Reconciliation simply means a change in status, and it is a major issue recognizing reconciliation. Reconciliation from God’s advantage point is an accomplished fact, and God is reconciled where the totality of the sin debt of all men is concerned.
None of us measure up to the perfection of God, and the only reason God could say through Paul, “Grace and Peace be unto you” is because his son fully paid the price. How many of us have grown up with the idea that God has to make a decision at some point in our life whether or not to forgive us for our sins? God forgiving us is not something he must decided to do.
The truth Paul has proclaimed in all of his epistles is we could not get right with God in a million life times of trial and error. We could never make ourselves right with God, and he had to do what we could not do for ourselves. God had to make us right with him, and he did so through the finished work of his perfectly righteous son.
How many of our sins were future when Christ died for our sins? All of them were future, and God placed them all on his perfectly righteous son. Christ’s test score is written on our paper, it is an amazing transfer. The issue of sin was settled as a result of Christ’s death, it is a son issue today, not a sin issue.
Will we accept what Jesus Christ accomplished as a result of his death or will we reject it, the son is the issue with God today. God’s attitude of love forces no one to take him at his word. God gives all the choice to accept what Christ accomplished on their behalf today, or to reject it.
God purchased men out of sins dominion, never to be returned to the market place of sin again. By removing the sin issue from the table of God’s justice, God effectively canceled Satan’s ownership of all mankind. Reconciliation has to do with God’s justice being satisfied for sins, reconciliation is a sin issue.
Many teachers will tell us that we can be reconciled, but that is not true, reconciliation was accomplished as a result of Christ’s death, where Christ became sin for the entire human race. Our sins were not stored on Christ to be brought back later; our sins were paid for by him, and he satisfied totally the justice of God for those sins.
Justification, on the other hand, is something entirely different; it has to do with a judicial decree of the very righteousness of God himself freely attributed to our account. No one can receive that unless that person is placed into Christ. Being placed into Christ, joined to Christ is the method whereby God justifies us; or righteousifies us.
We must believe that Christ put our sins (past, present and future) away forever as a result of his death, in order to be placed into Christ to have righteousness freely attributed to our account.
Death, as we know it, would indeed be the end of our existence were it not for the fact of the resurrection. It is the resurrection that turns death into a temporary sleep, so to speak. The second death differs from the first death, not in nature, but in results.
The first death is a temporary sleep, because it is followed the the resurrection. The second death is permeant and irreversible extinction, because there is no awakening. The second death is the death resulting from the final judgment which prevents evildoers from living in the new earth to come, a punishment that ultimately results in eternal, irreversible death.
The stern punishment awaiting the enemies of righteousness, whose temporary resurrection results only in a return to death and its punishment, their full and final defeat. The wicked will be resurrected mortal in order to receive their punishment which will result in their ultimate annihilation.
In the Old Testament, the word “sheol” is the underground depository of the dead. There are no immaterial, immortal souls in sheol, simply because the soul does not survive the death of the body. Nowhere in the Old Testament is the abode of the dead regarded as a place of punishment or torment.
The concept of an infernal ‘hell’ developed in Israel only during the Hellenistic period. The condition of the dead in sheol, the realm of the dead, is one of unconsciousness, inactivity, a rest or sleep that will continue until they are resurrected. The prospect that one day a vast number of people will be consigned to the everlasting torment of hell is most disturbing.
Traditionalists read “eternal punishment” as “eternal punishing.” When the adjective “aionios” meaning eternal or everlasting, is used in the Greek with nouns of action, it has reference to the result of the action, not the process. The wicked will not be passing through a process of punishment forever, but will be punished once and for all with eternal results.
The destruction of the wicked is eternal “aionios,” not because the process of destruction continues forever, but because the results are permanent. “Eternal” often refers to the permanence of the result, rather than the continuation of a process.
It is evident that the fire that destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah is eternal, not because of its duration, but because of its permanent results. “And others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire” (Jude 23a). The fire to which Jude refers is obviously the same kind of fire that consumed Sodom and Gomorrah.
It is evident that the fire that destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah is eternal, not because of its duration, but because of its permanent results. It is important to note that the Greek word “aionios” literally means “lasting for an age.”
Roman emperors being described as “aionios”; what is meant is that they held their office for life. Unfortunately, the English words “eternal” or “everlasting” do not accurately render the meaning of “aionios”, which literally means “age-lasting.”
The notion of the eternal torment of the wicked can only be defended by accepting the Greek view of the immortality and indestructibility of the soul, a concept which is foreign to Scripture. Everlasting torture is intolerable from a moral point of view, because it pictures God acting like a bloodthirsty monster who maintains an everlasting Auschwitz for his enemies, whom he does not even allow to die.
Consider the moral implications of the traditional view of hell, which depicts God as a cruel torturer who torments the wicked throughout all eternity. The thought of such a torment being deliberately inflicted by divine decree, is totally incompatible with the idea of God as infinite love.
Many Christians will be sorely disappointed to discover that their beliefs in the afterlife are a delusion. When this happens, it will cause personal crisis to Christians accustom to believing that at death their souls break loose from their bodies and continue to exist either in Heaven or in the torment of Hell.
Redemption is the restoration of the whole person, and not the salvation of the soul apart from the body. If at death the soul of the believer goes up immediately to Heaven to be with Jesus, one hardly can have any real sense of expectation for Jesus to come down to raise the dead believers that were in Jesus, and transform the living believers that are in Jesus.
Traditionally, evangelical and other religious persuasions teach, that at the resurrection, their material bodies are reunited with their souls, thus intensifying the pleasure of Heaven or the pain of Hell. Why are evangelicals so adamant in refusing to reconsider the Biblical teachings on the restoration of the whole person?
To abandon souls being reunited with their bodies, also entails abandoning a whole cluster of doctrines resulting form it. The total impact of dividing humans into body and soul has promoted all sorts of false dichotomies in Scripture. To be an “Evangelical” means to uphold certain fundamental traditional doctrines without questioning.
Any one who dares to question the Biblical validity of a traditional doctrine can become suspect as a “heretic.” It is impossible to estimate the far-reaching impact that the doctrine of unending hellfire has had throughout the centuries in justifying religious intolerance, torture, and the burning of “heretics.” The rationale is simple: If God is going to burn heretics in Hell for all eternity, why shouldn’t the church burn them to death now?
Redemption and forgiveness, this is a major focal point of the secret, when it’s come to what God is now revealed, sin no longer being the issue with God, we already have redemption and forgiveness.
It’s not things we need to seek from God, but things God’s already accomplished for us, we need simply believe they are ours in order to appropriate in our own thinking, what has already been accomplished on our behalf.
Our redemption is complete, our forgiveness is all complete, all upfront, both are past tense accomplishments that Paul would have us acknowledge and proclaim, who accomplished them for us, our Savior, Jesus Christ.
Israel was continually being called upon to repent, to change their thinking. John called upon the nation to repent, the 12 called upon Israel to repent, and Jesus called upon the nation to repent, God wanted them to change their thinking about the source of their righteousness and the identity of their Messiah.
Righteousness could never come from them, and that is where they had to change their thinking, this was the change of mind confession that God wanted his earthly nation to make. What do most church people think when they hear the word repentance?
Most would say to repent means to have Godly sorrow that leads to repentance. Others would say that to repent means to turn around and go the other direction, sin no more, is that not what first comes to mind when we see the word repentance from our religious upbringing, this is what is commonly taught in the hallways of religion.
Death, as we know it, would indeed be the end of our existence were it not for the fact of the resurrection. It is the resurrection that turns death into a temporary sleep, so to speak. The second death differs from the first death, not in nature, but in results.
The first death is a temporary sleep, because it is followed the the resurrection. The second death is permeant and irreversible extinction, because there is no awakening. The second death is the death resulting from the final judgment which prevents evildoers from living in the new earth to come, a punishment that ultimately results in eternal, irreversible death.
The stern punishment awaiting the enemies of righteousness, whose temporary resurrection results only in a return to death and its punishment, their full and final defeat. The wicked will be resurrected mortal in order to receive their punishment which will result in their ultimate annihilation.
In the Old Testament, the word “sheol” is the underground depository of the dead. There are no immaterial, immortal souls in sheol, simply because the soul does not survive the death of the body. Nowhere in the Old Testament is the abode of the dead regarded as a place of punishment or torment.
The concept of an infernal ‘hell’ developed in Israel only during the Hellenistic period. The condition of the dead in sheol, the realm of the dead, is one of unconsciousness, inactivity, a rest or sleep that will continue until they are resurrected. The prospect that one day a vast number of people will be consigned to the everlasting torment of hell is most disturbing.
Traditionalists read “eternal punishment” as “eternal punishing.” When the adjective “aionios” meaning eternal or everlasting, is used in the Greek with nouns of action, it has reference to the result of the action, not the process. The wicked will not be passing through a process of punishment forever, but will be punished once and for all with eternal results.
The destruction of the wicked is eternal “aionios,” not because the process of destruction continues forever, but because the results are permanent. “Eternal” often refers to the permanence of the result, rather than the continuation of a process.
It is evident that the fire that destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah is eternal, not because of its duration, but because of its permanent results. “And others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire” (Jude 23a). The fire to which Jude refers is obviously the same kind of fire that consumed Sodom and Gomorrah.
It is evident that the fire that destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah is eternal, not because of its duration, but because of its permanent results. It is important to note that the Greek word “aionios” literally means “lasting for an age.”
Roman emperors being described as “aionios”; what is meant is that they held their office for life. Unfortunately, the English words “eternal” or “everlasting” do not accurately render the meaning of “aionios”, which literally means “age-lasting.”
The notion of the eternal torment of the wicked can only be defended by accepting the Greek view of the immortality and indestructibility of the soul, a concept which is foreign to Scripture. Everlasting torture is intolerable from a moral point of view, because it pictures God acting like a bloodthirsty monster who maintains an everlasting Auschwitz for his enemies, whom he does not even allow to die.
