. If God’s energizing power from on high resides in every believer, no believer out of the loop, then how many believers are in the flesh? None!
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Knowing you are complete in Christ, how would love operate? God’s will for you is to be mature not only in the knowledge of his Word, but in the application of that knowledge through the avenue of love. Knowledge finds expression through our behavior. To serve Christ today, you must serve the earthly manifestation of Christ’s Body.
Knowing you have perfect righteousness in the son, how should you operate positively on behalf of others? Knowledge and love application of that knowledge is the idea behind growth, one without the other is entirely useless. Separation from the world means, growth requires something where the believer and the world is concerned.
A coin accomplishes nothing till it is spent, practical holiness is the hallmark of maturity; maturity demands it, you can not be mature apart from it. Practical holiness is that which will get you rewarded at The Bema Seat of Christ. Love will never show up empty handed where Bema Seat rewards are concerned, love always edifies and unifies.
To worship at the altar of the flesh, is to allow experience to trump truth, and to allow experience to trump truth, is to allow emotion to trump truth, and when experience becomes king in a person’s life, experience is determining that person’s doctrine, rather than that person’s doctrine determining the validity of their experience.
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The dispensing of the grace of God. You see, God does not bring armies of insects on people today, he is not sending calamity of any kind on people today, whether it be by climate disaster, financial upheaval, or whatever else might be attributed to God’s hand of judgment on a Christ rejecting world. Why?
God is NOT imputing people’s sins unto them today, because he imputed them to somebody else. Why all the turmoil and distressful circumstances in the world today? It is the age of sin, it is sin in the world, and sin playing itself out; the natural consequence of the sin of the world.
The apostle of the age of grace, delivers to us the truth that God is not bringing special judgments on the world today. The things that are occurring in our world today come as a natural result of the sin-cursed world in which we live, not from special judgments.
God is not trying to get even with people today because of their sins, and he is not calling down some special bad thing; some adverse situation, in order to teach certain individuals a lesson. God does not teach through special judgments during the Age of Grace, he teaches us through his written Word today.
Paul says, “It stablished us.” It stabilizes believers today, it is the Word that does the stabilizing work of God, so that we are able with the Word, hold up under what is happening today. God has given you what you need to endure whatever you face in this life, whether it be best circumstances or worse circumstances from our perspective. We take it in, it sustains us and builds us up, it fortifies us.
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2 Corinthians 7:1 - Why in the fear of God, because we have the Judgment Seat of Christ to which all those sealed in Christ will be present. This is every believer’s responsibility, we should conduct ourselves in a manner conducive to the job that God’s given us. It is our ambassadorship of the message of reconciliation, how am I to conduct myself given my ambassadorship?
Ephesians 4:1 - Your calling has not changed, it cannot change, so conduct yourselves in accordance with your calling. We are called to peace, this is how believers are to relate to other believers, but walk worthy of the vocation that belongs to you, because God has freely given it to you. How can those who have been justified freely, sanctified in Christ, how should those people be conducting themselves?
Colossians 3:14 - Agape is action love. There is a difference between upon and addition to, because when you put on love, you have simply taken all the seven states of mind listed in Colossians 3:12-13, and you have put movement to the attitude. Agape is the functional life of underlying attitude. Paul is saying I have given you the attitude, now let’s put feet to the attitude, grace attitude in action.
God never intended subjective feelings to be a replacement for objective truth, that is why he’s given us his Word. Only when inner peace lines up with the written Word of God Rightly Divided are we headed in the proper direction. Philippians 4:6-7, so when it comes to the peace department, God does NOT lead independently of the Word. So, we not only have peace with God, we can enjoy the peace of God, who shall keep our hearts and minds through Christ in every circumstance that we face.
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Romans 8:1 - There is THEREFORE NOW, the Now pointing back to the reality of our justification and our sanctification. Based on justification and sanctification, Paul often uses that word “therefore” which means he is ready to draw a conclusion. Paul took us through justification through faith, telling us how God has dealt with that problem of sin. And, then he took us through sanctification, the issue with sanctification is not about sin, but about perfection; God perfected us, made us as equally righteous as God himself.
Now, Paul draws it all together, based upon the fact that you are already sanctified, already IN Christ, there is now no condemnation for you. If God sees you IN Christ and he sees you as being complete in your identity with Christ, totally identified with Jesus Christ in every aspect of Christ’s life and relationship with the Father, to condemn you who are IN Christ, would be the same thing as to condemn Jesus Christ. Colossians 2:10
There are those who say the final portion of Romans 8:1 where it says, “who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit” should not be there at all. However, the thought of not walking after the flesh, but after the spirit does indeed appear down in Verse 4 and is in the manuscript of the Majority text, so that idea is a valid idea. So, rather than ignoring them altogether, why not just explain them.
