The Nicene Creed (Just some thoughts)

The conscious survival of the soul and its reattachment to the body at the resurrection. Cheating people out of being caught to meet the Savior in the air, when the Age of Grace is over.

Paul never alluded to the conscious survival of the soul and its reattachment to the body at the resurrection, that is a notion totally foreign to Paul and to Scripture as a whole. 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 not awareness of the passing of time between their death and resurrection.

As believers, we do not possess the life that Jesus got when God raised him from among the dead as an inherent quality any more than we possess God’s righteousness as a property in our own nature. Just as in the midst of our sinfulness, we are righteous, so in the midst of our self-evident mortality, we are going to get the life God gave to Jesus. 

Wholeness and meaning in life are not the products of what we have or do not have, what we have done or have not done, we are already a whole person and possess a life of infinite meaning and purpose because of who we are in Christ. 

Our understanding of the identity that Adam had before the fall, that identity has been restored to us, that restored identity is the critical foundation for our belief structure and our behavior patterns.

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. Reconciliation and sanctification are not one and the same, they are two different truths. A sanctified identity in Christ comes not as a result of behavior, it comes as a result of belief. 

What an identification God has given you, every believer’s sanctification comes by way of your union-identification with Christ Jesus. 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. The judicial decree of rightness God grants to those who believe is called justification, God alters your identity by removing you judicially in God’s mind from an identification with the first Adam and now you are judicially identified with the last Adam (Christ Jesus). That joining itself is where sanctification comes into play; sanctification is not a process, it is a past tense accomplishment that can never be revised, reduced, or retracted. 

You have also been sanctified or set apart in that you were identified with Christ by God’s resurrection power, baptized into Christ at the point of your belief. You need to look at sanctification from the standpoint of who is doing the setting apart. It is entirely a work of God for the believer, not a work of the believer for God. No effort of the flesh could accomplish it, no effort of the saint can add to it.

The fact that Christ became a redeemer of the world, does not mean that the world will accept the gift the Redeemer purchased on their behalf. Christ’s faithfulness was the only faithfulness sufficient to merit God’s favor. God used our faith in Christ’s faithfulness as the means whereby he would credit Christ’s righteousness to our account.

To be justified does not mean to be perfectly righteous in performance. It also does not mean to become perfectly righteous or even more righteous in performance through time. It means having Christ’s perfect righteousness freely credited to the account of the ungodly who believe.

Our justification was something accomplished for us by God’s grace. 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. God will never consider our works as a payment for God’s justifying declaration.

Justification is God’s gift! To say your works have anything at all to do with God’s gift declaration of righteousness is to slap the giver in the face. Remember, we were given our righteous standing as a free gift. 

The Nicene Creed (Box 3)

The Box

My thoughts about being disingenuous with arguments, testing doctrines against the word of God the way the Bereans did to Paul. Let’s begin with the assertion that there are “many” verses proving the Deity of Jesus Christ, showing that Jesus is God incarnate. The following references play havoc with that Doctrine. 

1. James 1:13 - Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God, for GOD CANNOT be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man.
   
2. Hebrews 4:14-15 - Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the son of God, let us hold fast our profession. For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are yet without sin. There is already a conflict…but there is much more.
   
3. Matthew 4:1-11 - Tells how Jesus was led up of the spirit into wilderness to be tempted of the devil and it lists the temptations. If Jesus is God incarnate as the “many” verses prove, then Matthew’s account contradicts James…another conflict.
   
4. Mark 1:9-13 - Mark describes how the spirit drove him into the wilderness where he was in the wilderness 40 days, tempted of Satan. If Jesus is God incarnate as the “many” verses prove, then Mark’s account contradicts James…another conflict.
   
5. Luke 4:1-13 -  Tells how Jesus was led by the spirit into the wilderness, being forty days tempted of the devil. If Jesus is God incarnate as the “many” verses prove, then Luke’s account contradicts James…another conflict. Until these conflicts can be resolved, it is useless to further study the word of God. Something is bad wrong here and must be seriously considered. 

The Nicene Creed (Box 2b)

The Box

Let’s take a long look at these two historical events that took place. Point (a) “My nature will become evident from my actions,” clearly Yahweh brought the children of Israel out of Egypt, and the rest is recorded history! Yahweh was not identified with nature, Yahweh transcended nature; and Yahweh wasn’t known through nature or natural phenomena. Yahweh was known through history, events and a particular relationship with a man, which Yahweh formed from the dust of the earth. Need I say more about point (a)?

Point (b) The servant is Israel herself! The punishment that Israel suffered, even if excessive-that punishment isn’t meaningless, it will lead to redemption. Israel will be healed by her wounds. Israel’s suffering is serving a purpose in the divine plan, it’s necessary. Israel needs purification and redemption and that will prepare her for a new role in world history.