Consider the moral implications of the traditional view of hell, which depicts God as a cruel torturer who torments the wicked throughout all eternity. The thought of such a torment being deliberately inflicted by divine decree, is totally incompatible with the idea of God as infinite love.
Many Christians will be sorely disappointed to discover that their beliefs in the afterlife are a delusion. When this happens, it will cause personal crisis to Christians accustom to believing that at death their souls break loose from their bodies and continue to exist either in Heaven or in the torment of Hell.
Redemption is the restoration of the whole person, and not the salvation of the soul apart from the body. If at death the soul of the believer goes up immediately to Heaven to be with Jesus, one hardly can have any real sense of expectation for Jesus to come down to raise the dead believers that were in Jesus, and transform the living believers that are in Jesus.
Traditionally, evangelical and other religious persuasions teach, that at the resurrection, their material bodies are reunited with their souls, thus intensifying the pleasure of Heaven or the pain of Hell. Why are evangelicals so adamant in refusing to reconsider the Biblical teachings on the restoration of the whole person?
To abandon souls being reunited with their bodies, also entails abandoning a whole cluster of doctrines resulting form it. The total impact of dividing humans into body and soul has promoted all sorts of false dichotomies in Scripture. To be an “Evangelical” means to uphold certain fundamental traditional doctrines without questioning.
Any one who dares to question the Biblical validity of a traditional doctrine can become suspect as a “heretic.” It is impossible to estimate the far-reaching impact that the doctrine of unending hellfire has had throughout the centuries in justifying religious intolerance, torture, and the burning of “heretics.” The rationale is simple: If God is going to burn heretics in Hell for all eternity, why shouldn’t the church burn them to death now?
Here is a link to an article that I have written on this subject of the New Testament Greek word for "age". It agrees with much of what you have posted above.
Here is a link to an article that I have written on this subject of the New Testament Greek word for "age". It agrees with much of what you have posted above.
Traditionalists read “eternal punishment” as “eternal punishing.” When the adjective “aionios” meaning eternal or everlasting, is used in the Greek with nouns of action, it has reference to the result of the action, not the process. The wicked will not be passing through a process of punishment forever, but will be punished once and for all with eternal results.
The destruction of the wicked is eternal “aionios,” not because the process of destruction continues forever, but because the results are permanent. “Eternal” often refers to the permanence of the result, rather than the continuation of a process.
It is evident that the fire that destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah is eternal, not because of its duration, but because of its permanent results. Great writing, share more. People need to hear more about the permanent resutts results, rather then the continuation of a process. Share more about "age". Thanks for reading my posts.
The simplicity of age is that it can ONLY refer to eternal as it is related to God. Otherwise, with age referring to ANYTHING else it will have a time limit. Both a beginning and an ending. As an example of this our natural bodies have a time limit for every human. And our natural bodies do decay. Without God the creator, mankind would not even be able to begin an age or time period of any kind. It is only as mankind is associated with God through his son Jesus Christ that mankind can receive a new spiritual eternal body. This should be obvious to every Christian or follower of Jesus Christ that our natural bodies have a time limit with a beginning and an ending. This is the main part of the word "Age". To have eternal life we need a new spiritual body and the apostle Paul makes this clear in his written work found in 1 Corinthians chapter 15. Last weekend I finished writing a commentary on this chapter. I can post this later, when I have more time for web site coding. I am now learning to code sites that can be viewed on both desktops along with smartphones for the same web site pages.
If there is eternal anything, for example the very negative pagan concept of eternal torment, this would have to be through the power of God only. I am glad that we see that God is not the spiritual equivalent of a very hateful Adolph Hitler on steroids. This is an obvious contradiction of the scripture "God is Love" along with many other scriptures.
The simplicity of age is that it can ONLY refer to eternal as it is related to God. Otherwise, with age referring to ANYTHING else it will have a time limit. Both a beginning and an ending. As an example of this our natural bodies have a time limit for every human. And our natural bodies do decay. Without God the creator, mankind would not even be able to begin an age or time period of any kind. It is only as mankind is associated with God through his son Jesus Christ that mankind can receive a new spiritual eternal body. This should be obvious to every Christian or follower of Jesus Christ that our natural bodies have a time limit with a beginning and an ending. This is the main part of the word "Age". To have eternal life we need a new spiritual body and the apostle Paul makes this clear in his written work found in 1 Corinthians chapter 15. Last weekend I finished writing a commentary on this chapter. I can post this later, when I have more time for web site coding. I am now learning to code sites that can be viewed on both desktops along with smartphones for the same web site pages.
If there is eternal anything, for example the very negative pagan concept of eternal torment, this would have to be through the power of God only. I am glad that we see that God is not the spiritual equivalent of a very hateful Adolph Hitler on steroids. This is an obvious contradiction of the scripture "God is Love" along with many other scriptures.
Traditionalists read “eternal punishment” as “eternal punishing.” When the adjective “aionios” meaning eternal or everlasting, is used in the Greek with nouns of action, it has reference to the result of the action, not the process. The wicked will not be passing through a process of punishment forever, but will be punished once and for all with eternal results. Look forward to reading your commentary.
Paul has something he can not escape, the struggle that was taking place with him, his flesh as opposed to God’s power from on high dwelling within him. The very fact this saved person continues to possess a sin nature or self bent always opposing that which God desires, is the very thing that keeps a saved person from accomplishing righteousness through performance.
It is one thing to begin right, then to hear false doctrine and move out in the left field somewhere, because we are hearing something after we have believed Paul’s good news. It is another thing to have never heard the proper good news of Paul to begin with, and to have begun with the thinking that we were earning God’s favor through something that we did or we would do.
Paul showed how some people become content to trust in their own obedience in order to stand justified in the eyes of a perfectly just God, they were crediting their righteous works for a superior position before God. We see that these people had chosen to believe a wrong message, they had believed correctly to begin with, and then they had chosen to believe those who used the scriptures to steal and hide the truth of a perfectly justified status before God by grace alone through faith alone in the accomplishments of Jesus Christ.
Not only did Paul face the doctrinally issues that people had then, much as they have now, he had to face the continuing conflict people had with one another in those assemblies. Problems arise, when people arrive, the more people we have, the more problems we will have.
Love is what the carnal Corinthians lacked, that lack of love was evidence in the divisions and factions within their fellowships. Love is the bond that unifies and edifies other members of the Body of Christ, love is the operating principle of doctrinal wisdom.
The agape behavioral glue that binds together the believer with all their doctrinal knowledge and their positional perfection to other members of the Body of Christ, that is how God designed the new creation in Christ to operate.
Love is the behavioral glue, attitudinal adhesive that God intended to keep the Body of Christ functioning smoothly and operation efficiently and effectively. Love is the bond that unifies and edifies other members of the Body of Christ, love is the operating principle of doctrinal wisdom.
Did pride not cause the divisions and factions in Corinth over the gifts given as a sign to unbelieving Israel. Pride cause God to turn away from Israel as his chosen channel of blessing and call forth a brand new apostle to initiate a brand new program with the establishment of a brand new creation called the Body of Christ.
It is surprising how many people think Jesus Christ died for the sins they have committed up to a point, but then, from that point on, they have got to keep those sins taken out of the way. Christ paid the price to deliver the human race from God’s justice, yet, with Christ paying the price necessary to satisfy God’s justice for ALL the sins of ALL the world, there are those who would accuse Paul of lying.
A Christ established reconciliation is the core ingredient in Paul’s good news, God has reconciled the world to himself, Paul makes that abundantly clear, God is not imputing people’s sins unto them, because Jesus Christ paid the penalty for those sins.
Judicial satisfaction for sins is what reconciliation is all about, God is not counting, reckoning, imputing, or charging people’s sins to their account, and for a very good reason, he charged those sins to his son’s account.
The doctrinal transaction called Justification has to do with God recognizing someone to be righteous. God will recognize those who take him at his word, concerning the price Christ became on their behalf, to resolve God’s justice for their sins. Justification is a recognition of righteousness that comes from God to those who believe God, it does not go away, it does not abate over time, it is ours forever.
We are not to cleanse ourselves in order to gain something from God, when it comes to our holy standing before him, or to maintain something before God because we have been freely given something, namely a justified and sanctified position in God’s son, Jesus Christ.
How can those who have been justified freely, sanctified in Jesus Christ, how should we be conducting ourselves? We should conduct ourselves in a manner that goes sides by side or that goes in hand with what God has already called us to do, our ambassadorship of the message of reconciliation.
Paul was teaching grace, plus nothing, and that leads people with a sin nature and pride nature to say, Oh, we have got something! If we do not know what Justification and Sanctification are all about, and we think that we are justified on the basis of how we set ourself apart behaviorally, naturally we want other people to set themselves apart, and we want them to have to tow the mark, as you have to tow the mark to keep God happy.
May grace never be the cause, although grace is true, may grace never be the cause for a person to think they should now go out and sin all the more. May that type of reasoning not cross our minds, that is not the way a believer should be thinking!
People do what they want to do, we have always done what we want to do, and people continue to do what they want to do. We would naturally come to be thinking along those lines, if we fail to have an understanding of Justification and Sanctification.
Do we sin? But, we are dead to sin! Are we supposed to stop sinning? If we understand what the word “sin” means, coming short of God’s Glory, now that we are dead to sin, can we now measure up to God’s Glory? Positional truth, we were dead in sins, because we had our identity in Adam, Adam in rebellion.
We now have a brand new identity, “dead to sin” identity, but those who would die in their sins were those who would continue to have their identity in Adam, Adam in rebellion, understanding identity is key! Failing to understand positional truth will cause much confusion, because we want to go back to practical reality.
Grace is a much greater motivator, it is the love of God that constrains us, not fear that God is going to strike us dead, or allow us to be a part of the second death if we perform what we should not be performing, or do not measure up through our performance.
