Friday, January 30, 2015

Just a Thought "33"

All around us today, religion is marked by divisions, they have divided into little factions, into little groups, and little cliques separating one from another over who is more important than the other person, in the person’s mind of course.


What took place during Isaiah’s day was true of Paul’s day and it continues on in our day, the same inner mind-set, that same sin nature at work in people throughout history, the more things change, the more they stay the same.


The Corinthian believers were acting like children, Paul called them babes, and not babes in a good context, they were adult children, but they were in charge of the church, the church of our day is best described as the Corinthians epistle, equally the Galatians epistle.


Human wisdom, human reasoning will go to great lengths to deny the truth of God, that God has already reconciled all people to himself through his son where their sins are concerned, that’s not an insurmountable hurtle, to think that God has reconciled all people to himself where their sins are concerned smacks people’s self-righteous pride nature right in the face!


If the reality of reconciliation must be believed in order for justification to become a judicial reality in the mind of God for those who believe that good news message, then we can only expect that Satan’s operation in this age of grace will be to attack the reality of reconciliation with all the religious fervor those who adhere to Satan’s false belief systems can muster, they will not just deny it, they will detest it.


The fact that Christ died for the sins of the world does not mean that there no longer exists a world of sinners, to have one’s sin slate judicially emptied, because Christ died for those sins does not mean that that one possess the righteousness reckoned on the slate of the one who died for those sins.


If we fail to understand that we are blameless and what being blameless is all about, everything we build from this point on is hay, wood and stubble, God sees us in Christ and Christ was blameless.


Total forgiveness for total sin accomplished by the one time death of Christ, and because of Christ’s payment for all sin, there is now no more reason for the believer to ever feel alienated estranged from God.


All who will accept reconciliation on the bases of Christ’s death and resurrection are forever reconciled to God, that is grace, all people as a whole was reconciled to God where sin is concerned and that is grace, reconciliation is the link that connects Grace and Peace.


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.




When the curtain drops and this present age comes to an end, it will be a glorious time when our blessed hope is realized. God has more in store for his grace age saints, not only heaven, but an authoritative position, a joint place of authority in the heavenly realm.


There is a headship order in the heavenly realm right now, it is invisible to us, but it is there, and God is the rightful head of that headship order. Rejoice, because we can expect for Jesus to come for us in the air, he will call us up in the air to be with him, thus will end the earthly phase of the unsearchable riches of Christ.


God wants believers to all think the same way, when it comes to what is happening in this age of grace, what God is doing today and how he is doing it.


The last days of this present age of grace, the time prior to God closing the door on the program through which he is accomplishing his heavenly purpose today, what will it be like when God says enough is enough on his program for the heavenlies, so he can pick up where he left off with his program for those who will inherit the earth.


There will be a people for God on the earth during those eventful years, there will be the remnant of believing Israelites, the 144,000 sealed ones, the great multitude, another bodies of faithful ones who are referred to all through the Book of Revelation.


Will these not need special instruction, God has provided for their instruction, and warning, and encouragement, in the second and third chapters of this book, right at the beginning they are the first subjects of God’s remembrance, provision, and care.


The Pauline Epistles will of course be of use as an historical record of what will then be past, just as we have the record of Israel’s history in the Old Testament now. Even now, the nucleus of the Remnant is being prepared, hundreds of Israelites are believing in Christ as the Messiah, who know nothing of him as the Savior.


At the very outset we are thus warned that we are no longer on, but quite off, the ground of the Pauline Epistles, which are addressed to sons, and not to servants, without denying that the members of the Body of Christ are in a certain sense servants of Christ, yet it is also perfectly clear that servant is not our title as to our new position in Christ before God.


As the members of the Body of Christ have need of patience, and endurance, but we are looking, not for the kingdom, but for the King himself, not as King, for he is not so proclaimed till his enemies are subdued, and though we, too, exercise this patient endurance in tribulation, it is not in the tribulation, but we are waiting to be taken away before that tribulation comes upon the earth.