The fall of Jerusalem shattered the national and territorial basis of Israel’s culture and religion. The Babylonians had burned the temple to the ground, they carried away most of the people to exile, to life in exile in Babylon, leaving behind mostly members of the lower classes to eke out a living as best they could. And it was the completion of the tragedy that had begun centuries earlier, and it was interpreted as a fulfillment of the covenant curses. 

It was the end of the Davidic monarchy, although the son of Jeholakim was alive and living in Babylon, kind of holding out hope that the line hadn’t actually been killed out, hadn’t been completely wiped out. But the institution seemed to have come to an end for now. It was the end of the temple, the end of the priesthood, the end of Israel as a nation; as an autonomous nation, the Israelites were confronted with a great test. One could see in these events a signal that Yahweh had abandoned Israel to, or had been defeated by the god of the Babylonians, and Marduk would replace Yahweh, as the Israelites assimilated themselves into their new home. 

And certainly there were Israelites who went that route, but others who were firmly rooted in exclusive Yahwism did not. Yahweh hadn’t been defeated, the nations’s calamities were not disproof of Yahweh’s power and covenant, they were proof of it. Yahweh’s desire for morality as expressed in the ancient covenant, the prophets had spoken truly when they had said that destruction would follow, if the people didn’t turn from their moral and religious violations of Yahweh’s law. The defeat and the exile had the potential to convince Israelites of the need to show absolute and undivided devotion to Yahweh and his commandments.

The traditions of gods abandoning their cities in anger, leaving them to destruction by another god. The primary difference here is that Yahweh, rather than another god, is Yahweh himself also bringing the destruction. Yahweh doesn’t retire to heaven, nor abandons his people. Yahweh doesn’t remain behind with those left in Judah, but Yahweh moves into exile; those left behind are guilty. Yahweh does not stay with them; Yahweh moves east with the righteous exiles. Need I say more about point (b)?

The Nicene Creed (Box 2a)

The Box

(a) Exodus 3:13-14 - Moses said to God, “When I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” And God said to Moses, “Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh.” He continued, “Thus shall you say to the Israelites, ‘Ehyeh sent me to you.’ ”

Not having been raised among his own people, Moses is ignorant of their God’s name and fears he will lack credibility with the Israelites. God’s proper name, disclosed in the verse 15, is YHVH (spelled “yod-heh-vav-heh” in Hebrew; in ancient times the “vav” was pronounced “w”). But here God first tells Moses its meaning: “I Will Be What I Will Be,” meaning “My nature will become evident from my actions.”

Yahweh was not identified with nature, Yahweh transcended nature; and Yahweh wasn’t known through nature or natural phenomena. Yahweh was known through history, events and a particular relationship with a man, which Yahweh formed from the dust of the earth.

Then God answers Moses’ question about what to say to the people: “Tell them: ‘Ehyeh’ (“I Will Be,” a shorter form of the explanation) sent me.” This explanation derives God’s name from the verb “h-v-h,” a variant form of “h-y-h,” “to be.” Because God is the speaker, he uses the first person form of the verb.

(b) The context of Isaiah, particularly in chapter 53 (Israel was the suffering servant of Yahweh).  

There have been many attempts to equate this man of sorrows with all kinds of figures. Early on, Yeshua’s followers saw Yeshua as the suffering servant of Yahweh in Isaiah. New Testament writers specifically borrowed passages from Isaiah, particularly in chapter 53, when constructing their narratives of Yeshua, taking those verses and using them in describing his story.

So Yeshua is depicted as the innocent and righteous servant who suffered for the sins of others. In the teachings of Paul, however, you have a different use of these verses. Christians, generally, are identified as the servant who suffers with and for Yeshua. Isaiah chapter 53 wasn’t talking about a remote Nazarene teacher and charismatic healer who would live more than five centuries later.

The servant is Israel herself, the punishment that Israel suffered even if excessive-that punishment isn’t meaningless, it will lead to redemption. Israel will be healed by her wounds. Israel’s suffering is serving a purpose in the divine plan, it’s necessary. Israel needs purification and redemption and that will prepare her for a new role in world history. 

The Nicene Creed (Box 1)

The Box

This is who Jesus Christ himself is. Let’s start with the one thing that will define who God really is? What is eternal life? John 5:26b…For as the Father HAS LIFE IN HIMSELF; so has he given to the son TO HAVE LIFE IN HIMSELF. The life Jesus referred to is eternal or everlasting life.

By his declaration and definition, he declared that he himself did not have eternal life at the time he was walking the earth or he was a complete liar! If you truly believe that the Bible is the Word of God, then you have to believe that Jesus Christ spoke the truth. If so, from his own mouth, he declared that only God had eternal life. Christ himself only had the promise of eternal life!