Are people set apart as holy in God’s sight because of their lack of sin, or are people set apart as holy in God’s sight because he has joined them to his son? God is not giving out his righteousness as a reward to those who are sorry for the past, and who promise to do their best in the future.
At the point of our belief in what Christ accomplished where our sins are concerned, we are as closely associated with Christ as anyone could be, we are joined to him. What an ingenious salvation plan, to take someone else that is righteous and join us to that person, therefore what is Christ’s is ours!
We need to cease attributing our righteous standing before God to our performance and keep our mind focused solely on how God views us in Christ, that is what grace-life is all about, and we will be victorious in that God’s power can now produce it’s fruit in our life.
When God raised Jesus from among the dead, it was God’s stamp of “pain in full” on the invoice of our sin debt. We could not get right with God in a million life times of trial and error, we could never make ourselves right with God; God had to do what we could not do. Now believing sinners can be certain that in Christ, they are justified.
God wants us to stop putting our faith in ourselves, he wants us to actually come to the place where we literally have no confidence in the flesh, but have full reliance in Christ alone. To bring our body in subjection, as Paul put it, but would he ever be able to do that sufficiently to merit righteousness before God? Absolutely not!
That is not the issue, but Paul could do it in appreciation to whatever degree he was capable. A person must understand what it is they are asked to believe, in order to be joined to the body of Jesus Christ.
It is unfathomable what God accomplished through his son; Jesus Christ took sinful people’s place, taking the penalty of their sins upon himself, so that those believing this truth can be joined to his body.
Paul had been given special divine authority with the understanding that he is our apostle, and that authority carried with it the details of what God expects people to believe today concerning the salvation Jesus Christ purchased for them with his sacrifice.
Unless people believe Jesus Christ accomplished something where their sins are concerned when he died for those sins, Paul’s good news is hidden to them. Satan’s ministers of righteousness are busy at work within the righteous structure called “religion” in order to keep the meaning of Paul’s good news hidden, to keep people’s eyes blinded to the truth of what Christ really accomplished.
Understanding our completeness in Jesus Christ should motivate us to make wise choices. All of us who have been sealed into the body of Christ wants God to be pleased with the decisions that we make, but God has given us the freedom to make our own choices.
Healthy behaviors result from an identity that is healthy and fully based upon Jesus Christ’s performance on our behalf, as a result, we can begin learning to find rest; who we are has been settled in Christ. It is Christ’s faith that righteousifies those who take their stand with God when it comes to what God has stated his son accomplished for them.
It was Christ’s faith and as a result of his faith, his faithfulness that he sacrificed himself and purchased the gift of our salvation. It is our faith in the accomplishment of Jesus Christ’s faithful sacrifice that is the means whereby God acknowledges that we have accepted the gift his son purchased.
Therefore, God in his infinite wisdom devised a plan whereby he could take the very faith belonging to his son, along with its resultant faithfulness, and credit that faith and faithfulness to the account of those who believe.
Yet, finding rest sounds rather foreign to us, an idea too unrealistic or too good to be true, because somewhere in our life we have been involved in the relationships of our environments that were based on conditions. Many people involved in religion’s domain are dealing with God on the basis of probation, rather than salvation.
Then God must make a decision in their minds, whether or not to save that individual. Their suitability for heaven depends upon their turning away from all of their sins. If they will simply dedicate themselves to no longer to sin, that is the idea.
Standards may have become so deeply ingrained, that we are not even aware of them, let alone conscious of how to get free from their tyranny, constantly trying to measure up to standards that are higher than we can reach.
This is why God allows all kinds of things into our lives, which he uses to strip us of our personal sense of worth. God is making us conformable to the death of Christ, so that in living this experience, we might become conformed in his resurrection.
This process is not enjoyable, because it is hard to learn that life cannot be controlled, it is far too spontaneous and rambunctious to be fully understood.
Relationally, forgiveness is crucial to our maturity, it is the glue that holds the body of Christ together. Instead of insisting on the unity of the mind, we need to preserve the unity by taking the initiative to be the peacemaker in our relationships.
Forgiveness is difficult for us, because it pulls against our concept of justice; we want revenge for offenses suffered, but if we do not let offenders off our hook, we are hooked to them. We need to let go, because the unforgiving believer is yoked to the past or to a person and is not free.
We should not try to rationalize or explain the believer’s behavior, forgiveness deals with our pain, not another’s behavior. Forgiveness is agreeing to live with the consequences of another believer’s wrong, our only choice is whether we will do so in the bitterness of unforgiveness or the freedom of forgiveness.
Forgiveness is a choice, forgetting may be a result of forgiveness, but it is never the means of forgiveness, and when we bring up the past against other, we have not forgiven them. Forgiveness does not mean that we must be a doormat to their continual wrongdoing, it is okay to forgive another’s past wrong, and at the same time, take a stand against future wrongdoing.
The shield of faith does not create reality; the shield of faith responds to reality, because forgiveness is a crisis of the will, a conscious choice to let the other person off the hook and free ourselves, though we may not fell like making this decision, but this is a crises of the will.
We put on the shoes of peace, because we are to forgive as we have been forgiven, and we must base our relationships with others on the same criteria on which God bases his relationship with us: love, acceptance, and forgiveness.
Satan and his forces use unforgiveness more than any other human deficiency to stop our growth and our ministry of reconciliation, unforgiveness toward other believers is the most widespread stronghold they enjoy.
Many of the body of Christ, instead of recognizing that their minds are being peppered by the fiery darts of the enemy, they think the problem is their own fault. “If those foul thoughts are mine, what kind of person am I?” they wonder.
So they end up condemning themselves while the enemy continues their attack unchecked; it is a gradual process of deception and yielding to their subtle influence. By observing us the enemy can pretty well tell what we are thinking, but they do not know what we are going to do before we do it.
They can put thoughts into our mind, and they will know whether we buy their lie by how we behave. If we are gong to resist the enemy, we must do so outwardly so they can understand us and be put to flight. The enemy will invite us to fulfill our physical needs in ways that outside the boundary of God’s will for us.
We cannot expect God to protect us from their influences if we do not take an active part in God’s prepared strategy. Whenever we feel enticed to meet a legitimate physical need by acting independently of God, we are being tempted though the lust of the flesh.
The lust of the eyes subtly draws us away from God and eats away at our confidence in God. We see what the world has to offer and we begin to place more credence in our own perspective of life. The temptation of the pride of life is intended to destroy our obedience to our ministry of reconciliation by urging us to take charge of our own lives.
Escaping temptation is to apprehend every thought as soon as it steps through the doorway of our mind. Every temptation is first a thought introduced to our mind by our own carnality or the enemy themselves. Once we have halted a penetration thought, we need to evaluate it on the basis of Paul’s criterion for what we should think about.
When we learn to respond to tempting thoughts by stopping them at the door of our mind, evaluating them on the basis of God’s word, we have found the way of escape that Paul talks about. When we do not understand the doctrinal truths Paul taught pertaining to our sealed position in Christ, we have no ground for success in the practical arena.
The most dangerous and harmful detriments to our growth is passivity, putting our mind in neutral and coasting, sitting back and waiting for God to do everything is not God’s way to maturity. Our old pattern for thinking and responding to our sin-trained flesh must be transformed by the renewing of our mind, it is our responsibility to change our behavior by putting to death the deeds of the body.
If the enemy can deceive us into believing a lie, they can control our life in that area. We are saints whom God has declared righteous, believing the enemies lie will lock us into a defeated, fruitless life, but believing God’s truth about who we are will set us free.
It is imperative to our growth and maturity that we believe God’s truth about who we are. We must learn how to resolve previous conflicts or the emotional baggage will accumulate as we continue to withdraw from life, the past will control our life as our options for handling it continue to decrease.
Perceiving those events from the perspective of our new identity, which God sealed in Christ, is what starts the process of healing those damaged emotions, because we have the privilege of evaluating our past experience in the light of who we are now, as opposed to who we were then.
When we put on the armor of God, we are really putting on Christ, and when we put on Christ, we take ourselves out of the realm of the flesh, where we are vulnerable to attack, it is not wise for us to live on the enemies level.
Since their primary weapon is the lie, our belt of truth is continually being attacked. If they can disable us in the area of truth, we become an easy target for their other attacks. We stand firm in the truth by relating everything we do to the truth of God’s word, and when we learn to live in the truth on a daily basis, we will grow to love the truth because we will have nothing to hide.
Rejoicing is the exhibit of that interstate of mind, because no longer do we have to strive to attain and maintain God’s acceptance on the basis of who we are and what we can do, no longer are our sins held against us, no longer does the death penalty for sin hang over us.
Joy is a trust issue; joy in Christ for a believer is that of a state of mind independent of surrounding circumstances. People glorifies themselves by filtering everything they say and everything they do through that screen of self-protection, self-elevation, and self-gratification.
Joy comes from an understanding of the grace of God, an understanding and appreciation of the resultant peace with God that we now have because of God’s grace. The insidious reality of the enemies relentless assault of deception on our mind can keep us from experiencing maturity and freedom, because our past has shaped our present belief system and will determine our future unless it is dealt with.
We have been tricked into believing that what we do makes us what we are. Our understanding of the identity that Adam had before the fall, that identity has been restored to us, that restored identity is the critical foundation for our belief structure and our behavior patterns.
Those who put on the breastplate of righteousness know that we have peace with God, for a person to have to make their own peace with God would be nothing more than an exercise in futility, it could never be done.
We could not make peace with God, to say that anyone could make peace with God, would be to limit God to his mercy, because grace is the foundation on which Paul’s entire ministry was built. There is a glory that belongs to God’s grace, and it is to be praised on the bases on what God’s grace has accomplished.
The security all believers have in that the indwelling resurrection power of God guarantees that those who have believed Paul’s good news can never be lost, they belong to God. The word translated “sealed” in Ephesians 1:13 means sealed for preservation.