The subject of this whole Book of Revelation is the visible appearing of Jesus Christ in power, and glory, and for judgment in the earth, it is not a series of revelations about Jesus Christ, but the book which gives us the particulars about the events which are connected with his appearing.


The end for which the Body of Christ is waiting is not judgment or tribulation, but to be received up in glory, to be changed and have glorious bodies like our Savior’s own body of glory, that coming is into the air, and not unto the earth.




There are pastors out there who have come to the knowledge of Paul’s good news, who refuse to take a stand on the distinctiveness of Paul’s ministry, and Paul’s message, and all because in their minds they have too much to lose if they do, could they only see what they truly have to gain, if they do.


Pride will not let us swallow our own pill, some people are never able to come to the knowledge of the truth, because they fear learning, knowledge of the truth may cause them to have to change the truth they have been standing on, for who knows how long, and that is a frightening thing for lots of people.


It is a fearful thing to think we may have been wrong all along, much easier for many people to avoid learning then change in mid-stream. People who write books must spend their entire lives from those books point on defending what they have written down, pride is a tremendously powerful force.


During the last days of this age of grace, the ever increasing tendency of people to focus their thoughts on self, to be self centered, “You do not satisfy my interest, I will go else where.”


One person underlies all the good news messages that have been proclaimed, but there is certainly more than one gospel, and each gospel pertains to a particular thing and some of them pertain to a particular group of people, we are not expecting the kingdom to be set up here on earth for us.


Paul could never preach and never preached, even one time in his ministry the Gospel of the Kingdom, because the kingdom was no longer at hand.


The good news from God to us today, is that God is not counting anyone’s sins against them, that is not the issue today, the good news is what will we do when it comes to us taking God at his word concerning what Jesus Christ accomplished where our sins are concerned.


Satan and his clan are working through ministers of righteousness to keep this news hidden from people, they do it by keeping that issue of sins on the table of God’s justice, clearly that issue of sins was resolved. Justification, not through our behavior and our performance, but this gift decree from God comes by faith, not by our works, not by our efforts, God can look at the sinning person who believes and call that sinning person a saint is the message.


There is now no violation of the law, no sin, that can alter God’s attitude toward an acceptance of those who accept the finished work of his son, sins are no longer merely covered, they are now completely paid for, completely forgiven, completely taken out of the way, that attitude can not fluctuate.


Jesus Christ removed the alienation sin wall, it could never be raised again, it is this message Satan and his clan hates the most, because that wall means alienation and separation, and removal of that wall means reconciliation.




Do we ponder this on a daily bases in our lives, so it becomes a state of mind, rejoicing in our savior until it becomes a state of mind, awaking every morning of our life with the security we have in Christ.


Everybody believes or supposed to believe in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, that is not the message that saves, it is understanding the meaning of that message that saves today.


We have to believe that message of what happened to our sins, and there is where ministers of righteousness are having a hay-day, because they are keeping the issue of sins on the table of God’s justice, when they are no longer on the table of God’s justice.


The issue is, in order to dwell with God in eternity future, we have to be as righteous as God, his justice will not allow nothing other.

There are people out there who believe they can lose their salvation, because they are totally confused with their position in Christ and with their state.


Standing is what God’s made us to be and what we can never cease to be in his eyes, state has to do with how we are taking advantage or not taking advantage of that God given position that is everlastingly ours by God’s decree.


Give up serving self, and that will be the best service to self we could ever give ourself, because we will find true freedom and joy to be the ultimate result, give up serving self and serve others.


We can learn one thing for sure, overcoming addiction does not come through the commitment to stop serving the addiction, the more effort we expend in that area, the more over-whelming will become the desire for that to which we are addicted, overcoming addition comes only through the commitment to be addicted to something different.



God has given us a perfect standing in our union with his perfectly righteous son, he’s also made provision for us now to have an ever improving state or experience, it is called maturing, it is what our growth is all about. 

Sunday, January 18, 2015

Just a Thought "32"

Best news the world could ever hear, 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 his son, Jesus Christ.


Walk worthy of the vocation that belongs to us, because God has freely given it to us, we have been justified freely, sanctified in Jesus Christ, how should we be conducting ourselves. We should conduct ourselves in a manner conducive to the job that God’s given us, it is our ambassadorship of the message of reconciliation.


