Monday, November 30, 2015

Just a Thought "95"

Romans 2:3-4 - The first characteristic of a self-righteous moralizer is arrogance. The guilty verdict that God has just declared upon the human race, do you think that you are going to escape that guilty verdict? Do you think for one moment that God is going to give you a non-wrath-worthy pass: that Christ need not have died for your sins; that your sins are of such a non-serious nature that you have no need of a Savior in the first place?

God is going to see you as having no need of the saving work of his son. God’s attitude toward ALL ungodliness and unrighteousness of people is being revealed in scripture. People are guilty before God, he has decreed it. NO excuse will suffice to pardon it. It is such a shame that so many people today are trusting in their goodness to get them to heaven. Paul wants us to understand that there is no refuge in human goodness. Judgment based on a righteousness people can produce for themselves can only lead to one verdict, GUILTY.

When we put our human hearts under the microscope of God’s truthful judgment, we are going to find out that we need much more than human righteousness to have a perfectly just standing before God. We need a Savior and Jesus Christ became that Savior. Do all people need to change their minds about the seriousness of sin and God’s answer to that serious dilemma people found themselves in? All people should change their minds about the way that God has provided and what his son accomplished where their sins are concerned, because not all people believe that those sins were done away with Christ’s payment.

God has held back the wrath you so justly deserve. God has been good to you in holding back that wrath. God has not held back his wrath because he is happy with who you think you are, or because he is satisfied with who you are trying to become. God has been long-suffering in holding back his wrath, because he hopes that you will consider his goodness through his son, his goodness on your behalf and flee to his grace, God wants you to change your mind about who you are from fleshly perspective apart from Christ.




Romans 2:5 - This is a chilling and sobering thought, when self-righteous moralizers harden their hearts and remain impenitent concerning their goodness, they are storing up to themselves wrath to be visited upon them in the day of wrath. They will one day stand at the Great White Throne Judgment where the merited righteousness they think they have will be put on display. It will be open for inspection. They will be standing at the Great White Throne Judgment having only their own righteousness to show for themselves.

Paul has taken on the role of prosecuting attorney seated at the plaintiff’s table. To illustrate just how bad things really are, Paul wants us to understand that all the human race are sitting at the table of the defense. The point that Paul makes as prosecuting attorney is to prove beyond any shadow of a doubt, the reality that every person is worthy of the wrath of God. Making all of us wrath conscious is the point in Paul’s presentation. We have to understand the charges against us and that is precisely what Paul set out to do.

Paul as a wise prosecutor has pointed the finger at the entire human race and he has accused us of being guilty of the crimes of being ungodly and unrighteous. We need to be justified, because our own performance and our own production, even when accompanied by our most sincere promises and pledges to God is insufficient to accomplish for us a just standing in the eyes of a perfectly just God. Paul wants us first and foremost to come to a full assurance of understanding that when judged according to truth, we are all in the same boat. Each and everyone of us had a need for a justification to be provided for us; a justification that would come totally apart from anything we could merit through our own performance.





Romans 2:6-11 - God completely took works out of the equation, when it came to gaining or maintaining salvation! Paul has fenced us all in and it is a closed-in pen, in a manner of speaking of wrath worthiness, therefore, the human race is in need of a Savior, simple as that! All of the saving work that God could possibly do, he has already done through Jesus Christ. God now holds forth the reconciliation that Christ has accomplished, offering people the choice to either accept or reject that gift of salvation. Our good works must be done solely out of appreciation for what God has already accomplished, we place our faith in Christ’s faithfulness, and that alone.

The Pastors roll is to prepare his people for the Bema, that is what teaching and pastoring is all about. The Bema has to do with the building project. The building is the Body of Christ. We as members of the Body of Christ, are co-labors with God in the building project. The blueprint for the proper construction of this building has been given to apostle Paul for the work crew of which we are apart. At the Judgment Seat of Christ, Christ will be able to judge, not only what is seen by the eye, but also the motivations of the heart, not only what was done, but why it was done in connection with each believer’s work of faith, labor of love, and patience of hope. But understand, it is the value of the work itself that will be judged at the Bema, not the believer.


God has given the human race a God consciousness, the conscious perception that we could say that there is a God somewhere and that ultimately the human race is accountable to that God. 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. The issue at the Great White Throne Judgment will be those standing there in their own righteousness, and not in God’s righteousness.




Sunday, November 29, 2015

Just a Thought "94"

Romans 1:18-32 - God is fair in revealing his perfect wrath against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of the human race. In other words, in spite of people’s excuses, in spite of trying to shift the blame for people’s wrath-worthiness, Paul is presenting the evidence that all people of all time justly deserve the wrath of God, because all people are without excuse. It’s not what we deserve that is the issue, because all people deserve the wrath of a perfectly just God.

People glorify themselves by filtering everything they say and everything they do through that screen of self-protection, self-elevation, and self-gratification. No matter what we wish others to believe, we seek to satisfy self first and foremost. It is true of all of us, whether we like to admit it or not. People began their journey with unthankfulness, a lack of appreciation for the true God, and once on that road of a darkened heart, they traveled through such checkpoints as human reasoning and close-mindedness until their wayward course at it’s final destination brought them all the way to what God calls vile affections.