The seal is the safeguarding device, the securing device, used to preserve the contents. God’s power is the seal that God uses to secure all who believe in this dispensation of grace. The word translated “earnest” in Ephesians 1:14 means a pledge in the sense that an advance deposit has been made as the security guaranteeing the fulfillment of that which has been promised to those who have been sealed.
Like when a person gives earnest money in connection with a purchase, that person is guaranteeing, through that which is given in advance their intention of following through on that which they have promised. According to Paul, the indwelling of God’s power is both God’s seal and his deposited pledge that all believers are forever his and are destined to inherit eternal life.
Paul doesn’t tell us that we are filled with God’s power, but instead, Paul is telling us that we should be filled with God’s power. In other words, we should allow God’s power to be in control of our lives. Of course, the degree to which we do that is up to us.
God’s power works in us, but only to the degree that we are willing to yield ourselves to God’s use in our ministry of reconciliation.
The difference between the two Adam’s in our history is the need to be sure we are identifying with the right one. Understanding and acting upon who we are in Jesus Christ is the basis for successful growth and maturity.
Our daily performance is often marked by personal failure and disobedience, which disappoints us and disrupts the harmony of our ambassadorship of God’s reconciliation. In our attempts to understand the disobedience which so often disturbs our ambassadorship, are we unwitting victims of our old identity?
Our old identity which we have inherited from the disobedience of the first Adam, is like a big black dog, but through the redemptive work of the second Adam, Jesus Christ, God put his power from on high in us, when we got born anew, and that power is like a big white dog.
Whenever we involve ourselves in worldly thoughts or behavior, we are feeding the black dog. Whenever we focus our mind and activities on matters of our ambassadorship, we are feeding the white dog. The dog we feed the most will eventually grow stronger and overpower the other.
God has not given us the power to imitate him, he has made us partakers of his righteousness, so that we can actually dwell with him. He did not say, “Here are my standards, now you measure up.” God knows we cannot solve the problem of our old identity, Adam in rebellion, by simply improving our behavior.
When we choose to walk according to the old identity, in which we were trained before becoming born anew, such behavior violates our ambassadorship. When this happens, we feel convicted because our behavior is not in keeping with who we really are.
In fact, if a person does something which they know is morally wrong, but feels no conviction, we should seriously doubt that that person is part of the Body of Christ. We commit sin when we willfully allow ourselves to act independent of our ambassadorship, as our old identity did as a matter of course.
So why do we still react as if our old identity is still in control of our behavior? Because, while we served under it, our old identity trained and conditioned our actions, reactions, emotional responses, thought patterns, memories and habits in our brain.
Our worldly experiences thoroughly programmed our brain with thought patterns, memory traces, responses and habits. Our brain still generates humanistic thoughts and ideas, and our old identity is that part of us which was trained and determined to succeed and survive by our own abilities.
When we became born anew, God did not press the “clear” button in our brain, our old identity persists in suggesting ways to live independent of our ambassadorship of God’s reconciliation. The first thing we need to know about the battle for our mind, is that the main targets which must be destroyed are the fortresses in our mind, or called strongholds.
Strongholds are negative patters of thought which are burned into our minds, either through repetition over time or through one-time traumatic experiences. The worldly stimulation we were exposed to was both brief and prevailing.
Every day we lived in this environment, we were influenced by it and preconditioned to conform to it. Brief stimulation includes individual events, situations, places, and personal encounter’s we experienced. We were influenced by books, movies, music, and traumatic events we experienced or witnessed.
We learned a way to cope with these experiences, and resolve the conflicts they produced. Prevailing stimulation consists of long-term exposure to our environment, such as the influence of our family, friends, peers, neighborhood, teachers, and jobs.
There are beings active in the world today who have opposed God before the Garden of Eden. Satan and his devil spirits are actively involved on trying to distract us from our ambassadorship, peppering our mind with their thoughts and ideas.
They are relentless in their attempts to establish negative, worldly patterns of thought in our mind, which will in turn produce negative, worldly patterns of behavior. Whenever we are stimulated to conform to our old identity, we are experiencing temptation.
Hold on there teachmevp, some of us have been going on longer in our lives since learning and practicing Christian values then during the non-Christian earas of our lives. You mix past and present tense in your dissertation, if you had stayed past tense, I would have no arguement (you do stay mostly past tense I will admit).
Is not the renewing of the mind a goal to be sought, though not possibly attained? That renewing is a constant action and it is doubtfull we have a self standard to measure ourselves - we strive to attain the mind of Christ.
Our world experiences, that would include Dick and Jane books and all teaching thereafter are part of the learning experience, if it were not for that, I would not be able to read the Bible so let's not dis all worldly teaching and life experiences and think they are detrimental.
I see your point: I count it all as dung but that's only in comparison to God's word and to not let traumatic life experiences or ungodly teachings influence us but to throw aside all attained knowledge that is not practical.
Thanks though for the post, it reminds us (at least me) that our changing needs to be a constant activity.
Hold on there teachmevp, some of us have been going on longer in our lives since learning and practicing Christian values then during the non-Christian earas of our lives. You mix past and present tense in your dissertation, if you had stayed past tense, I would have no arguement (you do stay mostly past tense I will admit).
Is not the renewing of the mind a goal to be sought, though not possibly attained? That renewing is a constant action and it is doubtfull we have a self standard to measure ourselves - we strive to attain the mind of Christ.
Our world experiences, that would include Dick and Jane books and all teaching thereafter are part of the learning experience, if it were not for that, I would not be able to read the Bible so let's not dis all worldly teaching and life experiences and think they are detrimental.
I see your point: I count it all as dung but that's only in comparison to God's word and to not let traumatic life experiences or ungodly teachings influence us but to throw aside all attained knowledge that is not practical.
Thanks though for the post, it reminds us (at least me) that our changing needs to be a constant activity.
The essence of all temptation is the invitation to live independent of our ambassadorship. Satan and his devil spirits knows just which buttons to push to tempt us away from our ambassadorship. They have observed our behavior over the years, and they know where we are vulnerable, and that is where they will attack.
The moment we are tempted to get our need met in the world, we are at the threshold of a decision. If we do not immediately choose to take that thought captive, we will begin to consider it as an option. And if we begin to mull it over in our mind, immediately our emotions will be affected and the likelihood of yielding to that temptation is increased.
We must capture the tempting thought in the first frame or it will probably capture us. Once our consideration of a temptation has triggered an emotional response, we will act upon that choice and own that behavior.
We may resent our actions or claim that we are not responsible for what we do, but we are responsible for our actions at this stage, because we failed to take a tempting thought captive when it first appeared at the threshold of our mind.
If we continue to repeat an act for more than six weeks, we will form a habit, and if we exercise that habit long enough, a stronghold will be established. Once a stronghold of thought and response is entrenched in our mind, our ability to choose and to act contrary to that pattern is virtually nonexistent, and negative thoughts and actions we cannot control, spring from a stronghold.
Somewhere in the past we consciously or unconsciously formed a pattern of thinking and behaving which now controls us. Simply putting on the armor of our Father at this stage will not solve our dilemma, these strongholds are already entrenched and fortified.
If the strongholds in our mind are the result of conditioning, then we can be reconditioned by the renewing of our mind. Anything that has been learned, can be unlearned, but we are also up against Satan and his devil spirits who are scheming to fill our mind with thoughts which are opposed to our ambassadorship.
Their strategy is to introduce their thoughts and ideas into our mind and deceive us into believing that they are ours. If they can place a thought in our mind-and they can, it is not much more of a trick for them to make us think it is our idea. If we knew that suggestion was theirs, we would reject the thought, but when they disguise their suggestion as our idea, we are more likely to accept it.
If they can get us to believe a lie, they can control our life. If we fail to take a thought captive to the obedience of our ambassadorship, but believe it, their power is in the lie. They have no power over us except what we give them by failing to take every thought captive, and thus being deceived into believing their lies, and since their primary weapon is the lie, our defense against them is the truth.
Dealing with Satan and his devil spirits is not a power encounter, it is a truth encounter. When we expose their lie with God’s truth, their power is broken. By preparing our minds for action, we must be transformed by the renewing of our mind, by filling it with God’s truth, as we continue to stockpile our mind with his truth, we will equip ourselves to recognize the lie and take it captive.
We need to practice threshold, first-frame thinking, evaluate every thought by the truth, and do not give place to the lie. People may not always live what they profess, but they will always live what they believe. If our behavior is off, we need to correct what we believe, because our misbehavior is the result of our disbelief.
We can know on a moment-by-moment basis if our ambassadorship is properly aligned with his truth. God has established a feedback system which is designed to grab our attention, so we can examine the validity of our goal.
That system is our emotions. When an experience leaves us feeling angry, anxious, or depressed, those emotional signposts are there to alert us that we may be cherishing a faulty goal. When our activity results in feelings of anger, it is usually because someone or something has blocked our goal.
Any goal which can be blocked by forces we cannot control (other then God’s goal) is not a healthy goal, because our success in that arena is out of our hands. Feelings of anger should prompt us to reexamine our ambassadorship, and the mental goals we have formulated to accomplish God’s message of reconciliation.
When we feel anxious in a task, our anxiety may be signaling the uncertainty of a goal we have chosen. We are wishing something will happen, but we have no guarantee that it will. We can control some of the factors, but not all of them.
When we base our future success on something that can never happen, we have an impossible goal. Our depression is a signal that our goal, no matter how noble, may never be reached. Depression often signals that we are desperately clinging to a goal we have little or no chance of achieving, and that is not a healthy goal.
Achieving God’s goals for our ambassadorship is learning to distinguish his goal, from his desire. It is a critical distinction, because it can spell the difference between success and failure. His goal is any specific result reflecting his purposes for our ambassadorship, that does not depend on people or circumstances beyond our ability.
The only person who can block his goal or render it uncertain or impossible is us, and if we adopt the attitude of cooperation with his goals, his goal can be reached. His desire is any specific result that depends on the cooperation of other people or the success of events or favorable circumstances we cannot control.
