Leviticus 25:50 (Amplified) says this concerning our "Kinsman Redeemer," "And (the redeemer) shall reckon with the purchaser of the servant from the year when he sold himself to the purchaser to the year of Jubilee, and the price of his release shall be adjusted according to the number of years. The time he was with his owner shall be counted as that of a hired servant."
The purchaser of the servant or (the one that has brought us into servant hood) would be satan, who became our spiritual father through Adam. Then, we were to be brought back into full relationship with and fellowship with God by our Kinsman Redeemer, Jesus. He restored everything that had been lost in the transaction in the Garden of Eden. He restored sonship rights instead of servant hood.
Now, when the redeemed of the Lord understand where we've been redeemed from and redeemed to, it actually means something by faith. In the Garden, we lost everything our Father had given when Adam turned it over to an outlaw spirit, a dead spirit. Mostly, we've never had any idea what was to be ours through Jesus.
In these last days, God is revealing the depth of the Lamb as not only the One Who forgave (by taking our place) our sin and trespass, but as the One Who bought us back in full. Until now, we've mostly thought of heaven as the place we go to when we die. In these last days, God is bringing to light, the truth that we (in His eyes) have already died, were crucified with Christ Jesus, were buried with Him in baptism and were raised together with Him at the new birth.
This is already done in the heart and mind of our Father. To our unrenewed mind, we still see ourselves as alive in the flesh, but still crucified with Him. And, because we still think of ourselves as "not yet dead," we're still more conscious of deeds in the body rather than life in the Spirit. The Apostle Paul went through a similar circumstance in his life before he settled on the truth of the Word and the revelation of it.
Paul said that his body (his carnal mind) was at war with his born again spirit. He said that the things he wanted to do, he couldn't and the things he didn't want to do, he did. His born again spirit was at war against his members (his natural trained body and mind). Although he knew he was free from the Law and the rituals of it, the habits of the flesh still wanted the pride of boasting about his past accomplishments.
As Paul grew from revelation to a new revelation, he began to see more and more fullness of redemption. I still run into people who wish to talk and act like there's still work to be done. It's true that we have to bring the natural senses into focus by renewing our minds by the Word, but God is not displeased with His family like many would have to believe. As a matter of fact, it was God Who said to the people that, "This is My beloved Son in Whom I am well pleased." The Word said that Jesus pleased the Father. Who Jesus was and what Jesus did pleased God, satisfied the claims of justice and redeemed His precious family back to Him in the full.
We've been reluctant to truly believe what we read in God's Word. We speak about "imputed righteousness" and our sin that is not "imputed" unto us. The word "impute" simply means that even though we didn't deserve forgiveness, it was granted to us anyway. God calls this grace and unmerited favor and so do we.
Our righteousness was imputed to us by grace as was our deliverance and forgiveness of sin. Not only did grace forgive, but it forgot. Salvation itself was an act of being imputed when sin was paid for by grace. The blood of bulls and goats only covered our sin, but the Blood of Jesus removed it and destroyed it altogether. Because we don't understand redemption, we continue struggling to pay our own bills and restore our own place with God.
When a person or an object is redeemed, it means that whatever price was required to deliver it has been met. The Word says that "Where sin does abound, the grace of God does much more abound." Jesus didn't only pay what the demand was, but He overpaid for it.
Because of Jesus, our righteousness , though imputed, is complete. This imputed righteousness was a gift by grace of a right standing with God that is equal to Jesus' right standing because it is His righteousness or right standing that has been given. I'm glad that it is imputed rather than earned or obtained by my own deeds. If it were granted to me based on my own merits, then when my merits slipped (as they will), my right standing also slips. We were granted by grace (or imputed) Jesus' righteousness (or right standing) and He never slips.
When Jesus was accepted by the Father, you and I were accepted with Him. When He restored all things back to Himself, He did it for us. In Him, you and I have been restored (by His redeeming power) to everything the Father had laid up for His family when He created all things. When we were given all "spiritual blessings in heavenly places," that means for here and now. It means that all things the Spirit created, are now poured out and are available again from God when He poured out His Spirit from on high.
The life of the Spirit, the blessings of the Spirit, the Love of the Spirit, the power of the Spirit and the connection back to God was given by His Spirit. Everything the Spirit created is now ours by this new birth by His Spirit. Remember, it's the Spirit Who created the natural. Therefore, by receiving all Spiritual blessings, we now have the Spirit Who made the world, living inside us, to bring to pass all things the Father intended for His family to have.
In His redemptive power, God has restored (through Jesus), everything the first Adam lost. If you really want to know what the last Adam has given by His grace and mercy, then go back and see what Adam had before the fall. You can also look at the complete realm of how satan ruled with his usurped authority from Adam. Jesus declared that "All power in heaven and in Earth was given to Him." If we are "in Christ Jesus" (and we are), then the power of redemption and restoration in Him has paid the full price of our ransom or redemption.
Wednesday, May 28, 2014
Lesson 1 REDEEMED
As Christians, we don't always read the Word of God as the redeemed of the Lord. You might ask, "What's the difference?" If we look at God's Word as the redeemed, instead of the lost, the Word makes all the difference. We've always looked at ourselves as the sinner instead of the forgiven.
Most of the sermons we hear and most of the songs we sing, are about the Man from Nazareth or the Man of the cross. We seldom, if ever, hear sermons about the ministry of Jesus as High Priest or any of the present day ministries He is fulfilling. As those who've been redeemed, we should be renewing our minds about Who God has made us to be in Christ Jesus.
It sounds very religious and humble to identify ourselves as "and old sinner saved by grace." In reality, it's dishonoring the finished work of the cross. We dare say that God has saved us through grace by faith in Jesus, but still talk as though it didn't work. We stumble and fumble in prayer because we feel unworthy. We fail to put boldness in the power of His Name because we're unsure of ourselves.
We declare that "Jesus' Name if the Name above all names" and that "All power in heaven, earth and under the earth is now subject to His Name," but we still act like it's not true. We proclaim to be the redeemed of the Lord and act like we're still in the same bondage. Psalm 107:2 (Amplified) says, "Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, Whom He has delivered from the hand of the adversary."
We react to the adversary according to the way we see ourselves in God's Word. If we still see ourselves as the enemy would have us see ourselves, then we think, act and approach the Father in this light. 1John 5:18 (Amplified) says that, "We know (absolutely) that anyone born of God does not (deliberately, knowingly) practice committing sin, but the One Who was begotten of God carefully watches over and protects him (Christ's divine presence within him preserves him against the evil) and the wicked one does not lay hold (get a grip) on him or touch (him)."
This scripture is one of the main keys in standing our ground against the lie of the devil. If we understand who we are now (not who we were), then we can see that the Holy Spirit is there to protect the believer and preserve him against the enemy. The divine presence of Christ in us, is the seal of God that preserves us. Once we realize who we are now, instead of who we were, we can understand this power of redemption.
We learned about the Law of the Kinsman Redeemer in a previous lesson. Jesus spoke about this from Isaiah 61:1-2 (Amplified) saying, "The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me, because the Lord has anointed and qualified Me to preach the Gospel of good tidings to the meek, the poor, and afflicted.; He has sent Me to bind up and heal the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the (physical and spiritual) captives and the opening of the prison and of the eyes of those who are bound, To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord (the year of His favor) and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn."
When Jesus quoted from this passage in Luke 4:18, He proclaimed the year of God's favor or Jubilee to the people. Those who believe in Jesus or Christian people, we are already redeemed. Our Kinsman Redeemer, Jesus, has already done everything needful in order to restore everything that was lost. This also includes (from Genesis 1:26-31) the total dominance and authority of all the earth and everything in it. Psalm 8:1-9 (Amplified) says, "O Lord, our Lord, how excellent (majestic and glorious) is Your Name in all the earth! You have set Your glory on (or above) the heavens..Out of the mouths of babes and unweaned infants You have established strength because of your foes, That You might silence the enemy and the avenger." [Psalm 107:2 says, "Let the redeemed of the Lord say so." This testimony is our strength that silences the enemy.]
Psalm 8:3-9 (Amplified) go on, "When I view and consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have ordained and established, What is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of (earth born) man that You care for him? Yet You have made him but a little lower than God (or heavenly beings) and You have crowned him with glory and honor, You made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands; You have put all things under his feet; all sheep and oxen, yes and the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatever passes along the paths of the seas. O Lord, our Lord, how excellent (majestic and glorious) is Your Name in all the earth."
When we really understand that we are the redeemed of the Lord through Jesus, then we can stand in a place against the enemy that proclaims our authority once again. Our Heavenly Father granted us the dominion and authority from the beginning. When Adam delivered over man's dominion and authority to satan, everything the Father intended for man was lost according to Luke 4:5-7 (Amplified) which says, "Then the devil took Him up to the high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the habitable world in a moment of time (in the twinkling of an eye)." Verse 6 says, "And he said to Him, to you I will give all this power and authority and their glory (all their magnificence, excellence, preeminence, dignity and grace) For it has been turned over to me, and I will give it to whomever I will." Verse 7 says, "Therefore if you will do homage to and worship me (just once) it shall be all yours."
This redemption is a very important part of "Let the redeemed of the Lord say so" from Psalm 107:2 confession we make daily in our world walk. Most of us know (or at least should know) that the redeeming Blood of Jesus had more to do than most people will acknowledge in this realm. We try putting off redemption as being only something in the future. The redeeming power of the Blood of Jesus is what purchased our liberty for here and in the hereafter.
When Jesus redeemed us, He paid off our debt to the one who had become our "god by default." Adam delegated and delivered all that the Father had given him over to satan. When satan made the temptation in the wilderness to Jesus in Luke 4:6, he was truthfully saying he had dominion and authority over the earth. Adam turned over all the authority, dominion and the inheritance God had given him, into the hands of satan. Satan had become man's god and master through the fall of Adam.
Adam traded life for death, plenty for lack, separation from God and everything God had placed in his hands into the hands of God's enemy, satan. When Jesus died on the cross, descended into the pit, paid the price man owed and rose from the dead, He paid all our price.
Most of the sermons we hear and most of the songs we sing, are about the Man from Nazareth or the Man of the cross. We seldom, if ever, hear sermons about the ministry of Jesus as High Priest or any of the present day ministries He is fulfilling. As those who've been redeemed, we should be renewing our minds about Who God has made us to be in Christ Jesus.
It sounds very religious and humble to identify ourselves as "and old sinner saved by grace." In reality, it's dishonoring the finished work of the cross. We dare say that God has saved us through grace by faith in Jesus, but still talk as though it didn't work. We stumble and fumble in prayer because we feel unworthy. We fail to put boldness in the power of His Name because we're unsure of ourselves.
We declare that "Jesus' Name if the Name above all names" and that "All power in heaven, earth and under the earth is now subject to His Name," but we still act like it's not true. We proclaim to be the redeemed of the Lord and act like we're still in the same bondage. Psalm 107:2 (Amplified) says, "Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, Whom He has delivered from the hand of the adversary."
We react to the adversary according to the way we see ourselves in God's Word. If we still see ourselves as the enemy would have us see ourselves, then we think, act and approach the Father in this light. 1John 5:18 (Amplified) says that, "We know (absolutely) that anyone born of God does not (deliberately, knowingly) practice committing sin, but the One Who was begotten of God carefully watches over and protects him (Christ's divine presence within him preserves him against the evil) and the wicked one does not lay hold (get a grip) on him or touch (him)."
This scripture is one of the main keys in standing our ground against the lie of the devil. If we understand who we are now (not who we were), then we can see that the Holy Spirit is there to protect the believer and preserve him against the enemy. The divine presence of Christ in us, is the seal of God that preserves us. Once we realize who we are now, instead of who we were, we can understand this power of redemption.
We learned about the Law of the Kinsman Redeemer in a previous lesson. Jesus spoke about this from Isaiah 61:1-2 (Amplified) saying, "The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me, because the Lord has anointed and qualified Me to preach the Gospel of good tidings to the meek, the poor, and afflicted.; He has sent Me to bind up and heal the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the (physical and spiritual) captives and the opening of the prison and of the eyes of those who are bound, To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord (the year of His favor) and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn."
When Jesus quoted from this passage in Luke 4:18, He proclaimed the year of God's favor or Jubilee to the people. Those who believe in Jesus or Christian people, we are already redeemed. Our Kinsman Redeemer, Jesus, has already done everything needful in order to restore everything that was lost. This also includes (from Genesis 1:26-31) the total dominance and authority of all the earth and everything in it. Psalm 8:1-9 (Amplified) says, "O Lord, our Lord, how excellent (majestic and glorious) is Your Name in all the earth! You have set Your glory on (or above) the heavens..Out of the mouths of babes and unweaned infants You have established strength because of your foes, That You might silence the enemy and the avenger." [Psalm 107:2 says, "Let the redeemed of the Lord say so." This testimony is our strength that silences the enemy.]
Psalm 8:3-9 (Amplified) go on, "When I view and consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have ordained and established, What is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of (earth born) man that You care for him? Yet You have made him but a little lower than God (or heavenly beings) and You have crowned him with glory and honor, You made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands; You have put all things under his feet; all sheep and oxen, yes and the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatever passes along the paths of the seas. O Lord, our Lord, how excellent (majestic and glorious) is Your Name in all the earth."
When we really understand that we are the redeemed of the Lord through Jesus, then we can stand in a place against the enemy that proclaims our authority once again. Our Heavenly Father granted us the dominion and authority from the beginning. When Adam delivered over man's dominion and authority to satan, everything the Father intended for man was lost according to Luke 4:5-7 (Amplified) which says, "Then the devil took Him up to the high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the habitable world in a moment of time (in the twinkling of an eye)." Verse 6 says, "And he said to Him, to you I will give all this power and authority and their glory (all their magnificence, excellence, preeminence, dignity and grace) For it has been turned over to me, and I will give it to whomever I will." Verse 7 says, "Therefore if you will do homage to and worship me (just once) it shall be all yours."
This redemption is a very important part of "Let the redeemed of the Lord say so" from Psalm 107:2 confession we make daily in our world walk. Most of us know (or at least should know) that the redeeming Blood of Jesus had more to do than most people will acknowledge in this realm. We try putting off redemption as being only something in the future. The redeeming power of the Blood of Jesus is what purchased our liberty for here and in the hereafter.
When Jesus redeemed us, He paid off our debt to the one who had become our "god by default." Adam delegated and delivered all that the Father had given him over to satan. When satan made the temptation in the wilderness to Jesus in Luke 4:6, he was truthfully saying he had dominion and authority over the earth. Adam turned over all the authority, dominion and the inheritance God had given him, into the hands of satan. Satan had become man's god and master through the fall of Adam.
Adam traded life for death, plenty for lack, separation from God and everything God had placed in his hands into the hands of God's enemy, satan. When Jesus died on the cross, descended into the pit, paid the price man owed and rose from the dead, He paid all our price.
Friday, May 23, 2014
Lesson 3 God's Revelation to Man
As born again people of God, we have the mind of Christ and the Holy Spirit as our teacher. When we try reading the revelation of the Word with a carnal mind, the Church always ends up back under the Law.
Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:16-17 (Amplified), "Consequently, from now on we estimate and regard no one from a (purely) human point of view (in terms of natural standards of value). (No) even though we once did estimate Christ from a human viewpoint and as a man, yet now (we have such knowledge of Him that) we know Him no longer (in terms of the flesh)." Verse 17 goes on, "Therefore if any person is (ingrafted) in Christ (the Messiah) he is a new creation (a new creature altogether); the old (previous moral and spiritual condition) has passed away, Behold, the fresh and new has come."
We see the difference here between revelation knowledge and sense knowledge. The carnal minded Christian still sees (and really only sees) Jesus as the Man. The Spirit minded or Word minded man goes beyond the Man Jesus, to the Christ. When we Jesus or any other born again person, we see the new man, the new creation and we no longer see the past, the faults or the shortcomings of our brethren.
Paul says that "Even though we once did estimate Christ from a human viewpoint and as a man, yet now (we have such knowledge of Him) that we know Him no longer (in terms of the flesh)." Paul didn't say that Jesus didn't come in the flesh or that He didn't die as flesh, but that it didn't stop there. What happened after the flesh died and the new spirit of life came? Romans 8:2 (Amplified) says that, "For the law of the Spirit of life (which is) in Christ Jesus (the law of our new being) has freed me from the law of sin and death."
