Romans 5:8 But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
When you became born again, it was a relief beyond joy, to know that all your sins up to that point were forgiven, not held against you.
And then, the very next minute, a Christian can be ensnared and shorn of lasting joy, by the false teaching that a) you must work extra hard from now on to stay clean in God's sight, lest you lose your salvation, and/or b) your sins after the point of salvation are somehow not covered, so you must be responsible to "I John 1:9" every time you do or think sin, or fail to do or think some good.
The world might ask, why become a Christian, if it means signing up to a lifetime of strain, strife, and stress? And if you are a Christian experiencing that sort of walk, you should ask yourself that, as well. If is no merely flippant query, but a logical checkpoint: is your yoke, like Christ's, easy? Is your burden light? Did the truth set you free from the law of sin and death, or did it not? Selah.
James 4:17 Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.
To be sure, there are parameters for the Christian, both of what we do not, and what we do. On the whole, if our focus is pinned on keeping ourselves straight-and-narrow, squeaky-clean in words and deeds...in other words, if we focus on what we must not do, then we are focused on SELF. The first rule of learning to steer a car is to set your focus on where you want to head towards, not on the imprint your tires are making.
So to start, the Christian walk must be lived "looking to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith." (Hebrews 12:2) And to continue, we have the Holy Spirit indwelling us - our conscience is reborn and it is now equipped to be our guide. Let everything you know is sin fall away, by looking to Jesus, every morning, every hour - 'Lord, what would you have me do?' And then be bold to do it.
This approach, starting from a right focus, sets us on an affirmative course of pursuing good, rather than a defeatist course of continuously fleeing evil. In fact, the way I understand both James 4:7 and II Timothy 2:22, it is our positive focus and dependence on Christ, that causes the devil to flee us.
I John 1:9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Now. This is frequently taught to Christendom as one of those Pharisaically-heavy burdens bound on the believer's back, an everlasting command to stay 'fessed up, if we would remain forgiven and righteous.
I cannot say strongly enough, that is a devilish perversion of God's word.
In fact, the subject of this verse and thought is God, and the fact that God is faithful and just in His forgiveness of our sins, and in the effectual cleansing of sin itself.
Once again: Calvary covered it all. At the point of yielding your life to Christ, you redeemed the forgiveness laid up on account for you, for your past, present, and future, From now on, until you leave the body and stand glorified in the presence of Jesus, you will still sin, but you will not be identified as "sinner" in the Lamb's book. That is no longer your address. All the function of your errors should be: to drive you to God for reassurance and refreshment, and to renew your gratitude for His love and forgiveness. Your confession is simply agreeing with God.
*Hebrews 9, 10, and 12 deal with the efficacy of Christ's blood, how Jesus fulfilled the whole Law where continued sacrifices under the Law could not, and keeping our focus on Jesus despite all the
Ephesians 4:24 And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.
Against the background of Old Testament sacrifices "that could not make [the sacrificer] perfect as pertaining to the conscience" (Hebrews 9:9), the new man is a different man altogether. The blood of bulls and goats that had been ordained in the Old Covenant had only the power of atoning for the flesh, and only a year's worth of flesh, at that. The blood of Christ, on the other hand, was shed once, for all (Hebrews 10:12) and was sufficient to cleanse the conscience of man. Jesus' sinless life, sacrificial death, and innocent blood obtained for every man who believes, "the way into the holiest of all" (Hebrews 9:8).
The holiest life, that of the regenerate, new man, is now lived by faith (Hebrews 10:38) in Jesus and in the power of his resurrection. To put faith in Jesus, who is the Son of God and so "God of very God" as the Credo states, is to take Him as savior, Lord, teacher, friend, strength, and guide. He is the prototype of the new manhood created for us to assume. (But when I put it that way, I do not want to appear to say that Jesus is a created being - he is Creator.) Actually, it is more accurate to say that Jesus is the mold in which the new personhood has been cast.