You see, vile affections is nothing more than idolatry at its logical conclusion: the end point of people replacing God with people. Things have not changed from the very beginning of time, we are at the same point today, or rapidly approaching it, that resulted in God giving up on the Gentiles way back in the book of Genesis. They knew about God, they chose not to keep him in their thoughts. The conscience has been present in people since the garden, and knowledge of the reality of God has been present as well.

That is Paul’s point, it is not just that people do these things, the problem is all people are wrath worthy, because all people have minds that are capable of doing these things given enough time or the right circumstances. Anyone of us here are capable of doing what anyone else in this world has ever done. Do you know what these vile affections that Paul is making reference to are called today? An alternate lifestyle. Obviously, unclean hearts, darkened minds attempt to take the shame out of it. The idea is, let’s just get on with life and accept it for what it is.




Romans 2:1 - Paul knew that the defense mechanism resident within the pride nature of the human heart would be instant in it’s response to protest the accusation of wrath worthiness. Paul knew the human heart would not only be quick, but that it would be ingenious in the pleas that it would offer as to why we are not wrath-worthy. Paul anticipated the reaction of the human heart given the sin nature disease. Paul anticipated that we would jump to defend ourselves. Paul anticipated that some people would be quick to defend other people.

Paul has done what any wise prosecuting attorney would do, he has been eliminating our excuses before we have opportunity to present them. No one has a self-defense plea that will successfully excuse them from being counted worthy of God’s wrath. No one therefore, will be able to escape the judgment of God by anything that they do. This is what Paul has been setting out to prove; the necessity of justification, the gift declaration of righteousness by faith.

Paul does not saying IF we do these things and IF we judge another then we are guilty. Paul is saying whenever we judge another we are automatically condemning yourself, because the truth is we do the same things, we may do them in a different way, but rest assured we do them. Anytime we condemn the coming shortnesses in others, we need to understand the reality of the fact that we are all in the same boat, we all come short in the righteousness department due to that indwelling sin nature.

We all come short of God’s measure of rightness. A person who is in the gutter, so to speak, oftentimes realizes the situation they have gotten themselves into, but a person who believes they are in a position to judge someone else; a person who has rationalized away their own short comings is one who is failing to recognize the sins of self.




Romans 2:2 - Paul begins with this statement in order to contrast God’s judgment with people’s judgment. God’s judgment is according to truth. No slanting of the facts to protect the guilty. No self-justification based on the convenience of the moment. No ethics geared to the situation at hand according to Paul, but God’s judgment is according to truth, our own moralizing standards set aside. The human race is guilty.


If we are pleading that some individuals do in fact measure up to God’s righteousness, Paul has just dispensed with that foolish notion. We all appear at different places, at different times within the list called: GUILTY. There is a short-coming of righteousness in the world, because there is a short-coming of righteousness in individuals, and that includes everyone. 

Saturday, November 28, 2015

Just a Thought "93"

Romans 1:15 - Being created in the image of God means that we must view ourselves as intrinsically valuable and richly invested with meaning, potentially and responsibilities. We are to be and to do on a finite scale, what God is and does on an infinite scale.

By virtue of being created in the image of God, human beings are capable of reflecting his character in their own life; animals possess none of these qualities. What distinguishes people from animals is the fact that human nature inherently has godlike possibilities.

Omniscience, omnipotence, or omnipresence, none of these other divine attributes have been ascribed to the human race as part of the image of God. We have been created to reflect God in our thinking and actions, but the physical sustained by God and dependent upon him for our existence in this world and in the world to come. Developing a godly character in this present life, this will be our personal identity in the world to come. It is the character or personality that we have developed in this life, that God preserves in his memory.




Romans 1:16 - What a marvelous plan God had for us! God has kept the fingerprints of the guilt-worthy off of the righteousness he designed for the guilt-worthy. God has committed to us the ministry of reconciliation, to tell the world God is not imputing their trespasses unto them; so we see the world still thinks he is. This ministry of reconciliation is not to the saved, we know we are reconciled, but now all have access to God, a change in status for the entire world. Does this mean the entire world is save? No.

There are those who mistakenly suppose that reconciliation is the same thing as justification. These people have jumped to the conclusion that Jesus Christ taking the sin issue off the table of God’s justice through his becoming sin for the human race is that which makes a person as righteous as God; they have mistaken reconciliation for justification. Being declared righteous is God’s gift to the believing sinner and it has nothing whatsoever to do with the sinner himself doing anything to deserve or merit that righteous standing.

What God was doing through his son; God knew about what he intended to do before the world was ever formed, yet, God had kept this secret from ages and generations until it was time for the ascended Jesus Christ to reveal it to the apostle Paul. God no longer views us in our human flesh, he views us in our identity in the second Adam (Jesus Christ), he views us in our glorified identity. In our identity in Christ, now we can bear fruit unto God, but it is only in our identity in Christ, not through this fleshly body in which we dwell.




Romans 1:17 - We could look at the righteousness of God, in the sense of righteousness being an attribute of God, God’s righteous character is part of God’s glory. BUT NOW the righteousness of God, apart from the law is manifested; God has provided for people what people desperately lacks, God’s very own perfect righteousness. Inside that gospel message is good news concerning a righteousness that far exceeds the righteousness of any person, no matter how righteous appearing that person may be.

The righteousness spoken of in what Paul calls “the gospel of Christ” is no less than than the perfect righteousness that belongs to God himself. Being justified results in an unchanging attitude of peace with God for every believer. 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.