We cannot base our self-worth or our personal success on our desires, no matter how godly they may be, because we cannot control their fulfillment. When a desire is wrongly elevated to a goal, and that goal is frustrated, we must deal with all the anger, anxiety, and depression which may accompany that failure.
Dealing with the disappointments of unmet desires is a lot easier then dealing with the anger, anxiety, and depression of goals, we would do well to distinguish goals from desires. When we begin to align our goals with God’s goals for our ambassadorship, and our desires with his desires, we will rid our life of a lot of anger, anxiety, and depression.
God’s basic goal for our life, is character development. The tribulations we face are actually a means of achieving our supreme goal of maturity, because persevering tribulations is the doorway to proven character, which is his goal for us.
Perhaps the greatest service performed by trails and tribulations in our lives is to reveal wrong goals. We need occasional mountaintop experiences, but the fertile soil for growth is alway down in the valleys of tribulation, not on the mountaintops.
It is during these times of pressure that our emotions raise their warning flags signaling blocked goals, uncertain goals and impossible goals which are based on our desires, instead of God’s goal for our ambassadorship. His plan is for us to hang in there and grow up, and tribulation just happens to be one of the primary stepping stones on the pathway.
To accept the gift, is to receive the gift according to scripture, and to receive it simply means to take it to ones self, or acknowledge something as being true, to believe it. So believe and receive are one in the same thing, when it comes to this gift of salvation.
The fact that Christ did died for all, proves without a doubt that all were indeed dead in trespasses and sins. Paul’s good news must be accepted, it must be believed, understanding the grace of God is an intricate part of the joy, that should really be a part of every believer’s life.
God’s grace has abounded and therefore, the gift has abounded unto the many who were affected by Adam’s sin, Adam’s sin brought sin and death to all, Christ’s righteousness brings the gift of grace to all.
God provided the free gift of justification, because that one sin, provoked the many sins of the human race, but God provided a sufficient gift to solve the dilemma of humankind. To be justified means to receive that gift that came to all; by the one sin, to condemnation, but the free gift is of many offenses, unto justification.
The receiving that must be done as Paul goes on to say, God’s grace has abounded and therefore, the gift has abounded unto the many who were affected by the first Adam’s sin. Being placed into the second Adam, Jesus Christ, joined to Christ is the method whereby God justifies us.
The issue at the Great White Throne Judgment will be those standing there in their own righteousness, and not in God’s righteousness. Many will believe Satan’s message that righteousness comes by way of a person’s efforts, what they merit, what they desire through their performance.
The reality of our reign in life results in the joy, rejoice in hope of the glory of God, consequently, not everyone will end up with the benefits of this gift, because the gift is contingent upon receiving the good news message Paul was delivering.
Satan’s minions today, unknowingly in many cases, are having a hay-day, because they are keeping the issue of sins on the table of God’s justice, when they are no longer on the table of God’s justice.
Everybody believes or supposed to believe in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That is not the message that saves, it is understanding the meaning of that message that saves today.
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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
Reconciliation simply means a change in status, and it is a major issue recognizing reconciliation. Reconciliation from God’s advantage point is an accomplished fact, and God is reconciled where the totality of the sin debt of all men is concerned.
None of us measure up to the perfection of God, and the only reason God could say through Paul, “Grace and Peace be unto you” is because his son fully paid the price. How many of us have grown up with the idea that God has to make a decision at some point in our life whether or not to forgive us for our sins? God forgiving us is not something he must decided to do.
The truth Paul has proclaimed in all of his epistles is we could not get right with God in a million life times of trial and error. We could never make ourselves right with God, and he had to do what we could not do for ourselves. God had to make us right with him, and he did so through the finished work of his perfectly righteous son.
How many of our sins were future when Christ died for our sins? All of them were future, and God placed them all on his perfectly righteous son. Christ’s test score is written on our paper, it is an amazing transfer. The issue of sin was settled as a result of Christ’s death, it is a son issue today, not a sin issue.
Will we accept what Jesus Christ accomplished as a result of his death or will we reject it, the son is the issue with God today. God’s attitude of love forces no one to take him at his word. God gives all the choice to accept what Christ accomplished on their behalf today, or to reject it.
God purchased men out of sins dominion, never to be returned to the market place of sin again. By removing the sin issue from the table of God’s justice, God effectively canceled Satan’s ownership of all mankind. Reconciliation has to do with God’s justice being satisfied for sins, reconciliation is a sin issue.
Many teachers will tell us that we can be reconciled, but that is not true, reconciliation was accomplished as a result of Christ’s death, where Christ became sin for the entire human race. Our sins were not stored on Christ to be brought back later; our sins were paid for by him, and he satisfied totally the justice of God for those sins.
Justification, on the other hand, is something entirely different; it has to do with a judicial decree of the very righteousness of God himself freely attributed to our account. No one can receive that unless that person is placed into Christ. Being placed into Christ, joined to Christ is the method whereby God justifies us; or righteousifies us.
We must believe that Christ put our sins (past, present and future) away forever as a result of his death, in order to be placed into Christ to have righteousness freely attributed to our account.
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teachmevp
Death, as we know it, would indeed be the end of our existence were it not for the fact of the resurrection. It is the resurrection that turns death into a temporary sleep, so to speak. The second death differs from the first death, not in nature, but in results.
The first death is a temporary sleep, because it is followed the the resurrection. The second death is permeant and irreversible extinction, because there is no awakening. The second death is the death resulting from the final judgment which prevents evildoers from living in the new earth to come, a punishment that ultimately results in eternal, irreversible death.
The stern punishment awaiting the enemies of righteousness, whose temporary resurrection results only in a return to death and its punishment, their full and final defeat. The wicked will be resurrected mortal in order to receive their punishment which will result in their ultimate annihilation.
In the Old Testament, the word “sheol” is the underground depository of the dead. There are no immaterial, immortal souls in sheol, simply because the soul does not survive the death of the body. Nowhere in the Old Testament is the abode of the dead regarded as a place of punishment or torment.
The concept of an infernal ‘hell’ developed in Israel only during the Hellenistic period. The condition of the dead in sheol, the realm of the dead, is one of unconsciousness, inactivity, a rest or sleep that will continue until they are resurrected. The prospect that one day a vast number of people will be consigned to the everlasting torment of hell is most disturbing.
Traditionalists read “eternal punishment” as “eternal punishing.” When the adjective “aionios” meaning eternal or everlasting, is used in the Greek with nouns of action, it has reference to the result of the action, not the process. The wicked will not be passing through a process of punishment forever, but will be punished once and for all with eternal results.
The destruction of the wicked is eternal “aionios,” not because the process of destruction continues forever, but because the results are permanent. “Eternal” often refers to the permanence of the result, rather than the continuation of a process.
It is evident that the fire that destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah is eternal, not because of its duration, but because of its permanent results. “And others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire” (Jude 23a). The fire to which Jude refers is obviously the same kind of fire that consumed Sodom and Gomorrah.
It is evident that the fire that destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah is eternal, not because of its duration, but because of its permanent results. It is important to note that the Greek word “aionios” literally means “lasting for an age.”
Roman emperors being described as “aionios”; what is meant is that they held their office for life. Unfortunately, the English words “eternal” or “everlasting” do not accurately render the meaning of “aionios”, which literally means “age-lasting.”
The notion of the eternal torment of the wicked can only be defended by accepting the Greek view of the immortality and indestructibility of the soul, a concept which is foreign to Scripture. Everlasting torture is intolerable from a moral point of view, because it pictures God acting like a bloodthirsty monster who maintains an everlasting Auschwitz for his enemies, whom he does not even allow to die.
Consider the moral implications of the traditional view of hell, which depicts God as a cruel torturer who torments the wicked throughout all eternity. The thought of such a torment being deliberately inflicted by divine decree, is totally incompatible with the idea of God as infinite love.
Many Christians will be sorely disappointed to discover that their beliefs in the afterlife are a delusion. When this happens, it will cause personal crisis to Christians accustom to believing that at death their souls break loose from their bodies and continue to exist either in Heaven or in the torment of Hell.
Redemption is the restoration of the whole person, and not the salvation of the soul apart from the body. If at death the soul of the believer goes up immediately to Heaven to be with Jesus, one hardly can have any real sense of expectation for Jesus to come down to raise the dead believers that were in Jesus, and transform the living believers that are in Jesus.
Traditionally, evangelical and other religious persuasions teach, that at the resurrection, their material bodies are reunited with their souls, thus intensifying the pleasure of Heaven or the pain of Hell. Why are evangelicals so adamant in refusing to reconsider the Biblical teachings on the restoration of the whole person?
To abandon souls being reunited with their bodies, also entails abandoning a whole cluster of doctrines resulting form it. The total impact of dividing humans into body and soul has promoted all sorts of false dichotomies in Scripture. To be an “Evangelical” means to uphold certain fundamental traditional doctrines without questioning.
Any one who dares to question the Biblical validity of a traditional doctrine can become suspect as a “heretic.” It is impossible to estimate the far-reaching impact that the doctrine of unending hellfire has had throughout the centuries in justifying religious intolerance, torture, and the burning of “heretics.” The rationale is simple: If God is going to burn heretics in Hell for all eternity, why shouldn’t the church burn them to death now?
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teachmevp
Redemption and forgiveness, this is a major focal point of the secret, when it’s come to what God is now revealed, sin no longer being the issue with God, we already have redemption and forgiveness.
It’s not things we need to seek from God, but things God’s already accomplished for us, we need simply believe they are ours in order to appropriate in our own thinking, what has already been accomplished on our behalf.
Our redemption is complete, our forgiveness is all complete, all upfront, both are past tense accomplishments that Paul would have us acknowledge and proclaim, who accomplished them for us, our Savior, Jesus Christ.
Israel was continually being called upon to repent, to change their thinking. John called upon the nation to repent, the 12 called upon Israel to repent, and Jesus called upon the nation to repent, God wanted them to change their thinking about the source of their righteousness and the identity of their Messiah.
