Why, if your are guilty of any of these things in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, you are flat out of luck as far as Heaven is concerned. You can not do those things and make Heaven, which leads more than some of the religiously minded to say, “I am not guilty of any of those vile behaviors.”
Listen, if you think you are above these particular sins because you do not commit them regularly, or because these types of behaviors are not a regular pattern in your life, or because you are certain to gain new forgiveness when you do find yourself somewhere on that list to some degree, perhaps you had better give it a little more careful consideration.
1 Corinthians 6:11-And such were some of you: But after you were saved, you became progressively more holy such that you never sinned again? Does that verse say that? But after you were saved, you sinned less and less until sin finally disappeared altogether from your life. That verse does not say that either.
But, after you were saved, your sin nature was removed, root and branch, and never have you had the propensity to sin again! Does that verse say that? No, it does not say any of those things. At least you will not sin higher than the 6’s, 7’s, and 8’s on the sin richter scale that you hold for yourself.
These Corinthians were called saints, they would remain set apart, even though they were carnal, meaning fleshly minded, fleshly oriented in their behavior, because their sanctification like their justification was God’s transaction, not their own. It was God who performed the sanctifying.
How many in Fundamental Christianity set themselves apart, because in their minds eye, they believe they are more holy by doing so in the eyes of God? Many of them think they are more holy in the eyes of God, because they have achieved that set-apartness.
It is a judicial transaction that takes place in God’s mind the moment you believe, God is the Sanctifier, not the person, in this case. Our justification, our righteous standing before God is accomplished through our being set-apart, justification is accomplished through sanctification. God’s act of sanctification is a part of that gift transaction connected with justification.
Can a person’s righteous works be added to the righteousness belonging to Jesus Christ himself, in order to arrive at a greater degree of righteousness than the righteousness already belonging to our Savior?
The lunacy of saints desiring to be under the law, do they actually think they can perform the law in a manner that would make them more righteous before God. Saints trying to perfect their righteousness, to cap off the righteousness they have in God’s sight.
That is idiotic reasoning, fleshly performance according to rules and regulations given in the law contract. Is God requiring that we add our righteous works to Christ’s righteousness, that we might become righteous indeed or is Christ’s righteousness, the only righteousness from God’s perspective his saints will ever need?
Can a person’s righteous works be added to the righteousness belonging to Jesus Christ himself, in order to arrive at a greater degree of righteousness than the righteousness already belonging to our Savior? A Israelite had to be a Israelite both inwardly and outwardly for God to consider that person a true Israelite.
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.
We are to cleanse ourselves not to keep on God’s good side, but because God’s already cleansed us, judicially speaking, by freely crediting us with the righteousness that belongs to his perfectly righteous son.
We should conduct ourselves in a manner that goes sides by side or that goes in hand with what God’s already called us to do. It is our ambassadorship of the message of reconciliation, how am I to conduct myself given my ambassadorship?
Paul wants us to be sitting in our thinking, in the place where Job was sitting, when Job asked a question, “But how should man be just with God” because Paul understood that the heart of people will go to great lengths to establish its own righteousness, and then to show just cause why they are not worthy of the wrath of God.
Seems it’s a health, wealth, and prosperity message that is motivated by the intent of separating you from the money in your wallet, gaining wealth at the expense of another’s worship is being done on a mass scale today.
Investment giving, this is what your seed faith people are being told is all about. You plant your seed faith here and God has no idea apart from you planting your seed faith whether you have faith.
So you plant your seed in this envelope with my address on it, God can see your faith and response by giving you your miracle. Modern day Christianity would say justifying the righteous, “Come to us and we will show you how to be righteous then God can justify you. We will teach you how to shoot that arrow that hit the dead center, so you can be acceptable before God.”
What a mistake that is. Look again all of you who are resting in the hypocrisy of your own well doing, while at the same time evaluating another’s salvation according to their performance in regard to whatever they are doing or not doing.
People placing confidence in their performance, not realizing that the law was designed to teach them not to place confidence in their performance when it came to earning their righteousness before God through their performance. Otherwise, God would not have provided for a sacrificial system within the law program in the first place, he would not of needed it.
Are you not glad to find out that your righteousness before God comes totally apart from your performance in the flesh in any way what’s so ever. Our deeds do not determine our destiny, our faith determines our destiny!
The Body of Christ is not the sign nation, and the Body has not become the assumers and fulfillers of God’s program with that sign nation, many think the Body have. That program has been placed on hold while God completes his plan and purpose for the saints of this dispensation.
God worked through visual evidences in connection with the Israelites who required a sign during the time that God’s program with Israel was in progress. Yet Israel, for the most part, remained an unbelieving people, they continue to remain so today while God’s program with that nation is on the shelf.
God set his program with the sign nation aside for a time as he ushered in a new program through a new dispensation for those for whom he has prepared a heavenly habitation. The Body has not been promised that earthly kingdom, an earthly inheritance, those in the Body of Christ, their citizenship is in Heaven.
We are the saints of a brand new program, while Israel walked by sight, we walk not by sight, but by faith. The focus today is no longer on the outward, but on the inward. Today, for the most part, we are also an unbelieving people.
Instead of trusting in God’s word and resting in the glories of his grace that we are shown through the word, we are even now continually looking for signs, continually looking for visual evidences of God’s presence and his approval in the day-to-day circumstance of our lives.
We have a new apostle (Paul) through whom we have been given God’s completed instruction. Would God not have us know and understand that the proof is right before our eyes, in a very real since today concerning God’s position, his power, his presence, his purpose, his program, and his predisposition in this dispensation? It is in God’s written word!
It is recited in churches across the country in our day, it is recited as though it is a prayer for today, it is recited like vain repetition as people stand up and uttering together what is commonly called: The Lord’s Prayer.
At the time this prayer was given to the disciples of the earthly kingdom program, Gentiles did not have a father-child relationship with God the Father. Israel was God’s people at the time this prayer was being taught to the disciples of Israel, and God was Israel’s God.
At the time this prayer was being taught to pray “our Father” meant that you recognized, if you were an Israelite, that you had a covenant relationship with God. During the time of Jacob’s trouble, the Israelites will be under tremendous persecution from the anti-Christ.
The anti-Christ will be putting Israelites to death for their faith, and do you know what they will be praying at that time? Thy kingdom come! The promised earthly kingdom to be set up right here on planet earth, because the only hope of deliverance for the believing Israelite at that time, will be the coming of the King and the setting up of the earthly kingdom.
Are we looking forward to the next event on Israel’s prophetic calendar-Christ coming to establish Israel’s promised earthly kingdom on the earth? Or, are we looking forward to the next secret event-Christ’s coming in the air to catch the Body of Christ up off of this planet?
Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven, why is that a significant part of this prayer for the Israelites? Because the Israelites have an earthly hope, they were promised the earth forever! Paul tells us that our citizenship is in heaven, but the Israelites will be praying that God’s will to be carried out on the earth to the same degree that it will already be being carried out in heavenly realm.
As faith gives way to feeling, people begin to base their faith on feeling. They want a God they can move to, and they want teachers who can make them feel good in the process. They find themselves on an endless quest for emotional satisfaction, because they relate their closeness to God upon feeling.
How is it that God is able to declare a believer to be perfectly righteous, when in practical experience that believer obviously falls short of perfect righteousness? Paul says, “Know you not” we should already know this and not because it is something we feel.
People oftentimes base their salvation and their relationship to God on their emotions, thinking that their relationship with God is based upon either the feelings of their flesh (emotions) or the capacity of their flesh to produce righteousness through their performance.