Hebrews 10:10 & 14 By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all...For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified.
It is God's will that our sanctification should be achieved by the offering of His only begotten Son. And that work of sanctification, God counts as "perfected," completed.
If we add anything to the sanctifying process beyond the blood of Jesus, we miss the mark of which God has already made a bullseye.
Ephesians 1:13 In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise.
The truth of the gospel sets you free from the law of sin and death, and as if this were not already the most amazing package deal - there is more. You are not merely gathered into the sheepfold or written into the Book of Life; you are "sealed" with that holy Spirit of promise.
Thinking about "that holy Spirit of promise" being a seal of salvation: this is not a visible 'brand' that could fade or be washed off or expunged in any other way. The holy Spirit of promise is more real than that, for it is the self-existent strength of God's word. God is the only One who can give His promise unequivocally. If He says it is so, it is so...even if we have yet to see/perceive, what He has promised has been provided.
John 4:24 God is a Spirit; and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.
When you ponder the fact that Almighty God is a Spirit, does this strike you as a literally "insubstantial" comfort? It seemed so to me in the early years of my faith...and I know God understood that shortcoming of human, physical finitude, when He made the plan to descend into His own creation in the likeness of man, as Jesus. It was necessary, to separate those who know the God they seek, from those who could never see past their preconceived ideas of God.
They who worship God "in truth," that is, from a state of being indwelt by His holy Spirit, and acknowledging the Truth of God's sovereignty, holiness, and goodness, are cautioned, "quench not the Spirit" (I Thessalonians 5:19). Does this mean that we have some sort of power over the holy Spirit? No, indeed! It means that a believer controls the degree of connection with God's Spirit by trusting or doubting.
"Deep calleth unto deep" (Psalm 42:7). Spirit calls to Spirit, Substance calls to Itself, wherever it has been distributed. If in the physical world which is passing away, opposites attract, in the spiritual world which is eternal, like things attract and confirm one another. "Draw nigh to God, and He will draw nigh to you" (James 4:8).
I Corinthians 6:17 But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit.
Here is a description of the bonded seal of promise that evokes the familiarity of marriage. Just as man and woman become one flesh in marriage (Genesis 2:24), believer and Lord now share the same spirit: righteous, holy, and eternal.
I John 4:17 Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world.
This verse finishes a thought contained in I John 4:15-17. You have believed and confessed that Jesus is the son of God, therefore God dwells in you, and you dwell (live and move and have your being) in Him. It follows that, since God is love, we dwell in love, too. As god is faithful and just, we are forgiven - and so we should be walking in that confidence before the rest of the world.
"Drive Satan Out"
John 10:10 The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.
There is precedent in the (Roman) Church for conducting exorcist ceremonies, to drive Satan from afflicted persons. This makes for sensationalist literature and films. In my college years there were two local works, one Protestant and one non-denominational, who "conducted spiritual warfare" with much speaking: "Satan, I bind you," or "Devil, you are cast out." As much success as any of these approaches may have depends entirely on the prominence of the Name, 'Jesus.' That name, more than all our confidence and bold manners, is the weapon that drives Satan out in cases of possession. It is no power that we have, to touch an angelic being or a demonic one. It is the presence of God. And for daily living, it is the presence of God in the daily and minute things of life that hold the devil at bay. So the way to resist the devil is to submit to God. The more we are yielded to the Holy Spirit, the more repellant Satan finds us.
Romans 6:16 Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?
We want to serve Jesus, who served us so fully. If there is any doubt as to how to serve Him, we have the bible and prayer ("If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth liberally and upbraideth not." James 1:5). We also have brothers and sisters in Christ to compare notes.
I John 1:7 But if we walk in the light, as his is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.
The "light of the world" is the gospel encapsulated in the person of Christ. That light is the awareness of God's love and the salvation which his love purchased for us. It is also the light of Truth, this glorious truth of Love being community, unity among individuals (not a homogenous mass), in eternity free from the sin and misery that beset this fallen world.