Righteousness could never come from them, and that is where they had to change their thinking, this was the change of mind confession that God wanted his earthly nation to make. What do most church people think when they hear the word repentance?
Most would say to repent means to have Godly sorrow that leads to repentance. Others would say that to repent means to turn around and go the other direction, sin no more, is that not what first comes to mind when we see the word repentance from our religious upbringing, this is what is commonly taught in the hallways of religion.
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Mark Sanguinetti
Here is a link to an article that I have written on this subject of the New Testament Greek word for "age". It agrees with much of what you have posted above.
Age and the Greek Words
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teachmevp
Traditionalists read “eternal punishment” as “eternal punishing.” When the adjective “aionios” meaning eternal or everlasting, is used in the Greek with nouns of action, it has reference to the result of the action, not the process. The wicked will not be passing through a process of punishment forever, but will be punished once and for all with eternal results.
The destruction of the wicked is eternal “aionios,” not because the process of destruction continues forever, but because the results are permanent. “Eternal” often refers to the permanence of the result, rather than the continuation of a process.
It is evident that the fire that destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah is eternal, not because of its duration, but because of its permanent results. Great writing, share more. People need to hear more about the permanent resutts results, rather then the continuation of a process. Share more about "age". Thanks for reading my posts.
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Mark Sanguinetti
The simplicity of age is that it can ONLY refer to eternal as it is related to God. Otherwise, with age referring to ANYTHING else it will have a time limit. Both a beginning and an ending. As an example of this our natural bodies have a time limit for every human. And our natural bodies do decay. Without God the creator, mankind would not even be able to begin an age or time period of any kind. It is only as mankind is associated with God through his son Jesus Christ that mankind can receive a new spiritual eternal body. This should be obvious to every Christian or follower of Jesus Christ that our natural bodies have a time limit with a beginning and an ending. This is the main part of the word "Age". To have eternal life we need a new spiritual body and the apostle Paul makes this clear in his written work found in 1 Corinthians chapter 15. Last weekend I finished writing a commentary on this chapter. I can post this later, when I have more time for web site coding. I am now learning to code sites that can be viewed on both desktops along with smartphones for the same web site pages.
If there is eternal anything, for example the very negative pagan concept of eternal torment, this would have to be through the power of God only. I am glad that we see that God is not the spiritual equivalent of a very hateful Adolph Hitler on steroids. This is an obvious contradiction of the scripture "God is Love" along with many other scriptures.
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teachmevp
Traditionalists read “eternal punishment” as “eternal punishing.” When the adjective “aionios” meaning eternal or everlasting, is used in the Greek with nouns of action, it has reference to the result of the action, not the process. The wicked will not be passing through a process of punishment forever, but will be punished once and for all with eternal results. Look forward to reading your commentary.
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teachmevp
Paul has something he can not escape, the struggle that was taking place with him, his flesh as opposed to God’s power from on high dwelling within him. The very fact this saved person continues to possess a sin nature or self bent always opposing that which God desires, is the very thing that keeps a saved person from accomplishing righteousness through performance.
It is one thing to begin right, then to hear false doctrine and move out in the left field somewhere, because we are hearing something after we have believed Paul’s good news. It is another thing to have never heard the proper good news of Paul to begin with, and to have begun with the thinking that we were earning God’s favor through something that we did or we would do.
Paul showed how some people become content to trust in their own obedience in order to stand justified in the eyes of a perfectly just God, they were crediting their righteous works for a superior position before God. We see that these people had chosen to believe a wrong message, they had believed correctly to begin with, and then they had chosen to believe those who used the scriptures to steal and hide the truth of a perfectly justified status before God by grace alone through faith alone in the accomplishments of Jesus Christ.
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teachmevp
Not only did Paul face the doctrinally issues that people had then, much as they have now, he had to face the continuing conflict people had with one another in those assemblies. Problems arise, when people arrive, the more people we have, the more problems we will have.
Love is what the carnal Corinthians lacked, that lack of love was evidence in the divisions and factions within their fellowships. Love is the bond that unifies and edifies other members of the Body of Christ, love is the operating principle of doctrinal wisdom.
The agape behavioral glue that binds together the believer with all their doctrinal knowledge and their positional perfection to other members of the Body of Christ, that is how God designed the new creation in Christ to operate.
Love is the behavioral glue, attitudinal adhesive that God intended to keep the Body of Christ functioning smoothly and operation efficiently and effectively. Love is the bond that unifies and edifies other members of the Body of Christ, love is the operating principle of doctrinal wisdom.
Did pride not cause the divisions and factions in Corinth over the gifts given as a sign to unbelieving Israel. Pride cause God to turn away from Israel as his chosen channel of blessing and call forth a brand new apostle to initiate a brand new program with the establishment of a brand new creation called the Body of Christ.
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teachmevp
It is surprising how many people think Jesus Christ died for the sins they have committed up to a point, but then, from that point on, they have got to keep those sins taken out of the way. Christ paid the price to deliver the human race from God’s justice, yet, with Christ paying the price necessary to satisfy God’s justice for ALL the sins of ALL the world, there are those who would accuse Paul of lying.
A Christ established reconciliation is the core ingredient in Paul’s good news, God has reconciled the world to himself, Paul makes that abundantly clear, God is not imputing people’s sins unto them, because Jesus Christ paid the penalty for those sins.
Judicial satisfaction for sins is what reconciliation is all about, God is not counting, reckoning, imputing, or charging people’s sins to their account, and for a very good reason, he charged those sins to his son’s account.
The doctrinal transaction called Justification has to do with God recognizing someone to be righteous. God will recognize those who take him at his word, concerning the price Christ became on their behalf, to resolve God’s justice for their sins. Justification is a recognition of righteousness that comes from God to those who believe God, it does not go away, it does not abate over time, it is ours forever.
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teachmevp
We are not to cleanse ourselves in order to gain something from God, when it comes to our holy standing before him, or to maintain something before God because we have been freely given something, namely a justified and sanctified position in God’s son, Jesus Christ.
How can those who have been justified freely, sanctified in Jesus Christ, how should we be conducting ourselves? We should conduct ourselves in a manner that goes sides by side or that goes in hand with what God has already called us to do, our ambassadorship of the message of reconciliation.
Paul was teaching grace, plus nothing, and that leads people with a sin nature and pride nature to say, Oh, we have got something! If we do not know what Justification and Sanctification are all about, and we think that we are justified on the basis of how we set ourself apart behaviorally, naturally we want other people to set themselves apart, and we want them to have to tow the mark, as you have to tow the mark to keep God happy.
May grace never be the cause, although grace is true, may grace never be the cause for a person to think they should now go out and sin all the more. May that type of reasoning not cross our minds, that is not the way a believer should be thinking!
People do what they want to do, we have always done what we want to do, and people continue to do what they want to do. We would naturally come to be thinking along those lines, if we fail to have an understanding of Justification and Sanctification.
Do we sin? But, we are dead to sin! Are we supposed to stop sinning? If we understand what the word “sin” means, coming short of God’s Glory, now that we are dead to sin, can we now measure up to God’s Glory? Positional truth, we were dead in sins, because we had our identity in Adam, Adam in rebellion.
We now have a brand new identity, “dead to sin” identity, but those who would die in their sins were those who would continue to have their identity in Adam, Adam in rebellion, understanding identity is key! Failing to understand positional truth will cause much confusion, because we want to go back to practical reality.
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teachmevp
Grace is a much greater motivator, it is the love of God that constrains us, not fear that God is going to strike us dead, or allow us to be a part of the second death if we perform what we should not be performing, or do not measure up through our performance.
Are people set apart as holy in God’s sight because of their lack of sin, or are people set apart as holy in God’s sight because he has joined them to his son? God is not giving out his righteousness as a reward to those who are sorry for the past, and who promise to do their best in the future.
At the point of our belief in what Christ accomplished where our sins are concerned, we are as closely associated with Christ as anyone could be, we are joined to him. What an ingenious salvation plan, to take someone else that is righteous and join us to that person, therefore what is Christ’s is ours!
We need to cease attributing our righteous standing before God to our performance and keep our mind focused solely on how God views us in Christ, that is what grace-life is all about, and we will be victorious in that God’s power can now produce it’s fruit in our life.
When God raised Jesus from among the dead, it was God’s stamp of “pain in full” on the invoice of our sin debt. We could not get right with God in a million life times of trial and error, we could never make ourselves right with God; God had to do what we could not do. Now believing sinners can be certain that in Christ, they are justified.
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teachmevp
God wants us to stop putting our faith in ourselves, he wants us to actually come to the place where we literally have no confidence in the flesh, but have full reliance in Christ alone. To bring our body in subjection, as Paul put it, but would he ever be able to do that sufficiently to merit righteousness before God? Absolutely not!
That is not the issue, but Paul could do it in appreciation to whatever degree he was capable. A person must understand what it is they are asked to believe, in order to be joined to the body of Jesus Christ.
It is unfathomable what God accomplished through his son; Jesus Christ took sinful people’s place, taking the penalty of their sins upon himself, so that those believing this truth can be joined to his body.
Paul had been given special divine authority with the understanding that he is our apostle, and that authority carried with it the details of what God expects people to believe today concerning the salvation Jesus Christ purchased for them with his sacrifice.
Unless people believe Jesus Christ accomplished something where their sins are concerned when he died for those sins, Paul’s good news is hidden to them. Satan’s ministers of righteousness are busy at work within the righteous structure called “religion” in order to keep the meaning of Paul’s good news hidden, to keep people’s eyes blinded to the truth of what Christ really accomplished.
Understanding our completeness in Jesus Christ should motivate us to make wise choices. All of us who have been sealed into the body of Christ wants God to be pleased with the decisions that we make, but God has given us the freedom to make our own choices.