We still mostly identify with the Jesus from the Gospels, the Man of Galilee and Nazareth. We marvel at His power and His glory He walked in. We can see Jesus as He walked on water and stopped the storm. We've seen His miracles presented in theaters around the world, and thank God for these portrayals), but this is only the beginning of Jesus' ministries. This part of His ministry lasted only 331/2 years. The other part is the part we don't see or preach, but it's the eternal part.
We cannot make movies about this part because we don't know how to express it. The only way to actually see Jesus in His present day ministry, is by the Word. As we allow the Holy Spirit to reveal the Word and make it real in our lives, then we can see this ministry.
Satan has tried keeping the children of God steeped in Law, creeds, doctrines and man's thoughts and good deeds. He's tried doing everything he can to keep the family of God from walking in the liberty that's theirs in Jesus. Satan would have us still believing that God is more our problem than our answer. We still struggle in our walk with Him because we haven't allowed Him to be revealed to us through His Word. We have walked in mental assent more than in faith in much of our Christian walk.
Mental assent is dangerous and very deceptive in the believer's life. Sometimes mistaken for faith, this place of mental assent has made way for all the doctrines that cover our failures in God. We will declare that we believe the Word and will become upset at even any hint that we don't believe. Then, we build doctrines that excuse our unbelief and build up our own beliefs.
This mental assent is where so many different doctrines come from in the Body of Christ today. We've approached the Word and professed our faith in it, but we fail to act upon it. We've felt as though our prayer life was powerless and our ability to actually pray for the sick was just not there. We keep seeking experiences and a deeper place that would bring about the power we knew had to be there. We knew that we were supposed to have victory, but then decided it was still somehow for the future.
Mental assent has deceived us and we didn't realize we were still trying to become what God had already made us to be. The authority and ability we were seeking was already ours. We were deceived into thinking that because we couldn't memorize the scriptures or quote them, then we didn't believe them. However, Jesus said in Mark 16:17 (Amplified) that, "And these attesting signs will accompany those who believe; in My Name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new languages." Mental assent would say that we believe those words, but we don't do them. We were confronted with the fact that we say we believe God's Word, but we weren't able to see the power of it in our lives.
We began making excuses for why God's Word was failing in our lives. It never occurred to us that we were the ones who failed. We would have refuted anyone saying that the Word was untrue, but we still couldn't point to any such results in our lives. As believers, we would agree that what the scriptures say about our being the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus, is true. Then, we would speak about ourselves like it wasn't true. We speak about our sinful nature, our past failures and our weaknesses. We count it an act of humility to come to the Father as someone who is dirty and unworthy and not righteous through Jesus.
We've made more about sin than righteousness and we've acted like the power of sin was greater of stronger than our redemption. Faith in His Word would determine that the power of His redemption has made us absolute righteous and has given us the ability to stand in God's presence free from sin and condemnation (like it never happened).
Mental assent made our prayer life a place of crying and pleading for God to hear us. We've kept trying to "pray through." When you know Jesus and use the Name of Jesus, you've already prayed through. We didn't realize that our place as joint-heirs with Christ and the authority of His Name, gave legal right in prayers, even though we knew all the promises about prayer.
James 1:22-24 (Amplified) says that, "But be doers of the Word (obey the message) and not merely listeners to it, betraying yourselves (into deception by reasoning contrary to the truth). For if anyone listens to the Word without obeying it and being a doer of it, he is like a man who looks carefully at his (own) natural face in a mirror, For he thoughtfully observes himself, and then goes off and promptly forgets what he was like."
James 1:5-8 (Amplified) tells us that, "If any of you is deficient in wisdom, let him ask of the giving God (Who gives) to everyone liberally and ungrudgingly, without reproach or fault finding, and it will be given him." Verse 6 says, "Only it must be in faith that he asks with no wavering (no hesitation, no doubting) for the one who wavers (hesitates, doubts) is like the billowing surge out at sea that is blown hither and thither and tossed by the wind." Verses 7-8 go on, "For truly, let not such a person imagine that he will receive anything (he asks for) from the Lord, (for being as he is) a man of two minds (hesitating, dubious, irresolute) he is unstable and unreliable and uncertain about everything (he thinks, feels and decides)."
We believe that God's Word is true and we confess that we believe in prayer, but we can ask for wisdom and not receive because of being double-minded. James says that being double-minded is like we are a man of two minds. Even when we ask for wisdom and God gives the wisdom, we still doubt that it was actually God and reason away the wisdom He gave us.
Mental assent has caused so many different doctrines and areas of unbelief in the Church,. On one hand we say we believe (mental assent), but then we don't ask in faith. James 1:6 (Amplified) says, "Let him ask in faith without wavering." This dangerous play on faith or mental assent is so subtle that we haven't made the connection in our lives.
In the natural mind, we would never dare say that God lied to us, so we confess that the Word is true and we believe it, but we never act on what it says in faith. We make up religious sounding excuses for why the Word doesn't work in order to cover our lack of faith in it. This is a battle raging in the unrenewed mind of a born again believer. He is born again, he is a child of God and he has all the promises of the Father in Christ Jesus, but nothing is working for him. He doesn't know why things don't work, so he makes up things to console his unrenewed mind.
We've created so many doctrines for our Christian walk to cover our lack of trust in the Word. We say that God has allowed all of these things to happen to teach us. This might be one of the most used terms of our carnal minds, "God doesn't do these things anymore." Another often used verse of unbelief is, "God doesn't do these things for everyone."
All of these excuses come from the mind of self righteousness and mental assent. It's self righteousness because, after all, if God were going to heal anyone in these last days, then wouldn't He have healed me? So, if I didn't get healed, then I won't believe that God won't heal me because I don't believe. Self righteousness says that "As good a Christian as I am, healing must have passed away."
This mental assent is so close to what we consider faith that it's difficult to tell the difference unless we look deeper into the Word. Satan will come instantly with accusations and condemnation against us for lack of faith. This place in the life of a believer is something every believer goes through and will go through. Learning to trust God at His Word comes one step at a time.
First, we must believe that we have been forgiven and accepted. This in itself, takes time. Satan is "Johnny on the spot" to tell you it didn't work. So, now, we mentally assent to the fact of our salvation at first. We sometimes have doubts about it for awhile because we still do some of the dumb things we did before we were saved. After being with other Christians for awhile and being in the Word, we begin to see some changes in our lives. Now, we can go from mental acceptance to faith in receiving.
As we grow in our walk with the Father, we put more and more faith in His Word. We must always remember what Paul said in Romans 12:2 (Amplified), "Do not be conformed to this world (this age), fashioned after and adapted to its external, superficial customs by being transformed (changed) by the (entire) renewal of your mind (by its new ideals and its new attitude)."
If we don't allow the Word to change our way of thinking, then we will allow the world to control our way of thinking. This is something that every individual believer must do for himself. We will always think one way or the other, depending on what you hear and what you do with what you hear. Some will go on to greater revelation and some will not.
Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:16-17 (Amplified), "Consequently, from now on we estimate and regard no one from a (purely) human point of view (in terms of natural standards of value). (No) even though we once did estimate Christ from a human viewpoint and as a man, yet now (we have such knowledge of Him that) we know Him no longer (in terms of the flesh)." Verse 17 goes on, "Therefore if any person is (ingrafted) in Christ (the Messiah) he is a new creation (a new creature altogether); the old (previous moral and spiritual condition) has passed away, Behold, the fresh and new has come."
We see the difference here between revelation knowledge and sense knowledge. The carnal minded Christian still sees (and really only sees) Jesus as the Man. The Spirit minded or Word minded man goes beyond the Man Jesus, to the Christ. When we Jesus or any other born again person, we see the new man, the new creation and we no longer see the past, the faults or the shortcomings of our brethren.
Paul says that "Even though we once did estimate Christ from a human viewpoint and as a man, yet now (we have such knowledge of Him) that we know Him no longer (in terms of the flesh)." Paul didn't say that Jesus didn't come in the flesh or that He didn't die as flesh, but that it didn't stop there. What happened after the flesh died and the new spirit of life came? Romans 8:2 (Amplified) says that, "For the law of the Spirit of life (which is) in Christ Jesus (the law of our new being) has freed me from the law of sin and death."
We still mostly identify with the Jesus from the Gospels, the Man of Galilee and Nazareth. We marvel at His power and His glory He walked in. We can see Jesus as He walked on water and stopped the storm. We've seen His miracles presented in theaters around the world, and thank God for these portrayals), but this is only the beginning of Jesus' ministries. This part of His ministry lasted only 331/2 years. The other part is the part we don't see or preach, but it's the eternal part.
We cannot make movies about this part because we don't know how to express it. The only way to actually see Jesus in His present day ministry, is by the Word. As we allow the Holy Spirit to reveal the Word and make it real in our lives, then we can see this ministry.
Satan has tried keeping the children of God steeped in Law, creeds, doctrines and man's thoughts and good deeds. He's tried doing everything he can to keep the family of God from walking in the liberty that's theirs in Jesus. Satan would have us still believing that God is more our problem than our answer. We still struggle in our walk with Him because we haven't allowed Him to be revealed to us through His Word. We have walked in mental assent more than in faith in much of our Christian walk.
Mental assent is dangerous and very deceptive in the believer's life. Sometimes mistaken for faith, this place of mental assent has made way for all the doctrines that cover our failures in God. We will declare that we believe the Word and will become upset at even any hint that we don't believe. Then, we build doctrines that excuse our unbelief and build up our own beliefs.
This mental assent is where so many different doctrines come from in the Body of Christ today. We've approached the Word and professed our faith in it, but we fail to act upon it. We've felt as though our prayer life was powerless and our ability to actually pray for the sick was just not there. We keep seeking experiences and a deeper place that would bring about the power we knew had to be there. We knew that we were supposed to have victory, but then decided it was still somehow for the future.
Mental assent has deceived us and we didn't realize we were still trying to become what God had already made us to be. The authority and ability we were seeking was already ours. We were deceived into thinking that because we couldn't memorize the scriptures or quote them, then we didn't believe them. However, Jesus said in Mark 16:17 (Amplified) that, "And these attesting signs will accompany those who believe; in My Name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new languages." Mental assent would say that we believe those words, but we don't do them. We were confronted with the fact that we say we believe God's Word, but we weren't able to see the power of it in our lives.
We began making excuses for why God's Word was failing in our lives. It never occurred to us that we were the ones who failed. We would have refuted anyone saying that the Word was untrue, but we still couldn't point to any such results in our lives. As believers, we would agree that what the scriptures say about our being the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus, is true. Then, we would speak about ourselves like it wasn't true. We speak about our sinful nature, our past failures and our weaknesses. We count it an act of humility to come to the Father as someone who is dirty and unworthy and not righteous through Jesus.
We've made more about sin than righteousness and we've acted like the power of sin was greater of stronger than our redemption. Faith in His Word would determine that the power of His redemption has made us absolute righteous and has given us the ability to stand in God's presence free from sin and condemnation (like it never happened).
Mental assent made our prayer life a place of crying and pleading for God to hear us. We've kept trying to "pray through." When you know Jesus and use the Name of Jesus, you've already prayed through. We didn't realize that our place as joint-heirs with Christ and the authority of His Name, gave legal right in prayers, even though we knew all the promises about prayer.
James 1:22-24 (Amplified) says that, "But be doers of the Word (obey the message) and not merely listeners to it, betraying yourselves (into deception by reasoning contrary to the truth). For if anyone listens to the Word without obeying it and being a doer of it, he is like a man who looks carefully at his (own) natural face in a mirror, For he thoughtfully observes himself, and then goes off and promptly forgets what he was like."
James 1:5-8 (Amplified) tells us that, "If any of you is deficient in wisdom, let him ask of the giving God (Who gives) to everyone liberally and ungrudgingly, without reproach or fault finding, and it will be given him." Verse 6 says, "Only it must be in faith that he asks with no wavering (no hesitation, no doubting) for the one who wavers (hesitates, doubts) is like the billowing surge out at sea that is blown hither and thither and tossed by the wind." Verses 7-8 go on, "For truly, let not such a person imagine that he will receive anything (he asks for) from the Lord, (for being as he is) a man of two minds (hesitating, dubious, irresolute) he is unstable and unreliable and uncertain about everything (he thinks, feels and decides)."
We believe that God's Word is true and we confess that we believe in prayer, but we can ask for wisdom and not receive because of being double-minded. James says that being double-minded is like we are a man of two minds. Even when we ask for wisdom and God gives the wisdom, we still doubt that it was actually God and reason away the wisdom He gave us.
Mental assent has caused so many different doctrines and areas of unbelief in the Church,. On one hand we say we believe (mental assent), but then we don't ask in faith. James 1:6 (Amplified) says, "Let him ask in faith without wavering." This dangerous play on faith or mental assent is so subtle that we haven't made the connection in our lives.
In the natural mind, we would never dare say that God lied to us, so we confess that the Word is true and we believe it, but we never act on what it says in faith. We make up religious sounding excuses for why the Word doesn't work in order to cover our lack of faith in it. This is a battle raging in the unrenewed mind of a born again believer. He is born again, he is a child of God and he has all the promises of the Father in Christ Jesus, but nothing is working for him. He doesn't know why things don't work, so he makes up things to console his unrenewed mind.
We've created so many doctrines for our Christian walk to cover our lack of trust in the Word. We say that God has allowed all of these things to happen to teach us. This might be one of the most used terms of our carnal minds, "God doesn't do these things anymore." Another often used verse of unbelief is, "God doesn't do these things for everyone."
All of these excuses come from the mind of self righteousness and mental assent. It's self righteousness because, after all, if God were going to heal anyone in these last days, then wouldn't He have healed me? So, if I didn't get healed, then I won't believe that God won't heal me because I don't believe. Self righteousness says that "As good a Christian as I am, healing must have passed away."
This mental assent is so close to what we consider faith that it's difficult to tell the difference unless we look deeper into the Word. Satan will come instantly with accusations and condemnation against us for lack of faith. This place in the life of a believer is something every believer goes through and will go through. Learning to trust God at His Word comes one step at a time.
First, we must believe that we have been forgiven and accepted. This in itself, takes time. Satan is "Johnny on the spot" to tell you it didn't work. So, now, we mentally assent to the fact of our salvation at first. We sometimes have doubts about it for awhile because we still do some of the dumb things we did before we were saved. After being with other Christians for awhile and being in the Word, we begin to see some changes in our lives. Now, we can go from mental acceptance to faith in receiving.
As we grow in our walk with the Father, we put more and more faith in His Word. We must always remember what Paul said in Romans 12:2 (Amplified), "Do not be conformed to this world (this age), fashioned after and adapted to its external, superficial customs by being transformed (changed) by the (entire) renewal of your mind (by its new ideals and its new attitude)."
If we don't allow the Word to change our way of thinking, then we will allow the world to control our way of thinking. This is something that every individual believer must do for himself. We will always think one way or the other, depending on what you hear and what you do with what you hear. Some will go on to greater revelation and some will not.
Thursday, May 22, 2014
Lesson 2 God's Revelation to Man
Men have always had a difficult time trying to understand our Heavenly Father. Because God is a Spirit, men couldn't see Him or know Him as they searched Him out. John 1:18 (Amplified) says that, "No man has ever seen God at anytime; the only unique Son, or the only begotten God, Who is in the bosom (in the intimate presence) of the Father, He has declared Him (He has revealed Him and brought Him out where He can be seen; He has interpreted Him and made Him known)."
The only way we can see the Father with our natural eyes, is through Jesus. Man has had a difficult time serving an unseen God. Natural man could only believe in what the five senses could contact. The only other way to have a revelation of God, is through His Word. Until we see God as Father, we're still in the same place as the Old Testament people were in. Jesus came to reveal the Father (not the God) Image to His people." John 1:18 (Amplified) says that, "He has revealed Him and brought Him out where He can be seen."