The avenue of our faith in Christ’s faithful performance on our behalf, rather than peace based upon our performance, results in an unchanging attitude of peace with God for every believer. We now have available for the enjoyment of our everyday experience an everlasting peaceful relationship with God! Justification is unfathomable to the earthly mind, that God could judicially consider you just as his perfectly righteous son.

This gift decree of righteousness comes totally apart from any and all human promise, any or all human performance or any or all human production, no human merit of people whatsoever for this free gift. God will never consider people’s works as a payment for God’s justifying declaration.

Just a Thought "92"

Romans 1:12 - It is imperative to our growth and maturity that we believe God’s truth about who we are in Christ. God is looking at our identification with his son and at what his energizing power from on high is producing in us, because that is where our life is as far as God is concerned. We cannot use experience to prove the validity of our doctrinal position, we must always use doctrine to prove the validity of our experience.

Our brains are an engine of understanding, our transformation process that is taking place in our lives as we take in the Word of God and apply it to the details of our lives, it is only when we come to properly understand God from his perspective concerning ourselves. The battle is taking place between the ears, between fleshy thinking and divine thinking. Trust that God knows what he is doing, and he is going to do it whether we pray or not. God knows precisely what he is going to do.

Paul doesn’t tell us that we are filled with God’s energizing power from on high, but instead, Paul is telling us that we should be filled with God’s energizing power from on high. In other words, we should allow God’s energizing power from on high to be in control of our lives. God’s energizing power from on high works in us, but only to the degree that we are willing to yield ourselves to God’s use in our ministry of reconciliation.

The most dangerous and harmful detriments to our growth is passivity, putting our mind in neutral and coasting, sitting back and waiting for God to do everything is not God’s way to maturity. Our old pattern for thinking and responding to our sin-trained flesh must be transformed by the renewing of our mind, it is our responsibility to change our behavior by putting to death the deeds of the body.




Romans 1:13 - We cannot base our self-worth or our personal success on our desires, no matter how godly they may be, because we cannot control their fulfillment. When a desire is wrongly elevated to a goal, and that goal is frustrated, we must deal with all the anger, anxiety, and depression which may accompany that failure. Dealing with the disappointments of unmet desires is a lot easier then dealing with the anger, anxiety, and depression of goals, we would do well to distinguish goals from desires.

When we begin to align our goals with God’s goals for our ambassadorship, and our desires with his desires, we will rid our life of a lot of anger, anxiety, and depression. We can know on a moment-by-moment basis if our ambassadorship is properly aligned with his truth. God has established a feedback system which is designed to grab our attention, so we can examine the validity of our goal. That system is our emotions. When an experience leaves us feeling angry, anxious, or depressed, those emotional signposts are there to alert us that we may be cherishing a faulty goal. 

Any goal which can be blocked by forces we cannot control (other then God’s goal) is not a healthy goal, because our success in that arena is out of our hands. When we feel anxious in a task, our anxiety may be signaling the uncertainty of a goal we have chosen. We are wishing something will happen, but we have no guarantee that it will. We can control some of the factors, but not all of them.

When we base our future success on something that can never happen, we have an impossible goal. Our depression is a signal that our goal, no matter how noble, may never be reached. Depression often signals that we are desperately clinging to a goal we have little or no chance of achieving, and that is not a healthy goal. Feelings of anger should prompt us to reexamine our ambassadorship, and the mental goals we have formulated to accomplish God’s message of reconciliation.




Romans 1:14 - The Bema has to do with the building project. The building is the Body of Christ. We as members of the Body of Christ, are co-labors with God in the building project. The Chief Architect for the building project, the master builder is the apostle Paul. The blueprint for the proper construction of this building has been given to apostle Paul for the work crew of which we are apart.

Paul’s ministry was distinct, because Paul was the chief, the head architect for the Age of Grace for the building called the Body of Christ. The Bema of Christ, issues with which we need to be concerned, understand God does not want us to be unaware of the evaluation we will face.

The Bema has to do with the building project, remember whenever we see those words “labour or work” in Paul’s epistle, they are always in direct connection to the Bema of Christ. What is this blueprint? Paul’s epistles are laid out in the manner of Doctrine, Reproof, Correction, issues.


Paul tells us what those issues are in those epistles, and when it comes to our reward worthiness or not being worthy of reward, Faith, Hope, Love, are the maturity of the believer is all about, and the maturity of the believer is what the evaluation at the Bema of Christ is all about. 

Just a Thought "91"

Romans 1:8 - A labor of love, it is trying to understand something and then work with that understanding. Love, the behavioral glue that binds together the believer to other members of the Body of Christ, that is how God designed the new creation in Christ to operate. Love is the attitudinal adhesive God intends to keep the Body of Christ functionally smoothly and operating efficiently and effectively. Love is the bond that both unifies and edifies the members of the Body of Christ.

Maturity is all about the degree to which you participate in the increase of the Body of Christ unto the deifying of its self in love. The degree to which you participate in that which brings unity to the Body of Christ and edifies the believer to that degree you can consider yourself to be mature. We serve others today motivated by appreciation in the fact that God loves them, we are intricately joined to them, just as we are joined to Christ.

The law had apprehension as a motivation factor. Our labor of love under the Age of Grace has had the apprehension aspect removed entirely. We are to serve others today based on how God expressed his love to others through Christ and what he accomplished for them, who he made them and us to be in our savior by joining us to our savior.