In this context of John 5:2 - 5:47, but beginning in John 5:16, Jesus is going to capitalizing on the popular understanding of the condition of the dead in ‘hades.’ Jesus made use of this popular belief several other times, not to endorse it, but to impress upon the minds of his hearers of different important lessons. Many of Jesus’ hearers had come to believe in a conscious state of existence between death and the resurrection, though such a belief is foreign to Scripture.

You see, the Greek word ‘hades’ came into Biblical use when the translators of the Septuagint chose ‘hades’ to render the Hebrew ‘sheol.’ The problem is that ‘hades’ was used in the Greek world in a vastly different way than ‘sheol.’ In Greek mythology, Hades was the god of the underworld, and then the name of the nether world itself. Charon ferried the souls of the dead across the rivers Styx or Acheron into his abode, where the watchdog Cerberus guarded the gate, so that none might escape. The pagan myth contained all the elements of the medieval eschatology: there was the pleasant Elysium, the gloomy and miserable Tartarus, and even the Plains of Asphodel, where ghosts could wander who were suited for neither of the above.

This Greek conception of ‘hades’ influenced Hellenistic Israelites, because of the conscious decision of Alexander the Great. He used what is called ‘religious syncretism,’ Alexander took this tendency of syncretism, of mixing together different religious traditions from different places, and he used it as a self-conscious propaganda technique. But what Alexander and his successors did, was they made sort of a conscious, propagandistic decision to use religious syncretism to bind together their kingdoms.

The Hellenistic Israelites adopt the belief in the immortality of the soul and the idea of a spatial separation in the underworld between the righteous and the godless. The souls of the righteous proceeded immediately after death to heavenly felicity, there to await the resurrection, while the souls of the godless went to a place of torment in ‘hades.’ When Jesus came on the scene, the current Israelite concept of Hades became a subterraneous region where the light of this world does not shine. This region is allowed as a place of custody for souls, in which angels are appointed as guardians to them, who distribute to them temporary punishments, agreeable to every one’s behavior and manners.

According to Hellenistic Israelites, ‘hades’ is divided into two regions. One is the region of light, where the souls of the righteous dead are brought by angels to the place known as the bosom of Abraham.” The second region is in perpetual darkness, and the souls of the ungodly are dragged by force by the angels allotted for punishment. These angels drag the ungodly into the neighborhood of hell itself, so that they can see and feel the heat of the flames, but they are not thrown into hell itself, until after the final judgment. But a chaos deep and large is fixed between them; insomuch that a just man that has compassion upon them, cannot be admitted, nor can one that is unjust, if he were bold enough to attempt it, pass over it.

Jesus did indeed capitalized on the popular understanding of the condition of the dead in ‘hades,’ not to endorse such views, but to drive home the importance of heeding in this present life the teachings of Moses and the prophets, because this determines bliss or misery in the world to come. In John 5:21, the word ‘quicken’ means give life to, which was universally believed by the Israelites. The word ‘raise’ means awake or to rouse up from sleep; the resurrection.

Jesus was explaining that he was given the authority to give the promise of this eternal life to whomever he wished. He was not the source of that eternal life, but he was the only way to obtain the life from God himself. Jesus did not have life in himself, so he could not be the source of that life; however, that being said, he was given the authority to give the promise to whomever he wished. He was not the source, but he was the only way to obtain the life from God himself. This is not semantics, the scriptures make it quite plain to anyone who reads it.

Just a Thought "103"

Thomas O’Buck’s Reasonings:

My thoughts on prayer…communication with God himself. If Christians are filled with the spirit of God, and if it is the spirit of truth and it dwells in us, then we have an amazing thing that we don’t recognized the potential of. The very same spirit that dwelled in Christ and revealed to him the thoughts and intentions of men’s hearts also dwells in us.

Since the spirit groans with thoughts we cannot utter, it reveals the thoughts and intentions of our hearts directly to God whether we are able to express them or not. It also reveals the thoughts and intentions of God’s heart directly to us, if we will just listen to him instead of constantly telling him what we want. That means we don’t “go pray”, instead, we are in a constant state of prayer to and from God through the spirit God has given us.

Everything we, as spirit filled Christians, think, say, and do is offered directly to God through his spirit ALL THE TIME. Religious people “go pray” and argue over how, what, when, where, and why to pray. People who walk in the spirit of God are in a constant state of prayer.

Thomas O’Buck’s Reasonings:

My thoughts on who Jesus Christ himself is. Let’s start with the one thing that will define who God really is? What is eternal life? John 5:26b…For as the Father HAS LIFE IN HIMSELF; so has he given to the son TO HAVE LIFE IN HIMSELF. The life Jesus referred to is eternal or everlasting life.

By his declaration and definition, he declared that he himself did not have eternal life at the time he was walking the earth or he was a complete liar! If you truly believe that the Bible is the Word of God, then you have to believe that Jesus Christ spoke the truth. If so, from his own mouth, he declared that only God had eternal life. Christ himself only had the promise of eternal life!