Paul says that people will be seeking after and devoting themselves to a God they can feel. That is what the emergent church is all about. That is why miracles for money has been selling so well over the past several decades, feeling related, emotion related!
It is not an outward demonstration of an inward manifestation, as some would have us believe. When we trusted Jesus Christ as Savior, something happened that took place outside the realm of our sensation, outside the realm of our feeling. Paul wants us to recognize that Justification and Sanctification are not based upon feelings at all, we walk by faith, not by sight.
Jesus Christ’s death is historical fact, but what does his death by itself have to with you? In order to be saved, a person must believe that Christ’s death accomplished something on that person’s behalf, where that person’s sin debt is concerned.
To believe in Christ’s death and nothing more would be profitless belief, unless Christ died for your sin debt, Christ’s death would not be good news for you at all. It is now a son issue, not a sin issue, will people accept or reject the payment Christ made for their redemption?
When you accept your redeemer and the ransom he paid, then you are joined to Christ and you have his righteousness attributed to your account. Grace is Grace. Salvation is a Gift. God in his sovereignty offers that Gift and allows the human race to accept or reject the Gift.
It is up to those of the world to either accept or reject their redeemer, but that does no less make Jesus Christ their redeemer. Those who reject the Gift, are thumbing their noses at the one who died to paid that price, that price for their redemption. Those who reject their redeemer will face the ultimate consequences of that rejection, the second death.
God accepted the payment for the sin debt his son paid for, if he had not accepted the payment, where would his son be? He would still be in the ground!
Ephesians 1:6, the word glory here is not an adjective, Paul is not describing grace. The word glory is a noun here, it means there is a glory that belongs to God’s grace, and the glory that belongs to God’s grace is to be praised on the bases on what God’s grace has accomplished.
Most people think of sainthood as something reserved for only a select few, but that is not the case. Paul certainly taught separation from the world, but never as the prerequisite to sainthood. Paul taught separation so that a believer might make their experience compatible with the exalted position God had already given them in Christ.
To be positionally in Christ makes a person a saint, because you have the very righteousness of God himself freely attributed to your account. The Corinthian believers were not so different than the saints today, but saints none the less, because sainthood is not determined by an external list of rules by what we do or how we live, that is GRACE.
The inevitable result of God’s grace to the believer is true peace, because every believer is without blame before him in love. God sees us in Christ, and Christ was blameless. Sin is not the question anymore, reconciliation is the link that connects Grace and Peace.
We can be absolutely certain that Satan’s main target will be centered right here. If this is the ministry committed to members of the Body of Christ, the Word of Reconciliation, then we can be absolutely certain that Satan wants to confuse the message of reconciliation. He wants to confuse the truth of reconciliation and turn it into a lie.
The dilemma of the human race, just as religion did not save the Israelite during the time of the law contract, religion could not save the Gentiles during that time either, just as it cannot save the Israelite or Gentile today. Religion is an equally inadequate self-defense plea today for people to make, as it was in Paul’s day.
People say, “Well, there are a lot of good people out there.” Yes, from an earthly perspective, certainly they are good, but not when their earthly goodness is measured beside God’s perfect righteousness, it does not cut it.
We might think of them as good and they would be good relatively speaking, good citizens, good neighbors, good people from a relative standpoint, but from God’s standpoint, they do not measure up to who he is.
Paul tells us that he was a Pharisee indeed of the strictest sect of Pharisees when it came to the rules and regulations, ceremonial rites and rituals, but he counted that all dung when it came to winning Christ. No one could ever win Christ by rule-keeping.
No amount of rules and regulations, no observance of rites and rituals, no matter what they are would suffice when it comes to meriting a righteous standing before God. This will be the issue at the Great White Throne Judgment, people will be standing there not clothed in Christ’s righteousness, because they have rejected what Christ accomplished where their sin debt is concerned.
People will be standing there in their own righteousness, and that righteousness is the righteousness Paul said, “I do not want to be found in that, I will not measure up.” Nobody’s righteousness will measure up. God did not make Heaven for good people, he made Heaven for sinners who are justified freely by his grace.
We have a self-sanctification in the positive sense of separating ourselves from those things we know that are not good for us or not good for others, not in order to merit any more righteousness before God through that performance, but in light of all that God has already made us to be in Christ.
Motivation is the key component when it comes to self-sanctification, for what reason do you set yourself apart. Their are people who suppose that their behavior is the source of their right standing with God. They suppose that becoming more righteous in practice, will make them more righteous in God’s sight.
Whether they will admit it or not, these people link practical righteousness with their salvation to some degree. We cannot earn salvation and we can never lose salvation, because salvation is based not upon what we do, or promise to do, but upon what Jesus Christ has already done for us!
To walk after the flesh, is to assign righteous credit to your fleshly conduct, from Adam onward, people have been doing what seems right to a person in regard to having a relationship with God. Not one member of the entire human race has ever lived up to any system of rule-keeping for righteousness.
Yet, how many are attempting today, to do what humankind before us was totally unable to do? How many people think they are measuring up to God’s standard today? Israel supposed they were producing sufficient righteousness through their performance for God to recognize their performance and call them just in his eyes.
Listen to the sarcasm of the legalist, the one who does not think salvation comes quite so easily, the one who thinks that salvation is contingent upon works in their life: “Sure, Paul, your are saying we should just go out and live for the devil and God’s grace will still abound. You are a crazy man! That is easy believism, that is cheap grace!”
The legalist would equate sinfulness with salvation, and thus link grace to license, but carnality would use grace for true purpose of unbridled sensuality. Paul is not telling us that we will no longer be inclined to do wrong or to think wrong things, or even that believers will more often than not always choose to do the right thing.
What Paul is telling us, is that sin shall not conquer us, because we can conquer sin? Not at all! Sin cannot prevail over us, because we can prevail over that in our behavior? Not at all! Sin shall not have dominion over believers, because we are not living under the law program, we are living under grace. The victory has already been won and who won it? Jesus Christ won it. All believers, we are all alike, we all continue to struggle with that issue of sins in our lives.
Not only do we continue to have the propensity to sin, we do in fact do those things that come short of the glory of God far more often than any of us would like. We know that even though we have trusted in what Christ accomplished on our behalf, to have resolved that issue of our sin debt when it comes to the table of God’s justice and Christ has resolved that issue for everyone; God’s justice is resolved.
We want a formula to give us some guidelines and we can do A,B,C, and we will be doing the Christian life successfully, but Christian living it not about doing. It is about believing something, and when we believe something and we continue to take in God’s Word and study God’s Word, it should change who we are, not change what we are trying to do and trying to become.
Listen to the attitude of law orientation; an attitude that comes from a person, who is walking after the flesh: “I’m not going to do that, because that is bad,” or “I’m not going to do that, because I cannot do that and remain a Christian,” or “I’m going to do this, because God demands I do it,” or I’m going to follow the rules, because God will accept me if I follow the rules faithfully.”
Now contrast a walking after the flesh attitude with the attitude of one who is walking after the new nature: “I’m not going to do that, because that is not who I am in Christ, and that is not good for me and it is not good for the other person. These good deeds will not save me, they will not even help to keep me saved, but why spend my time wallowing in the mire that caused my Savior to have to die in the first place? I do not owe anything to this old flesh.”
We do not owe anything to this flesh, it will never please God. That is why it is doing on down to the dust and God is going to give us a new body. Our fleshly production did not gain us our new identity in Christ in the first place. If the works of our flesh did not contribute to getting us saved, how can the works of the flesh play a part in keeping us saved?