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teachmevp
Healthy behaviors result from an identity that is healthy and fully based upon Jesus Christ’s performance on our behalf, as a result, we can begin learning to find rest; who we are has been settled in Christ. It is Christ’s faith that righteousifies those who take their stand with God when it comes to what God has stated his son accomplished for them.
It was Christ’s faith and as a result of his faith, his faithfulness that he sacrificed himself and purchased the gift of our salvation. It is our faith in the accomplishment of Jesus Christ’s faithful sacrifice that is the means whereby God acknowledges that we have accepted the gift his son purchased.
Therefore, God in his infinite wisdom devised a plan whereby he could take the very faith belonging to his son, along with its resultant faithfulness, and credit that faith and faithfulness to the account of those who believe.
Yet, finding rest sounds rather foreign to us, an idea too unrealistic or too good to be true, because somewhere in our life we have been involved in the relationships of our environments that were based on conditions. Many people involved in religion’s domain are dealing with God on the basis of probation, rather than salvation.
Then God must make a decision in their minds, whether or not to save that individual. Their suitability for heaven depends upon their turning away from all of their sins. If they will simply dedicate themselves to no longer to sin, that is the idea.
Standards may have become so deeply ingrained, that we are not even aware of them, let alone conscious of how to get free from their tyranny, constantly trying to measure up to standards that are higher than we can reach.
This is why God allows all kinds of things into our lives, which he uses to strip us of our personal sense of worth. God is making us conformable to the death of Christ, so that in living this experience, we might become conformed in his resurrection.
This process is not enjoyable, because it is hard to learn that life cannot be controlled, it is far too spontaneous and rambunctious to be fully understood.
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teachmevp
Relationally, forgiveness is crucial to our maturity, it is the glue that holds the body of Christ together. Instead of insisting on the unity of the mind, we need to preserve the unity by taking the initiative to be the peacemaker in our relationships.
Forgiveness is difficult for us, because it pulls against our concept of justice; we want revenge for offenses suffered, but if we do not let offenders off our hook, we are hooked to them. We need to let go, because the unforgiving believer is yoked to the past or to a person and is not free.
We should not try to rationalize or explain the believer’s behavior, forgiveness deals with our pain, not another’s behavior. Forgiveness is agreeing to live with the consequences of another believer’s wrong, our only choice is whether we will do so in the bitterness of unforgiveness or the freedom of forgiveness.
Forgiveness is a choice, forgetting may be a result of forgiveness, but it is never the means of forgiveness, and when we bring up the past against other, we have not forgiven them. Forgiveness does not mean that we must be a doormat to their continual wrongdoing, it is okay to forgive another’s past wrong, and at the same time, take a stand against future wrongdoing.
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teachmevp
The shield of faith does not create reality; the shield of faith responds to reality, because forgiveness is a crisis of the will, a conscious choice to let the other person off the hook and free ourselves, though we may not fell like making this decision, but this is a crises of the will.
We put on the shoes of peace, because we are to forgive as we have been forgiven, and we must base our relationships with others on the same criteria on which God bases his relationship with us: love, acceptance, and forgiveness.
Satan and his forces use unforgiveness more than any other human deficiency to stop our growth and our ministry of reconciliation, unforgiveness toward other believers is the most widespread stronghold they enjoy.
Many of the body of Christ, instead of recognizing that their minds are being peppered by the fiery darts of the enemy, they think the problem is their own fault. “If those foul thoughts are mine, what kind of person am I?” they wonder.
So they end up condemning themselves while the enemy continues their attack unchecked; it is a gradual process of deception and yielding to their subtle influence. By observing us the enemy can pretty well tell what we are thinking, but they do not know what we are going to do before we do it.
They can put thoughts into our mind, and they will know whether we buy their lie by how we behave. If we are gong to resist the enemy, we must do so outwardly so they can understand us and be put to flight. The enemy will invite us to fulfill our physical needs in ways that outside the boundary of God’s will for us.
We cannot expect God to protect us from their influences if we do not take an active part in God’s prepared strategy. Whenever we feel enticed to meet a legitimate physical need by acting independently of God, we are being tempted though the lust of the flesh.
The lust of the eyes subtly draws us away from God and eats away at our confidence in God. We see what the world has to offer and we begin to place more credence in our own perspective of life. The temptation of the pride of life is intended to destroy our obedience to our ministry of reconciliation by urging us to take charge of our own lives.
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teachmevp
Escaping temptation is to apprehend every thought as soon as it steps through the doorway of our mind. Every temptation is first a thought introduced to our mind by our own carnality or the enemy themselves. Once we have halted a penetration thought, we need to evaluate it on the basis of Paul’s criterion for what we should think about.
When we learn to respond to tempting thoughts by stopping them at the door of our mind, evaluating them on the basis of God’s word, we have found the way of escape that Paul talks about. When we do not understand the doctrinal truths Paul taught pertaining to our sealed position in Christ, we have no ground for success in the practical arena.
The most dangerous and harmful detriments to our growth is passivity, putting our mind in neutral and coasting, sitting back and waiting for God to do everything is not God’s way to maturity. Our old pattern for thinking and responding to our sin-trained flesh must be transformed by the renewing of our mind, it is our responsibility to change our behavior by putting to death the deeds of the body.
If the enemy can deceive us into believing a lie, they can control our life in that area. We are saints whom God has declared righteous, believing the enemies lie will lock us into a defeated, fruitless life, but believing God’s truth about who we are will set us free.
It is imperative to our growth and maturity that we believe God’s truth about who we are. We must learn how to resolve previous conflicts or the emotional baggage will accumulate as we continue to withdraw from life, the past will control our life as our options for handling it continue to decrease.
Perceiving those events from the perspective of our new identity, which God sealed in Christ, is what starts the process of healing those damaged emotions, because we have the privilege of evaluating our past experience in the light of who we are now, as opposed to who we were then.
When we put on the armor of God, we are really putting on Christ, and when we put on Christ, we take ourselves out of the realm of the flesh, where we are vulnerable to attack, it is not wise for us to live on the enemies level.
Since their primary weapon is the lie, our belt of truth is continually being attacked. If they can disable us in the area of truth, we become an easy target for their other attacks. We stand firm in the truth by relating everything we do to the truth of God’s word, and when we learn to live in the truth on a daily basis, we will grow to love the truth because we will have nothing to hide.
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teachmevp
Rejoicing is the exhibit of that interstate of mind, because no longer do we have to strive to attain and maintain God’s acceptance on the basis of who we are and what we can do, no longer are our sins held against us, no longer does the death penalty for sin hang over us.
Joy is a trust issue; joy in Christ for a believer is that of a state of mind independent of surrounding circumstances. People glorifies themselves by filtering everything they say and everything they do through that screen of self-protection, self-elevation, and self-gratification.
Joy comes from an understanding of the grace of God, an understanding and appreciation of the resultant peace with God that we now have because of God’s grace. The insidious reality of the enemies relentless assault of deception on our mind can keep us from experiencing maturity and freedom, because our past has shaped our present belief system and will determine our future unless it is dealt with.
We have been tricked into believing that what we do makes us what we are. Our understanding of the identity that Adam had before the fall, that identity has been restored to us, that restored identity is the critical foundation for our belief structure and our behavior patterns.
Those who put on the breastplate of righteousness know that we have peace with God, for a person to have to make their own peace with God would be nothing more than an exercise in futility, it could never be done.
We could not make peace with God, to say that anyone could make peace with God, would be to limit God to his mercy, because grace is the foundation on which Paul’s entire ministry was built. There is a glory that belongs to God’s grace, and it is to be praised on the bases on what God’s grace has accomplished.
The security all believers have in that the indwelling resurrection power of God guarantees that those who have believed Paul’s good news can never be lost, they belong to God. The word translated “sealed” in Ephesians 1:13 means sealed for preservation.
The seal is the safeguarding device, the securing device, used to preserve the contents. God’s power is the seal that God uses to secure all who believe in this dispensation of grace. The word translated “earnest” in Ephesians 1:14 means a pledge in the sense that an advance deposit has been made as the security guaranteeing the fulfillment of that which has been promised to those who have been sealed.
Like when a person gives earnest money in connection with a purchase, that person is guaranteeing, through that which is given in advance their intention of following through on that which they have promised. According to Paul, the indwelling of God’s power is both God’s seal and his deposited pledge that all believers are forever his and are destined to inherit eternal life.
Paul doesn’t tell us that we are filled with God’s power, but instead, Paul is telling us that we should be filled with God’s power. In other words, we should allow God’s power to be in control of our lives. Of course, the degree to which we do that is up to us.
God’s power works in us, but only to the degree that we are willing to yield ourselves to God’s use in our ministry of reconciliation.
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teachmevp
The difference between the two Adam’s in our history is the need to be sure we are identifying with the right one. Understanding and acting upon who we are in Jesus Christ is the basis for successful growth and maturity.
Our daily performance is often marked by personal failure and disobedience, which disappoints us and disrupts the harmony of our ambassadorship of God’s reconciliation. In our attempts to understand the disobedience which so often disturbs our ambassadorship, are we unwitting victims of our old identity?
Our old identity which we have inherited from the disobedience of the first Adam, is like a big black dog, but through the redemptive work of the second Adam, Jesus Christ, God put his power from on high in us, when we got born anew, and that power is like a big white dog.
Whenever we involve ourselves in worldly thoughts or behavior, we are feeding the black dog. Whenever we focus our mind and activities on matters of our ambassadorship, we are feeding the white dog. The dog we feed the most will eventually grow stronger and overpower the other.
God has not given us the power to imitate him, he has made us partakers of his righteousness, so that we can actually dwell with him. He did not say, “Here are my standards, now you measure up.” God knows we cannot solve the problem of our old identity, Adam in rebellion, by simply improving our behavior.
When we choose to walk according to the old identity, in which we were trained before becoming born anew, such behavior violates our ambassadorship. When this happens, we feel convicted because our behavior is not in keeping with who we really are.
