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.