Christian living is not about doing, it is about believing something, and when we believe something and we continue to take in God’s Word, it should change who we are, not change what we are trying to do and trying to become. Every believer has a part to play when it comes to that which edifies and unifies the Body of Christ, but attitude is that which instigates action. Faith does not come in gallons and tons, faith is not something “do I have enough faith, have I believed firmly enough?” Faith is simply taking your stand where God takes his stand.




Romans 1:9-10 - When we think of pouring a foundation for a building, we might think of something like concrete being use as the foundation material. We can relate that to Paul’s job, when it came to dispensing the doctrinal truth.
It was committed to the apostle Paul to dispense the doctrinal concrete which would become that firm foundation upon which a believer’s growth might take place. Since growth is an important issue, it was essential that the doctrinal concrete Paul would begin to pour would contain the appropriate ingredients and that those ingredients would be in the correct proportions.

What happens if concrete’s too thin or too thick, doesn’t have sufficient water or moist with it. So we see these concrete doctrines would have to be prepared properly. They’d have to be spread adequately and smoothly to the point that our minds become set with the truths Paul was commissioned to establish. We can not pour a foundation properly, even if we have the proper ingredients for the foundation material apart from preparing the soil properly on which those ingredients are to be poured. We would want the foundation of the structure to be poured in an appropriate manner. If the soil of a person’s mind is not prepared by that which God has revealed about himself, then foundational truths holds no meaning.

Achieving God’s goals for our ambassadorship is learning to distinguish his goal, from his desire. It is a critical distinction, because it can spell the difference between success and failure. His goal is any specific result reflecting his purposes for our ambassadorship, that does not depend on people or circumstances beyond our ability. The only person who can block his goal or render it uncertain or impossible is us, and if we adopt the attitude of cooperation with his goals, his goal can be reached. His desire is any specific result that depends on the cooperation of other people or the success of events or favorable circumstances we cannot control. 




Romans 1:11 - Dealing with Satan and his forces is not a power encounter; it is a truth encounter. You can not expect God to protect you from Satan and his forces influences if you do not take an active part in his prepared strategy. The armor that we must take up to protect ourselves from Satan and his forces attack, the first three are established because of our identity in Christ, the last three help us continue to win the battle. It is critical that when we put on the armor of God, we start with the belt of truth. If Satan and his forces can deceive us into believing a lie, they can control our life in that area. 


It is absolutely vital that we put on the breastplate of righteousness, so that we can resist the persistent accusations of Satan and his forces, they never give up trying to get us down and keep us down by hurling one false accusation after another. We put on the shoes of peace, because we are to forgive as we have been forgiven, and we must base our relationships with others on the same criteria. If we fail to speak the truth in love and manage our emotions, anger which turns to bitterness and unforgiveness is an open invitation to Satan and his forces.

The important process of renewing our mind includes managing our emotions by managing our thoughts and perceptions. Satan and his forces are always hurling their fiery darts of fear, doubt and worry in our direction, but the only time they can hit us is when we let our shield of faith down. The fact that the helmet is related to salvation indicates that their blows are directed at the believer’s security and assurance of being placed into Christ. This helmet covers our mind, intellect or reasoning. The two dangerous edges of Satan and his forces broadsword are discouragement and doubt.


In addition to believing it and thinking it, the Word of God is the only offensive weapon mentioned in the list of armor. If you are going to resist Satan and his forces, you must do so outwardly so they can understand you and be put to flight. That is why Paul insists that we be transformed by the renewing of our minds. Satan and his forces have no power over us except what we give them by failing to take every thought captive and thus being deceived into believing their lies. 


Friday, November 27, 2015

Just a Thought "90"

Romans 1:5 - Grace within a dispensation was one thing, a dispensation characterized solely by grace is something else altogether. Grace is the foundation on which Paul’s entire ministry was built, and grace covers all the bases for the believer’s life. There is a glory that belongs to God’s grace, and it is to be praised on the bases on what God’s grace has accomplished.

Paul had been given special divine authority with the understanding that he is our apostle, and that authority carried with it the details of what God expects people to believe today, concerning the salvation Jesus Christ purchased for them with his sacrifice.

Therefore, God in his infinite wisdom devised a plan whereby he could take the very faith belonging to his son, along with its resultant faithfulness, and credit that faith and faithfulness to the account of those who believe. It is Christ’s faith that is freely credited to the account of the one who believes the good news message given to the apostle Paul to proclaim to us in this age of grace.

Paul wants us to know how a person is saved. He wants us to understand the basis by which God provides eternal security, not only has provided the gift of salvation; but provides eternal security to all those who place their faith in what the sacrifice of his son accomplished. It is our faith in the accomplishment of Jesus Christ’s faithful sacrifice that is the means whereby God acknowledges that we have accepted the gift his son purchased.




Romans 1:6 - When Paul refers to us as the called, he is referring not just to the fact that God is extending a call to us, an invitation or summons. Paul’s also referring to the fact that God’s calling us to participate in that to which we have been called, the Body of Christ. The Body of Christ is an expression denoting the point when God began to judicially join believers to his son, the Body of Christ is not about program, but about judicial identity.

God forgave us, not because he had to, but because it was his desire too. God accomplished through Christ what we could never do on our own. God did not wait for us to do the first step. God had a choice, Jesus Christ had a choice, and they chose to do it. Christ believed that his sacrifice would settle the sin issue once and for all, and that God would raise him from among the dead.