Hebrews 1:1-3 (Amplified) tells us that, "In many separate revelations (each of which set forth a portion of the truth) and in different ways God spoke of old to (our) forefathers in and by the prophets." Verse 2 says, "(But) in the last of these days He has spoken to us in (the person of a) Son, Whom He appointed Heir and Lawful Owner of all things, also by and through Whom He created the worlds and the reaches of space and the ages of time (He made, produced, built, operated, and arranged them in order)." Verse 3 says, "He is the sole expression of the glory of God (the Light-being, the outraying or radiance of the divine) and He is the perfect imprint and very Image of (God's) nature, upholding and maintaining and guiding and propelling the universe by His Mighty Word of power, When He had by offering Himself accomplished our cleansing of sin and riddance of guilt, He sat down at the right hand of the divine Majesty on High."
Man in his carnal mind, cannot imagine God. So, God sent His Son in His Own Image so that we (natural man) could finally see and understand Him. At this time, no one was born again because Jesus had not yet gone to the cross. The only thing the people could see was a Man Who walked in the power and glory of God.
It was hard for man to believe the revelation that Jesus was actually God in human form because man had never seen God. The scriptures revealed this truth for centuries, but because man wasn't "spiritually alive" at the time, they couldn't see Him. When Jesus rose from the dead, ascended to the Father and sent the Holy Spirit, men could be born again and actually see God by revelation of the Holy Spirit.
Satan has tried for centuries to stop the Word of God to hide the revelation of Who He (God) is as Father. In the day of grace in the wake of the new covenant, we have lapsed back into what the old covenant people walked in. We could see Jesus as a Man, we could identify with the Man Who was sent, we could see Him as He walked among men, we could even see Jesus on the cross and raised from the dead and we could see and identify with Jesus as He ascended to heaven before His disciples. But, this is where our identifying seems to have stopped.
Once Jesus ascended to the Father, our identifying with Him went back to seeing Him in the Spirit again. Most of the time, we don't minister much about the risen, seated and reigning Christ. We seem to still only see God by natural means and not by revelation. Without the Holy Spirit's revealing God through the now risen Christ, we continue seeing Him in the Man form of Jesus.
Most of the sermons we hear or preached, come mostly from the Gospels because this is where we identify with Him. We've failed to realize that Jesus was now talking to those who were under the old covenant Law. He was revealing bits and pieces of the new covenant that would be at His resurrection. John 16:12-13 (Amplified) says, "I have still many things to say to you, but you are not able to bear them or to take them upon you or to grasp them now." Verse 13 says, "But When He, the Spirit of truth (the truth giving Spirit) comes, He will guide you into all the truth (the full, whole truth) for He will not speak His Own message (on His Own authority) but He will tell whatever He hears from the Father; (He will give the message that has been given to Him) and He will announce and declare to you the things that are to come (that will happen in the future)."
Jesus was stating here that once He was crucified and risen and ascended, the ministry of the Holy Spirit would be their teacher. The things "that were to come," were the things that would come once Jesus ascended to the Throne. The ministry of the Holy Spirit would reveal the Risen Christ and not just the Man Jesus, to us.
The Apostle Paul spoke about this more than any other teacher in the new covenant. He was the one who never saw the "man" Jesus, but only the risen Christ. Paul never knew Jesus except by the Spirit. In 2Corinthians 12:2-4 (Amplified), Paul, speaking about Himself, says, "I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago-whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows_ was caught up to the third heaven." Verses 3-4 go on, "And I know that this man-whether in the body or away from the body I do not know, God knows was caught up into paradise, and he heard utterances beyond the power of man to put into words, which man is not permitted to utter."
This is the revelation given by and to the Spirit. This revelation can only come to man now, by revelation in the Word of God. Paul was taken into the presence of the Lord (he said he didn't know if he was just in the spirit or his entire body was there), but he knew he was there. He was given a revelation of the Risen Christ that no other man had at that time. This revelation could only be seen now, by the eyes of the Spirit, as revealed by the Holy Spirit.
Because the Church still walks (mostly) with unrenewed minds, we still walk and see like natural men. The revelation of the present day ministry of Jesus remains mostly unknown to the Church. We've lapsed back into thinking in the natural mind after the resurrection. And, for the most part, we only think of His ascension as a way for us to go to heaven.
Paul's revelation was something that caused division even among the other disciples. Many of those in the early Church, believed that salvation was only for the Jews. When the Apostle Paul was given the revelation in Acts 10:34-35 (Amplified), "Peter opened his mouth and said; Most certainly and thoroughly I now perceive and understand that God shows no partiality and is no respector of persons. But in every nation he who venerates and has a reverential fear for God, treating Him with worshipful obedience and living uprightly is acceptable to Him and sure of being received and welcomed (by Him)." Acts 11:17-18 (Amplified) says that, "When they asked (or objected) about Peter and the Gentiles, Peter quieted them with his sayings, If then God gave to them the same Gift (equally) as He gave to us when we believed (speaking of Cornelius and his house) in (adhered to, trusted in, and relied on) the Lord Jesus Christ, Who was I and what power or authority had I to interfere or hinder or forbid or withstand God?" Verse 18 goes on, "When they heard this, they were quieted and made no further objection. And they glorified God, saying, then God has also granted to the Gentiles repentance unto (real) life (after resurrection)."
Paul's writing bring forth that which can only be understood by the revelation of the Holy Spirit. We have had a send knowledge or mental assent to the Word more than the revelation knowledge of the Word. We say we believe the Bible and we can (and do) read the words. I can have a knowledge of what the words mean, but have no revealed knowledge of what the Word actually says. Jesus commented on this in His earthly walk. He said the people had ears, but don't hear and have eyes, but don't see. They heard and saw only with the reasonings of the carnal mind or the mind of the flesh.
The only way we can see the Father with our natural eyes, is through Jesus. Man has had a difficult time serving an unseen God. Natural man could only believe in what the five senses could contact. The only other way to have a revelation of God, is through His Word. Until we see God as Father, we're still in the same place as the Old Testament people were in. Jesus came to reveal the Father (not the God) Image to His people." John 1:18 (Amplified) says that, "He has revealed Him and brought Him out where He can be seen."
Hebrews 1:1-3 (Amplified) tells us that, "In many separate revelations (each of which set forth a portion of the truth) and in different ways God spoke of old to (our) forefathers in and by the prophets." Verse 2 says, "(But) in the last of these days He has spoken to us in (the person of a) Son, Whom He appointed Heir and Lawful Owner of all things, also by and through Whom He created the worlds and the reaches of space and the ages of time (He made, produced, built, operated, and arranged them in order)." Verse 3 says, "He is the sole expression of the glory of God (the Light-being, the outraying or radiance of the divine) and He is the perfect imprint and very Image of (God's) nature, upholding and maintaining and guiding and propelling the universe by His Mighty Word of power, When He had by offering Himself accomplished our cleansing of sin and riddance of guilt, He sat down at the right hand of the divine Majesty on High."
Man in his carnal mind, cannot imagine God. So, God sent His Son in His Own Image so that we (natural man) could finally see and understand Him. At this time, no one was born again because Jesus had not yet gone to the cross. The only thing the people could see was a Man Who walked in the power and glory of God.
It was hard for man to believe the revelation that Jesus was actually God in human form because man had never seen God. The scriptures revealed this truth for centuries, but because man wasn't "spiritually alive" at the time, they couldn't see Him. When Jesus rose from the dead, ascended to the Father and sent the Holy Spirit, men could be born again and actually see God by revelation of the Holy Spirit.
Satan has tried for centuries to stop the Word of God to hide the revelation of Who He (God) is as Father. In the day of grace in the wake of the new covenant, we have lapsed back into what the old covenant people walked in. We could see Jesus as a Man, we could identify with the Man Who was sent, we could see Him as He walked among men, we could even see Jesus on the cross and raised from the dead and we could see and identify with Jesus as He ascended to heaven before His disciples. But, this is where our identifying seems to have stopped.
Once Jesus ascended to the Father, our identifying with Him went back to seeing Him in the Spirit again. Most of the time, we don't minister much about the risen, seated and reigning Christ. We seem to still only see God by natural means and not by revelation. Without the Holy Spirit's revealing God through the now risen Christ, we continue seeing Him in the Man form of Jesus.
Most of the sermons we hear or preached, come mostly from the Gospels because this is where we identify with Him. We've failed to realize that Jesus was now talking to those who were under the old covenant Law. He was revealing bits and pieces of the new covenant that would be at His resurrection. John 16:12-13 (Amplified) says, "I have still many things to say to you, but you are not able to bear them or to take them upon you or to grasp them now." Verse 13 says, "But When He, the Spirit of truth (the truth giving Spirit) comes, He will guide you into all the truth (the full, whole truth) for He will not speak His Own message (on His Own authority) but He will tell whatever He hears from the Father; (He will give the message that has been given to Him) and He will announce and declare to you the things that are to come (that will happen in the future)."
Jesus was stating here that once He was crucified and risen and ascended, the ministry of the Holy Spirit would be their teacher. The things "that were to come," were the things that would come once Jesus ascended to the Throne. The ministry of the Holy Spirit would reveal the Risen Christ and not just the Man Jesus, to us.
The Apostle Paul spoke about this more than any other teacher in the new covenant. He was the one who never saw the "man" Jesus, but only the risen Christ. Paul never knew Jesus except by the Spirit. In 2Corinthians 12:2-4 (Amplified), Paul, speaking about Himself, says, "I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago-whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows_ was caught up to the third heaven." Verses 3-4 go on, "And I know that this man-whether in the body or away from the body I do not know, God knows was caught up into paradise, and he heard utterances beyond the power of man to put into words, which man is not permitted to utter."
This is the revelation given by and to the Spirit. This revelation can only come to man now, by revelation in the Word of God. Paul was taken into the presence of the Lord (he said he didn't know if he was just in the spirit or his entire body was there), but he knew he was there. He was given a revelation of the Risen Christ that no other man had at that time. This revelation could only be seen now, by the eyes of the Spirit, as revealed by the Holy Spirit.
Because the Church still walks (mostly) with unrenewed minds, we still walk and see like natural men. The revelation of the present day ministry of Jesus remains mostly unknown to the Church. We've lapsed back into thinking in the natural mind after the resurrection. And, for the most part, we only think of His ascension as a way for us to go to heaven.
Paul's revelation was something that caused division even among the other disciples. Many of those in the early Church, believed that salvation was only for the Jews. When the Apostle Paul was given the revelation in Acts 10:34-35 (Amplified), "Peter opened his mouth and said; Most certainly and thoroughly I now perceive and understand that God shows no partiality and is no respector of persons. But in every nation he who venerates and has a reverential fear for God, treating Him with worshipful obedience and living uprightly is acceptable to Him and sure of being received and welcomed (by Him)." Acts 11:17-18 (Amplified) says that, "When they asked (or objected) about Peter and the Gentiles, Peter quieted them with his sayings, If then God gave to them the same Gift (equally) as He gave to us when we believed (speaking of Cornelius and his house) in (adhered to, trusted in, and relied on) the Lord Jesus Christ, Who was I and what power or authority had I to interfere or hinder or forbid or withstand God?" Verse 18 goes on, "When they heard this, they were quieted and made no further objection. And they glorified God, saying, then God has also granted to the Gentiles repentance unto (real) life (after resurrection)."
Paul's writing bring forth that which can only be understood by the revelation of the Holy Spirit. We have had a send knowledge or mental assent to the Word more than the revelation knowledge of the Word. We say we believe the Bible and we can (and do) read the words. I can have a knowledge of what the words mean, but have no revealed knowledge of what the Word actually says. Jesus commented on this in His earthly walk. He said the people had ears, but don't hear and have eyes, but don't see. They heard and saw only with the reasonings of the carnal mind or the mind of the flesh.
Monday, May 19, 2014
Lesson 1 God's Revelation to Man
Since God is a Spirit, man cannot see, hear, touch or know Him except by the Spirit. We've spent centuries trying to find God in the natural realm. Finally, we built our own creeds and doctrines on how to know Him based on the flesh.
The only revelation of God that man has is God's Word. Satan has set up a war against God's Word that still wages strongly today. Even when we see Jesus as our carnal view of God, He is God's Word made flesh. John 1:14 says that, "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us."
Everything about a Christian's life is dependent on receiving the truth of God's Word. Even our prayer of salvation is dependent on believing His Word. Romans 10:17 says that, "Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God." Satan has fought bitterly against God's Word because God works by His Word. Even when God wanted to create the universe, He brought it into being by His Word. Hebrews 11:3 tells us the worlds were created by the Word of God. Every child of God was brought forth by the Word and was born of the Word according to James 1:18 which says that, "Of His Own will He brought us forth by the Word of truth." 1Peter 1:23 says, "Having been begotten again not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, through the Word of God which liveth and abideth forever."
After man was born again, his growth, nourishment and strength of life comes from the Word of God. Matthew 4:4 says that, "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every Word that proceeds from the mouth of God." It's the Word that builds us up.
Philippians 2:13 says, "For it is Gos Who worketh in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure." So, He's working in us through His Word.
Colossians 1:5-6 (Amplified) says, "Because of the hope (of experiencing what is) Laid up (reserved and working) for you in heaven. Of this (hope) you heard in the past in the message of the truth of the Gospel which has come to you, Indeed, in the whole world (that Gospel) is bearing fruit and still is growing (by its own inherent power) even as it has done among yourselves ever since the day you first heard and came to know and understand the grace of God in truth (you came to know the grace or undeserved favor of God in reality, deeply and clearly and thoroughly, becoming accurately and intimately acquainted with it)."
Satan has had a battle against the Word from the beginning. When he saw that his moving again the Church by torturing and killing God's people didn't work and that it actually caused the Church to stand together and increase, he decided to hide God's Word from the people. He began burning Bibles, but that didn't work so well either.
So, satan had to find a more subtle way of stopping the Church. And, that way was to simply attack the Word and make it powerless in mans lives. For nearly a thousand years, the Word was never given it's place in Christian circles. Mans philosophies usurped the authority of God's Word and ruled and reigned over the Christian world.
Once the Word of God lost its place in the Church, redemption was lost and faith became an unknown factor in Christian lives. The Bible was locked away in monasteries for almost one thousand years and was printed in a language that the common people couldn't understand. The Bible was written only in Latin and only the clergy had access to it. Even history records this time as "The Dark Ages." I'm sure they didn't call it the Dark Ages because the Light of God's Word was hidden, but because the quality of life was in such decline. When God's Word lost its place in mankind's lives, the light of truth lost its place. It was during this period of history (when God's Word was hidden) that the crusades,the black death, purgatory and other such man made ideas about God appear.
The Reformation came about because a few good men saw a small portion of the light of God's Word and gave it to the people once again. Once the Reformation began, Bibles were printed in the common language and found its way back into the homes of the common people. This was something satan hadn't counted on.
Still though, satan never ceased his attack on the Word. When he couldn't keep it locked up anymore, he created creeds and doctrines of men. No single person in the Reformation had the whole light of the Word, only a part of it. Most of these men were products of the Middle Ages who shut themselves up with a set of creeds and they shut out any further light and growth from the Word. This was handed down from one generation to another and has greatly affected the redemptive power of the Word to work in mans lives. It's hindered a true presentation of Christianity to the world and has caused all kinds of battles in the Church and the world.
We have fought and still fight the authority of the Word, the deity of Christ and the power of the Spirit. Many churches are preaching things they consider to be better suited for the times and culture of today and have gotten away from the truth of God's Word. This other "gospel" has taken away a true picture of our Heavenly Father from the people. The very fact that God's Word has been made common among the people, should have been our deliverance, but has now been used to hinder the working of the Word in our lives through doctrines of men.
The only revelation of God that man has is God's Word. Satan has set up a war against God's Word that still wages strongly today. Even when we see Jesus as our carnal view of God, He is God's Word made flesh. John 1:14 says that, "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us."
Everything about a Christian's life is dependent on receiving the truth of God's Word. Even our prayer of salvation is dependent on believing His Word. Romans 10:17 says that, "Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God." Satan has fought bitterly against God's Word because God works by His Word. Even when God wanted to create the universe, He brought it into being by His Word. Hebrews 11:3 tells us the worlds were created by the Word of God. Every child of God was brought forth by the Word and was born of the Word according to James 1:18 which says that, "Of His Own will He brought us forth by the Word of truth." 1Peter 1:23 says, "Having been begotten again not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, through the Word of God which liveth and abideth forever."