The carnal Corinthians are guilty of the things Paul listed for them, but that did not reduce, reverse or remove from them their sanctified position that already belonged to them in their union with the risen, glorified son of God.


We are to be subject to the higher powers, only when those higher powers are not asking us to go against the highest power there is, and that is God himself, the supreme authority in all matters of life.


Grace that results in peace with God, understanding the grace of God which has brought peace with God, is the foundation of every believer’s joy in this age. In the midst of Paul’s troubling circumstances, he was thanking God, he was thinking what God accomplished for him through Jesus Christ.


Who we are and what we have in our savior is incredible, joy began with grace unto us from God, the Father and from our savior Jesus Christ. God is anxiously awaiting his own inheritance, which happens to be us, God considers believers to be his own inheritance, he purchased us with the blood of his son, we are God’s valuable inheritance.


We cannot do destruction to one truth from Paul in an effort to validate our belief about another truth from Paul, because if we base our theology on one truth given by Paul, while at the same time destroying another truth given us by Paul, we had better rethink our theological position.


Rethinking a theological position is much better than committing doctoral destruction to a passage that is put there so very clearly by our apostle Paul.


Dead to sin, we now have a brand new identity, those who would die in their sins, were those who would continue to have their identity in Adam, Adam in rebellion, to die with that identification intact. We no longer have that identification once we believe the good news, now we have a brand new identity.


The pride nature in people has a difficult time understanding how righteousness from God’s viewpoint can be granted apart from their conduct, and it was true through the ages, God judicially declared to be righteous all who would take him at his word down through time.




Paul introduces us in Romans, how it is that God can delate sinners to be heaven-worthy, God decided to give a judicial decree of rightness apart from our behavior, apart from our practice based solely on our belief, that belief would be concerning all who would take him at his word relative to what his son accomplished for us.


So, performing that which is good and ceasing from that which is bad is directly related in most people’s minds, especially the religious mindset today to the way that God views a person.


We realize that we are saved for the purpose of good works, but we are not saved by our good works, or kept saved by our good works.


God knows whether there is a hidden motivation even to ourselves, hidden by our pride nature to look good before others, to appear knowledgeable before others, to somehow elevate self in relation to others to gain the praise of others, God knows the motivations of the human heart.


Any kind of works at all, even if they appear to be good works in our mind, that are done for the purpose attaining salvation or for the purpose of maintaining salvation, even for the purpose of proving one’s salvation is a slap in the face of God who had to provide the gift of salvation, because people’s righteousness would be totally incapable of meriting it, our good works must be done solely out of appreciation for what God has already accomplished.


Were establishing the law, we establish it by acknowledging the fact that the law was a picture of God’s perfect righteousness where human performance is concerned, and that when it comes to attaining to that righteous standard, the law can not make a right relationship with God.


Was God only partially satisfied with the payment Christ made, or was God fully satisfied where the payment made by his son for the sins of the world are concerned, Christ purchased mankind out of the market place of sins.


It is not probation, it is salvation, forgiving us is not something God must decide to do, what his son did for us was sufficient to absolve us of our sin debt, past, present, future, it is gone. If God believes that, let us all take our stand where God takes his, faith is simply taking our stand where God takes his stand.




Righteous fruit was a requirement under the law contract, and Israel, the fig tree had not produced any, Israel was incapable of producing any, because the law was weak through the flesh, there was no crop to harvest when it came to righteousness.


The law was given to Israel, not to deter sin, but to show them their sin, how very opposite from the thinking of the religious pride nature of human reasoning, people who have no clue as to why the law was given in the first place, or really to whom it was given, actually think that the ten commandments will make us all better.


The truth is those with a sin nature have never needed a license to sin, we do it naturally, have we today, learned any thing at all from God’s program with the nation Israel, even though we are not part of that program.


People who want to think they are obeying the law contract today, they think they are fulfilling that law contract at least to a degree that God will say that they are doing the very best they can, the law required much more than that.