What an ingenious salvation plan, to take someone else that is righteous and join us to that person. Sin causes a debt to God so large that it can never be paid by ourselves, but the person who knows what Jesus Christ really accomplished, exist in a completely new relationship with God. Justification is a legal act, wherein God deems the sinner righteous on the basis of Christ’s righteousness.

Justification is not a process, but is a one-time act, complete and definitive. God could only declare us to be right on the bases of who and what he is, not on the bases of who and what we would be apart from him. God had to devise a way to see us that way, and the way he devised to do that was by joining us to, hiding us in our perfectly righteous savior, thus freely crediting to our account Christ righteousness.




Romans 1:7 - The realization that God’s love accomplished some fantastic things on our behalf. 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 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. We are called “saints” today, “set apart ones,” that is the word God uses for those who have placed their faith in the all-sufficiency of the sin-resolving sacrifice of his son, Jesus Christ. We are the saints of a brand new program, to be identified in Christ makes a person a saint, because we have the very righteousness of God himself freely attributed to our account.

Grace is that which God does for the human race through his son, which the human race can not earn, does not deserve and will never merit. Grace is God’s work for people, and encompasses everything we receive from God, he is free to do now for ungodly people who take him at his word. We must understand that God has predetermined to glorify us. In fact, he has predestined us to that glorification, we are objects of God’s purpose, because God had a purpose in mind where grace age believers are concerned, and he predetermined through his own decree that his purpose would stand, it will come to pass no matter what.


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. The only reason God could say through Paul, “Grace and Peace be unto you” is because God’s son fully paid the price. Justification by grace through faith, what a marvelous thing God has done, and who would have thought of a salvation in the sense that God’s plan would call for him to join a person to his son, therefore, what belongs to the son would now belong to believing people who have been joined to the son. 

Just a Thought "89"

It was God’s plan before the creation of the world, that humankind’s fingerprints would not be found on humankind's salvation. Romans is designed to grow us up in faith doctrine. God has always used faith in every age, he has always used faith or what a person believes as the criteria necessary to effect salvation for humankind.

Romans 1:1 - Paul was not only first in line, when it came to dispensing the grace of God, Paul was also foremost in crime when it came to murdering the saints of Israel’s earthly kingdom program. If Paul was at Pentecost, would Paul himself, if he took part in stoning Stephen for believing the message given at Pentecost, would he have been a blasphemer at Pentecost? In Paul’s pre-grace zealousness, he would have been a foremost rejecter of any notion whatsoever that Jesus was Israel’s messiah or that Jesus had been risen from among the dead.

First in line, first in crime are apt descriptions for the Apostle of Grace. Paul was the chosen spokesman for God to relay the information for this entire dispensation of grace. God is not dealing with Israel nationally today, he is dealing with all alike in the Age of Grace. The apostle Paul dispensed a message that the 12 apostles had not dispensed, and that message was different, and that message was geared to the Gentiles.

Paul is the chief pattern of God’s grace to all, he is the foremost example. We need to understand that even though Paul was saved, Paul still considered himself to be a sinner. Paul understood the word: Sin. And Paul understood that word meant to come short of the righteousness belonging to God himself. Paul is the foremost example of the impossibility, the total impossibility of gaining righteousness before God through the performance of the flesh.

Paul could never preach and never preached the Gospel of the Kingdom, because the kingdom was no longer at hand. God cease dealing with “the outer man” in connection with God’s program with Israel and prophecy concerning their promised earthly kingdom, and then began dealing with “the inner man” in connection with his program concerning the saints of his heavenly calling.




Romans 1:2-3 - The Davidic covenant is an eternal and unconditional covenant between God and the House of David, or the dynasty of David. God says that David and his descendants may be punished for sin. They certainly will be punished for sin, but God will not take the kingdom away from them as he did from Saul.

God’s unconditional and eternal covenants with the patriarchs and with David do not prelude the possibility of punishment or chastisement for sin as specified in the conditional Mosaic covenant. The covenant with David, it’s a covenant of grant, it’s a grant of a reward for loyal service and deeds. God rewards David with the gift of an unending dynasty, in exchange for his loyalty. 

God’s oath to preserve the Davidic dynasty, would lead eventually to a popular belief in the invincibility of the Holy City. The belief in Israel’s ultimate deliverance from enemies, became bound up with David and his dynasty. When the kingdom fell finally to the Babylonians, the promise to David’s House was believed to be eternal. 

The community looked to the future for a restoration of the Davidic line or Davidic king or messiah. And in the exile, Israelites would pray for another messiah, meaning another king from the House of David appointed and anointed by Yahweh to rescue them from enemies, and reestablish them as a nation at peace in their land as David had done. The Israelites hope for a messiah; it involved the restoration of the nation in its land under a Davidic king.





Romans 1:4 - The Christian belief in the resurrection of the body did not arise from philosophical speculations or wishful thinking like the notion of the immortality of the soul. It arose from the conviction that such an event had actually already taken place with the resurrection of Jesus from among the dead. The resurrection is proof that Jesus is who he claimed to be, and that his sacrifice was pleasing to God.

As long as Jesus lay in the tomb, he was just another tragic religious figure who suffered a martyr’s death. In fact, Paul tells us that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the greatest display of God’s power ever to be demonstrated, nor can it ever be surpassed. Our degree  of judicial perfection in the eyes of God comes not through Jesus’ death for our sins, but through our identity with Jesus’ resurrection life.