After man was born again, his growth, nourishment and strength of life comes from the Word of God. Matthew 4:4 says that, "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every Word that proceeds from the mouth of God." It's the Word that builds us up.
Philippians 2:13 says, "For it is Gos Who worketh in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure." So, He's working in us through His Word.
Colossians 1:5-6 (Amplified) says, "Because of the hope (of experiencing what is) Laid up (reserved and working) for you in heaven. Of this (hope) you heard in the past in the message of the truth of the Gospel which has come to you, Indeed, in the whole world (that Gospel) is bearing fruit and still is growing (by its own inherent power) even as it has done among yourselves ever since the day you first heard and came to know and understand the grace of God in truth (you came to know the grace or undeserved favor of God in reality, deeply and clearly and thoroughly, becoming accurately and intimately acquainted with it)."
Satan has had a battle against the Word from the beginning. When he saw that his moving again the Church by torturing and killing God's people didn't work and that it actually caused the Church to stand together and increase, he decided to hide God's Word from the people. He began burning Bibles, but that didn't work so well either.
So, satan had to find a more subtle way of stopping the Church. And, that way was to simply attack the Word and make it powerless in mans lives. For nearly a thousand years, the Word was never given it's place in Christian circles. Mans philosophies usurped the authority of God's Word and ruled and reigned over the Christian world.
Once the Word of God lost its place in the Church, redemption was lost and faith became an unknown factor in Christian lives. The Bible was locked away in monasteries for almost one thousand years and was printed in a language that the common people couldn't understand. The Bible was written only in Latin and only the clergy had access to it. Even history records this time as "The Dark Ages." I'm sure they didn't call it the Dark Ages because the Light of God's Word was hidden, but because the quality of life was in such decline. When God's Word lost its place in mankind's lives, the light of truth lost its place. It was during this period of history (when God's Word was hidden) that the crusades,the black death, purgatory and other such man made ideas about God appear.
The Reformation came about because a few good men saw a small portion of the light of God's Word and gave it to the people once again. Once the Reformation began, Bibles were printed in the common language and found its way back into the homes of the common people. This was something satan hadn't counted on.
Still though, satan never ceased his attack on the Word. When he couldn't keep it locked up anymore, he created creeds and doctrines of men. No single person in the Reformation had the whole light of the Word, only a part of it. Most of these men were products of the Middle Ages who shut themselves up with a set of creeds and they shut out any further light and growth from the Word. This was handed down from one generation to another and has greatly affected the redemptive power of the Word to work in mans lives. It's hindered a true presentation of Christianity to the world and has caused all kinds of battles in the Church and the world.
We have fought and still fight the authority of the Word, the deity of Christ and the power of the Spirit. Many churches are preaching things they consider to be better suited for the times and culture of today and have gotten away from the truth of God's Word. This other "gospel" has taken away a true picture of our Heavenly Father from the people. The very fact that God's Word has been made common among the people, should have been our deliverance, but has now been used to hinder the working of the Word in our lives through doctrines of men.
Friday, May 16, 2014
lesson 4 The Covenant of Grace and Faith
There are so many things the Father has given us by grace that we have never dared to trust in and receive by our faith. The saddest thing about this is that we've actually rejected the offer of God to us and haven't believed in His Word. Isaiah 53:1 (Amplified) tells us that this has happened before when it says, "Who has believed (trusted in, relied upon, and clung to) our message (of that which was revealed to us)? And to whom has the Arm of the Lord been disclosed?"
Further down in this same chapter of Isaiah 53, he speaks of the Lord bearing our sickness and disease, our pain and punishment, our transgressions and trespasses and all of our guilt and sin. Even as we read this and the next chapter, I cannot get away from Isaiah 53:1 which says, "Who has believed our report?"
Has our faith reached out to include this part of grace? Or, are we like those who couldn't enter in because of unbelief? Is this part of the cross not just as valid even though we don't put faith in it? This is why everything God has promised through Jesus, must come by faith.
Romans 8:31-32 (Amplified) says, "What then shall we say to (all) this? If God is for us, who (can be) against us? (who can be our foe,m if God is on our side?" Verse 37 says, "He who did not withhold or spare (even) His Own Son but gave Him up for us all, Will He not also with Him freely and graciously give us all (other) things?"
So, we see that even with all the Father has done through giving Jesus in our place, it still must be received by faith. John 1:16-17 (Amplified) says, "For out of His fulness (abundance) we have all received (all had a share and were all supplied with) one grace after another and spiritual blessing upon spiritual blessing and even favor upon favor and gift (heaped) upon gift." Verse 17 says, "For while the Law was given through Moses, grace (unearned, undeserved favor and spiritual blessing) and truth came through Jesus Christ."
The things we used to have to earn under the commandments of the Law, we now obtain by faith in the finished work of Jesus. That's what the grace was all about. Under the Law, you could only obtain favor from God by how you kept the Law. Through Jesus, all things have been freely given by grace.
We don't become good enough within ourselves to deserve or not deserve our healing or blessing. We simply receive (by faith) that Jesus has already don it for us and by faith, receive His favor and grace. The same way we received Jesus as our sin bearer for our forgiveness (by faith) we also received Him as our Healer, our Wisdom, our Comforter, our Counselor and everything He is to the Church. Grace has already made all spiritual blessing ours in Him. What is required is for us to believe it.
For many years, we've tried being good enough to deserve salvation. The heart was right within us and because we didn't know any better, God still honored His Word. After awhile, we are called to grow up (mature) in the Lord and no longer walk as mere infants. We excluded faith for church doctrine and religion for centuries. We've tried walking with God once again, based on our performance rather than our faith.
If something in God's Word wasn't working the way we thought it should, then we counted it as we were doing something wrong. And, if things were working, then we counted that as we were doing something right. We began to base our righteousness and success in the Word based on how we dressed, how much make-up we wore, how many times we prayed a day or even what denomination we belonged to just like the scribes and Pharisees.
If we didn't get healed, then we must have sin in our lives or we were doing something wrong. Where then is our faith? Is is in what He's done or what we've done? Now, then, we began walking back under the Law based on our performance and we've made grace no longer grace (unmerited favor). We're trying to get blessed based on favor that was earned or merited by our own performance rather than on grace (the unmerited favor of God). This takes no faith, but is an attempt to obligate God to help us by our own terms.
We don't need to believe in healing, but to believe in Jesus Who is our healing. Like we believe He bore our sins, we now believe He bore my disease. We can't separate the two things because He if One. We've somehow tried dividing Him into different categories by our doctrine. We've tried to separate our spirit from the rest of us. But, you cannot do it. Everything that comes from the spirit (good or bad), affects the flesh and the soul. We are a tri-une people. Sin and sickness all come from the same source. Sin brought death (spiritual and physical), so salvation brought life in both realms. Even our natural bodies are to be raised and restored by God in the last day.
This body is the Temple of God once again. 1Corinthians 6:19 (Amplified) says, "Do you not know that your body is the temple (the very sanctuary) of the Holy Spirit Who lives within you, Whom you have received (as a gift) from God? You are not your own."
When sin entered mankind through the fall of Adam, death and disease were the result of his trespass. This trespass affected everything about man; spirit, soul and body. When Jesus went to the cross and the grave and then to His resurrection, He bought back (by His Own life and blood) the entire spectrum of man that had bound mankind; spirit, soul, and body.
Once the new creation was made complete by receiving Jesus Christ, life in every spectrum of man was to be restored. Man was once again to be complete in God. This was the provision of God's great grace and mercy towards man. Nothing of the enemy was to remain that could contaminate the family God so loved. Every trace of the death of sin that had held His children in darkness, was to be expelled.
This grace is made available to all who will believe on and in the love God has for us. For too long, we've been taught to think of God as a far distant force Who is totally separated from us mortals. We were taught that He was totally unpredictable and nearly impossible to please. Our relationship with God was like walking on a frozen lake where you could never tell when you might fall through the ice to your death. We were taught that God was almost a mystical being, not unlike the heathen gods and masters.
We tried appeasing God by sacrifice and sufferings. We've even had religious sects who abuse themselves with whips and other instruments of torture to who their repentance and sorrow for their sin. How wrong we've been taught and how wrong we've viewed our Father. Only the devil himself could have given us such a distorted view of our God.
It's no wonder it's been so hard for us to believe that God really wants us to walk at peace with Him. We reached a place where every terrible thing that happened to us, we were told (and believed), God was trying to teach us something. Nobody had any idea what He was trying to teach us or how long we were to learn. Worse yet, because we didn't even know what it was we were to learn, we never knew when the test was over.
Our lives became one never ending trial and test. We were never taught to listen to the Lord's Prayer, I guess. Jesus taught us to pray, "Lead us not into temptation (trials and tests), but deliver us from evil (or the evil one who does try and test us)."
We've moved in misguided faith for so long that we forgot it's also a gift of God to be able to understand the grace. Our faith was to be able to now believe and see our Father through the very gift of His Son. Our faith was to be able to see past the ideas of man and see into the heart of our Father's grace by this gift of faith.
Jesus Himself was the Sacrifice that the door to this unmerited and undeserved favor and blessing of our Father. Until the time of His coming, no one but Jesus referred to God as "Father." When Jesus taught His disciples to pray, "Our Father," it must have been a fearsome way to pray. The Chief Priest and his followers actually got Jesus crucified for this very statement according to Luke 22:70-71 (Amplified) which says, "And they all said, You are the Son of God, then? And He said to them, It is just as you say; I AM. And they said, what further evidence do we need? For we have heard (it) ourselves from His Own mouth."
Jesus was accused and tried and ordered to die for saying that He was the Son of God and that God was actually His Father. It still frightens some Christians to dare say they are righteous or to refer to themselves as no longer sinners. Grace has declared that we are no longer sinners, butheirs of God and joint heirs with Jesus.
Because of Jesus, this grace is made available to us at any time and it can always be counted on to be there to meet our needs. Because of Jesus, we have the boldness to come into the very presence of our Father and know that we are accepted and received. Hebrews 4:16 (Amplified) says, "Let us then fearlessly and confidently and boldly draw near to the throne of grace (the throne of God's unmerited favor to us sinners) that we may receive mercy (for our failures) and find grace to help in good time for every need (appropriate help and well timed help coming just when we need it)."
Only by grace can we hope to have this access to the Father and Jesus is this manifest grace of God. Faith in Jesus has now opened the door to all the grace of God. It's unmerited and undeserved, but always there because Jesus paid for it for us, which was the will of God. When we put our faith in Jesus, all of God's grace and favor and mercy was included in our salvation. Everything man could ever need to restore us back to the Father, was in Jesus. It's grace and truth by faith.
Further down in this same chapter of Isaiah 53, he speaks of the Lord bearing our sickness and disease, our pain and punishment, our transgressions and trespasses and all of our guilt and sin. Even as we read this and the next chapter, I cannot get away from Isaiah 53:1 which says, "Who has believed our report?"
Has our faith reached out to include this part of grace? Or, are we like those who couldn't enter in because of unbelief? Is this part of the cross not just as valid even though we don't put faith in it? This is why everything God has promised through Jesus, must come by faith.
Romans 8:31-32 (Amplified) says, "What then shall we say to (all) this? If God is for us, who (can be) against us? (who can be our foe,m if God is on our side?" Verse 37 says, "He who did not withhold or spare (even) His Own Son but gave Him up for us all, Will He not also with Him freely and graciously give us all (other) things?"
So, we see that even with all the Father has done through giving Jesus in our place, it still must be received by faith. John 1:16-17 (Amplified) says, "For out of His fulness (abundance) we have all received (all had a share and were all supplied with) one grace after another and spiritual blessing upon spiritual blessing and even favor upon favor and gift (heaped) upon gift." Verse 17 says, "For while the Law was given through Moses, grace (unearned, undeserved favor and spiritual blessing) and truth came through Jesus Christ."
The things we used to have to earn under the commandments of the Law, we now obtain by faith in the finished work of Jesus. That's what the grace was all about. Under the Law, you could only obtain favor from God by how you kept the Law. Through Jesus, all things have been freely given by grace.
We don't become good enough within ourselves to deserve or not deserve our healing or blessing. We simply receive (by faith) that Jesus has already don it for us and by faith, receive His favor and grace. The same way we received Jesus as our sin bearer for our forgiveness (by faith) we also received Him as our Healer, our Wisdom, our Comforter, our Counselor and everything He is to the Church. Grace has already made all spiritual blessing ours in Him. What is required is for us to believe it.
For many years, we've tried being good enough to deserve salvation. The heart was right within us and because we didn't know any better, God still honored His Word. After awhile, we are called to grow up (mature) in the Lord and no longer walk as mere infants. We excluded faith for church doctrine and religion for centuries. We've tried walking with God once again, based on our performance rather than our faith.
If something in God's Word wasn't working the way we thought it should, then we counted it as we were doing something wrong. And, if things were working, then we counted that as we were doing something right. We began to base our righteousness and success in the Word based on how we dressed, how much make-up we wore, how many times we prayed a day or even what denomination we belonged to just like the scribes and Pharisees.
If we didn't get healed, then we must have sin in our lives or we were doing something wrong. Where then is our faith? Is is in what He's done or what we've done? Now, then, we began walking back under the Law based on our performance and we've made grace no longer grace (unmerited favor). We're trying to get blessed based on favor that was earned or merited by our own performance rather than on grace (the unmerited favor of God). This takes no faith, but is an attempt to obligate God to help us by our own terms.
We don't need to believe in healing, but to believe in Jesus Who is our healing. Like we believe He bore our sins, we now believe He bore my disease. We can't separate the two things because He if One. We've somehow tried dividing Him into different categories by our doctrine. We've tried to separate our spirit from the rest of us. But, you cannot do it. Everything that comes from the spirit (good or bad), affects the flesh and the soul. We are a tri-une people. Sin and sickness all come from the same source. Sin brought death (spiritual and physical), so salvation brought life in both realms. Even our natural bodies are to be raised and restored by God in the last day.
This body is the Temple of God once again. 1Corinthians 6:19 (Amplified) says, "Do you not know that your body is the temple (the very sanctuary) of the Holy Spirit Who lives within you, Whom you have received (as a gift) from God? You are not your own."
When sin entered mankind through the fall of Adam, death and disease were the result of his trespass. This trespass affected everything about man; spirit, soul and body. When Jesus went to the cross and the grave and then to His resurrection, He bought back (by His Own life and blood) the entire spectrum of man that had bound mankind; spirit, soul, and body.
Once the new creation was made complete by receiving Jesus Christ, life in every spectrum of man was to be restored. Man was once again to be complete in God. This was the provision of God's great grace and mercy towards man. Nothing of the enemy was to remain that could contaminate the family God so loved. Every trace of the death of sin that had held His children in darkness, was to be expelled.
This grace is made available to all who will believe on and in the love God has for us. For too long, we've been taught to think of God as a far distant force Who is totally separated from us mortals. We were taught that He was totally unpredictable and nearly impossible to please. Our relationship with God was like walking on a frozen lake where you could never tell when you might fall through the ice to your death. We were taught that God was almost a mystical being, not unlike the heathen gods and masters.
We tried appeasing God by sacrifice and sufferings. We've even had religious sects who abuse themselves with whips and other instruments of torture to who their repentance and sorrow for their sin. How wrong we've been taught and how wrong we've viewed our Father. Only the devil himself could have given us such a distorted view of our God.
It's no wonder it's been so hard for us to believe that God really wants us to walk at peace with Him. We reached a place where every terrible thing that happened to us, we were told (and believed), God was trying to teach us something. Nobody had any idea what He was trying to teach us or how long we were to learn. Worse yet, because we didn't even know what it was we were to learn, we never knew when the test was over.
Our lives became one never ending trial and test. We were never taught to listen to the Lord's Prayer, I guess. Jesus taught us to pray, "Lead us not into temptation (trials and tests), but deliver us from evil (or the evil one who does try and test us)."
We've moved in misguided faith for so long that we forgot it's also a gift of God to be able to understand the grace. Our faith was to be able to now believe and see our Father through the very gift of His Son. Our faith was to be able to see past the ideas of man and see into the heart of our Father's grace by this gift of faith.