It certainly can get much worse than it is today for believers, it is just an age of grace tribulation, and the time of Jacob’s tribulation are entirely two different things.


Persecution and suffering troubling circumstances in a wide variety of ways will very likely increase as this age of grace winds onward towards it’s culmination toward the time of our being caught up to meet Jesus, our Savior in the air.


We will be delivered from the time of Israel’s tribulation by way of the Body of Christ being caught up in the air to meet Jesus, we need not come with the idea that since we have deliverance from that tribulation, we believers of the age of grace have an automatic pass when it comes to tribulation, we certainly will not.


Every person who has believed Paul’s good news, from the point of Paul’s conversion onward has been made a member of the Body of Christ by being joined to Christ through the baptizing work of God’s power from on high, which takes place at the point of a person’s belief, no one prior to the apostle Paul ever became a member of the Body of Christ.


The Body of Christ is a reality only for the saints who came to Christ through Paul’s good news, and have nothing whosoever to do with the saints of the earthly kingdom calling.


We do not need to start pointing at particular sins, but if we are a slave to sin, whatever sin we are serving, the sin that has us in bondage will exact it’s toll on our flesh. Choices have consequences, the choices we make with serving self have an effect on others which will affect us.


Death can take place in so many ways, it could be emotional, it can be relational, we know that an unbeliever’s sin leads to physical death, so the universal principle that sin leads to death is true.


A believer can die functionally in that we can serve no further useful purpose here on earth, no heavenly purpose on earth to those to whom we become an ambassador.


Death, in a physical sense, can come from making improper choices in our lives, if we continue in a sinful lifestyle, and we continue not bringing the flesh into subjection as Paul talks about, we can count on that lifestyle to take a toll on us.


Our decree of judicial perfection in the eyes of God comes not through Christ’s death for our sins, but through our union with Christ’s resurrection life.


Reconciliation and righteousness are two different things, the sinner becomes a new creation when that sinner trusts what Christ accomplished where their sins are concerned, and that is when God’s power from on high joins that sinner to the Savior.


The instance we take God at his word concerning what his son did on our behalf, God ask us to simply believe Christ gave his life for us, Christ did it all, there is nothing left for us to do. God did all the giving, we do only all the receiving, he is asking us to believe Christ accomplished salvation for us and we are simply to believe it.


All around us today, religion is marked by divisions, they have divided into little factions, into little groups, and little cliques separating one from another over who is more important than the other person, in the person’s mind of course.


What took place during Isaiah’s day was true of Paul’s day and it continues on in our day, the same inner mind-set, that same sin nature at work in people throughout history, the more things change, the more they stay the same.



The Corinthian believers were acting like children, Paul called them babes, and not babes in a good context, they were adult children, but they were in charge of the church, the church of our day is best described as the Corinthians epistle, equally the Galatians epistle.  

Thursday, January 8, 2015

Just a Thought "31"

Will Christ be magnified in my choice? Here is one basic principle we can apply to every situation in our life, God has given us the freedom of personal preference. Not feelings directed, nor is it sight oriented, it comes only through the instruction given in God’s word, as we apply the principles of that word to circumstances of our lives.


The Apostle Paul tells us that God’s word to us is complete, God can work through any choice we make, but the choice is ours, because God is not micro-managing believer’s lives today.


When it comes to directing our lives, God need not say anything further, in that word that God has completed for us, is all that we need to know to make the choices we have to make in this age of grace, and God has dispensed that information liberally!


Every believer is set apart by God as being holy at that person’s belief, God is the one who is performing the setting apart. God accomplishes this sanctification by joining all who believe to his son, a judicial union takes place.


Justification is our gift declaration of righteousness, sanctification is how that judicial degree of righteousness is achieved. We are washed, because now we are something else.


We are justified, set apart in a judicial sense as being perfectly holy in our union with Jesus Christ, recipients of God’s gift decree of righteousness. Paul brings our attention to the fact that God is now no longer viewing us apart from the righteousness that belongs to his son.


One purpose of worship as some people define it, is to get a touch from God, to get the emotions at a peak, they feel close to God when they are in a situation that stimulates their emotions.