In fact, if a person does something which they know is morally wrong, but feels no conviction, we should seriously doubt that that person is part of the Body of Christ. We commit sin when we willfully allow ourselves to act independent of our ambassadorship, as our old identity did as a matter of course.
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teachmevp
So why do we still react as if our old identity is still in control of our behavior? Because, while we served under it, our old identity trained and conditioned our actions, reactions, emotional responses, thought patterns, memories and habits in our brain.
Our worldly experiences thoroughly programmed our brain with thought patterns, memory traces, responses and habits. Our brain still generates humanistic thoughts and ideas, and our old identity is that part of us which was trained and determined to succeed and survive by our own abilities.
When we became born anew, God did not press the “clear” button in our brain, our old identity persists in suggesting ways to live independent of our ambassadorship of God’s reconciliation. The first thing we need to know about the battle for our mind, is that the main targets which must be destroyed are the fortresses in our mind, or called strongholds.
Strongholds are negative patters of thought which are burned into our minds, either through repetition over time or through one-time traumatic experiences. The worldly stimulation we were exposed to was both brief and prevailing.
Every day we lived in this environment, we were influenced by it and preconditioned to conform to it. Brief stimulation includes individual events, situations, places, and personal encounter’s we experienced. We were influenced by books, movies, music, and traumatic events we experienced or witnessed.
We learned a way to cope with these experiences, and resolve the conflicts they produced. Prevailing stimulation consists of long-term exposure to our environment, such as the influence of our family, friends, peers, neighborhood, teachers, and jobs.
There are beings active in the world today who have opposed God before the Garden of Eden. Satan and his devil spirits are actively involved on trying to distract us from our ambassadorship, peppering our mind with their thoughts and ideas.
They are relentless in their attempts to establish negative, worldly patterns of thought in our mind, which will in turn produce negative, worldly patterns of behavior. Whenever we are stimulated to conform to our old identity, we are experiencing temptation.
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MRAP
Hold on there teachmevp, some of us have been going on longer in our lives since learning and practicing Christian values then during the non-Christian earas of our lives. You mix past and present tense in your dissertation, if you had stayed past tense, I would have no arguement (you do stay mostly past tense I will admit).
Is not the renewing of the mind a goal to be sought, though not possibly attained? That renewing is a constant action and it is doubtfull we have a self standard to measure ourselves - we strive to attain the mind of Christ.
Our world experiences, that would include Dick and Jane books and all teaching thereafter are part of the learning experience, if it were not for that, I would not be able to read the Bible so let's not dis all worldly teaching and life experiences and think they are detrimental.
I see your point: I count it all as dung but that's only in comparison to God's word and to not let traumatic life experiences or ungodly teachings influence us but to throw aside all attained knowledge that is not practical.
Thanks though for the post, it reminds us (at least me) that our changing needs to be a constant activity.
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teachmevp
The essence of all temptation is the invitation to live independent of our ambassadorship. Satan and his devil spirits knows just which buttons to push to tempt us away from our ambassadorship. They have observed our behavior over the years, and they know where we are vulnerable, and that is where they will attack.
The moment we are tempted to get our need met in the world, we are at the threshold of a decision. If we do not immediately choose to take that thought captive, we will begin to consider it as an option. And if we begin to mull it over in our mind, immediately our emotions will be affected and the likelihood of yielding to that temptation is increased.
We must capture the tempting thought in the first frame or it will probably capture us. Once our consideration of a temptation has triggered an emotional response, we will act upon that choice and own that behavior.
We may resent our actions or claim that we are not responsible for what we do, but we are responsible for our actions at this stage, because we failed to take a tempting thought captive when it first appeared at the threshold of our mind.
If we continue to repeat an act for more than six weeks, we will form a habit, and if we exercise that habit long enough, a stronghold will be established. Once a stronghold of thought and response is entrenched in our mind, our ability to choose and to act contrary to that pattern is virtually nonexistent, and negative thoughts and actions we cannot control, spring from a stronghold.
Somewhere in the past we consciously or unconsciously formed a pattern of thinking and behaving which now controls us. Simply putting on the armor of our Father at this stage will not solve our dilemma, these strongholds are already entrenched and fortified.
If the strongholds in our mind are the result of conditioning, then we can be reconditioned by the renewing of our mind. Anything that has been learned, can be unlearned, but we are also up against Satan and his devil spirits who are scheming to fill our mind with thoughts which are opposed to our ambassadorship.
Their strategy is to introduce their thoughts and ideas into our mind and deceive us into believing that they are ours. If they can place a thought in our mind-and they can, it is not much more of a trick for them to make us think it is our idea. If we knew that suggestion was theirs, we would reject the thought, but when they disguise their suggestion as our idea, we are more likely to accept it.
If they can get us to believe a lie, they can control our life. If we fail to take a thought captive to the obedience of our ambassadorship, but believe it, their power is in the lie. They have no power over us except what we give them by failing to take every thought captive, and thus being deceived into believing their lies, and since their primary weapon is the lie, our defense against them is the truth.
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teachmevp
Dealing with Satan and his devil spirits is not a power encounter, it is a truth encounter. When we expose their lie with God’s truth, their power is broken. By preparing our minds for action, we must be transformed by the renewing of our mind, by filling it with God’s truth, as we continue to stockpile our mind with his truth, we will equip ourselves to recognize the lie and take it captive.
We need to practice threshold, first-frame thinking, evaluate every thought by the truth, and do not give place to the lie. People may not always live what they profess, but they will always live what they believe. If our behavior is off, we need to correct what we believe, because our misbehavior is the result of our disbelief.
We can know on a moment-by-moment basis if our ambassadorship is properly aligned with his truth. God has established a feedback system which is designed to grab our attention, so we can examine the validity of our goal.
That system is our emotions. When an experience leaves us feeling angry, anxious, or depressed, those emotional signposts are there to alert us that we may be cherishing a faulty goal. When our activity results in feelings of anger, it is usually because someone or something has blocked our goal.
Any goal which can be blocked by forces we cannot control (other then God’s goal) is not a healthy goal, because our success in that arena is out of our hands. Feelings of anger should prompt us to reexamine our ambassadorship, and the mental goals we have formulated to accomplish God’s message of reconciliation.
When we feel anxious in a task, our anxiety may be signaling the uncertainty of a goal we have chosen. We are wishing something will happen, but we have no guarantee that it will. We can control some of the factors, but not all of them.
When we base our future success on something that can never happen, we have an impossible goal. Our depression is a signal that our goal, no matter how noble, may never be reached. Depression often signals that we are desperately clinging to a goal we have little or no chance of achieving, and that is not a healthy goal.
Achieving God’s goals for our ambassadorship is learning to distinguish his goal, from his desire. It is a critical distinction, because it can spell the difference between success and failure. His goal is any specific result reflecting his purposes for our ambassadorship, that does not depend on people or circumstances beyond our ability.
The only person who can block his goal or render it uncertain or impossible is us, and if we adopt the attitude of cooperation with his goals, his goal can be reached. His desire is any specific result that depends on the cooperation of other people or the success of events or favorable circumstances we cannot control.
We cannot base our self-worth or our personal success on our desires, no matter how godly they may be, because we cannot control their fulfillment. When a desire is wrongly elevated to a goal, and that goal is frustrated, we must deal with all the anger, anxiety, and depression which may accompany that failure.
Dealing with the disappointments of unmet desires is a lot easier then dealing with the anger, anxiety, and depression of goals, we would do well to distinguish goals from desires. When we begin to align our goals with God’s goals for our ambassadorship, and our desires with his desires, we will rid our life of a lot of anger, anxiety, and depression.
God’s basic goal for our life, is character development. The tribulations we face are actually a means of achieving our supreme goal of maturity, because persevering tribulations is the doorway to proven character, which is his goal for us.
Perhaps the greatest service performed by trails and tribulations in our lives is to reveal wrong goals. We need occasional mountaintop experiences, but the fertile soil for growth is alway down in the valleys of tribulation, not on the mountaintops.
It is during these times of pressure that our emotions raise their warning flags signaling blocked goals, uncertain goals and impossible goals which are based on our desires, instead of God’s goal for our ambassadorship. His plan is for us to hang in there and grow up, and tribulation just happens to be one of the primary stepping stones on the pathway.
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teachmevp
To accept the gift, is to receive the gift according to scripture, and to receive it simply means to take it to ones self, or acknowledge something as being true, to believe it. So believe and receive are one in the same thing, when it comes to this gift of salvation.
The fact that Christ did died for all, proves without a doubt that all were indeed dead in trespasses and sins. Paul’s good news must be accepted, it must be believed, understanding the grace of God is an intricate part of the joy, that should really be a part of every believer’s life.
God’s grace has abounded and therefore, the gift has abounded unto the many who were affected by Adam’s sin, Adam’s sin brought sin and death to all, Christ’s righteousness brings the gift of grace to all.
God provided the free gift of justification, because that one sin, provoked the many sins of the human race, but God provided a sufficient gift to solve the dilemma of humankind. To be justified means to receive that gift that came to all; by the one sin, to condemnation, but the free gift is of many offenses, unto justification.
The receiving that must be done as Paul goes on to say, God’s grace has abounded and therefore, the gift has abounded unto the many who were affected by the first Adam’s sin. Being placed into the second Adam, Jesus Christ, joined to Christ is the method whereby God justifies us.
The issue at the Great White Throne Judgment will be those standing there in their own righteousness, and not in God’s righteousness. Many will believe Satan’s message that righteousness comes by way of a person’s efforts, what they merit, what they desire through their performance.
The reality of our reign in life results in the joy, rejoice in hope of the glory of God, consequently, not everyone will end up with the benefits of this gift, because the gift is contingent upon receiving the good news message Paul was delivering.
Satan’s minions today, unknowingly in many cases, are having a hay-day, because they are keeping the issue of sins on the table of God’s justice, when they are no longer on the table of God’s justice.
Everybody believes or supposed to believe in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That is not the message that saves, it is understanding the meaning of that message that saves today.
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