Just a Thought "102"

It is amazing that religious teachers would tell people that they have got that sin, and they preach a message to make people fell guilty about the indwelling sin, and then they would give those people rules to straighten up from the sin. People want to be saved by grace, and then they want their fellowship with God maintained by rule-keeping.

The responsibility for keeping the slate clean after salvation would be up to us. If we could do it after salvation, we could have done it before our salvation! If we are not acting saved, we did not get saved, is the idea that is being promoted. The predicament of sin is that no person can escape it, and no person can beat it, there is not any fixing the sin-nature, the flesh cannot be repaired.

Grace comes along and tells us that being identified with Christ’s resurrection life, we now have an everlasting life we do not deserve and could never earn. God did not establish a new law for the age of grace and place believers under that law, so that he would have a new way to measure our righteous performance for the purpose of permitting a heavenly entrance.

The issue in eternity will be to which man are you related? Our understanding of the identity that Adam had before the fall, that identity has been restored to us. 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. The issue for life everlasting is not what church you attend or to which denomination you belong or how religious you are.

It is not about perfecting the flesh, it is about crucifying the flesh in our minds. Yet, how many are attempting today, to do what humankind before us was totally unable to do?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 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.

One of the most disturbing things is someone unable to express confidence about whether they can know if they will have eternal life or not. Not one member of the entire human race has ever lived up to any system of rule-keeping for righteousness. We need to cease attributing our righteous standing before God to our performance and keep our mind focused solely on how God views us in Christ, that is what grace-life is all about.

God wants believers to all think the same way when it comes to what’s happening in this Age of Grace, what God is doing today and how’s he doing it. Every sin we have or ever will commit was put on Jesus Christ, but how many people in the world miss it, because they think God is still looking at them and judging them and evaluating them on the bases of their performance. 

Religious circles of our society believe that they reign in life over the circumstances in their life, in that God has empowered them with a tool called prayer, in order that they might have God alter the negative circumstances that come their way. Prayer is indeed a powerful tool that God has given us, but was prayer given for the purpose of prodding God, pleading with God to alter the circumstances of our everyday lives, or was prayer given for the purpose of providing peace to the mind of the troubled saint.

There is a tremendous difference in one who believes they can influence God and therefore, alter their circumstances because they are a believer with prayer in hand, and a believer who acknowledges that God is in absolute control and is already doing what is best on behalf of every believer, no matter how unfortunate the circumstance that is at hand.

Just a Thought "101"

The drama of Adam and Eve’s life should revolve not around the search for eternal life, nor preoccupation with immortality; it was not in Yahweh’s design for this kind of drama. It was Yahweh’s design for the tree of life to have been eaten of, there was no danger to Adam and Eve going on eternally, being immortal. When Adam forfeited his inheritance; and the promise of a coming Deliverer and Redeemer was given.

Who has the right to redeem the forfeited inheritance, the lost Paradise? Satan is in possession of this world now, and as such Satan was able in a peculiar way to tempt him who had come to redeem it, in the only lawful way in which it could be redeemed. Who is worthy, who will act the Goel’s (or Redeemer’s) part for man and for Israel, and recover his lost estate.

And while Jesus was in Jerusalem, at the feast of the Passover, many believed in him, because they saw the miracles which he did; and there was a man of the Pharisees there, whose name was Nicodemus, a ruler of the Israelites; and he came to Jesus by night, and said to him, “Teacher, we know that you are a teacher sent from God; for no man can do these miracles that you are doing, unless God is with him.”

Jesus replied, saying to him, “Truly I say to you, that, unless a man be born anew, he cannot behold the sovereignty of God.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can an old man be born? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb, and be born?” Jesus replied, saying to him, “Truly I say to you, that, unless a man be born of water and new nature, he cannot enter the sovereignty of Yahweh.

That which is born of the flesh, is flesh; and that which is born of new nature, is new nature. Be not surprised that I said to you, you must be born of new nature.” Nicodemus answered, saying to him, “How can these things be?” Yesus answered, saying to him, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?”

God has to modify his plan, by barring access to the tree of life; that was not something presumably God planned to do. Adam and Eve had access to this tree up to that point, as long as their will conformed to the will of God, there was no danger to their going on eternally, being immortal. Once they discovered their moral freedom, once they discovered that they could thwart God and work evil in the world, and abuse and corrupt all that God had created, then God could not afford to allow them access to the tree of life.

That would be tantamount to creating divine enemies, immortal enemies. So God must maintain the upper hand in his struggle with these humans who have learned to defy him. And God maintains the upper hand in this, the fact that humans eventually must die. God stations the cherubim and the fiery ever-turning sword to guard the way back to the tree of life, once Adam and Eve were banished from the garden. The tree of life is now inaccessible; no humans have access to immortality, and the pursuit of immortality is futile.