Jesus Himself was the Sacrifice that the door to this unmerited and undeserved favor and blessing of our Father. Until the time of His coming, no one but Jesus referred to God as "Father." When Jesus taught His disciples to pray, "Our Father," it must have been a fearsome way to pray. The Chief Priest and his followers actually got Jesus crucified for this very statement according to Luke 22:70-71 (Amplified) which says, "And they all said, You are the Son of God, then? And He said to them, It is just as you say; I AM. And they said, what further evidence do we need? For we have heard (it) ourselves from His Own mouth."
Jesus was accused and tried and ordered to die for saying that He was the Son of God and that God was actually His Father. It still frightens some Christians to dare say they are righteous or to refer to themselves as no longer sinners. Grace has declared that we are no longer sinners, butheirs of God and joint heirs with Jesus.
Because of Jesus, this grace is made available to us at any time and it can always be counted on to be there to meet our needs. Because of Jesus, we have the boldness to come into the very presence of our Father and know that we are accepted and received. Hebrews 4:16 (Amplified) says, "Let us then fearlessly and confidently and boldly draw near to the throne of grace (the throne of God's unmerited favor to us sinners) that we may receive mercy (for our failures) and find grace to help in good time for every need (appropriate help and well timed help coming just when we need it)."
Only by grace can we hope to have this access to the Father and Jesus is this manifest grace of God. Faith in Jesus has now opened the door to all the grace of God. It's unmerited and undeserved, but always there because Jesus paid for it for us, which was the will of God. When we put our faith in Jesus, all of God's grace and favor and mercy was included in our salvation. Everything man could ever need to restore us back to the Father, was in Jesus. It's grace and truth by faith.
Lesson 3 The Covenant of Grace and Faith
Through Jesus, we can by His grace, enter in by faith into a place of unbroken fellowship and the place of fullness of His love. This is what the heart of God desired when He allowed Jesus to take our place in judgment. It wasn't simply the idea of forgiveness that we were to major on, but what He had now made available by His grace, because of our forgiveness.
By faith in His grace (unmerited favor and mercy), we were to be restored by Jesus to a place with the Father as though the fall in the Garden had never happened. Grace has made all of this possible to the child of God. Fear has kept us from accepting (by faith) what this great grace has now done for us. We're so unsure of the heart of the Father that we won't receive what His grace has made ours.
When we don't allow grace to come to a fullness in our lives, we haven't given the Father the joy in us that He bought by the Blood of Jesus. We have been taught for many years that we're still not righteous in our place with God. By our being reluctant to actually trust what God has done in Jesus, we've really robbed the Father of the joy of family He brought about by Jesus. Despite of what the Father went through (by sending Jesus to suffer and die) to once again be in relationship with us, we have drawn back because of unbelief and robbed the heart of our Father of the joy He sought through our Sacrifice Lamb.
We can see now more clearly what was being revealed in Hebrews 4:1-2 (Amplified) which says, "Therefore, While the promise of entering His rest still holds and is offered (today) let us be afraid (to distrust it) lest any of you should think he has come too late and has come short of (reaching) it." Verse 2 goes on, "For indeed we have had the glad tidings (Gospel of God) proclaimed to us just as truly as they (the Israelites of old did when the good news of deliverance from bondage came to them) but the message they heard did not benefit them, because it was not mixed with faith (with the leaning of the entire personality on God in absolute trust and confidence in His power, wisdom, and goodness) by those who heard it; neither were they united in faith with the ones (Joshua and Caleb) who heard (and did believe)."
You can see why faith is so important with the grace that has been given us by God. Those in the wilderness wouldn't put faith in what they had heard. We have been reluctant to put faith in what we have heard in the Word. Grace has restored God's lost family back to Him by the Blood of Jesus. We've heard the Good News, but have been afraid to trust what He said. When we don't put our faith and trust in Him, then we haven't only robbed ourselves of our deliverance, but we have robbed our Father from the joy of reconciliation with His children.
I know that we never intended to rob our Father of His joy, but in essence, that's what happens when we don't put faith in this grace. When we don't trust Him, then we don't enter into God's rest (or we don't rest in His grace). The thing that displeased God was that the Israelites didn't trust Him in His grace.
Until the Hebrew people were given the Law by Moses on Mt. Sinai, they walked in the grace of Abraham's covenant with God. This grace kept them fed, clothed, watered, healed, warm, protected and in the actual presence of God in their midst. No matter what God did by grace to provide for them, the Hebrew people still doubted when another need arose. All the while God was taking care of them, they continued to doubt He could feed them or then bring water to them. No matter what was made available, they still doubted at every turn.
This is why faith is so important to God. Hebrews 11:6 says that, "Without faith, it is impossible to please God." No matter what He provides for us, it requires faith to appropriate it. As new covenant people, we have received our forgiveness of sin by faith in His grace. Ephesians 2:8 tells us that it is "By Grace are we saved through Faith." Now, when it comes to believing that God also put our sickness and disease on Jesus, we become like the Israelites in the wilderness. Exodus 16:2 (Amplified) says, "And the whole congregation of Israel murmured against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. After He had parted the Red Sea, brought water into the desert and destroyed Pharaoh's army, they still doubted at every new door of His grace.
We stumble at every new door of His grace in our lives. This gift of His righteousness is still debated in many Christian circles. We see what grace has provided in God's Word, yet we stumble at the great provision of it repeatedly. We still try finding ways to earn what grace has freely given. We fight in the family over prosperity, over healing, over sanctification, over the Holy Spirit, over the gifts of the Spirit, over justification and even over the love of God as though His love is determined by our performance.
Each thing we read in God's Word concerning the Church is a state of God's grace. Each part of God's grace must be believed and adhered to by faith to make it work even though salvation was, and is, for the whole world by God's grace. What about those people who never put faith in this grace to receive salvation? Ephesians 2:8 (Amplified) tells us that, "For it is by free grace (God's unmerited favor) that you are saved (delivered from judgment and made partakers of Christ's salvation) through (your) faith."
This salvation is by God's free grace and is received by faith. Are those who have never applied their faith towards this free gift saved? No, although "God so loved the world that He gave Jesus." If we will not believe in this gift of grace (by faith), then you aren't saved. This applies to every other aspect of God's grace. It's available, it's ours through Jesus, it is God's will for us to have and it was paid for by the Blood of Jesus, but we must believe in it, and for it, in order to appropriate it. Jesus is God's grace in all things.
By faith in His grace (unmerited favor and mercy), we were to be restored by Jesus to a place with the Father as though the fall in the Garden had never happened. Grace has made all of this possible to the child of God. Fear has kept us from accepting (by faith) what this great grace has now done for us. We're so unsure of the heart of the Father that we won't receive what His grace has made ours.
When we don't allow grace to come to a fullness in our lives, we haven't given the Father the joy in us that He bought by the Blood of Jesus. We have been taught for many years that we're still not righteous in our place with God. By our being reluctant to actually trust what God has done in Jesus, we've really robbed the Father of the joy of family He brought about by Jesus. Despite of what the Father went through (by sending Jesus to suffer and die) to once again be in relationship with us, we have drawn back because of unbelief and robbed the heart of our Father of the joy He sought through our Sacrifice Lamb.
We can see now more clearly what was being revealed in Hebrews 4:1-2 (Amplified) which says, "Therefore, While the promise of entering His rest still holds and is offered (today) let us be afraid (to distrust it) lest any of you should think he has come too late and has come short of (reaching) it." Verse 2 goes on, "For indeed we have had the glad tidings (Gospel of God) proclaimed to us just as truly as they (the Israelites of old did when the good news of deliverance from bondage came to them) but the message they heard did not benefit them, because it was not mixed with faith (with the leaning of the entire personality on God in absolute trust and confidence in His power, wisdom, and goodness) by those who heard it; neither were they united in faith with the ones (Joshua and Caleb) who heard (and did believe)."
You can see why faith is so important with the grace that has been given us by God. Those in the wilderness wouldn't put faith in what they had heard. We have been reluctant to put faith in what we have heard in the Word. Grace has restored God's lost family back to Him by the Blood of Jesus. We've heard the Good News, but have been afraid to trust what He said. When we don't put our faith and trust in Him, then we haven't only robbed ourselves of our deliverance, but we have robbed our Father from the joy of reconciliation with His children.
I know that we never intended to rob our Father of His joy, but in essence, that's what happens when we don't put faith in this grace. When we don't trust Him, then we don't enter into God's rest (or we don't rest in His grace). The thing that displeased God was that the Israelites didn't trust Him in His grace.
Until the Hebrew people were given the Law by Moses on Mt. Sinai, they walked in the grace of Abraham's covenant with God. This grace kept them fed, clothed, watered, healed, warm, protected and in the actual presence of God in their midst. No matter what God did by grace to provide for them, the Hebrew people still doubted when another need arose. All the while God was taking care of them, they continued to doubt He could feed them or then bring water to them. No matter what was made available, they still doubted at every turn.
This is why faith is so important to God. Hebrews 11:6 says that, "Without faith, it is impossible to please God." No matter what He provides for us, it requires faith to appropriate it. As new covenant people, we have received our forgiveness of sin by faith in His grace. Ephesians 2:8 tells us that it is "By Grace are we saved through Faith." Now, when it comes to believing that God also put our sickness and disease on Jesus, we become like the Israelites in the wilderness. Exodus 16:2 (Amplified) says, "And the whole congregation of Israel murmured against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. After He had parted the Red Sea, brought water into the desert and destroyed Pharaoh's army, they still doubted at every new door of His grace.
We stumble at every new door of His grace in our lives. This gift of His righteousness is still debated in many Christian circles. We see what grace has provided in God's Word, yet we stumble at the great provision of it repeatedly. We still try finding ways to earn what grace has freely given. We fight in the family over prosperity, over healing, over sanctification, over the Holy Spirit, over the gifts of the Spirit, over justification and even over the love of God as though His love is determined by our performance.
Each thing we read in God's Word concerning the Church is a state of God's grace. Each part of God's grace must be believed and adhered to by faith to make it work even though salvation was, and is, for the whole world by God's grace. What about those people who never put faith in this grace to receive salvation? Ephesians 2:8 (Amplified) tells us that, "For it is by free grace (God's unmerited favor) that you are saved (delivered from judgment and made partakers of Christ's salvation) through (your) faith."
This salvation is by God's free grace and is received by faith. Are those who have never applied their faith towards this free gift saved? No, although "God so loved the world that He gave Jesus." If we will not believe in this gift of grace (by faith), then you aren't saved. This applies to every other aspect of God's grace. It's available, it's ours through Jesus, it is God's will for us to have and it was paid for by the Blood of Jesus, but we must believe in it, and for it, in order to appropriate it. Jesus is God's grace in all things.
Thursday, May 15, 2014
Lesson 2 The Covenant of Grace and Faith
Romans 3:23-26 (Amplified) says that, "Since all have sinned and are fallen short of the honor and glory which God bestows and receives, All are justified and made upright and in right standing with God, freely and gratuitously by His grace (His unmerited favor and mercy),through the redemption which is (provided) in Christ Jesus." Verse 25 goes on, "Whom God put forward (before the eyes of all) as a mercy seat and propitiation by His Blood (the cleansing and life-giving sacrifice of atonement and reconciliation, to be received) through faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in His divine forbearance He had passed over and ignored former sins without punishment." Verse 26 says, It was to demonstrate and prove at the present time (in the now season) that He Himself is righteous and that He justifies and accepts as righteous him who has (true) faith in Jesus."
We've had a difficult time accepting the full scope of the awesome grace of God. Even though grace has been freely given all things through Jesus, we have a difficult time placing our faith in its power of cleansing. We struggle with our past life and where we came from. We believe that in the eyes of a Holy God, we always seem far below where we know we should be in our lives. We cannot seem to reach out far enough with our faith in Jesus, to receive all that grace has provided for us.
Although grace has now put us into a place with God that only Jesus has had until now, we still can't seem to believe it can be true. Ephesians 2:6 (Amplified) says, "And He raised us up together with Him (Jesus) and made us sit down together (giving us joint seating with Him) in the heavenly sphere (by virtue of our being) in Christ Jesus (the Messiah, the Anointed One)."
The natural mind can't take in the fullness of the truth this statement holds. Our unrenewed mind thinks only on who we were and not on who He has made us to be in Jesus. This is why your faith is so important in our walk with our Father. Even though, by His grace, He has removed everything that we were, we still struggle to believe what we are now by this wonderful grace.
And, even though we know our sin has been completely done away with, we still struggle with our own conscience. We still struggle with the old sin conscience and can't accept the whole truth of grace by our faith. Even though all of these things are now ours by His grace, we won't allow ourselves to receive them in our lives.
Romans 5:1-2 (Amplified) tells us, "Therefore, since we are justified (acquitted, declared righteous and given a right standing with God) through faith, let us (grasp the fact that we) have (the peace of reconciliation to hold and to enjoy) peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed One)." Verse 2 says, "Through Him also we have (our) access (entrance, introduction) by faith into this grace (state of God's favor) in which we (firmly and safely) stand. And let us rejoice and exalt in our hope of experiencing and enjoying the glory of God."
According to this scripture, we are to (by faith) experience and enjoy God's glory, here and now in our new lives. Once we reach out by faith to dare accept what Jesus has done for us, we can walk in a place of joy and glory in our Father's presence. We can (by faith) finally accept what His grace has provided for us. Then we can begin to understand what Paul said in Romans 12:2 (Amplified) which says, "Do not be conformed to this world (this age), (fashioned after and adapted to its external, superficial customs) but be transformed (changed) by the (entire) renewal of your mind (by its new ideals and its new attitude) So that you may prove (for yourselves) what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God, even the thing which is good and acceptable and perfect (in His sight for you)."
Until we renew our minds by His Word, we can never release our faith into what His grace has freely given. Paul said that, "As we renew our minds by the Word, we can then prove for ourselves what God's perfect will is for us in His sight." When man was separated from his Heavenly Father in the Garden of Eden, it saddened the Father greatly. His great love was now limited in what it could do for the children He loved so much. Sin separated His children from Him and He could only enter into their lives by so much. Even the Law and the blood of goats and bulls could only allow God limited entrance to His people.
This great love of God couldn't and wouldn't be denied and His grace has provided everything through the death and resurrection of Jesus. This great love is no longer limited in its ability to bring God's children back into His presence. Romans 8:38-39 (Amplified) says, "For I am persuaded beyond doubt (am sure) that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities, nor things impending and threatening nor things to come, nor powers, Nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
We've had a difficult time accepting the full scope of the awesome grace of God. Even though grace has been freely given all things through Jesus, we have a difficult time placing our faith in its power of cleansing. We struggle with our past life and where we came from. We believe that in the eyes of a Holy God, we always seem far below where we know we should be in our lives. We cannot seem to reach out far enough with our faith in Jesus, to receive all that grace has provided for us.
Although grace has now put us into a place with God that only Jesus has had until now, we still can't seem to believe it can be true. Ephesians 2:6 (Amplified) says, "And He raised us up together with Him (Jesus) and made us sit down together (giving us joint seating with Him) in the heavenly sphere (by virtue of our being) in Christ Jesus (the Messiah, the Anointed One)."
The natural mind can't take in the fullness of the truth this statement holds. Our unrenewed mind thinks only on who we were and not on who He has made us to be in Jesus. This is why your faith is so important in our walk with our Father. Even though, by His grace, He has removed everything that we were, we still struggle to believe what we are now by this wonderful grace.
And, even though we know our sin has been completely done away with, we still struggle with our own conscience. We still struggle with the old sin conscience and can't accept the whole truth of grace by our faith. Even though all of these things are now ours by His grace, we won't allow ourselves to receive them in our lives.
Romans 5:1-2 (Amplified) tells us, "Therefore, since we are justified (acquitted, declared righteous and given a right standing with God) through faith, let us (grasp the fact that we) have (the peace of reconciliation to hold and to enjoy) peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed One)." Verse 2 says, "Through Him also we have (our) access (entrance, introduction) by faith into this grace (state of God's favor) in which we (firmly and safely) stand. And let us rejoice and exalt in our hope of experiencing and enjoying the glory of God."