Paul’s statement that Jesus’ resurrection was “the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep,” the expression “first fruits” has little meaning for today’s urban dwellers. In Bible times, it had a rich meaning because it referred to the first produce of the harvest, which was offered in sacrifice to God to express gratitude for granting a new harvest. Thus, the first fruits, which were brought to the Temple, were seen not as mere hope of a new harvest, but as its actual beginning.


Jesus’ resurrection, then, is “the first fruits” in the sense that it has made the resurrection of believers not a mere possibility, but a certainty. Paul and the 12 apostles preached the reality of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Paul preached what that meant to us Gentiles. The 12 apostles had preached the necessity of Christ being raised from among the dead, in order to sit on the throne of David in the promised kingdom. 

Wednesday, November 25, 2015

Just a Thought "88"

Ephesians 1:13-14 - The security all believers have in that the indwelling resurrection power of God guarantees that those who have believed Paul’s good news message can never be lost, they belong to God. The seal is the safeguarding device, the securing device, used to preserve the contents.

God’s energizing power from on high is the seal that God uses to secure all who believe in this dispensation of grace. Earnest means a pledge in the sense that an advance deposit has been made as the security guaranteeing the fulfillment of that which has been promised to those who have been sealed.

According to Paul, the indwelling of God’s energizing power from on high is both God’s seal and his deposited pledge that all believers are forever his and are destined to inherit eternal life. God’s energizing power from on high works in us, but only to the degree that we are willing to yield ourselves to God’s use in our ministry of reconciliation.

Paul doesn’t tell us that we are filled with God’s energizing power from on high, but instead, Paul is telling us that we should be filled with God’s energizing power from on high. In other words, we should allow God’s energizing power from on high to be in control of our lives. Of course, the degree to which we do that is up to us.



Romans 6:23 - They will continually want us to do this and stop doing that, in order to keep God happy with us when the reality is: God couldn’t be any happier with us than he is; Christ having taken our sin debt upon himself, and we having trusted what happened where our sins are concerned.

We can now serve God out of appreciation rather than apprehension. Sin is gone as far as the judicial aspect of sin from God’s vantage point. It is taken care of once and for all! People will suffer the second death not because of the sins God’s son pain for. They have kept sin on the table of God’s justice their entire lifetimes and sat under ministers of righteousness who have led the way.

We need to be less interested in trying to become something, or trying to do something, and we need to become a whole lot more interested in learning about who we already are, that is the key. Paul could not escape his sinful nature no matter how fervently he tried. Our fleshly bodies will never be worthy of heaven in that they will never be able to perform to the measure of the righteousness that is true of God.

We are alive because of our identity in Christ, not at all because of our practice. As we understand what God accomplished for us through his son, we build upon that foundation the truths of who he has made us to be when he placed us into his son, we begin to view ourselves as God views us, and there is great security to be found in doing so.





Romans 5:10 - Why not consider your relationship with God to be based solely on your new identity. Why not come to the understanding that God now relates to you the only way he can relate to you and that is according to your new identity in his son. All of the human race are in need of a justification that will come totally apart from anything that they can do.

Paul wants the human race to know at one point in time something was true, but now something else is true. God alone decided to make peace with the human race, while the human race is an active enemy to God. Certainly the bible shows that God does not like the actions of the human race, but God reconciled himself to his enemies while they are still in hostility.


These are important words; God’s reconciliation to the human race took place when the human race was actively his enemy, not after the human race repented. The entire human race is guilty when it comes to human merit, performance, and production, and  continually coming short of the righteousness of God himself. God cannot relate to you, he will not relate to you according to your former identity in Adam, that Identity disappeared the instant you took God at his word concerning Paul’s good news message. 

Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Just a Thought "87"

2 Corinthians 4:1 - The goal of most believer’s life has been to become disgusted enough with ourselves to try hard enough, so that we can finally win God’s approval. The truth Paul has proclaimed in all of his epistles is we could not get right with God in a million life times of trial and error. We could never make ourselves right with God; God had to do what we could not do for ourselves.

Yet many believers spend their entire existence unsuccessfully trying to be someone other than who they really are, paying lip service to the idea that we are accepted because of God’s grace, the struggle for acceptance on the basis of works is epidemic, but the greatest travesty of all, is the lack of understanding about our new identity in Christ.

It would be disastrous enough if the reason people did not understand who they are was simply for a lack of information, and the truth is that there is an absence of teaching concerning our new identity and what it means to be new creations in Christ. For all the performance-based people around us, we are simply bad for public relations.




2 Corinthians 5:18 - This ministry of reconciliation is not to the saved, we know we are reconciled, but now all have access to God, a change in status for the entire world. Does this mean the entire world is save? No. We have to have an individual change of status and that takes place when we accept what God’s son accomplished for us.

Paul wants us to agree with God, to reckon our identity with our flesh as dead and gone, but the sin nature has not died. Do we need to change our minds about the seriousness of sin and God’s answer to that serious dilemma we find ourselves in? Yes, we do. God has been long-suffering in holding back his wrath, because he hopes that we will consider his goodness through his son, his goodness on our behalf and flee to his grace.

God wants us to change our mind about who we are from fleshly perspective apart from Christ. God is not patiently waiting for us to change our mind about what we do; many have done that, thinking it gains salvation. We are justified through our sanctified position in Christ; we have a new identity.