The connection is solid, because the emotional high has been established as they find themselves on an endless quest for emotional satisfaction, because they relate their closeness to God upon feeling, they are either on fire or the fire’s gone out.


Paul told us that as time progresses forward in this age of grace, people will become more and more about satisfying their emotional desires, they will be seeking after and devoting themselves to a God they can feel. Justification and Sanctification are not based upon feelings at all, they have nothing to do with feelings or emotions, they are not based on sensation in any sense.


When we trusted Christ as our Savior, something happened that took place outside the realm of our sensation, outside the realm of our feeling. This is commonly taught in the hallways of religion, that a person must make a decision to serve, in order to get God to make the decision to save.


Some would say to repent, means to have Godly sorrow, others would say that to repent, means to turn around and go the other direction, sin no more. Repent simply means, a change of mind, a change of thinking, Israel was continually being called upon to repent, to change their thinking, they were trusting in themselves.


God did not give Israel a law they could keep, he gave them a law impossible for those with a sin-nature to obey perfectly, in order to teach them their need of a Savior. We certainly can make some choices in our lives, due to who God’s made us to be, by joining us to his son.





Those of us who are bent on satisfying the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life fall into a snare, in that we become addicted to the manner in which we satisfy those lusts. Paul does not talk about God pushing a bad button and having something bad happen to us or God taking our life.


Paul does talk about when we pursue the satisfaction of the sinful lusts of the flesh, it is not ruination God is bringing on sinful believers, but ruination sinning believers are bringing upon themselves.


Unbelievers and believers alike can make choices, Paul is calling on the saved saints, saved and sealed saints to make a decision, to make righteousness the choice of their service. Since God’s power from on high indwells every believer, his power can indeed be grieved when the conduct of believers is contrary to their new position in the Savior.


We did not gain our new position in Christ by being good, but rather by believing on what God accomplished, he justifies the ungodly. God counts the faith of the one who agrees with him as to the reality of their own unworthiness, and the fact that they must be justified by God’s gift decree, God counts that person’s faith as being that person’s righteousness.


God had to do for us, what we could never do for ourselves, our former identity with Adam, that identity is no longer true of believers, but the sin nature is ever present.


While God’s power from on high cannot depart, it can certainly be grieved, God placed it within every believer for the express purpose of guaranteeing those believers an inheritance in heaven, it is God’s guarantee that God will keep his promise.





We can thank God that we do not have to pray, deliver us from that anti-Christ, this is the manner in which the Israelites are to be praying during the period of the tribulation.


We are going to be delivered from this evil one before the tribulation even begins, because we are going to be caught up off of this planet to be with Jesus in the air, we are not appointed to the wrath associated with Israel’s tribulation.


These saints of the earthly kingdom program will be praying in that day, give us this day our daily bread, they will be worrying about that day, not the next day. For God has not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Savior Jesus Christ, according to what Paul tells us.


Israel was God’s people at the time this prayer was being taught to the disciples of Israel and God was Israel’s God, the Gentiles were apart from God.


People oftentimes base their salvation and their relationship to God on their emotions, from Paul’s perspective these people are walking after the flesh, they are walking in relation to the flesh, 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.


As faith gives way to feeling, people begin to base their faith on feeling, they want a God they can move to, they want a God that gets them moving, and they want teachers who can make them feel good in the process. Doctrine giving way to emotion will be the order of the day, as time goes on.


For the time will come when people will not endure sound doctrine, but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears. Itching has to do with feeling with physical sensation, to make somebody pleased, or appeal to somebody’s sense of humor.


Best news the world could ever hear, 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 his son, Jesus Christ. Walk worthy of the vocation that belongs to us, because God has freely given it to us, we have been justified freely, sanctified in Jesus Christ, how should we be conducting ourselves.



We should conduct ourselves in a manner conducive to the job that God’s given us, it is our ambassadorship of the message of reconciliation. The carnal Corinthians are guilty of the things Paul listed for them, but that did not reduce, reverse or remove from them their sanctified position that already belonged to them in their union with the risen, glorified son of God.