If we are trying to satisfy God’s justice on a daily basis or however by conforming to a standard of rules and regulations, we are going to find that just the opposite becomes true in our flesh. We are going to find ourselves constantly focusing on the flesh. The milk of self-righteousness will sour under the divine heat of God’s justice.
To walk in the new nature, is to take the credit away from yourself. You realize that God is not looking at how well you adhere to any standard. God is not looking at your production. God is not looking at your behavior in order to view you as being in favor with him. God is looking at your identification with his son and at what his power is producing in you, because that is where your life is as far as God is concerned.
Unsearchable simply means that which had never been made known, that which could never be search out about Jesus Christ. God told Paul a secret, the idea that Paul was simply taking the same message taught by John, taught by the 12 apostles, taught by Jesus Christ during his earthly ministry, but Paul was taking that message in a different direction, same message, different direction.
Something was different with Paul and something began with the apostle Paul, understand this is a issue of vital importance. When Paul talks about placing no confidence in the flesh, he’s contrasting having Christ righteousness freely imputed to the account of the believer with those who suppose that they can merit a righteous standing before God through commitment through their performance through their production.
If Satan is playing a cover up game with Paul’s message, it is because Satan has a desire to keep people lost. Satan has an obsessive compulsive urge to steal or rob, Satan is obsessed with pilfering Paul’s message.
It is only when we come to properly understand God from his perspective concerning ourselves, both before we came to understand Paul’s message and then what we are and who we are after we have believed Paul’s message and have been joined to God’s son, then we can be capable if viewing others and relating to others accordingly who are also members of Christ’s body of his flesh and of his bones.
If you thought previously that the successful Christian life was all about reformed doing and commitments, you have gotten it wrong according to the apostle Paul. It is all about transformed thinking. According to our apostle, the battle is taking place between the ears, between fleshy thinking and divine thinking. God’s work in us, not our work for God, major difference.
How is God able to call someone righteous who is not righteous from a practical perspective? God’s ability to do so and remain just himself, came by way of the faith of his son, Jesus Christ.
Christ had faith in the will of the Father, and because of Christ’s faith in the Father’s will, he was faithful to do the Father’s will. So it was ultimately Christ’s faith that allowed God’s justice to remain intact, as God declares an unrighteous believer to be righteous.
You see, apart from Christ’s faith and his faithfulness to carry out the Father’s will based on that faith, there would not be anyone perfectly righteous to whom God could join a believing sinner. Just as Christ never doubted the will of the Father, the Father never doubted the faith and faithfulness of his son.
It was God’s plan to use the faith and its resultant faithfulness of the son of God in the ultimate glorification of human-kind who would take him at his word, the union of believers to Christ is that which allows God to remain just when he credits those with the righteousness of his son.
We do not need outside the Word of Truth instruction, there are people who like to draw other people aside and say, “God’s given me a word for you.” They are stepped in the enthusiasm of ignorance, if God’s Word is complete, then God has not reserved further instruction for you that is going to come through visual evidences that you could call a God-thing.
Are we to study the Word of God as though it were a hodge-podge assortment of instructions that are all the same for all the people of all the ages? Some people study it that way, and then wonder why they can not make sense of it.
Cafeteria Christianity, each group placing on their plate the portion, or portions of Scripture that appeal most to them. “We want this, but we will ignore that.” “We will take one of these, but we will leave the others off our plate.” But we can not pick and choose whatever doctrine suits our appetites, as though it is left up to us to sere ourselves.
We have to allow God to tell us in the Word, the portions of that Word that are specifically written about and directly apply to us. If you read the words “ye men of Israel,” “ye men of Judaea” do not take from the table of that nation and put that instruction on your plate. You are not the nation Israel. You are not under the law, they were. You are under grace!
Allow God to tell you in his Word the identity of those he is instructing, and discover the distinctions he’s defined in the economies that he’s designed, and then get on board with what God is doing today and join him in it.
You see, there is one basic principle we can apply to every situation in our life, will Christ be magnified in my choice, and if he’s magnified equally in A or B have at it. Enjoy it and God will enjoy your enjoyment of it, but if Christ will be magnified no matter the choice, then it is simply a matter of personal preference.
The fact is that God does not speak through the avenue of feelings, nor does he give visual evidences through the use of signs as he did with the nation Israel in time past. Every believer wants God to pleased with the decisions that believer makes, but God has given us the freedom to make our own choices in light of the application of relative Scriptural principle when it comes to making them.
Does God have a particular direction he wants every believer to somehow discover, when it comes to every detail and every area of direction that believer might take? Or, does God want believers to apply Scripture where Scripture can be applied, and where no Scriptural principle can be applied, to make the choices that we desire, and then take responsibility for choices we made?
God is not saying “Choose A, but you will first have to discover that choice A is the choice that I want you to make before you choose it! Pray and I will give you a feeling of peace, or watch closely and I will provide you a sign so that you can make my choice, your choice!” That is how people are operating with God today.
If God has to give any person a sign in connection with the direction, or course that believer might take, then God’s Word to the human race is not complete, and we must pray and with for God to speak further truth that he has not revealed in his written Word. God speaks through the avenue of his written Word, and the apostle Paul tells us that God’s Word to us is complete, Colossians 1:25.
We should be very grateful that we are saved by the faith of Jesus Christ, his faith accomplished our salvation. But there are those who believe that if a person has sufficient faith, that God will remove those untoward circumstances in response to the prayer of faith.
But, as these people insist, in order to have God take those circumstances away, a person must first have the faith that God CAN and WILL take them away. These are the people that talk about casting our devil spirits and binding Satan.
Of course, insufficient faith means no healing, thus the answer to prayer for those of insufficient faith would be NO, end of story. Show your faith - God will show you his miracle. Faith that God CAN and WILL heal is an absolutely essential component if that healing, that resolution is to take place in your life. And of course, these people often seek out “faith healers” in that God obviously works through these people of such great faith.
There are those who believe there to be a power resident IN the prayer itself, thus the term “the power of prayer”, such that in certain situations God will deliver certain people from certain suffering situations that for reasons know only to God, and he allows other believers, as well as non-believers to endure.
Yet, our patient endurance through suffering is a way of demonstrating our hope, and when our hope is put on display in the midst of our suffering, that brings glory to God. The grace and strength God gives a person to endure that suffering, is the strength of God, he wants others to see in that person’s life. That is when God’s strength is perfected in our life, while we seek deliverance from suffering, God seeks devotion through suffering.
Is it a difficult choice? Curtain #1 - Satan is backstage arranging all the health, wealth, and prosperity that you could possibly stand during the time of your earthly existence, here today, gone tomorrow, then face the second death.
Or Curtain #2 - To be glorified together with the son of God, joint-heirs with Jesus Christ, seated together in Heaven. God already has it all set up, but you will not see it lest you choose it.
If all that God has in store for his son is sitting behind Curtain #2 for you, which Curtain would you choose? Paul reasoned it out, and Paul chose to WAIT for Curtain #2 - his glorified body - health, wealth, and prosperity for a limited time held up beside eternal glorification.
Paul was eagerly awaiting God’s purpose for Paul, the glory that Paul knew would be revealed in him at the manifestation of the sons of God, when the sons of God receive their glorified bodies. A glorified body is God’s purpose for his suffering saints, a glorified body like unto Christ’s glorified body, that is God’s purpose for you down the road. Romans 8:18
So, suffering circumstances are working something in our life, while we are undergoing what we are undergoing and thinking it is the worse thing that can happen to us in our life, and we do not know the answer, and we do not know which way to turn, Paul says that it is working for us. 2 Corinthians 4:17-18
Has something changed? Why, of course it did. So why are people going back to the law program or a time when that law program was in effect and trying to eat from that table?