According to this scripture, we are to (by faith) experience and enjoy God's glory, here and now in our new lives. Once we reach out by faith to dare accept what Jesus has done for us, we can walk in a place of joy and glory in our Father's presence. We can (by faith) finally accept what His grace has provided for us. Then we can begin to understand what Paul said in Romans 12:2 (Amplified) which says, "Do not be conformed to this world (this age), (fashioned after and adapted to its external, superficial customs) but be transformed (changed) by the (entire) renewal of your mind (by its new ideals and its new attitude) So that you may prove (for yourselves) what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God, even the thing which is good and acceptable and perfect (in His sight for you)."
Until we renew our minds by His Word, we can never release our faith into what His grace has freely given. Paul said that, "As we renew our minds by the Word, we can then prove for ourselves what God's perfect will is for us in His sight." When man was separated from his Heavenly Father in the Garden of Eden, it saddened the Father greatly. His great love was now limited in what it could do for the children He loved so much. Sin separated His children from Him and He could only enter into their lives by so much. Even the Law and the blood of goats and bulls could only allow God limited entrance to His people.
This great love of God couldn't and wouldn't be denied and His grace has provided everything through the death and resurrection of Jesus. This great love is no longer limited in its ability to bring God's children back into His presence. Romans 8:38-39 (Amplified) says, "For I am persuaded beyond doubt (am sure) that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities, nor things impending and threatening nor things to come, nor powers, Nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
Tuesday, May 13, 2014
Lesson 1 Covenant of Grace and Faith
As new covenant believers, we have a covenant that's not under the Law of works and rituals, but under the gift of God's grace. This covenant of God's grace has provided everything the child of God will ever need for here and in heaven. Ephesians 2:5-6 (Amplified) says that, "Even when we were dead (slain) by (our own) shortcomings and trespasses, He made us alive together in fellowship and in union with Christ; (He gave us the very life of Christ Himself, the same new life with which He quickened Him for) it is by Grace (His favor and mercy which you did not deserve) that you are saved (delivered from judgment and made partakers of Christ's salvation)." Verse 6 goes on, "And He raised us up together with Him and made us sit down together (giving us joint seating with Him) in heavenly sphere (by virtue of our being) in Christ Jesus (the Messiah, the Anointed
In Verse 8 of the same chapter, we find that in order to obtain what grace already provided, we must accept what God has done by faith. Verse 8 says, "For it is by free grace (God's unmerited favor) that you are saved (delivered from judgment and made partakers of Christ's salvation) through (your) faith. And this (salvation) is not of yourselves (of your own doing, it came not of your own striving) but it is the gift of God."
This covenant we have with our Father is something so new and completely different that we've had a difficult time understanding it. We've had so many teachings about faith throughout the years. And, that's good. It brought faith back into the Church's focus. For many years we'd lost faith in so many of the things God had in store for us. In many instances, we'd lost faith in nearly everything He had for us here in this realm.
We settled into a place where we'd "hang on until we die and then go to heaven." We believed that all the things that were offered through Jesus were for when we passed away and not for today. Or, we believed that these things were only for the early Church, died with the Apostles, not for everyone or even from the devil. Our faith had been so undermined over the years, that our prayers weren't relevant because of our uncertainty of God.
Once the faith message was introduced back into the Church, we overshot and returned to trying to make things happen "by our own works." Faith almost became a thing to avoid in some circles. And, we once again went back to the same place we started. We tried being good and then we would go to heaven once we died. We did exactly what Paul spoke to the Church in Galatians 3:1-3(Amplified) which says, "Oh you poor and silly and thoughtless and unreflecting and senseless Galatians! Who has fascinated or bewitched or cast a spell over you, unto whom-right before your very eyes-Jesus Christ (the Messiah) was openly and graphically set forth and portrayed as crucified?" Verse 2 says, "Let me ask you this one question; Did you receive the (Holy) Spirit as the result of obeying the Law and doing its works, or was it by hearing (the message of the gospel) and believing (it)? (Was it from observing a Law of rituals or from a message of faith?" Verse 3 says, "Are you so foolish and so senseless and so silly? having begun (your new life spiritually) with the (Holy) Spirit, are you now reaching perfection (by dependence) on the flesh?"
Once again, we've become like the Galatians who tried being justified by the works of their flesh. We believed if we'd do enough good works and had strong enough faith, then God would bless me and answer my prayers. Once again, it came down to "my faith, my works."
Then entered the Great Debate concerning faith in the Church. Some called it hyper faith and some called themselves faith people. So, the thing that should unite the Church became a source of division once again. Some said that it was up to God whether or not He wanted to bless or heal you and that faith had nothing at all to do with it. Some even tried making God do it out of obligation to His Word. Both groups were wrong.
Were we to believe anything anymore? Should we teach about healing and have some who would not be healed and then be disappointed? Or, should we simply preach about going to heaven when you die and leave it at that? Afterall, it was up to God anyway, right? So, we coined the simple solution that you needn't believe anything and you'll still be okay. "Lord, if it be Thy will, and if not, not my will but Yours be done," we prayed as if God would perform anything that wasn't His will anyway.
1John 5:14-15 (Amplified) says, "And this is the confidence (the assurance, the privilege of boldness) which we have in Him; (we are sure) that if we ask anything (make our request) according to His will (in agreement with His Own plan) He listens to and hears us." Verse 15 goes on, "And if (since) we (positively) know that He listens to us in whatever we ask, we also know (with settled and absolute knowledge) that we have (granted us as our present possessions) the requests made of Him."
Then comes the great questions of the Church of "Does faith have anything to do with answered prayer or requests," "Do we have an obligation to know what God's will is when we pray,"and "Does God still heal and deliver and do things for His people or are we just on automatic pilot until Jesus comes?"
Now comes the message of grace. Once again we leaned to our own understanding instead of listening to the Holy Spirit and we decided that grace meant that if God wanted us to have it," "You can never be sure God wants you to have it," or that God "may have pity on us and do something."
Somehow, grace and faith became opposite things. One group in the Church became those who were going to make things happen by their faith. The other group decided that if God wanted us to have these things, then He would just do it by grace. And, once again, both groups were wrong!
Now comes what God has desired for us ever since Jesus rose from the dead and put forth this new covenant of grace and faith. Everything God has for His children is now by grace. And, everything that grace has granted must be received by faith. Romans 1:5 (Amplified) says that, "It is through Him that we have received grace (God's unmerited favor) and (our) apostleship to promote obedience to the faith and make disciples for His Name's sake among all the nations."
Through Jesus, we have been granted this grace (the unearned, unmerited and undeserved favor of God). This grace was granted through God's love for us when He sent Jesus to pay our penalty. We didn't deserve to be forgiven, but grace forgave us. We didn't deserve to be made righteous, but grace made it possible through Jesus. We didn't deserve to be saved at all, but grace made it possible through the cross.
Now comes the thing that's been such a division in the Church for all this time. Were we saved by grace or by faith? It takes both according to Ephesisans 2:8 which says that, "We are saved by grace through faith." Grace has made salvation available to everyone and faith has to receive what grace has made available.
Salvation was made available to everyone "Both Jew and Gentile" at the resurrection of Jesus. Romans 5:1-2 (Amplified) says, "Therefore since we are justified (acquitted, declared righteous and given a right standing with God) through faith, let us (grasp the fact that we) have (the peace of reconciliation to hold and to enjoy) peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed One)." Verse 2 says, "Through Him also we have (our) access (entrance, introduction) by faith into this grace (state of God's favor) in which we (firmly and safely) stand, And let us rejoice and exalt in our hope of experiencing and enjoying the glory of God."
Here we find that grace and faith are of equal importance when it comes to our salvation, deliverance, healing, peace or entering into the glory of God. Grace has made everything available, but it must be received by faith. We find that salvation came to all men two thousand years again when Jesus rose from the dead. When I received my salvation, Jesus didn't need to come back and die again. I had to have faith in what grace already provided two thousand years ago.
Hebrews 4:16 (Amplified) tells us that we have an open invitation to come boldly to God's throne of grace whenever we have a need. The only way to come boldly to this throne of grace is by faith. If we don't have faith in what we're doing when we approach His throne, then how could we come boldly? We read in Romans 3:23-25 (Amplified) how these two attributes of God work together in the life of man. Thus, it says, "Since all have sinned and are falling short of the honor and glory which God bestows and receives (All) are justified and made upright and in right standing with God, freely and gratuitously by His grace (His unmerited favor and mercy) through the redemption which is (provided) in Christ Jesus Whom God put forward (before the eyes of all) as a mercy seat and propitiation by His Blood (the cleansing and life-giving sacrifice of atonement and reconciliation, to be received through faith this was to show God's righteousness because in His divine forbearance He had passed over and ignored former sins without punishment."
"All were made righteous and were justified by grace," but the sacrifice must be received by faith. Our being made righteous before God, doesn't depend on what we do, but what we believe by faith in Jesus. Everything God has offered to the world and the Church is by His grace. All He has offered to the world and the Church won't help either unless we apply our faith in what grace has made available.
Salvation was made available to all men through Jesus. John 3:16 might by the most quoted and well known verses in the Bible that, "God so loved the world that He gave Jesus for our salvation." By grace, this gift of salvation has been offered to "All who will believe." The grace for salvation has been granted, but faith must reach out to receive it.
If we don't put faith in the gift of grace (salvation), then men can still die in their sin and perish even though that grace was made available to them. Hebrews 4:16 says that, "Without faith it is impossible to please God." Now we see why faith is so important to God. It is the doorway into grace He granted us by the very life of His Son. We can only enter in by grace (not by works or deeds of the flesh), but grace can only be received by faith.
We see that what we've learned about "being saved by grace" is true. And, we've learned that it's true that "the just shall live by faith,"but not one without the other. Everything in the whole of our new covenant was based on God's unmerited favor and mercy (His grace) and that all of it must be received by faith.
Healing has been provided to all according to the Word which tells us that, "By His stripes we are healed and made whole." Healing came as a gift of grace when Jesus bore our sickness and disease. Is this scripture true? Of course it is true. This is a gift of healing to the new covenant believer by grace just like the forgiveness of sin. What then, is the difference? Grace provided both. But, the faith of many only received the one, forgiveness.
Romans 4:16 (Amplified) says, "Therefore (inheriting) the promise is the outcome of faith and it depends (entirely) on faith, in order that it might be given as an act of grace (unmerited favor) to make it stable and valid and guaranteed to all his (Abraham's) descendants, not only to the devotees and adherents of the Law, but also to those who share the faith of Abraham, who is (thus) the father of us all."
Although we confess we believe, we've had a problem actually believing we're righteous. We can read it in the Word and say we believe it, but then still struggle with it. This righteousness is a gift of grace that must be received by faith. We read in Romans 5:2 (Amplified) earlier how, "Through Him (Jesus) also we have (our) access (entrance, introduction) by faith into this grace." The grace or gift of righteousness provided by God through Jesus won't give you the peace in your own spirit unless you will accept it by faith.
God has provided everything needed in our lives as His Own children by His grace,but only that which we receive and place our faith in, will work in our lives (even though it's all ours through Jesus).
Some people have received the Baptism of the Holy Spirit with the language of the Spirit (speaking in tongues). Some haven't. The same gift of the Holy Spirit is given by grace to all, but not all have placed their faith in it. We can go through the Word in the new covenant and find this is true in one way or another in nearly everything whether it by tongues, healing, authority, deliverance, peace, righteousness, prosperity or grace. No matter what comes up, we all seem able to accept some of what grace has made available and not other things. All were offered by grace, but not all of us have put faith into the same things.
Even the validity of the"Gifts of the Spirit" found in 1Corinthians 12 are debated in some churches, but not in other churches. Even though all these things are ours by grace, we stumble in our accepting them because of lack of faith.
In Verse 8 of the same chapter, we find that in order to obtain what grace already provided, we must accept what God has done by faith. Verse 8 says, "For it is by free grace (God's unmerited favor) that you are saved (delivered from judgment and made partakers of Christ's salvation) through (your) faith. And this (salvation) is not of yourselves (of your own doing, it came not of your own striving) but it is the gift of God."
This covenant we have with our Father is something so new and completely different that we've had a difficult time understanding it. We've had so many teachings about faith throughout the years. And, that's good. It brought faith back into the Church's focus. For many years we'd lost faith in so many of the things God had in store for us. In many instances, we'd lost faith in nearly everything He had for us here in this realm.
We settled into a place where we'd "hang on until we die and then go to heaven." We believed that all the things that were offered through Jesus were for when we passed away and not for today. Or, we believed that these things were only for the early Church, died with the Apostles, not for everyone or even from the devil. Our faith had been so undermined over the years, that our prayers weren't relevant because of our uncertainty of God.
Once the faith message was introduced back into the Church, we overshot and returned to trying to make things happen "by our own works." Faith almost became a thing to avoid in some circles. And, we once again went back to the same place we started. We tried being good and then we would go to heaven once we died. We did exactly what Paul spoke to the Church in Galatians 3:1-3(Amplified) which says, "Oh you poor and silly and thoughtless and unreflecting and senseless Galatians! Who has fascinated or bewitched or cast a spell over you, unto whom-right before your very eyes-Jesus Christ (the Messiah) was openly and graphically set forth and portrayed as crucified?" Verse 2 says, "Let me ask you this one question; Did you receive the (Holy) Spirit as the result of obeying the Law and doing its works, or was it by hearing (the message of the gospel) and believing (it)? (Was it from observing a Law of rituals or from a message of faith?" Verse 3 says, "Are you so foolish and so senseless and so silly? having begun (your new life spiritually) with the (Holy) Spirit, are you now reaching perfection (by dependence) on the flesh?"
Once again, we've become like the Galatians who tried being justified by the works of their flesh. We believed if we'd do enough good works and had strong enough faith, then God would bless me and answer my prayers. Once again, it came down to "my faith, my works."
Then entered the Great Debate concerning faith in the Church. Some called it hyper faith and some called themselves faith people. So, the thing that should unite the Church became a source of division once again. Some said that it was up to God whether or not He wanted to bless or heal you and that faith had nothing at all to do with it. Some even tried making God do it out of obligation to His Word. Both groups were wrong.
Were we to believe anything anymore? Should we teach about healing and have some who would not be healed and then be disappointed? Or, should we simply preach about going to heaven when you die and leave it at that? Afterall, it was up to God anyway, right? So, we coined the simple solution that you needn't believe anything and you'll still be okay. "Lord, if it be Thy will, and if not, not my will but Yours be done," we prayed as if God would perform anything that wasn't His will anyway.
1John 5:14-15 (Amplified) says, "And this is the confidence (the assurance, the privilege of boldness) which we have in Him; (we are sure) that if we ask anything (make our request) according to His will (in agreement with His Own plan) He listens to and hears us." Verse 15 goes on, "And if (since) we (positively) know that He listens to us in whatever we ask, we also know (with settled and absolute knowledge) that we have (granted us as our present possessions) the requests made of Him."
Then comes the great questions of the Church of "Does faith have anything to do with answered prayer or requests," "Do we have an obligation to know what God's will is when we pray,"and "Does God still heal and deliver and do things for His people or are we just on automatic pilot until Jesus comes?"
Now comes the message of grace. Once again we leaned to our own understanding instead of listening to the Holy Spirit and we decided that grace meant that if God wanted us to have it," "You can never be sure God wants you to have it," or that God "may have pity on us and do something."
Somehow, grace and faith became opposite things. One group in the Church became those who were going to make things happen by their faith. The other group decided that if God wanted us to have these things, then He would just do it by grace. And, once again, both groups were wrong!
Now comes what God has desired for us ever since Jesus rose from the dead and put forth this new covenant of grace and faith. Everything God has for His children is now by grace. And, everything that grace has granted must be received by faith. Romans 1:5 (Amplified) says that, "It is through Him that we have received grace (God's unmerited favor) and (our) apostleship to promote obedience to the faith and make disciples for His Name's sake among all the nations."
Through Jesus, we have been granted this grace (the unearned, unmerited and undeserved favor of God). This grace was granted through God's love for us when He sent Jesus to pay our penalty. We didn't deserve to be forgiven, but grace forgave us. We didn't deserve to be made righteous, but grace made it possible through Jesus. We didn't deserve to be saved at all, but grace made it possible through the cross.