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. Many people believe they are God, and therefore, they do not need salvation, they need enlightenment. They need to be able to find some way to get in touch with that God that is in them, that God-Spark! And of course, the God-Spark is not stationary.

The God-Spark is moving all the time called “Ying-Yang” in some belief systems. That God-Spark can sometimes just get jammed up, and they need to free it so it can operate, which is what yoga was based on. Currently the fastest growing trend within brief systems that humankind has ever seen, reincarnation is all wrapped up in the Pantheist mind-set, coming back again and again until they get it right, then when a person gets it right, “Nirvana!”

Satan and his clan loves to propagate in the minds of people, they love it when people question God! When people begin to question God, that frees them up to develop their own concept of God and establish their own basis for a relationship with the god that they have invented in their minds.

A major satanic goal is to hide the justification aspect of the good news of the grace of God, the lost include many of the most moral and religious people in history. The natural inclination of religious people is to conceive of salvation as resulting from merit, based on something they can do for God, have done or commit to do for the future.

Just a Thought "100"

What an astounding truth to ponder and really come to understand; a gift declaration of righteousness to those who could never gain that declaration through performance. We need to look at sanctification from the standpoint of who is doing the setting apart.

Where do people go to see how far they have removed themselves through their behavior from God’s favor? More often then not, they go right back to the Law of Moses taught in the halls of religianity by ministers of righteousness. That can only lead in one direction, instability.

The religiously minded begin to believe they are indeed measuring up as righteousness becomes relative to those people. There are to many preachers holding over the heads of their congregations a little law mixed with the possibility of losing their salvation, this is how they keep people in line!

They feed their congregations a little fear of missing heaven! Frighten them a bit with the possibility of hell fire and brimstone and they will keep on doing the do’s and avoiding the don’ts, that will keep them straight! They will live properly in order to merit heaven and miss hell!

Flesh wants to say if I broke it I can fix it. God is not asking us to turn from anything to be saved. God is asking us to believe Christ accomplished salvation for us and we are simply to believe it. Christ did it all, there is nothing left for us to do.

Our being setting apart is not contingent upon the degree to which we set ourselves apart. The pathway of rules and regulations for righteousness, otherwise called religion in the word of God, seems right to a lot of people today, yet when we look at the Scripture, we find it used in negative sense.

The law did not work within the religious system God gave to Israel to prove to them the law would not make them righteous. We find that rather than something that worked to produce what the natural mind thought could be produced through the law; the law worked to produce the opposite.

Some would say an unsaved person would never chose Christ in the first place, a person would be to dead to make a decision as to whether to believe gospel. So this  person would have to be made alive, before that person can even make a decision, a person has to be saved in order to be saved.

The idea some people have is that God has to do a work in a person before belief by the person is even a possibility. God gives faith only to those he’s so chosen to be believers, saving faith, in order for a person to believe.

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, participation in that which we have been called to.

A ransom for all - was not testified until Paul proclaimed it, the revelation of the secret, which was kept secret since the world began. Some have called God’s justification, cheap justification; if it is that easy, if a person can obtain righteousness without doing something, or even trying to do something in order to gain it, that would be too easy, and that would make it cheap.

That is difficult for people imbued with the pride of life to imagine; it is difficult to accept, because it does not seem fair to the human mind, especially to the religiously minded. It does not seem quite right that God could consider someone righteous, especially if that person is not expending the same amount of effort or attention that they are to become righteous by way of their practice.

The fact is Christ became the redeemer of the entire world, when he satisfied the justice of God for the sins of the entire world. The sin issue was resolved for everyone, but understand, that having a redeemer and accepting the redeemer that we have, and what that redeemer accomplished, are two different things.

God’s justification is absolutely free, but it was certainly not cheap, it came at tremendous cost. Apart from God’s grace, the justification Paul’s been telling us about would be totally impossible, but then, apart from the price the son of God paid to make it possible, God’s grace could not offer it.

Just a Thought "99"

Romans 3:19-20 - That every mouth may be stopped; and here it is, the jury foreman is rendering the jury’s verdict and the judge brings down his gavel and pronounces the human race guilty. The law was never given as a standard by which people could live their life and achieve righteousness. It was given to be a mirror, so that those who were placed under the law might gain a better glimpse of themselves. It allowed the human race to stand back when looking at that law and see themselves in a proper light. It was given in order to reflect a perfectly clear picture of how sinful the human race really is.

What God wanted Israel to see was her shortcoming, her sin. The law was given to manifest or to bring to light the indisputable reality of sin; the undeniable truth of the existence of sin, even in a person who thought they were performing sufficiently righteously to merit a justified standing before God. Now if a religious Israelite was sinful, what does that say about the rest of the world? The law was given to Israel and that condemned the entire world.

Everyone has done exactly like Israel, it condemned the entire human race according to Paul, for all have sinned. 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 all fall short continually coming short of the righteousness of God himself. All of the human race are in need of a justification that will come totally apart from anything that they do. Paul wants the human race to know at one point in time something was true, but now something else is true.