Walking after the flesh is not talking about committing sins, but with placing one’s confidence in the capacity of their flesh to provide righteousness through performance. Rather than having Christ’s righteousness freely imputed to their account, the person who is walking after the flesh is the person laboring under the false notion that they can earn their righteousness through their performance. They are laboring under the false notion that there is capacity in their flesh to be right before God, that is precisely what Israel was doing.
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Romans 6:16 - If sin leads to death, obedience would lead to life is what we would conclude, but that is not what Paul said. Paul did not use life in opposition to death. Is it possible for a believer to sin and have those sins lead to death? Yes! We know that an unbeliever’s sin leads to death, so the universal principle that sin leads to death is true.
How then can a believer die? They can die physically, death can come in many different ways. If you decided every morning to drink a fifth of whiskey, what are you going to do to your body? A believer can die functionally in that they can serve no further useful purpose here on earth, no heavenly purpose on earth to those to whom they become an ambassador.
Galatians 6:8 - We can take this as a general principle. Life, in the physical sense, comes from making proper choices. Death, in a physical sense, can come from making improper choices in our lives. If we continue in a sinful lifestyle, and we continue not bringing the flesh into subjection, we can count on that lifestyle to take a toll on us.
Choices have consequences. The choices we make with serving self have an effect on others which will affect us. Death can take place in so many ways, it could be emotional, it can be relational. We do not need to start pointing at particular sins, but if we are a slave to sin, whatever sin we are serving, the sin that has us in bondage will exact its toll on our flesh.
You did not free yourself from sin, God did that in response to Christ’s faithfulness and your faith in Christ faithful sacrifice to have resolved God’s justice where your sins are concerned. You became a servant to the righteousness that is already yours, but some of us servants do not do a very good job of serving, do we?
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Romans 6:11 - We need to be focusing on our new identity. Where do you reckon? In your mind. Take an inventory of the facts, to count it up and consider all of the facts and then to come to an appropriate conclusion based upon those facts. Paul is going to great lengths here in Romans Chapter 6 to make his case, that people who fail to conduct themselves properly, fail to understand properly.
That is Paul’s point here in Verse 11, he places the emphasis when it comes to grace behavior on helping us to perceive ourselves in the new identity that is our right now, being IN Jesus Christ. Paul wants us to see ourselves as God already sees us. We need to be focusing on our new identity.
You have to know something, to count up the facts before you can come to an appropriate conclusion based upon what you know to be true. That is why knowledge is absolutely essential. If you have drawn an improper conclusion, Paul would say it is because you have failed to properly consider all of the facts.
Anyone who teaches that God accepts you or blesses you on the basis of how well you dress up the old man up in Christian clothing, or on how well you make the old man perform, that person fails to properly understand that the old man no longer exists in the eyes of God. They spend all of their time trying to perfect the old man.
Reckon ourselves to be now and forevermore alive unto God, we cannot lose it. Behavior did not put us there, behavior cannot take us out of there. Christ will never again have to die for our sins and likewise, we can count on the fact that we will never die for our sins. When Paul tells us to put on the new man, he is not asking us to dress up the old man, he is simply asking us to recognize that the old man no longer exists in the eyes of God. See yourselves as God sees you.
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Romans 12:10 - A synonym for the word “preferring” is the word “deference.” Showing deference means putting another person’s interests above your own interest. If preferring others above self is the measure of our love for God, how many of us can truly say we love God with ALL our heart, ALL our soul, ALL our mind? How many of us love others more than we love ourselves?
We do not show deference, we show preference, and the problem is that the one most often preferred in the life of everyone with a sin nature, is self. Whose love was it that restrained our apostle? Was it his love for God, or was it God’s love for Paul? Isn’t serving one another love?
Love is serving others, but notice here in Galatians 5:13, “by love serve one another.” In other wards, by love we are to love, does that make sense? Isn’t that an interesting construction? Through the instrumentality of love, we are to love others. Through the instrumentality of who’s love, is it our love for God that helps us love others or is it God’s love for us that helps us to love others?
Our reasonable service is a reflection of our appreciation for the fact that the sin question was forever settled. The root cause of our sin is that we love our self and we will not allow anyone to taint that self view. We interpret everything through the sieve of self. We relate what others do, we relate what others say in accordance with their actions and their words substantiate the way we desire to see our self. This is the idolatry mind-set.
Maturity is all about the degree to which you participate in the increase of the Body of Christ unto the deifying of its self in love. The degree to which you participate in that which brings unity to the Body of Christ and edifies the believer to that degree you can consider yourself to be mature. It is much more than taking in knowledge, it is a renewed mind.
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