It is impossible for a believer to lose his salvation, but a believer can die physically. If that believer decided every morning before eating cereal, that they are going to coat their cereal not with milk, but with a fifth of whiskey, what is the believer going to do to their body? A believer can die functionally in that they can serve no further useful purpose here on earth, no heavenly purpose on earth to those to whom they become an ambassador.




2 Corinthians 6:1 - The most dangerous and harmful detriments to our growth is passivity, putting our mind in neutral and coasting, sitting back and waiting for God to do everything is not God’s way to maturity. Our old pattern for thinking and responding to our sin-trained flesh must be transformed by the renewing of our mind, it is our responsibility to change our behavior by putting to death the deeds of the body.

If the enemy can deceive us into believing a lie, they can control our life in that area. We are saints whom God has declared righteous, believing the enemies lie will lock us into a defeated, fruitless life, but believing God’s truth about who we are will set us free.

It is imperative to our growth and maturity that we believe God’s truth about who we are. We must learn how to resolve previous conflicts or the emotional baggage will accumulate as we continue to withdraw from life, the past will control our life as our options for handling it continue to decrease.


Perceiving those events from the perspective of our new identity, which God sealed in Christ, is what starts the process of healing those damaged emotions, because we have the privilege of evaluating our past experience in the light of who we are now, as opposed to who we were then.

Monday, November 23, 2015

Just a Thought "86"

2 Corinthians 10:3 - When we choose to walk according to the old identity, in which we were trained before becoming born anew, such behavior violates our ambassadorship. When this happens, we feel convicted because our behavior is not in keeping with who we really are. We commit sin when we willfully allow ourselves to act independent of our ambassadorship, as our old identity did as a matter of course.

So why do we still react as if our old identity is still in control of our behavior? Because, while we served under it, our old identity trained and conditioned our actions, reactions, emotional responses, thought patterns, memories and habits in our brain. Our worldly experiences thoroughly programmed our brain with thought patterns, memory traces, responses and habits.

Our brain still generates humanistic thoughts and ideas, and our old identity is that part of us which was trained and determined to succeed and survive by our own abilities. When we became born anew, God did not press the clear button in our brain, our old identity persists in suggesting ways to live independent of our ambassadorship of God’s reconciliation.




2 Corinthians 6:4 - God’s basic goal for our life, is character development. The tribulations we face are actually a means of achieving our supreme goal of maturity, because persevering tribulations is the doorway to proven character, which is his goal for us. Perhaps the greatest service performed by trails and tribulations in our lives is to reveal wrong goals.

It is during these times of pressure that our emotions raise their warning flags signaling blocked goals, uncertain goals and impossible goals which are based on our desires, instead of God’s goal for our ambassadorship. His plan is for us to hang in there and grow up, and tribulation just happens to be one of the primary stepping stones on the pathway.

By preparing our minds for action, we must be transformed by the renewing of our mind, by filling it with God’s truth. We need to practice threshold, first-frame thinking, evaluate every thought by the truth. People may not always live what they profess, but they will always live what they believe. If our behavior is off, we need to correct what we believe, because our misbehavior is the result of our disbelief.




2 Corinthians 5:1 - Far too many believers are feeling dirty, worthless and ashamed of themselves; shame is a silent, but deadly disease that pollutes the lifeblood of many believers ambassadorship. As a result, we feel unclean and therefore unworthy to approach God and have the living and intimate relationship that he wants to have with us.

Shame prevents us from intimacy with God, because it makes us feel unworthy and distant from him. God’s standard is nothing less than perfection and none of us measure up, if we did or we ever could measure up sufficiently righteous for heaven through our performance, we would not have needed a savior at all.

For it is God’s grace, not our striving, that makes us accepted and acceptable. It is God’s performance through Jesus Christ, not our trying hard to perform, that eradicates our shame. Some of us spend most of our life giving up. We are tired, burned out, disillusioned, depressed, addicted to something. People around us feel frustrated by the huge disparity between our capabilities and our performance.


They either pep talk us concerning our value, or shame us for not performing. No one can have a close relationship with us; we push people away physically and emotionally, and push God away. We are the ones in families, churches, and society that people take care of-for a while, until we are given up on because of our lack of response. 

Sunday, November 22, 2015

Just a Thought "85"

Philippians 3:20 - Satan and his forces are playing a cover up game with Paul’s good news message, because they have a desire to keep people lost. For example, Satan and his forces have deceived a great many people into believing a negative view of the body in contrast to the soul, and a concept of salvation as interior experience rather than total transformation.

A great many people have been deceived into believing that their nature is dualistic, that is, consisting of a material, mortal body and a spiritual, immortal soul. Dualism has done such a serious harm in weakening our blessed hope of Christ ‘s appearing and in distorting our understanding of our citizenship in heaven.

The Bible never sees the flesh and the soul as two different forms of existence. Rather, they are manifestations of the same person, the ancient Hebrews could not conceive of one without the other. The two are indissolubly connected because the body is the outward form of the soul and the soul the inward life of the body. The body and soul are an indivisible unity; people are seen from two different perspectives.

The body is the physical reality of human existence; the soul is the vitality and personality of human existence. The fact that a person consists of various parts which are integrated, interrelated and functionally united, leaves no room for the notion of the soul being distinct from the body and thus removing the basis for the belief in the survival of the soul at the death of the body.