Romans 3: BUT NOW, no longer does the human race have to strive to attain and maintain God’s acceptance on the basis of who they are and what they can do. 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. If a person believes Christ died for their sins, but does not believe that God’s justice was satisfied, when Christ died for those sins, that person has not believed Christ died for their sins. God purchased the human race out of sins dominion, never to be returned to the market place of sin again.

By removing the sin issue from the table of God’s justice, God effectively canceled Satan’s ownership of all the human race. Satan can lay claim to no person based on that persons sinfulness. If we misunderstand justification, we are going to have a difficult time understanding the cornerstone that comes prior to sanctification. Since people link a justified standing before God with performance of their own, they also link a sanctified standing before God with their own performance. And as a result, they believe the degree to which they stand sanctified in God’s eyes depends entirely upon the degree to which they remain holy in behavior.

If they do not see themselves as being holy in conduct, they do not believe that God sees them as being holy, either. We need to understand that forgiveness was all upfront and all-inclusive, but when we accept this idea of conditional forgiveness/forgiveness on the installment plan; a little forgiveness here, a little forgiveness there, the need for new forgiveness for new sin, that is the atonement program of Israel. The truth is, our deeds do not determine our destiny, our faith in Christ’s faithfulness determines our destiny.

Today people think they have to ask God to forgive them for the sins that God is no longer charging to their account in the first place. Ministers of righteousness would have people believe God is not totally reconciled in his mind. Satan and his forces want to keep sin on the table of God’s justice today, as much in the Age of Grace as he has in the other ages. If Satan had known what Jesus Christ would actually accomplish where the sins of the world are concerned, Satan would not have had Christ crucified.

Just a Thought "98"

Romans 2:29-3:9 - A Israelite had to be a Israelite both inwardly and outwardly for God to consider that person a true Israelite. Do you think those with a Israelite heritage who were readily willing to accept Paul’s indictment of the Gentiles as being wrath worthy, were now equally as ready to admit their own wrath worthiness, to accept that indictment against themselves?

First came that plea of ignorance, “We Gentiles just did not know there was a God, why didn’t God tell us about himself?” Paul quickly dispensed with that notion, they knew all about God according to Paul. God had shown them all about himself and told them about himself. It would be easier for them to dispense with the God they knew about, than to have to be accountable to that God.

The second plea of ignorance came, the self defense motion of relative righteousness; the plea that went along these lines, “I do some pretty good things from time to time, surely my righteousness is worthy of God’s consideration.” When it comes to our failures at rightness, our pride nature will not let us see what is in the room.

The third self defense plea of natural righteousness, the Israelites were entertaining in their minds a rightness that they supposed came along with their physical heritage; their lineage. The Israelites identified themselves as being the offspring of Abraham and God certainly honored Abraham. He was a great man in God’s eye, so they felt that that linkage to Abraham made them great in God’s eyes. Their is a very real difference in taking pride in a privileged position God has provided and thinking you are worthy of holding the position God has given.

Romans 3:10-17 - No one has a self defense plea that will successfully excuse them from being counted worthy of God’s wrath. The natural person is the person who can only perceive things that fit in with their own human reasoning. The natural person has their mind tuned in only to the channel of their own human perspective; satisfying the lust of their flesh; the lust of their eyes; and the pride of life. If something is not logical to the natural person’s way of thinking, they refuses to believe it, whether God said it or not, they want to remain in their comfort zone.

The human race has become quite adept at mixing poison with their speech. They lace their poison with perfume, but it is poison, nonetheless. The words come out designed to appear innocuous, but lo and behold, there is something hidden under the lips of sinful people. While their words may appear harmless and unoffending, oftentimes these words are not benign words at all. They are insidiously designed by the speaker to be laced with character venom so as to contaminate the object of the speech.

Swearing is not the meaning of the word, this word cursing has more to do with wishing harm on another; wishing ill will toward another person; bringing another under the condemnation of ill will due to the bitterness or animosity in our hearts. Every where a person goes, you can see the results of their having been there. Destruction and misery line the pathway of the human race. We could say that the footprint of sin is easily traced to the sinner. Sin renders lasting peace impossible.

Romans 3:18 - People have a lack of proper alarm when it comes to the judgment of God. The pride of the Israelite people, there are many parallels between the pride of these Israelites and the pride that take place in Christianity today. The programs have simply been intertwined in the minds of the religious world. Christianity, they have mixed God’s program with Israel and his program with the Body of Christ and mixed dispensations together; dispensations that do not mix together and as a result, they think they have taken on Israel’s role from the point where Israel left off.