Now comes the thing that's been such a division in the Church for all this time. Were we saved by grace or by faith? It takes both according to Ephesisans 2:8 which says that, "We are saved by grace through faith." Grace has made salvation available to everyone and faith has to receive what grace has made available.
Salvation was made available to everyone "Both Jew and Gentile" at the resurrection of Jesus. Romans 5:1-2 (Amplified) says, "Therefore since we are justified (acquitted, declared righteous and given a right standing with God) through faith, let us (grasp the fact that we) have (the peace of reconciliation to hold and to enjoy) peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed One)." Verse 2 says, "Through Him also we have (our) access (entrance, introduction) by faith into this grace (state of God's favor) in which we (firmly and safely) stand, And let us rejoice and exalt in our hope of experiencing and enjoying the glory of God."
Here we find that grace and faith are of equal importance when it comes to our salvation, deliverance, healing, peace or entering into the glory of God. Grace has made everything available, but it must be received by faith. We find that salvation came to all men two thousand years again when Jesus rose from the dead. When I received my salvation, Jesus didn't need to come back and die again. I had to have faith in what grace already provided two thousand years ago.
Hebrews 4:16 (Amplified) tells us that we have an open invitation to come boldly to God's throne of grace whenever we have a need. The only way to come boldly to this throne of grace is by faith. If we don't have faith in what we're doing when we approach His throne, then how could we come boldly? We read in Romans 3:23-25 (Amplified) how these two attributes of God work together in the life of man. Thus, it says, "Since all have sinned and are falling short of the honor and glory which God bestows and receives (All) are justified and made upright and in right standing with God, freely and gratuitously by His grace (His unmerited favor and mercy) through the redemption which is (provided) in Christ Jesus Whom God put forward (before the eyes of all) as a mercy seat and propitiation by His Blood (the cleansing and life-giving sacrifice of atonement and reconciliation, to be received through faith this was to show God's righteousness because in His divine forbearance He had passed over and ignored former sins without punishment."
"All were made righteous and were justified by grace," but the sacrifice must be received by faith. Our being made righteous before God, doesn't depend on what we do, but what we believe by faith in Jesus. Everything God has offered to the world and the Church is by His grace. All He has offered to the world and the Church won't help either unless we apply our faith in what grace has made available.
Salvation was made available to all men through Jesus. John 3:16 might by the most quoted and well known verses in the Bible that, "God so loved the world that He gave Jesus for our salvation." By grace, this gift of salvation has been offered to "All who will believe." The grace for salvation has been granted, but faith must reach out to receive it.
If we don't put faith in the gift of grace (salvation), then men can still die in their sin and perish even though that grace was made available to them. Hebrews 4:16 says that, "Without faith it is impossible to please God." Now we see why faith is so important to God. It is the doorway into grace He granted us by the very life of His Son. We can only enter in by grace (not by works or deeds of the flesh), but grace can only be received by faith.
We see that what we've learned about "being saved by grace" is true. And, we've learned that it's true that "the just shall live by faith,"but not one without the other. Everything in the whole of our new covenant was based on God's unmerited favor and mercy (His grace) and that all of it must be received by faith.
Healing has been provided to all according to the Word which tells us that, "By His stripes we are healed and made whole." Healing came as a gift of grace when Jesus bore our sickness and disease. Is this scripture true? Of course it is true. This is a gift of healing to the new covenant believer by grace just like the forgiveness of sin. What then, is the difference? Grace provided both. But, the faith of many only received the one, forgiveness.
Romans 4:16 (Amplified) says, "Therefore (inheriting) the promise is the outcome of faith and it depends (entirely) on faith, in order that it might be given as an act of grace (unmerited favor) to make it stable and valid and guaranteed to all his (Abraham's) descendants, not only to the devotees and adherents of the Law, but also to those who share the faith of Abraham, who is (thus) the father of us all."
Although we confess we believe, we've had a problem actually believing we're righteous. We can read it in the Word and say we believe it, but then still struggle with it. This righteousness is a gift of grace that must be received by faith. We read in Romans 5:2 (Amplified) earlier how, "Through Him (Jesus) also we have (our) access (entrance, introduction) by faith into this grace." The grace or gift of righteousness provided by God through Jesus won't give you the peace in your own spirit unless you will accept it by faith.
God has provided everything needed in our lives as His Own children by His grace,but only that which we receive and place our faith in, will work in our lives (even though it's all ours through Jesus).
Some people have received the Baptism of the Holy Spirit with the language of the Spirit (speaking in tongues). Some haven't. The same gift of the Holy Spirit is given by grace to all, but not all have placed their faith in it. We can go through the Word in the new covenant and find this is true in one way or another in nearly everything whether it by tongues, healing, authority, deliverance, peace, righteousness, prosperity or grace. No matter what comes up, we all seem able to accept some of what grace has made available and not other things. All were offered by grace, but not all of us have put faith into the same things.
Even the validity of the"Gifts of the Spirit" found in 1Corinthians 12 are debated in some churches, but not in other churches. Even though all these things are ours by grace, we stumble in our accepting them because of lack of faith.
Thursday, May 8, 2014
Lesson 4 Identified with Him
When we understand this new righteousness that has been granted us by His grace, we will understand the power of His Name. Many will say that "Jesus paid it all," but then continue acting and walking like we still have a part to play in it. Our part is to believe in what Jesus has already done. Believe that He wasn't raised from the dead until all was paid for. Therefore, if you will see yourself as raised with Christ, then you'll see yourself raised with Him and you will understand the difference between a "forgiven sinner" and a new creation.
You're not an old sinner saved by grace. You, as the old sinner, died and was buried and were saved by grace, became a new creation, became a son of God and joint heir with Jesus and have the very righteousness of God in Jesus Himself.
We've never dared count ourselves as sinless because of what religion has taught us. We still struggle under the burden of who we were because we have never really counted ourselves dead with Christ. As we study God's Word concerning these truths with the carnal mind, we are still awaiting the resurrection. If we ready these truths by the Holy Spirit, then He (the Holy Spirit) will reveal the "now" truth of our resurrection in Jesus...that it's already done.
For some reason, I don't really understand how we falter at the truth of actually being dead and then risen with Jesus. We can read the words and mentally come to an agreement with what we read, but we haven't allowed the revealed truth of the Spirit to make these truths alive to us. We keep thinking that these are future truths and now "now" truths. And, as long as we continue to think this way, we will see ourselves as "forgiven sinners."
The power of our right standing with our Father, is wrapped up in the power of Christ's resurrection. If we see ourselves resurrected with Him, then we can understand that we're now like Him in His resurrection. This means that we died the death with Him as payment for our sin, we were separated from God as Christ was when He was buried, we were sentenced with Him when He was sentenced and we were raised with Him when He was raised.
The resurrection that we as believers will experience in the future, is the resurrection of this house (body) we now live in. Our resurrection by the Spirit of God is a total and complete raising of a new being. The being (dead spirit) was cast out of His presence with Christ. The new being was raised from death to life and was a new creation without sin, without fault and without blemish. This new being was so pure, in fact, that we are now called and made to be one spirit with the Lord.
1Corinthians 6:17 (Amplified) says, "But the person who is united to the Lord becomes one spirit with Him." 1Corinthians 6:19 (Amplified) says, "Do you not know that your body is the temple (the very sanctuary) of the Holy Spirit Who lives in you; Whom you have received (as a Gift) from God? You are not your own."
We've studied more about the sin than we have the Sin Bearer. We've always been spoken to like the person we used to be before we died, then the new being who was raised up with Jesus. We've mostly dealt with our "dead" body rather than our "live" spirit. We keep dealing with the body as though we never died with Christ. We also keep dealing with our spirit as though we were never raised with Him. In most cases,we have acted like these are future events that are not yet done.
Because we haven't considered our bodies to be dead, we have the problem of sin conscience that we struggle to fix on a daily basis. The sin problem can't be fixed in the flesh because sin was an is a spirit problem.
If our bodies are dead to sin (and they are), then how can you fix a dead man? We're still trying to make a dead man do right when a dead man can do nothing. Galatians 5:16 (Amplified) says that, "But I say, walk and live (habitually) in the (Holy) Spirit (responsive to and controlled and guided by the Spirit) then you will certainly not gratify the cravings and desires of the flesh (of human nature without God)."
We've spent most of our time trying to control the flesh instead of spending time walking in the Spirit. As we spend more time understanding and walking in the Word, the things of the flesh will have no pull or control over us.
You're not an old sinner saved by grace. You, as the old sinner, died and was buried and were saved by grace, became a new creation, became a son of God and joint heir with Jesus and have the very righteousness of God in Jesus Himself.
We've never dared count ourselves as sinless because of what religion has taught us. We still struggle under the burden of who we were because we have never really counted ourselves dead with Christ. As we study God's Word concerning these truths with the carnal mind, we are still awaiting the resurrection. If we ready these truths by the Holy Spirit, then He (the Holy Spirit) will reveal the "now" truth of our resurrection in Jesus...that it's already done.
For some reason, I don't really understand how we falter at the truth of actually being dead and then risen with Jesus. We can read the words and mentally come to an agreement with what we read, but we haven't allowed the revealed truth of the Spirit to make these truths alive to us. We keep thinking that these are future truths and now "now" truths. And, as long as we continue to think this way, we will see ourselves as "forgiven sinners."
The power of our right standing with our Father, is wrapped up in the power of Christ's resurrection. If we see ourselves resurrected with Him, then we can understand that we're now like Him in His resurrection. This means that we died the death with Him as payment for our sin, we were separated from God as Christ was when He was buried, we were sentenced with Him when He was sentenced and we were raised with Him when He was raised.
The resurrection that we as believers will experience in the future, is the resurrection of this house (body) we now live in. Our resurrection by the Spirit of God is a total and complete raising of a new being. The being (dead spirit) was cast out of His presence with Christ. The new being was raised from death to life and was a new creation without sin, without fault and without blemish. This new being was so pure, in fact, that we are now called and made to be one spirit with the Lord.
1Corinthians 6:17 (Amplified) says, "But the person who is united to the Lord becomes one spirit with Him." 1Corinthians 6:19 (Amplified) says, "Do you not know that your body is the temple (the very sanctuary) of the Holy Spirit Who lives in you; Whom you have received (as a Gift) from God? You are not your own."
We've studied more about the sin than we have the Sin Bearer. We've always been spoken to like the person we used to be before we died, then the new being who was raised up with Jesus. We've mostly dealt with our "dead" body rather than our "live" spirit. We keep dealing with the body as though we never died with Christ. We also keep dealing with our spirit as though we were never raised with Him. In most cases,we have acted like these are future events that are not yet done.
Because we haven't considered our bodies to be dead, we have the problem of sin conscience that we struggle to fix on a daily basis. The sin problem can't be fixed in the flesh because sin was an is a spirit problem.
If our bodies are dead to sin (and they are), then how can you fix a dead man? We're still trying to make a dead man do right when a dead man can do nothing. Galatians 5:16 (Amplified) says that, "But I say, walk and live (habitually) in the (Holy) Spirit (responsive to and controlled and guided by the Spirit) then you will certainly not gratify the cravings and desires of the flesh (of human nature without God)."
We've spent most of our time trying to control the flesh instead of spending time walking in the Spirit. As we spend more time understanding and walking in the Word, the things of the flesh will have no pull or control over us.
Lesson 3 Identified with Him
Romans 5:1-2 (Amplified) says, "Therefore, since we are justified (acquitted, declared righteous, and given a right standing with God) through faith, let us (grasp the fact that we) have (the peace of reconciliation to hold and to enjoy) peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed One) through Him also we have (our) access (entrance, introduction) by faith into this grace (state of God's favor) in which we (firmly and safely) stand. And let us rejoice and exalt in our hope of experiencing and enjoying the glory of God."
Since we have been restored and made in right standing (righteous) by faith in Jesus, we've now been justified by the Blood of the sacrifice of Jesus. When He was crucified and became our substitute, Jesus bore the entire scope of our separation from God on and in Himself. And, because of Jesus, we no longer are just "God and His people," but Father and His family.
Our relationship with the Creator has changed so drastically that we, by Jesus, can now come into the presence of God at any time and all the time. A sacrifice is no longer required and no longer is there a time for a separation time for cleansing. Through Jesus, we've been declared righteous, justified, acquitted and clean from everything that's ever kept away from God's presence. We've not only been declared righteous, but through the resurrection of Jesus, were actually born again through His resurrection. We're not just "forgiven sinners," like some would say, but the Blood of Jesus completely removed the old body of sin (having nailed it to His cross) and we were actually crucified with Him. Galatians 2:20 (Amplified) says, "I have been crucified with Christ (in Him I have shared His crucifixion); it is no longer I who live, but Christ (the Messiah) lives in me; and the life I now live in the body I live by faith in (by adherence to and reliance on and complete trust in) the Son of God, Who loved me and gave Himself up for me."
We all can repeat Romans 6:23 (Amplified) which says, "For the wages which sin pays is death, but the (bountiful) free gift of God is eternal life through (in union with) Jesus Christ our Lord."
"The wages of sin is death" means that we, who were dead in sin, have now been made alive through Jesus. We've viewed ourselves as "forgiven sinners" and haven't allowed ourselves to really walk in the freedom of the cross. We weren't just forgiven by the cross and resurrection. We died on the cross. Romans 6:5 (Amplified) says, "For if we have become one with Him by sharing a death like His, We shall also be (one with Him in sharing) His resurrection (by a new life lived for God)." Romans 6:10-11 (Amplified) says that, "For by the death He died, He died to sin (ending His relation to it) once for all; and the life that He lives, He is living to God (in unbroken fellowship with Him)." Verse 11 goes on, "Even so consider yourselves also dead to sin and your relation to it broken, but alive to God (living in unbroken fellowship with Him) in Christ Jesus."
We've always thought of ourselves as "forgiven sinners," but God see us as having died when Jesus died (the wages of sin is death). So, God didn't just forgive our sin, but Jesus (and you) both paid the cost of sin when He and you both died. We actually died when Jesus died and were raised when He was raised. We became alive when Jesus was made alive and we became new creation children who were raised from death unto life when Jesus was raised.
We were never to be thought of as forgiven sinners. We actually died with Jesus when He died. And, we actually were raised with Him at His resurrection. We've been waiting all this time for what we've believed would be our resurrection. But, we were actually already raised with Him in unbroken fellowship with God.
The power of righteousness that we've been granted through grace and faith, is in Jesus. If we don't receive this power of righteousness, then it's because we don't see it as a "now" thing, but a "some day" promise.
We keep waiting for ourselves to be resurrected (and we do have His promise of a bodily resurrection when Jesus comes back), but when we received Jesus as our sacrifice, we were raised with Him as well. When you read Romans 6:5 (Amplified) which says, "For if we have become one with Him by sharing a death like His," do you really believe you were crucified with Him? When you read that, "We shall also be (one with Him in sharing) His resurrection," do you believe that we were raised together with Him?
As Christians, we weren't just forgiven, but we died and paid the wage of sin when He died. Our sins were not just forgiven, but were eradicated by paying the full penalty of death. Now, we who are raised together with Jesus, are new beings who never existed before 2Corinthians 5:17 (Amplified) which says, "Therefore if any person is (engrafted) in Christ (the Messiah) he is a new creation (a new creature altogether); the old (previous moral and spiritual condition) has passed away. Behold, the fresh and new has come!"
Now we can understand the power of the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. We, who were ingrafted into Christ, actually died with Him and were raised with Him. We're not the same person who existed before we received Christ, but we're new creatures altogether. I know that we've all read these scriptures and that you may think there's nothing new in what I'm saying.
If we take literally what these scriptures are saying, instead of just being religious, then we can see what I mean about being forgiven sinners or new creatures. Romans 1:17 (Amplified) speaks about going from "saving faith" into the deeper faith which is revealed faith or revelation knowledge concerning Jesus.