2 Corinthians 9:8 - Achieving God’s goals for our ambassadorship is learning to distinguish his goal, from his desire. It is a critical distinction, because it can spell the difference between success and failure. His goal is any specific result reflecting his purposes for our ambassadorship, that does not depend on people or circumstances beyond our ability.

The only person who can block his goal or render it uncertain or impossible is us, and if we adopt the attitude of cooperation with his goals, his goal can be reached. His desire is any specific result that depends on the cooperation of other people or the success of events or favorable circumstances we cannot control.

We cannot base our self-worth or our personal success on our desires, no matter how godly they may be, because we cannot control their fulfillment. When a desire is wrongly elevated to a goal, and that goal is frustrated, we must deal with all the anger, anxiety, and depression which may accompany that failure.

Dealing with the disappointments of unmet desires is a lot easier then dealing with the anger, anxiety, and depression of goals, we would do well to distinguish goals from desires. When we begin to align our goals with God’s goals for our ambassadorship, and our desires with his desires, we will rid our life of a lot of anger, anxiety, and depression. 





Philippians 4:6-7 - We can know on a moment-by-moment basis if our ambassadorship is properly aligned with his truth. God has established a feedback system which is designed to grab our attention, so we can examine the validity of our goal.

That system is our emotions. When an experience leaves us feeling angry, anxious, or depressed, those emotional signposts are there to alert us that we may be cherishing a faulty goal. When our activity results in feelings of anger, it is usually because someone or something has blocked our goal.

Any goal which can be blocked by forces we cannot control (other then God’s goal) is not a healthy goal, because our success in that arena is out of our hands. Feelings of anger should prompt us to reexamine our ambassadorship, and the mental goals we have formulated to accomplish God’s message of reconciliation.

When we feel anxious in a task, our anxiety may be signaling the uncertainty of a goal we have chosen. We are wishing something will happen, but we have no guarantee that it will. We can control some of the factors, but not all of them.


When we base our future success on something that can never happen, we have an impossible goal. Our depression is a signal that our goal, no matter how noble, may never be reached. Depression often signals that we are desperately clinging to a goal we have little or no chance of achieving, and that is not a healthy goal. 

Just a Thought "84"

2 Corinthians 5:18-19 - People continue to operate today in their thinking, nothings really changed, under the assumption that their sin is separating them from God. Many believe that they have to commit to abstain or commit to perform in order to be acceptable to God. If they sin in their thinking, they think God’s not going to accept them, that is how they reason it.

Many think they have sinned too many times to be acceptable to God. Or still others who may have made that “I will not sin” commitment over and over again and then broken those commitments, suppose it is to late for them anyway. Then you have the religious crowd who think their religious practices keep them in God’s favor. There are those who suppose church attendance merit’s some degree of favor with God. Others have I am doing the very best I can. So God will surely take note of my heart.

If an ounce of new reconciliation in this Age of Grace could be restored for anyone when it comes to the issue of their sins, then the degree of forgiveness that must be obtained in order to restore the reconciliation, is the very degree to which that individual refuses to believe that Christ accomplished it all. Paul’s good news message is hid from those people. They do not understand what reconciliation is all about.

They think that new sin needs a new measure of reconciliation, so they seek forgiveness on the installment plan. Is that not the golden thread woven through every denomination out there? The truth is, you could not obtain an ounce of forgiveness if you tried, because God has already forgiven you all. That is why Christ’s ambassadors have the responsibility and privilege of making the reality of the reconciliation Christ has already accomplished known to those who know nothing of it.




1 Corinthians 3:14-15 - Dying to self, is never portrayed as something optional, it is the reality of being born anew; unless we are willing to see our old lives crucified with Christ and begin to live anew in obedience to him. Dying to self is something you can take very literal; you will die in every way possible in order to be someone you are not.

The entire concept seems a bit strange to our natural eyes. Rather, dying to self means that the things of the old life are put to death, most especially the sinful ways and lifestyles we once engaged in. We see that we need to die to self, although our salvation is not dependent upon how well we accomplish this.

Yet, as ambassadors of the ministry of reconciliation, our witness is dependent upon how well we accomplish this. Dying to self is never portrayed as something optional, it is the reality of being born anew. Dying to self is something you can take very literal, you will die in every way possible in order to be someone you are not. Dying to self is a change in our principle action from what is by nature the exact opposite.

Dying to self is not fun or easy, but what is particularly difficult about fighting this tendency is that it is not exactly a behavior or action. It can certainly manifest itself in those forms, but underneath them is an attitude. Dying to self is a real change of mind and attitude towards sin itself and the cause of it.




1 Thessalonians 4:14 - Paul did not think the question of the status of the person between death and resurrection was a question that needed to be considered. The reason is that for Paul, those who die in Christ, their relationship with Christ is one of immediacy, because they have no awareness of the passing of time between their death and resurrection.

Death as we know it, would indeed be the end of our existence were it not for the fact of the resurrection. The second death differs from the first death, not in nature, but in results. The second death is permeant and irreversible extinction, because there is no awakening.


The second death is the death resulting from the final judgment which prevents evildoers from living in the new earth to come, a punishment that ultimately results in eternal, irreversible death. The stern punishment awaiting the enemies of righteousness, whose temporary resurrection results only in a return to death and its punishment, their full and final defeat. The wicked will be resurrected mortal in order to receive their punishment which will result in their ultimate annihilation.