We look at the Old Testament scripture, and we see God’s judgment being rained on those who walked contrary to his law, and it is hard for us to understand God’s love in light of those passages. We tend to think that a God who is love is totally incapable of being a God who will judge. One of Satan and his forces goals accomplished through the heart of sinful people is to humanize God. That is precisely what the human race has done, God is our great big buddy in the sky, Jesus has simply become our best friend. Many think that salvation comes to those who can maintain a sufficient camaraderie with Jesus, their friend.

Where do people go to see how far they have removed themselves through their behavior from God’s favor? More often then not, they go right back to the Law of Moses taught in the halls of religianity by ministers of righteousness. That can only lead in one direction, instability. The religiously minded begin to believe they are indeed measuring up as righteousness becomes relative to those people. On the other end of the spectrum, there are people walking away from a God they perceive as being unfair in having created them to fail in the first place.

Some take it to the extent of a total denunciation of God altogether. If God does exist, how can he demand perfection? If God does exist, the fact of his fairness or unfairness does not really matter, does it? You see, no matter where on the performance spectrum one happens to sit, whether it be the perceived safe haven of religion or avowed atheism on the other end. 

Just a Thought "97"

Romans 2:17-23 - You see, the Law of Moses had a relationship claim on every member of the human race. If the law has a rightful claim on you, God cannot have a rightful claim on you. If Christ has a rightful claim on you, the law has no rightful claim on you whatsoever. People have such a hard time when their motivation is based on the false assumption that God gave to Israel a law contract in order to provide for them the motivation necessary for them to live righteously. God designed the law to make sin show its hand, to make sin abound, so that they could look at that picture of the law and look at themselves and say, “These pictures do not match up,” so that they could see that their sin was exceedingly sinful. 

People must rid themselves of the tendency to think that God is dealing with people as he has dealt in time past, when the law program was the order of the day. Paul wants us to understand and understand fully that motivation to do righteousness is the exact opposite of what our natural minds suppose it to be. God did not design the law to enable Israel to live righteously unto him or to give them the motivation to do it. Take away the law Paul and you have taken away the motivation people need to do good and to avoid evil, that is the way the natural mind works.

Listen to the attitude of law orientation; an attitude that comes from a person, who is walking after the flesh: “I’m not going to do that, because that is bad,” or “I’m not going to do that, because I cannot do that and remain righteous,” or “I’m going to do this, because God demands I do it,” or I’m going to follow the rules, because God will accept me if I follow the rules faithfully.” If we are trying to satisfy God’s justice on a daily basis or however by conforming to a standard of rules and regulations, we are going to find that just the opposite becomes true in our flesh. We are going to find ourselves constantly focusing on the flesh. The milk of self-righteousness will sour under the divine heat of God’s justice.

Romans 2:24 - God did not design the law to enable Israel to live righteously unto him or to give them the motivation to do it. Take away the law Paul and you have taken away the motivation people need to do good and to avoid evil, that is the way the natural mind works. The nation Israel was given every visual opportunity to change their thinking about the identity of their messiah and their ability to perform up to the standard of God’s righteousness, when it came to the law contract. God proved how obstinate the hearts of Israel’s political/religious leadership were, in spite of all the visual evidences God placed before them.

A visual evidence given and a visual evidence rejected! Well, this is the case with Israel’s religious leadership, people were getting healed, people were coming to belief and many people were added to that earthly kingdom in that day, but God was looking for the leadership, the representatives of that nation to make their confession. It was a national promise and it is a national rejection as far as God is concerned.

Jesus Christ was no military giant in their eyes, much less a military genius, and that is what they were looking for. Israel’s leadership did not want a suffering servant as a messiah, they wanted a conquering hero as their messiah.
The issue with God in his plan and program with Israel and their promised land was an issue concerning their need of, and acknowledgment of the source of their righteousness. Israel would need a righteousness that God could recognize. They had a righteousness that they could recognize as far as they were seeing things, but they did not have a righteousness that God could recognize.

A God recognized righteousness would be an absolute necessity for that nation, if they were to acquire and remain in the land promised to their fathers. Paul could never preach and never preached the Gospel of the Kingdom, because the kingdom was no longer at hand. When Israel’s leadership rejected the King, that kingdom was placed on the shelf to be reserved for a future fulfillment.

Romans 2:25-28 - Circumcision, or the setting aside of the flesh was simply the sign, according to the apostle Paul, that God gave to Abraham to point out that Abraham had placed his faith in God and in God alone, and not in himself. Abraham learned that it would not be his own fleshly production that would accomplish God’s purpose for him. It is significant when we think about Abraham’s faith, that God wanted Abraham to place no confidence in his flesh.

It is law principle that actually stirs up the sinful emotions. The law principle itself incites the sinful nature that is within the human race. Most people suppose that if you want to eliminate sin, simply put forth a little more law. Well, it is the other way around according to the apostle Paul, it is the law that stirs up the passions of the sin nature. The law actually ignites the passions of the sin nature. The law is a good thing, the problem lies not with a holy and just law, the problem lies in the fact that while the law is good, the flesh is weak.