God’s program with the nation Israel was placed on the shelf, only after the 1-year time period given Israel in the parable of the fig tree Jesus Christ relayed to his disciples in Luke chapter 13, Israel’s indictment came with the stoning of Stephen. Paul’s conversion came in Acts chapter 9, and thus began God’s new program and an age of superabounding grace.
Dispensing the message of that new program would not begin until Paul received the revelations necessary to do the dispensing. So, the dispensing of the message did not come when Paul was converted, but we know for a fact, that Paul was judicially joined to Christ at the point of his belief.
Israel’s program had not been placed on hold at Pentecost, Israel was still the focus of God’s dealings at Pentecost. Of course, the majority of fundamental denominationalists believe that God’s new program began at Pentecost, but God’s program with Israel was not set aside until the conversion of Paul.
We find the amazing and comforting truth that God’s love for those who are joined to his son, is the same unalterable and unending love God has for his son. That is how closely connected we are to Christ, nothing will ever be able to diminish God’s loving attitude towards those who are joined to his son.
One of the most horrible, most cruel forms of punishment was a method employed by the Romans, it was worse than crucifixion. One of the ways of putting people to death was to take a corpse, someone who had already been executed and to strap that corpse onto the body of a live person.
What an adherent presence that would have been as that corpse began to rot. Well, Paul paints that very picture when he illustrates the ever present problem that his sinful nature presented to him. Paul could not escape his sinful nature, no matter how fervently he tried.
We can rejoice and we can give all the glory and the praise to the God and Father of our Savior Jesus Christ for the fact that even though that sinful nature is strapped onto our fleshly backs like a rotting corpse, God does not see us in our flesh from his judicial perspective.
God does not relate to us on the basis of our performance in the flesh, but on the basis of our new identification in his son. God gave the law to showcase that sinful nature inside people, which was the only thing the law was capable of doing when it came to Israel or those who had never been placed under that law to begin with. God gave the law that sin might abound, not abate or cease or lessen.
We either have a relationship with the law or a relationship with Jesus Christ, but it is impossible to have a relationship with both at the same time. Christ freed us from an obligation to the law, when he satisfied all the law’s demands on our behalf.
In fact, Christ freed the entire human race from the law, he fulfilled the requirement of the justice that the law required for every law breaker of those under its jurisdiction, and that would be everyone in the human race. Christ became the ransom for all, so he satisfied the justice of God concerning that law contract for everyone.
It is law principle that actually stirs up the sinful emotions. The law principle itself incites the sinful nature that is within the human race. Most people suppose that if you want to eliminate sin, simply put forth a little more law.
Well, it is the other way around according to the apostle Paul, it is the law that stirs up the passions of the sin nature. The law actually ignites the passions of the sin nature.
The law is a good thing, the problem lies not with a holy and just law, the problem lies in the fact that while the law is good, the flesh is weak. This is why God had to devise a way to view us not in our flesh, but in his son.
Saved - what kind of salvation? Not saved in the sense of justified unto eternal life with our Savior, that is not what Paul’s talking about in Romans chapter 8, but saved in the sense of all the suffering circumstances that have been the thrust of this chapter all along; we are delivered from the suffering circumstances of this life.
We will be delivered from this by the preacher on TV! We will be delivered from these suffering situations by planting our seed faith! We will be delivered from these if our life becomes a song and we become saved! No! We are not going to be delivered from any of these by any of those things.
What is the manner of our deliverance, are we delivered from our suffering circumstances based upon the number of people praying for that deliverance? Are we delivered from those suffering circumstances by the persistence and protracted manner in which those prayers are being offered?
Are we being delivered from the suffering circumstances to which we have been subjected such that God will allow us to “see our deliverance” and tell those around us that we have just witnessed a “God-thing?” Is our deliverance the repair and the escape of the problems of the old or is it the hope of the new?
Which is it? Well, Paul answered it for us in verse 23 - even we ourselves groan within ourselves, WAITING for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of OUR BODY. - We are waiting for our new bodies, the body God has in store for each of us, the body that will be fashioned like unto Christ’s glorious body.
When we get our new bodies, we will be delivered from the suffering circumstances that adversely affect this old body in which we must dwell until we die or the gathering of the body of Christ occurs, whichever is first. It is not the deliverance of the old, it is the hope of the new today.
But, what is our hope again? Is it the fix of these old bodies? Or, is it the new body we get, with that life Jesus got, John 5:26. The first Adam got the human race cut off from that life the tree of life produced, but the second Adam got us access to that life, in new bodies. How cool is that.
I do not know if you grasp the full scope of what predestination means? God did not predetermine to cause some individuals to belief unto eternal life, he predetermined to conform everyone who believes to his son.
God in his infinite wisdom pre-decreed that every believer would be joined to his son, fully identified with his son. God also pre-decided that you the believer would be blessed with all the blessings and privileges of an adopted son.
God also decided in advance that you the believer are to be to the praise of the glory of his grace. These are not something that could happen, something that should happen, something might happen, this is something that will indeed happen and it is guaranteed, God predetermined it, his mind is set.
God wants us to rejoice in these things. You see he wants us to praise him for all these things and he certainly wants us to thank him for all these things, because he’s pre-determined these outcomes for you, for every believer, he wants us to rest in these things.
Reconciliation has to do with God’s justice being satisfied for sins, and that means all of them and that means for all the world, reconciliation is a sin issue. Justification is something entirely different, it has to do with a judicial decree of the very righteousness of God himself freely attributed to the believer’s account.
Who took you sin debt? Jesus Christ! Who paid it? Jesus Christ! How much of it did he pay? All of it before you were ever born! Reconciliation had to do with sin debt. Justification has to do with righteousness.
Circumcision, or the setting aside of the flesh was simply the sign, according to the apostle Paul, that God gave to Abraham to point out that Abraham had placed his faith in God and in God alone, and not in himself.
Abraham was given the picture of the setting aside of his own flesh, in that Abraham had already placed his dependence entirely upon God. God counted Abraham to be righteous for doing so. God counted Abraham to be righteous solely on the basis of Abraham’s belief in what God told him, God would do.
Abraham learned that it would not be his own fleshly production that would accomplish God’s purpose for him. It is significant when we think about Abraham’s faith, that God wanted Abraham to place no confidence in his flesh.
What Paul wants us to see here in Romans chapter 4, is that God justified Abraham (declared Abraham to be righteous) solely on the basis of Abraham’s belief. Paul wants to make it crystal clear that Abraham was not justified according to a ritual, a ceremonial observance, even the ritual of circumcision that Abraham was given to perform.
Abraham was not considered righteous in accordance with any law-keeping system whatsoever, because God declared Abraham to be righteous approximately 25 years before he was circumcised and at least 400 years before the Law of Moses was ever instituted.
In other words, throughout the ages, God has declared to be righteous those who believed the message he was giving them at the time. When a person believed the good news that God was dispensing, God credited that person’s account with righteousness.
God transferred the sin debt of the entire world, to his son’s account. Yours were all future when that transfer took place, so God had to know about every one of those sins, and God collected the payment for those sins from his son, rather than collect that debt from a world of sinners. That means Christ satisfied God’s justice for your sins, rather than God exacting from you, what was rightfully yours to pay.
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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
Why, if your are guilty of any of these things in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, you are flat out of luck as far as Heaven is concerned. You can not do those things and make Heaven, which leads more than some of the religiously minded to say, “I am not guilty of any of those vile behaviors.”