To experience fellowship even in this world, needs only our acceptance of God's love and His judgment for all things...as Jesus did and does.
I John 1:9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Yes, this is a second mention of a scripture from the beginning of these notes. There I pointed out that the main character of the verse if God, not you or I. Since this section has been looking at Who actually drives Satan out of our way, we can also see in I John 1:9 that, when God cleanses the sin, when He says it is forgiven...the Devil ha no handhold. Selah.
We should all be hearing angelic strains of "Victory in Jesus" about how "he plunged us to victory, beneath the cleansing flood," right about now.
"Never Fluctuated"
I John 3:15 Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him.
I John 4:8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.
The main theme of this topic is the completeness of God's forgiveness. Since I have used space discussing how love is a behavior, I want to spend some time addressing the matter of "hate," and to settle one of those apparent contradictions that skeptics of every stripe seek in the Bible, or order to disprove its validity, and over which they gloat when they find it.
We assure people that "God IS love," and we have to answer the next minute, for Jesus' words in (Luke 14:26-27) If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple. What?! I must hate my dear ones in order to be an accepted disciple of Love?
NO! That is a superficial and deliberately spurious apprehension. Love and Hate are behaviors, proceeding from attitudes and thoughts; they are not merely the emotions and thoughts. What is the cross that each of us bears, but the conflict of loyalties - to those of the fleshly relationships, or to Him of the Spirit, who can also redeem the flesh?
When we read the rest of Jesus' words in this vein, it is obvious that He was developing a theme of considering and weighing, before committing to a preference. (Luke 14:28-33) For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it? Lest haply, after he hath laid the foundation, and is not able to finish it, all that behold it begin to mock him, Saying, this man began to build, and was not able to finish. Or what king, going to make war against another king, sitteth not down first, and consulteth whether he be able with ten thousand to meet him that cometh against him with twenty thousand? Or else, while the other is yet a great way off, he sendeth an ambassage, and desireth conditions of peace. So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.
Jesus warns truly, that his Truth will divide even families, where some receive the gospel and others reject: (Matthew 10:32-38) Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven. But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven. Think not that I am come to bring peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household. He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me is not worthy of me.
I have born this cross twenty-five years since becoming a Christian. Time has mellowed the vitriol from my family, to a point where my dad merely rails occasionally at the abstract of "faith" as "superstition," my brother avoids any spiritual topic, and my mom now brings me all the compendiums of Bible stories from the books sales that she attends.
Perhaps they will never understand, that when I appeared to forsake them to love the Lord, that taught me to love them yet more...amost to love them for real. It is the power of god that has enabled me not to return scorn, belittling personal remarks and insulting demeanor. It is God's love for my family that through me has offered and given help in many situations.
So I have not ultimately 'lost' any loved ones because I chose to 'hate' them, to put them after Jesus in preferment. And this was the resolution of that choice, which Jesus promised: "Then Peter began to say unto him, Lo, we have left all, and have followed thee. And Jesus answered and said, Verily I say unto you, There is no man hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake, and the gospel's, But he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life." (Mark 10:28-30) It is also recorded in Luke 18:28-30. And indeed in this present time, we who believe have gained manifold, relationships in the body of Christ who are like mothers, fathers, children, and siblings to us, in whose dwellings we also are at home.
All of that I found necessary to say, to lay to rest any claims that Jesus is no better than a jihadist, going about inciting people to hatred of their unbelieving loved ones.
Now, to treat the statements from I John. this is "hate" as in, "bears an emotional animosity"... and if the heart contains that, the body acts accordingly. "Out of the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks," says Jesus, and "a good man does good things out of a heart full of goodness stored up, while an evil man does evil from the evil he has in his heart" (Matthew 12:34, my updating of KJV).
Hebrews 3:13 But exhort one another daily, while it is called today; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.