Is it not interesting that the Gentiles had been considered dogs? Now you come to Paul speaking to the saints in Philippi, and it is the unbelieving Israelites who are considered dogs. Beware of Dogs; Beware of Evil Workers; Beware of the Concision. Just the fact that they were of the physical linage of Abraham did not cut the mustard as far as their righteous standing with God was concerned. Paul’s point here is circumcision apart from faith is nothing more than concision. It is nothing more than mutilation. You see, the concision, although it sounds like the word circumcision, the concision is a reference to those false teachers who thought that ritual, who thought they could do something, perform something and the ritual was circumcision.

People placing confidence in their performance, not realizing that the law was designed to teach them not to place confidence in their performance when it came to earning their righteousness before God through their performance. Otherwise, God would not have provided for a sacrificial system within the law program in the first place, he would not of needed it. Paul wants us to be sitting in our thinking, in the place where Job was sitting, when Job asked a question, “But how should man be just with God” because Paul understood that the heart of people will go to great lengths to establish its own righteousness. 

Just a Thought "96"

Romans 2:12-13 - People who lived before the time of the law, as well as the nations who were never under the law, people today who are not under law, the Mosaic Law will not be cited against these people. The law itself was proof that Israel was unable to earn righteousness through their performance. Israel had a problem when it came to learning the lesson of their inability and the futility to gain righteousness through performance. They trusted in themselves that they were righteous.

When performance is the measure of a person’s righteous standing at the bar of God’s justice, only a patient continuance in well doing would cut it, and there is none that do good, not to that degree. What is a patient continuance in well doing? Keep the whole law if you want to obtain eternal life through law-keeping. Wrath worthiness if you fail in even one point of the law is the other side of the coin. Paul is proving the wrath worthiness of the entire human race, when it comes to a non-wrath-worthy self-defense plea before God.

The dilemma of the human race, just as religion did not save the Israelite during the time of the law contract, religion could not save the Gentiles during that time either, just as it cannot save the Israelite or Gentile today. Religion is an equally inadequate self-defense plea today for people to make, as it was in Paul’s day. No amount of rules and regulations, no observance of rites and rituals, no matter what they are would suffice when it comes to meriting a righteous standing before God. This will be the issue at the Great White Throne Judgment, people will be standing there not clothed in Christ’s righteousness, because they have rejected what Christ accomplished where their sin debt is concerned.

To walk after the flesh, is to assign righteous credit to your fleshly conduct, from Adam onward, people have been doing what seems right to a person in regard to having a relationship with God. Not one member of the entire human race has ever lived up to any system of rule-keeping for righteousness. Yet, how many are attempting today, to do what humankind before us was totally unable to do? How many people think they are measuring up to God’s standard today? Israel supposed they were producing sufficient righteousness through their performance for God to recognize their performance and call them just in his eyes.

Romans 2:14-15 - The Gentiles who were never placed under the law of Moses, do by nature the things contained in the law, the Gentiles determined for themselves their own right and wrong. The Gentiles were following what the Bible calls “the way of Cain” the WORK of the law was written in their hearts. Paul did not say the LAW was written in Gentile hearts. Writing the law in the heart is something God is going to do for the nation Israel in fulfillment of their New Covenant, Jeremiah 31:33-34.

The works of the law are written in the hearts of the Gentiles, in other words, God knows whether or not a person has placed their faith in the faithfulness of his son, or whether that person is still holding onto the notion that his good works will somehow merit them a position of righteousness in the eyes of God. God knows the motivation that resides in the human heart that underlies all the works that we call good.

Any kind of works at all, even if they appear to be good works in your mind, that are done for the purpose attaining salvation or for the purpose of maintaining salvation, and yes, 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.

Romans 2:16 - We seldom recognize the sin within ourselves. The most insidious evil present in the heart of people is a person’s refusal to recognize the evil that is present within self. This is what the pride of life is all about, it is always the other person who does the really serious sins. You see, we have a pretty good cause to justify ourselves, because the pride nature uses only relative righteousness as its reasoning. The pride nature rebels against and hates to accept the truth.

We do not want to see ourselves as unjust. We resist seeing ourselves as unjust and being in the same boat with those poor unfortunate souls we consider to be less just than we are. The prideful human nature convinces us that we possess some righteousness, some meritorious standing before God of our own doing, some goodness achieved by our own accomplishments. Paul has set out to prove to the human race that nothing we do and nothing we promise to do will have anything whatsoever to do with our righteous standing before a perfectly righteous God.

The dilemma of the human race, just as religion did not save the Israelite during the time of the law contract, religion could not save the Gentiles during that time either, just as it cannot save the Israelite or Gentile today. Religion is an equally inadequate self-defense plea today for people to make, as it was in Paul’s day.