Listen, if you think you are above these particular sins because you do not commit them regularly, or because these types of behaviors are not a regular pattern in your life, or because you are certain to gain new forgiveness when you do find yourself somewhere on that list to some degree, perhaps you had better give it a little more careful consideration.
1 Corinthians 6:11-And such were some of you: But after you were saved, you became progressively more holy such that you never sinned again? Does that verse say that? But after you were saved, you sinned less and less until sin finally disappeared altogether from your life. That verse does not say that either.
But, after you were saved, your sin nature was removed, root and branch, and never have you had the propensity to sin again! Does that verse say that? No, it does not say any of those things. At least you will not sin higher than the 6’s, 7’s, and 8’s on the sin richter scale that you hold for yourself.
These Corinthians were called saints, they would remain set apart, even though they were carnal, meaning fleshly minded, fleshly oriented in their behavior, because their sanctification like their justification was God’s transaction, not their own. It was God who performed the sanctifying.
How many in Fundamental Christianity set themselves apart, because in their minds eye, they believe they are more holy by doing so in the eyes of God? Many of them think they are more holy in the eyes of God, because they have achieved that set-apartness.
It is a judicial transaction that takes place in God’s mind the moment you believe, God is the Sanctifier, not the person, in this case. Our justification, our righteous standing before God is accomplished through our being set-apart, justification is accomplished through sanctification. God’s act of sanctification is a part of that gift transaction connected with justification.
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teachmevp
Can a person’s righteous works be added to the righteousness belonging to Jesus Christ himself, in order to arrive at a greater degree of righteousness than the righteousness already belonging to our Savior?
The lunacy of saints desiring to be under the law, do they actually think they can perform the law in a manner that would make them more righteous before God. Saints trying to perfect their righteousness, to cap off the righteousness they have in God’s sight.
That is idiotic reasoning, fleshly performance according to rules and regulations given in the law contract. Is God requiring that we add our righteous works to Christ’s righteousness, that we might become righteous indeed or is Christ’s righteousness, the only righteousness from God’s perspective his saints will ever need?
Can a person’s righteous works be added to the righteousness belonging to Jesus Christ himself, in order to arrive at a greater degree of righteousness than the righteousness already belonging to our Savior? A Israelite had to be a Israelite both inwardly and outwardly for God to consider that person a true Israelite.
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.
We are to cleanse ourselves not to keep on God’s good side, but because God’s already cleansed us, judicially speaking, by freely crediting us with the righteousness that belongs to his perfectly righteous son.
We should conduct ourselves in a manner that goes sides by side or that goes in hand with what God’s already called us to do. It is our ambassadorship of the message of reconciliation, how am I to conduct myself given my ambassadorship?
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teachmevp
Paul wants us to be sitting in our thinking, in the place where Job was sitting, when Job asked a question, “But how should man be just with God” because Paul understood that the heart of people will go to great lengths to establish its own righteousness, and then to show just cause why they are not worthy of the wrath of God.
Seems it’s a health, wealth, and prosperity message that is motivated by the intent of separating you from the money in your wallet, gaining wealth at the expense of another’s worship is being done on a mass scale today.
Investment giving, this is what your seed faith people are being told is all about. You plant your seed faith here and God has no idea apart from you planting your seed faith whether you have faith.
So you plant your seed in this envelope with my address on it, God can see your faith and response by giving you your miracle. Modern day Christianity would say justifying the righteous, “Come to us and we will show you how to be righteous then God can justify you. We will teach you how to shoot that arrow that hit the dead center, so you can be acceptable before God.”
What a mistake that is. Look again all of you who are resting in the hypocrisy of your own well doing, while at the same time evaluating another’s salvation according to their performance in regard to whatever they are doing or not doing.
People placing confidence in their performance, not realizing that the law was designed to teach them not to place confidence in their performance when it came to earning their righteousness before God through their performance. Otherwise, God would not have provided for a sacrificial system within the law program in the first place, he would not of needed it.
Are you not glad to find out that your righteousness before God comes totally apart from your performance in the flesh in any way what’s so ever. Our deeds do not determine our destiny, our faith determines our destiny!
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teachmevp
The Body of Christ is not the sign nation, and the Body has not become the assumers and fulfillers of God’s program with that sign nation, many think the Body have. That program has been placed on hold while God completes his plan and purpose for the saints of this dispensation.
God worked through visual evidences in connection with the Israelites who required a sign during the time that God’s program with Israel was in progress. Yet Israel, for the most part, remained an unbelieving people, they continue to remain so today while God’s program with that nation is on the shelf.
God set his program with the sign nation aside for a time as he ushered in a new program through a new dispensation for those for whom he has prepared a heavenly habitation. The Body has not been promised that earthly kingdom, an earthly inheritance, those in the Body of Christ, their citizenship is in Heaven.
We are the saints of a brand new program, while Israel walked by sight, we walk not by sight, but by faith. The focus today is no longer on the outward, but on the inward. Today, for the most part, we are also an unbelieving people.
Instead of trusting in God’s word and resting in the glories of his grace that we are shown through the word, we are even now continually looking for signs, continually looking for visual evidences of God’s presence and his approval in the day-to-day circumstance of our lives.
We have a new apostle (Paul) through whom we have been given God’s completed instruction. Would God not have us know and understand that the proof is right before our eyes, in a very real since today concerning God’s position, his power, his presence, his purpose, his program, and his predisposition in this dispensation? It is in God’s written word!
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teachmevp
It is recited in churches across the country in our day, it is recited as though it is a prayer for today, it is recited like vain repetition as people stand up and uttering together what is commonly called: The Lord’s Prayer.
At the time this prayer was given to the disciples of the earthly kingdom program, Gentiles did not have a father-child relationship with God the Father. Israel was God’s people at the time this prayer was being taught to the disciples of Israel, and God was Israel’s God.
At the time this prayer was being taught to pray “our Father” meant that you recognized, if you were an Israelite, that you had a covenant relationship with God. During the time of Jacob’s trouble, the Israelites will be under tremendous persecution from the anti-Christ.
The anti-Christ will be putting Israelites to death for their faith, and do you know what they will be praying at that time? Thy kingdom come! The promised earthly kingdom to be set up right here on planet earth, because the only hope of deliverance for the believing Israelite at that time, will be the coming of the King and the setting up of the earthly kingdom.
Are we looking forward to the next event on Israel’s prophetic calendar-Christ coming to establish Israel’s promised earthly kingdom on the earth? Or, are we looking forward to the next secret event-Christ’s coming in the air to catch the Body of Christ up off of this planet?
Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven, why is that a significant part of this prayer for the Israelites? Because the Israelites have an earthly hope, they were promised the earth forever! Paul tells us that our citizenship is in heaven, but the Israelites will be praying that God’s will to be carried out on the earth to the same degree that it will already be being carried out in heavenly realm.
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teachmevp
As faith gives way to feeling, people begin to base their faith on feeling. They want a God they can move to, and they want teachers who can make them feel good in the process. They find themselves on an endless quest for emotional satisfaction, because they relate their closeness to God upon feeling.
How is it that God is able to declare a believer to be perfectly righteous, when in practical experience that believer obviously falls short of perfect righteousness? Paul says, “Know you not” we should already know this and not because it is something we feel.
People oftentimes base their salvation and their relationship to God on their emotions, thinking that their relationship with God is based upon either the feelings of their flesh (emotions) or the capacity of their flesh to produce righteousness through their performance.
Paul says that people will be seeking after and devoting themselves to a God they can feel. That is what the emergent church is all about. That is why miracles for money has been selling so well over the past several decades, feeling related, emotion related!