For a period of eight years, I sat under the preaching of a man who described himself as 'an exhorter.' His brand of exhortation was to continually pound on our sin, our unworthiness, and God's anger at sin. Finally I came to see that, in part, this sort of exhortation came out of his very limited involvement with the congregation. He needed to give a harangue with enough sting, I think, to make it stick between Sundays. Very little new ground was covered in each edition to a series topic, as he spent much time if warm-up chat and then in strenuous "review" of what he had said from the beginning of the series. I somehow don't think that the author of Hebrews meant for believers to harangue and scold one another daily, to reinforce a dread that each of them would never get this Christian thing right.
Among a body of believers, as the epistle is addressed, the proper way to understand and apply exhortation is to en-courage, to instill in each other courage for the circumstances we face. We cannot do this effectively without a working familiarity with the lives of our brothers and sisters in Christ. It does not need to be nosiness, to seek active involvement. This may take some effort beyond the present-day conveniences of communication that define our day.
The primary function of sin is to separate us from God; that has been paid for and we are forgiven! But a secondary effect of sin still very much present, especially in an Age of Communication, is to make one feel isolated from community. If you feel cut off from the body during the week, with your conscience for company and no loving ear and face to sound off to, that is a recipe for the kind of shell that layers itself around the heart, gradually hardening it.
We need to be involved, in order to see the need for encouragement. We need the presence of one another, to remind and reassure that God's mercy, grace, and love have never fluctuated.
John 4:24 God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. (Again, a repetition)
Now revisiting this verse after Hebrews 3:13, it highlights even more how we must worship God unencumbered by the flesh, since that is how God exists.
"Sober, Righteous, and Holy"
Titus 2:11-12 For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, Teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world
So, being fully persuaded that God's love has never fluctuated, his forgiveness has never been voided, and his grace abounds toward us, "how shall we then live?" The phrase, 'denying ungodliness and worldly lusts' can be and has been taken as the pillar of many formulaic prescriptions (characterized mostly by proscription!), conjuring up the days when the good Methodists would not play cards, the Baptists would not dance, and the Catholics never ate meat on Friday. For most people, it is probably not so hard a thing, not so heavy a burden to forego certain entertainments and vittles. And for most people, when we discover how easy that is, we think, "No problem, this godliness is a piece of cake." Is godliness merely an outward form of behavior, though, or is it really the quality of being submitted to and aligned with God's word in such a way and to such a degree, that the outward behavior becomes a positive expression of a winsome faith, not merely a worldly testimony of "I can do this better than you?" Well, that is a leading question and it makes my point. Denying ungodliness and worldly lusts cannot be genuine on the strength of an outward show, if it is only as shallow as all legalistic regulations are. Fleeing ungodliness and conquering worldly lusts is an outward manifestation of worshipping God in spirit and in truth: a total surrender to good Almighty God begets a total victory over the world. Didn't Christ say so - "In the world ye will have tribulation, (temptations, trials, troubles, obstacles of every kind) but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world" (John 16:33).
"We should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world." First of all, we are going to do this in Christ, and in His strength. This is the only way, since our temporary flesh is dust, and our eternal substance is always at war with our own flesh. We get distracted; the Holy Spirit of Christ does not. Therefore, we have only to ask God's guidance, and to thank him for directing our hearts, for this day to come, for the next hour full of politics at the board meeting, through the ordering of the semester's schedule. More and more through the course of a Bible study that has taken up nearly two years, I have been struck by the realization at several corners, that submission to God, delving into the Bible and knowing Jesus, makes the Christian walk fall into place. Even as it may get tougher, stamina and maturity are there as needed, and one discovers that to submit the self to God in Jesus, is get back more of the self as God has created me to be, and to achieve more of the good works he has foreordained for me to walk in. (Peruse Ephesians 2:10, it is there.)
Looking to the author and finisher, or the pioneer and perfecter, of our faith, effects earnest, clean, and beautiful living in this present world, in any circumstance.
No comments:
Post a Comment