It is not an outward demonstration of an inward manifestation, as some would have us believe. When we trusted Jesus Christ as Savior, something happened that took place outside the realm of our sensation, outside the realm of our feeling. Paul wants us to recognize that Justification and Sanctification are not based upon feelings at all, we walk by faith, not by sight.
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teachmevp
Jesus Christ’s death is historical fact, but what does his death by itself have to with you? In order to be saved, a person must believe that Christ’s death accomplished something on that person’s behalf, where that person’s sin debt is concerned.
To believe in Christ’s death and nothing more would be profitless belief, unless Christ died for your sin debt, Christ’s death would not be good news for you at all. It is now a son issue, not a sin issue, will people accept or reject the payment Christ made for their redemption?
When you accept your redeemer and the ransom he paid, then you are joined to Christ and you have his righteousness attributed to your account. Grace is Grace. Salvation is a Gift. God in his sovereignty offers that Gift and allows the human race to accept or reject the Gift.
It is up to those of the world to either accept or reject their redeemer, but that does no less make Jesus Christ their redeemer. Those who reject the Gift, are thumbing their noses at the one who died to paid that price, that price for their redemption. Those who reject their redeemer will face the ultimate consequences of that rejection, the second death.
God accepted the payment for the sin debt his son paid for, if he had not accepted the payment, where would his son be? He would still be in the ground!
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teachmevp
Ephesians 1:6, the word glory here is not an adjective, Paul is not describing grace. The word glory is a noun here, it means there is a glory that belongs to God’s grace, and the glory that belongs to God’s grace is to be praised on the bases on what God’s grace has accomplished.
Most people think of sainthood as something reserved for only a select few, but that is not the case. Paul certainly taught separation from the world, but never as the prerequisite to sainthood. Paul taught separation so that a believer might make their experience compatible with the exalted position God had already given them in Christ.
To be positionally in Christ makes a person a saint, because you have the very righteousness of God himself freely attributed to your account. The Corinthian believers were not so different than the saints today, but saints none the less, because sainthood is not determined by an external list of rules by what we do or how we live, that is GRACE.
The inevitable result of God’s grace to the believer is true peace, because every believer is without blame before him in love. God sees us in Christ, and Christ was blameless. Sin is not the question anymore, reconciliation is the link that connects Grace and Peace.
We can be absolutely certain that Satan’s main target will be centered right here. If this is the ministry committed to members of the Body of Christ, the Word of Reconciliation, then we can be absolutely certain that Satan wants to confuse the message of reconciliation. He wants to confuse the truth of reconciliation and turn it into a lie.
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teachmevp
The dilemma of the human race, just as religion did not save the Israelite during the time of the law contract, religion could not save the Gentiles during that time either, just as it cannot save the Israelite or Gentile today. Religion is an equally inadequate self-defense plea today for people to make, as it was in Paul’s day.
People say, “Well, there are a lot of good people out there.” Yes, from an earthly perspective, certainly they are good, but not when their earthly goodness is measured beside God’s perfect righteousness, it does not cut it.
We might think of them as good and they would be good relatively speaking, good citizens, good neighbors, good people from a relative standpoint, but from God’s standpoint, they do not measure up to who he is.
Paul tells us that he was a Pharisee indeed of the strictest sect of Pharisees when it came to the rules and regulations, ceremonial rites and rituals, but he counted that all dung when it came to winning Christ. No one could ever win Christ by rule-keeping.
No amount of rules and regulations, no observance of rites and rituals, no matter what they are would suffice when it comes to meriting a righteous standing before God. This will be the issue at the Great White Throne Judgment, people will be standing there not clothed in Christ’s righteousness, because they have rejected what Christ accomplished where their sin debt is concerned.
People will be standing there in their own righteousness, and that righteousness is the righteousness Paul said, “I do not want to be found in that, I will not measure up.” Nobody’s righteousness will measure up. God did not make Heaven for good people, he made Heaven for sinners who are justified freely by his grace.
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teachmevp
We have a self-sanctification in the positive sense of separating ourselves from those things we know that are not good for us or not good for others, not in order to merit any more righteousness before God through that performance, but in light of all that God has already made us to be in Christ.
Motivation is the key component when it comes to self-sanctification, for what reason do you set yourself apart. Their are people who suppose that their behavior is the source of their right standing with God. They suppose that becoming more righteous in practice, will make them more righteous in God’s sight.
Whether they will admit it or not, these people link practical righteousness with their salvation to some degree. We cannot earn salvation and we can never lose salvation, because salvation is based not upon what we do, or promise to do, but upon what Jesus Christ has already done for us!
To walk after the flesh, is to assign righteous credit to your fleshly conduct, from Adam onward, people have been doing what seems right to a person in regard to having a relationship with God. Not one member of the entire human race has ever lived up to any system of rule-keeping for righteousness.
Yet, how many are attempting today, to do what humankind before us was totally unable to do? How many people think they are measuring up to God’s standard today? Israel supposed they were producing sufficient righteousness through their performance for God to recognize their performance and call them just in his eyes.
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teachmevp
Listen to the sarcasm of the legalist, the one who does not think salvation comes quite so easily, the one who thinks that salvation is contingent upon works in their life: “Sure, Paul, your are saying we should just go out and live for the devil and God’s grace will still abound. You are a crazy man! That is easy believism, that is cheap grace!”
The legalist would equate sinfulness with salvation, and thus link grace to license, but carnality would use grace for true purpose of unbridled sensuality. Paul is not telling us that we will no longer be inclined to do wrong or to think wrong things, or even that believers will more often than not always choose to do the right thing.
What Paul is telling us, is that sin shall not conquer us, because we can conquer sin? Not at all! Sin cannot prevail over us, because we can prevail over that in our behavior? Not at all! Sin shall not have dominion over believers, because we are not living under the law program, we are living under grace. The victory has already been won and who won it? Jesus Christ won it. All believers, we are all alike, we all continue to struggle with that issue of sins in our lives.
Not only do we continue to have the propensity to sin, we do in fact do those things that come short of the glory of God far more often than any of us would like. We know that even though we have trusted in what Christ accomplished on our behalf, to have resolved that issue of our sin debt when it comes to the table of God’s justice and Christ has resolved that issue for everyone; God’s justice is resolved.
We want a formula to give us some guidelines and we can do A,B,C, and we will be doing the Christian life successfully, but Christian living it not about doing. It is about believing something, and when we believe something and we continue to take in God’s Word and study God’s Word, it should change who we are, not change what we are trying to do and trying to become.
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teachmevp
Listen to the attitude of law orientation; an attitude that comes from a person, who is walking after the flesh: “I’m not going to do that, because that is bad,” or “I’m not going to do that, because I cannot do that and remain a Christian,” or “I’m going to do this, because God demands I do it,” or I’m going to follow the rules, because God will accept me if I follow the rules faithfully.”
Now contrast a walking after the flesh attitude with the attitude of one who is walking after the new nature: “I’m not going to do that, because that is not who I am in Christ, and that is not good for me and it is not good for the other person. These good deeds will not save me, they will not even help to keep me saved, but why spend my time wallowing in the mire that caused my Savior to have to die in the first place? I do not owe anything to this old flesh.”
We do not owe anything to this flesh, it will never please God. That is why it is doing on down to the dust and God is going to give us a new body. Our fleshly production did not gain us our new identity in Christ in the first place. If the works of our flesh did not contribute to getting us saved, how can the works of the flesh play a part in keeping us saved?
If we are trying to satisfy God’s justice on a daily basis or however by conforming to a standard of rules and regulations, we are going to find that just the opposite becomes true in our flesh. We are going to find ourselves constantly focusing on the flesh. The milk of self-righteousness will sour under the divine heat of God’s justice.
To walk in the new nature, is to take the credit away from yourself. You realize that God is not looking at how well you adhere to any standard. God is not looking at your production. God is not looking at your behavior in order to view you as being in favor with him. God is looking at your identification with his son and at what his power is producing in you, because that is where your life is as far as God is concerned.
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teachmevp
Unsearchable simply means that which had never been made known, that which could never be search out about Jesus Christ. God told Paul a secret, the idea that Paul was simply taking the same message taught by John, taught by the 12 apostles, taught by Jesus Christ during his earthly ministry, but Paul was taking that message in a different direction, same message, different direction.
Something was different with Paul and something began with the apostle Paul, understand this is a issue of vital importance. When Paul talks about placing no confidence in the flesh, he’s contrasting having Christ righteousness freely imputed to the account of the believer with those who suppose that they can merit a righteous standing before God through commitment through their performance through their production.
If Satan is playing a cover up game with Paul’s message, it is because Satan has a desire to keep people lost. Satan has an obsessive compulsive urge to steal or rob, Satan is obsessed with pilfering Paul’s message.
It is only when we come to properly understand God from his perspective concerning ourselves, both before we came to understand Paul’s message and then what we are and who we are after we have believed Paul’s message and have been joined to God’s son, then we can be capable if viewing others and relating to others accordingly who are also members of Christ’s body of his flesh and of his bones.
If you thought previously that the successful Christian life was all about reformed doing and commitments, you have gotten it wrong according to the apostle Paul. It is all about transformed thinking. According to our apostle, the battle is taking place between the ears, between fleshy thinking and divine thinking. God’s work in us, not our work for God, major difference.
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teachmevp
How is God able to call someone righteous who is not righteous from a practical perspective? God’s ability to do so and remain just himself, came by way of the faith of his son, Jesus Christ.
Christ had faith in the will of the Father, and because of Christ’s faith in the Father’s will, he was faithful to do the Father’s will. So it was ultimately Christ’s faith that allowed God’s justice to remain intact, as God declares an unrighteous believer to be righteous.
You see, apart from Christ’s faith and his faithfulness to carry out the Father’s will based on that faith, there would not be anyone perfectly righteous to whom God could join a believing sinner. Just as Christ never doubted the will of the Father, the Father never doubted the faith and faithfulness of his son.
It was God’s plan to use the faith and its resultant faithfulness of the son of God in the ultimate glorification of human-kind who would take him at his word, the union of believers to Christ is that which allows God to remain just when he credits those with the righteousness of his son.
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teachmevp
We do not need outside the Word of Truth instruction, there are people who like to draw other people aside and say, “God’s given me a word for you.” They are stepped in the enthusiasm of ignorance, if God’s Word is complete, then God has not reserved further instruction for you that is going to come through visual evidences that you could call a God-thing.
Are we to study the Word of God as though it were a hodge-podge assortment of instructions that are all the same for all the people of all the ages? Some people study it that way, and then wonder why they can not make sense of it.
Cafeteria Christianity, each group placing on their plate the portion, or portions of Scripture that appeal most to them. “We want this, but we will ignore that.” “We will take one of these, but we will leave the others off our plate.” But we can not pick and choose whatever doctrine suits our appetites, as though it is left up to us to sere ourselves.
We have to allow God to tell us in the Word, the portions of that Word that are specifically written about and directly apply to us. If you read the words “ye men of Israel,” “ye men of Judaea” do not take from the table of that nation and put that instruction on your plate. You are not the nation Israel. You are not under the law, they were. You are under grace!
Allow God to tell you in his Word the identity of those he is instructing, and discover the distinctions he’s defined in the economies that he’s designed, and then get on board with what God is doing today and join him in it.
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teachmevp
You see, there is one basic principle we can apply to every situation in our life, will Christ be magnified in my choice, and if he’s magnified equally in A or B have at it. Enjoy it and God will enjoy your enjoyment of it, but if Christ will be magnified no matter the choice, then it is simply a matter of personal preference.
The fact is that God does not speak through the avenue of feelings, nor does he give visual evidences through the use of signs as he did with the nation Israel in time past. Every believer wants God to pleased with the decisions that believer makes, but God has given us the freedom to make our own choices in light of the application of relative Scriptural principle when it comes to making them.
Does God have a particular direction he wants every believer to somehow discover, when it comes to every detail and every area of direction that believer might take? Or, does God want believers to apply Scripture where Scripture can be applied, and where no Scriptural principle can be applied, to make the choices that we desire, and then take responsibility for choices we made?
God is not saying “Choose A, but you will first have to discover that choice A is the choice that I want you to make before you choose it! Pray and I will give you a feeling of peace, or watch closely and I will provide you a sign so that you can make my choice, your choice!” That is how people are operating with God today.
If God has to give any person a sign in connection with the direction, or course that believer might take, then God’s Word to the human race is not complete, and we must pray and with for God to speak further truth that he has not revealed in his written Word. God speaks through the avenue of his written Word, and the apostle Paul tells us that God’s Word to us is complete, Colossians 1:25.
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teachmevp
We should be very grateful that we are saved by the faith of Jesus Christ, his faith accomplished our salvation. But there are those who believe that if a person has sufficient faith, that God will remove those untoward circumstances in response to the prayer of faith.
But, as these people insist, in order to have God take those circumstances away, a person must first have the faith that God CAN and WILL take them away. These are the people that talk about casting our devil spirits and binding Satan.
Of course, insufficient faith means no healing, thus the answer to prayer for those of insufficient faith would be NO, end of story. Show your faith - God will show you his miracle. Faith that God CAN and WILL heal is an absolutely essential component if that healing, that resolution is to take place in your life. And of course, these people often seek out “faith healers” in that God obviously works through these people of such great faith.
There are those who believe there to be a power resident IN the prayer itself, thus the term “the power of prayer”, such that in certain situations God will deliver certain people from certain suffering situations that for reasons know only to God, and he allows other believers, as well as non-believers to endure.
Yet, our patient endurance through suffering is a way of demonstrating our hope, and when our hope is put on display in the midst of our suffering, that brings glory to God. The grace and strength God gives a person to endure that suffering, is the strength of God, he wants others to see in that person’s life. That is when God’s strength is perfected in our life, while we seek deliverance from suffering, God seeks devotion through suffering.
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teachmevp
Is it a difficult choice? Curtain #1 - Satan is backstage arranging all the health, wealth, and prosperity that you could possibly stand during the time of your earthly existence, here today, gone tomorrow, then face the second death.
Or Curtain #2 - To be glorified together with the son of God, joint-heirs with Jesus Christ, seated together in Heaven. God already has it all set up, but you will not see it lest you choose it.
If all that God has in store for his son is sitting behind Curtain #2 for you, which Curtain would you choose? Paul reasoned it out, and Paul chose to WAIT for Curtain #2 - his glorified body - health, wealth, and prosperity for a limited time held up beside eternal glorification.
Paul was eagerly awaiting God’s purpose for Paul, the glory that Paul knew would be revealed in him at the manifestation of the sons of God, when the sons of God receive their glorified bodies. A glorified body is God’s purpose for his suffering saints, a glorified body like unto Christ’s glorified body, that is God’s purpose for you down the road. Romans 8:18
So, suffering circumstances are working something in our life, while we are undergoing what we are undergoing and thinking it is the worse thing that can happen to us in our life, and we do not know the answer, and we do not know which way to turn, Paul says that it is working for us. 2 Corinthians 4:17-18
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teachmevp
Has something changed? Why, of course it did. So why are people going back to the law program or a time when that law program was in effect and trying to eat from that table?
God’s program with the nation Israel was placed on the shelf, only after the 1-year time period given Israel in the parable of the fig tree Jesus Christ relayed to his disciples in Luke chapter 13, Israel’s indictment came with the stoning of Stephen. Paul’s conversion came in Acts chapter 9, and thus began God’s new program and an age of superabounding grace.
Dispensing the message of that new program would not begin until Paul received the revelations necessary to do the dispensing. So, the dispensing of the message did not come when Paul was converted, but we know for a fact, that Paul was judicially joined to Christ at the point of his belief.
Israel’s program had not been placed on hold at Pentecost, Israel was still the focus of God’s dealings at Pentecost. Of course, the majority of fundamental denominationalists believe that God’s new program began at Pentecost, but God’s program with Israel was not set aside until the conversion of Paul.
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teachmevp
We find the amazing and comforting truth that God’s love for those who are joined to his son, is the same unalterable and unending love God has for his son. That is how closely connected we are to Christ, nothing will ever be able to diminish God’s loving attitude towards those who are joined to his son.
One of the most horrible, most cruel forms of punishment was a method employed by the Romans, it was worse than crucifixion. One of the ways of putting people to death was to take a corpse, someone who had already been executed and to strap that corpse onto the body of a live person.
What an adherent presence that would have been as that corpse began to rot. Well, Paul paints that very picture when he illustrates the ever present problem that his sinful nature presented to him. Paul could not escape his sinful nature, no matter how fervently he tried.
We can rejoice and we can give all the glory and the praise to the God and Father of our Savior Jesus Christ for the fact that even though that sinful nature is strapped onto our fleshly backs like a rotting corpse, God does not see us in our flesh from his judicial perspective.
God does not relate to us on the basis of our performance in the flesh, but on the basis of our new identification in his son. God gave the law to showcase that sinful nature inside people, which was the only thing the law was capable of doing when it came to Israel or those who had never been placed under that law to begin with. God gave the law that sin might abound, not abate or cease or lessen.
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teachmevp
We either have a relationship with the law or a relationship with Jesus Christ, but it is impossible to have a relationship with both at the same time. Christ freed us from an obligation to the law, when he satisfied all the law’s demands on our behalf.
In fact, Christ freed the entire human race from the law, he fulfilled the requirement of the justice that the law required for every law breaker of those under its jurisdiction, and that would be everyone in the human race. Christ became the ransom for all, so he satisfied the justice of God concerning that law contract for everyone.
It is law principle that actually stirs up the sinful emotions. The law principle itself incites the sinful nature that is within the human race. Most people suppose that if you want to eliminate sin, simply put forth a little more law.
Well, it is the other way around according to the apostle Paul, it is the law that stirs up the passions of the sin nature. The law actually ignites the passions of the sin nature.
The law is a good thing, the problem lies not with a holy and just law, the problem lies in the fact that while the law is good, the flesh is weak. This is why God had to devise a way to view us not in our flesh, but in his son.
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teachmevp
Saved - what kind of salvation? Not saved in the sense of justified unto eternal life with our Savior, that is not what Paul’s talking about in Romans chapter 8, but saved in the sense of all the suffering circumstances that have been the thrust of this chapter all along; we are delivered from the suffering circumstances of this life.
We will be delivered from this by the preacher on TV! We will be delivered from these suffering situations by planting our seed faith! We will be delivered from these if our life becomes a song and we become saved! No! We are not going to be delivered from any of these by any of those things.
What is the manner of our deliverance, are we delivered from our suffering circumstances based upon the number of people praying for that deliverance? Are we delivered from those suffering circumstances by the persistence and protracted manner in which those prayers are being offered?
Are we being delivered from the suffering circumstances to which we have been subjected such that God will allow us to “see our deliverance” and tell those around us that we have just witnessed a “God-thing?” Is our deliverance the repair and the escape of the problems of the old or is it the hope of the new?
Which is it? Well, Paul answered it for us in verse 23 - even we ourselves groan within ourselves, WAITING for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of OUR BODY. - We are waiting for our new bodies, the body God has in store for each of us, the body that will be fashioned like unto Christ’s glorious body.
When we get our new bodies, we will be delivered from the suffering circumstances that adversely affect this old body in which we must dwell until we die or the gathering of the body of Christ occurs, whichever is first. It is not the deliverance of the old, it is the hope of the new today.
But, what is our hope again? Is it the fix of these old bodies? Or, is it the new body we get, with that life Jesus got, John 5:26. The first Adam got the human race cut off from that life the tree of life produced, but the second Adam got us access to that life, in new bodies. How cool is that.
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teachmevp
I do not know if you grasp the full scope of what predestination means? God did not predetermine to cause some individuals to belief unto eternal life, he predetermined to conform everyone who believes to his son.
God in his infinite wisdom pre-decreed that every believer would be joined to his son, fully identified with his son. God also pre-decided that you the believer would be blessed with all the blessings and privileges of an adopted son.
God also decided in advance that you the believer are to be to the praise of the glory of his grace. These are not something that could happen, something that should happen, something might happen, this is something that will indeed happen and it is guaranteed, God predetermined it, his mind is set.
God wants us to rejoice in these things. You see he wants us to praise him for all these things and he certainly wants us to thank him for all these things, because he’s pre-determined these outcomes for you, for every believer, he wants us to rest in these things.
Reconciliation has to do with God’s justice being satisfied for sins, and that means all of them and that means for all the world, reconciliation is a sin issue. Justification is something entirely different, it has to do with a judicial decree of the very righteousness of God himself freely attributed to the believer’s account.
Who took you sin debt? Jesus Christ! Who paid it? Jesus Christ! How much of it did he pay? All of it before you were ever born! Reconciliation had to do with sin debt. Justification has to do with righteousness.
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teachmevp
Circumcision, or the setting aside of the flesh was simply the sign, according to the apostle Paul, that God gave to Abraham to point out that Abraham had placed his faith in God and in God alone, and not in himself.
Abraham was given the picture of the setting aside of his own flesh, in that Abraham had already placed his dependence entirely upon God. God counted Abraham to be righteous for doing so. God counted Abraham to be righteous solely on the basis of Abraham’s belief in what God told him, God would do.
Abraham learned that it would not be his own fleshly production that would accomplish God’s purpose for him. It is significant when we think about Abraham’s faith, that God wanted Abraham to place no confidence in his flesh.
What Paul wants us to see here in Romans chapter 4, is that God justified Abraham (declared Abraham to be righteous) solely on the basis of Abraham’s belief. Paul wants to make it crystal clear that Abraham was not justified according to a ritual, a ceremonial observance, even the ritual of circumcision that Abraham was given to perform.
Abraham was not considered righteous in accordance with any law-keeping system whatsoever, because God declared Abraham to be righteous approximately 25 years before he was circumcised and at least 400 years before the Law of Moses was ever instituted.
In other words, throughout the ages, God has declared to be righteous those who believed the message he was giving them at the time. When a person believed the good news that God was dispensing, God credited that person’s account with righteousness.
God transferred the sin debt of the entire world, to his son’s account. Yours were all future when that transfer took place, so God had to know about every one of those sins, and God collected the payment for those sins from his son, rather than collect that debt from a world of sinners. That means Christ satisfied God’s justice for your sins, rather than God exacting from you, what was rightfully yours to pay.
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