If the Blood of Jesus and His sacrifice only forgave sin, then it would be a sacrifice which needed to be done again and again. Forgiveness would only cover on a temporary basis until we messed up again. He didn't simply forgive sin, Jesus destroyed it by paying the full penalty for it by dying. Now, in Him, we have died as well. And, by faith in Jesus, we were raised with Him when God raised Jesus from the dead.
We supposed to be living as those who were raised with Christ. This new in Him is unbroken fellowship.
We've mostly never seen the full truth of what went on at the resurrection of Christ. When we died with Him, we were buried with Him (in baptism), but we were also raised with Him. Many times, we continue identifying ourselves as still on the cross or talk about being buried with Him (in baptism). We don't hear a lot about being raised with Jesus in His resurrection. For most of us and to God, it's already done. We've not forgiven sinners, but are resurrected new beings without a stain of sin because of Jesus. As far as God is concerned, you never existed before you knew Jesus. At Jesus' resurrection, we were as He was, crucified, buried, judged, punished, justified and raise up without any penalty left to be paid.
Since we have been restored and made in right standing (righteous) by faith in Jesus, we've now been justified by the Blood of the sacrifice of Jesus. When He was crucified and became our substitute, Jesus bore the entire scope of our separation from God on and in Himself. And, because of Jesus, we no longer are just "God and His people," but Father and His family.
Our relationship with the Creator has changed so drastically that we, by Jesus, can now come into the presence of God at any time and all the time. A sacrifice is no longer required and no longer is there a time for a separation time for cleansing. Through Jesus, we've been declared righteous, justified, acquitted and clean from everything that's ever kept away from God's presence. We've not only been declared righteous, but through the resurrection of Jesus, were actually born again through His resurrection. We're not just "forgiven sinners," like some would say, but the Blood of Jesus completely removed the old body of sin (having nailed it to His cross) and we were actually crucified with Him. Galatians 2:20 (Amplified) says, "I have been crucified with Christ (in Him I have shared His crucifixion); it is no longer I who live, but Christ (the Messiah) lives in me; and the life I now live in the body I live by faith in (by adherence to and reliance on and complete trust in) the Son of God, Who loved me and gave Himself up for me."
We all can repeat Romans 6:23 (Amplified) which says, "For the wages which sin pays is death, but the (bountiful) free gift of God is eternal life through (in union with) Jesus Christ our Lord."
"The wages of sin is death" means that we, who were dead in sin, have now been made alive through Jesus. We've viewed ourselves as "forgiven sinners" and haven't allowed ourselves to really walk in the freedom of the cross. We weren't just forgiven by the cross and resurrection. We died on the cross. Romans 6:5 (Amplified) says, "For if we have become one with Him by sharing a death like His, We shall also be (one with Him in sharing) His resurrection (by a new life lived for God)." Romans 6:10-11 (Amplified) says that, "For by the death He died, He died to sin (ending His relation to it) once for all; and the life that He lives, He is living to God (in unbroken fellowship with Him)." Verse 11 goes on, "Even so consider yourselves also dead to sin and your relation to it broken, but alive to God (living in unbroken fellowship with Him) in Christ Jesus."
We've always thought of ourselves as "forgiven sinners," but God see us as having died when Jesus died (the wages of sin is death). So, God didn't just forgive our sin, but Jesus (and you) both paid the cost of sin when He and you both died. We actually died when Jesus died and were raised when He was raised. We became alive when Jesus was made alive and we became new creation children who were raised from death unto life when Jesus was raised.
We were never to be thought of as forgiven sinners. We actually died with Jesus when He died. And, we actually were raised with Him at His resurrection. We've been waiting all this time for what we've believed would be our resurrection. But, we were actually already raised with Him in unbroken fellowship with God.
The power of righteousness that we've been granted through grace and faith, is in Jesus. If we don't receive this power of righteousness, then it's because we don't see it as a "now" thing, but a "some day" promise.
We keep waiting for ourselves to be resurrected (and we do have His promise of a bodily resurrection when Jesus comes back), but when we received Jesus as our sacrifice, we were raised with Him as well. When you read Romans 6:5 (Amplified) which says, "For if we have become one with Him by sharing a death like His," do you really believe you were crucified with Him? When you read that, "We shall also be (one with Him in sharing) His resurrection," do you believe that we were raised together with Him?
As Christians, we weren't just forgiven, but we died and paid the wage of sin when He died. Our sins were not just forgiven, but were eradicated by paying the full penalty of death. Now, we who are raised together with Jesus, are new beings who never existed before 2Corinthians 5:17 (Amplified) which says, "Therefore if any person is (engrafted) in Christ (the Messiah) he is a new creation (a new creature altogether); the old (previous moral and spiritual condition) has passed away. Behold, the fresh and new has come!"
Now we can understand the power of the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. We, who were ingrafted into Christ, actually died with Him and were raised with Him. We're not the same person who existed before we received Christ, but we're new creatures altogether. I know that we've all read these scriptures and that you may think there's nothing new in what I'm saying.
If we take literally what these scriptures are saying, instead of just being religious, then we can see what I mean about being forgiven sinners or new creatures. Romans 1:17 (Amplified) speaks about going from "saving faith" into the deeper faith which is revealed faith or revelation knowledge concerning Jesus.
If the Blood of Jesus and His sacrifice only forgave sin, then it would be a sacrifice which needed to be done again and again. Forgiveness would only cover on a temporary basis until we messed up again. He didn't simply forgive sin, Jesus destroyed it by paying the full penalty for it by dying. Now, in Him, we have died as well. And, by faith in Jesus, we were raised with Him when God raised Jesus from the dead.
We supposed to be living as those who were raised with Christ. This new in Him is unbroken fellowship.
We've mostly never seen the full truth of what went on at the resurrection of Christ. When we died with Him, we were buried with Him (in baptism), but we were also raised with Him. Many times, we continue identifying ourselves as still on the cross or talk about being buried with Him (in baptism). We don't hear a lot about being raised with Jesus in His resurrection. For most of us and to God, it's already done. We've not forgiven sinners, but are resurrected new beings without a stain of sin because of Jesus. As far as God is concerned, you never existed before you knew Jesus. At Jesus' resurrection, we were as He was, crucified, buried, judged, punished, justified and raise up without any penalty left to be paid.
Tuesday, May 6, 2014
Lesson 2 Identified with Him
We read in Isaiah 54:15 (Amplified) that fear, oppression, terror or even the thought of these things cannot defeat us if we will establish ourselves in righteousness. Verse 15 says, "Behold, they may gather together and stir up strife, but it is not from Me."
The thing giving us victory over strife, fear, terror or oppression is the establishing of ourselves in righteousness. God says in Isaiah 54:14 (Amplified), "You shall establish yourself in righteousness." This means we need to believe, by faith in Jesus, that we are now righteous. This is such a vital part of the child of God's life, that it prevents the enemy's ability to terrorize, oppress and scare us. If he can convince us we're not "really righteous," then we're still in the hands of deception.
Our ability to "Come boldly to God's throne of grace" found in Hebrews 4:16 is based on our faith in His righteousness in our lives. If for any reason, we don't believe we're righteous, then we can't come in clear conscience into the presence of a righteous God or Father. So much of life with God depends on this understanding. The world, the enemy and our own unrenewed mind, will try convincing us otherwise. We must establish ourselves in righteousness. God has already done it. The enemy knows it. God knows it. All of heaven knows it. Now, the question is...do we know it?
Are we still trying to become righteous or in right standing with God by some other means or do we accept by faith that fact we're righteous in Jesus. If we attempt becoming righteous by any other means, then it is not grace we're depending on, but our own works and our own deeds. This kind of righteousness is not acceptable to God and will only bring condemnation to us because we will always fail to achieve this righteousness in our lives.
Nothing we could ever do will make us righteous and nothing we could ever do can make us acceptable to the Father. We must simply believe that Jesus has done what we could never do. He bridged the gap between us and the Father. Now, by faith, we've become everything the Father requires us to be, in Jesus.
If God says we're now made righteous, then we simply accept that as true. It doesn't depend upon our performance or ability, but on our faith in Jesus. As a righteous Church, we're now to believe in the sacrifice God has provided in Jesus and that His sacrifice has accomplished everything needful to bring us to where God wants us to be.
2Timothy 3:16-17 (Amplified) says that, "Every scripture is God-breathed (given by His inspiration) and profitable for instruction, for reproof and conviction of sin, for correction of error and discipline in obedience (and) for training in righteousness (in holy living, in conformity to God's will in thought, purpose, and action so that the man of God may be complete and proficient, well fitted and thoroughly equipped for every good work."
God's Word is our road map on how to live our lives. He will show us, through His Word, how to live a life in right standing with Him and how to live righteous now that we're in right standing with Him. We learn how to live in this new life God has given us from His Word. We don't learn to become righteous, but how righteous people live.
We've already been made righteous in Jesus and now we must walk out this right standing by His Word. No baby understands how to walk when they're born. It's something they learn as they grow.
As new babes in Christ, we must learn how to walk and talk like any other baby would. Just because a baby hasn't learned to walk yet, doesn't mean he's not human. It only means that he's still a baby human. Just because a baby Christian doesn't know how to walk in right standing with the Father, doesn't mean he isn't a Christian. It just means he's a baby Christian. The Word will teach him how to act as he grows in the spirit.
You would think that after awhile, we'd learn to depend on Jesus for our righteousness like we depend on Him to carry our sin. We've depended more on our feelings or righteousness (which will never come into conformity without the Spirit) instead of Jesus.
We aren't to walk by feelings, but by faith in God's Word. As we grow, we will put feelings aside and learn to walk by His Word. Every time we make a mistake, the enemy will try convincing us we're not righteous. We're not supposed to base our righteousness on our performance, but on Jesus' righteousness. This right standing with God is a gift of His grace and not our obedience to the Law or any law, but the law of faith.
There is one Law we're to walk in according to Romans 8:2 (Amplified) which says, "The law of the Spirit of life (which is) in Christ Jesus (the Law of our new being) has freed me from the Law of sin and death." This is the law we're to walk in today. This Law is put in place by God when He raised Jesus from the dead. And, now in Jesus, this Law is above every other law. It's the Law of the Spirit of Life. We're no longer dead in sin, but dead to sin by Christ.
Romans 8:10 (Amplified) says, "But if Christ lives in you, (then although) your (natural) body is dead by reason of sin and guilt, the Spirit is alive because of (the) righteousness (that He imputes to you)." This righteousness is the life of God Himself Who now lives in and through us by the Holy Spirit.
The power of right standing with God is what man has always inspired to do, but could not. Man always knew that if he could find a way to be righteous, then he could walk in and live in the favor of God. Not being able to produce this righteousness, man set about to establish his own way of being righteous. It satisfied the natural pride and nature of the fallen man, but could never satisfy the spiritual claims of justice. Romans 10:3 (Amplified) says, "For being ignorant of the righteousness that God ascribes (which makes one acceptable to Him in word, thought, and deed) and seeking to establish a righteousness (a means of salvation) of their own, they did not obey or submit themselves to God's righteousness."
In this last day, we need to be watchful that we don't get caught up in trying to establish our own righteousness like in Romans. But, we must accept by faith that we're already counted as righteous because of Jesus. This doesn't mean that we live any way we want, but that we learn how to walk by the Word and the Holy Spirit in right standing with the Father. We need to take full advantage of this right standing with God to come to the throne of grace, to learn, to grow and to receive God's favor in every portion of our lives.
To understand our new and great righteousness in Jesus, is a vital part of our assurance in prayer, fellowship, faith and lack of fear or torment from the enemy. Our righteousness doesn't depend on our being good, but on His being good. We gained our righteousness when we received Jesus as our Lord. It's His righteousness that we have and not our own. We didn't earn or deserve it. It's not based on us, but on Him. If it is His righteousness that we're walking in, then you cannot improve upon it. You can't be any more righteous than Jesus is no matter how good you try to be or how hard you might work at it. You've been made the righteousness of God through Christ Jesus. Trust in and receive it by faith.
,
The thing giving us victory over strife, fear, terror or oppression is the establishing of ourselves in righteousness. God says in Isaiah 54:14 (Amplified), "You shall establish yourself in righteousness." This means we need to believe, by faith in Jesus, that we are now righteous. This is such a vital part of the child of God's life, that it prevents the enemy's ability to terrorize, oppress and scare us. If he can convince us we're not "really righteous," then we're still in the hands of deception.
Our ability to "Come boldly to God's throne of grace" found in Hebrews 4:16 is based on our faith in His righteousness in our lives. If for any reason, we don't believe we're righteous, then we can't come in clear conscience into the presence of a righteous God or Father. So much of life with God depends on this understanding. The world, the enemy and our own unrenewed mind, will try convincing us otherwise. We must establish ourselves in righteousness. God has already done it. The enemy knows it. God knows it. All of heaven knows it. Now, the question is...do we know it?
Are we still trying to become righteous or in right standing with God by some other means or do we accept by faith that fact we're righteous in Jesus. If we attempt becoming righteous by any other means, then it is not grace we're depending on, but our own works and our own deeds. This kind of righteousness is not acceptable to God and will only bring condemnation to us because we will always fail to achieve this righteousness in our lives.
Nothing we could ever do will make us righteous and nothing we could ever do can make us acceptable to the Father. We must simply believe that Jesus has done what we could never do. He bridged the gap between us and the Father. Now, by faith, we've become everything the Father requires us to be, in Jesus.
If God says we're now made righteous, then we simply accept that as true. It doesn't depend upon our performance or ability, but on our faith in Jesus. As a righteous Church, we're now to believe in the sacrifice God has provided in Jesus and that His sacrifice has accomplished everything needful to bring us to where God wants us to be.
2Timothy 3:16-17 (Amplified) says that, "Every scripture is God-breathed (given by His inspiration) and profitable for instruction, for reproof and conviction of sin, for correction of error and discipline in obedience (and) for training in righteousness (in holy living, in conformity to God's will in thought, purpose, and action so that the man of God may be complete and proficient, well fitted and thoroughly equipped for every good work."
God's Word is our road map on how to live our lives. He will show us, through His Word, how to live a life in right standing with Him and how to live righteous now that we're in right standing with Him. We learn how to live in this new life God has given us from His Word. We don't learn to become righteous, but how righteous people live.
We've already been made righteous in Jesus and now we must walk out this right standing by His Word. No baby understands how to walk when they're born. It's something they learn as they grow.
As new babes in Christ, we must learn how to walk and talk like any other baby would. Just because a baby hasn't learned to walk yet, doesn't mean he's not human. It only means that he's still a baby human. Just because a baby Christian doesn't know how to walk in right standing with the Father, doesn't mean he isn't a Christian. It just means he's a baby Christian. The Word will teach him how to act as he grows in the spirit.
You would think that after awhile, we'd learn to depend on Jesus for our righteousness like we depend on Him to carry our sin. We've depended more on our feelings or righteousness (which will never come into conformity without the Spirit) instead of Jesus.
We aren't to walk by feelings, but by faith in God's Word. As we grow, we will put feelings aside and learn to walk by His Word. Every time we make a mistake, the enemy will try convincing us we're not righteous. We're not supposed to base our righteousness on our performance, but on Jesus' righteousness. This right standing with God is a gift of His grace and not our obedience to the Law or any law, but the law of faith.
There is one Law we're to walk in according to Romans 8:2 (Amplified) which says, "The law of the Spirit of life (which is) in Christ Jesus (the Law of our new being) has freed me from the Law of sin and death." This is the law we're to walk in today. This Law is put in place by God when He raised Jesus from the dead. And, now in Jesus, this Law is above every other law. It's the Law of the Spirit of Life. We're no longer dead in sin, but dead to sin by Christ.
Romans 8:10 (Amplified) says, "But if Christ lives in you, (then although) your (natural) body is dead by reason of sin and guilt, the Spirit is alive because of (the) righteousness (that He imputes to you)." This righteousness is the life of God Himself Who now lives in and through us by the Holy Spirit.
The power of right standing with God is what man has always inspired to do, but could not. Man always knew that if he could find a way to be righteous, then he could walk in and live in the favor of God. Not being able to produce this righteousness, man set about to establish his own way of being righteous. It satisfied the natural pride and nature of the fallen man, but could never satisfy the spiritual claims of justice. Romans 10:3 (Amplified) says, "For being ignorant of the righteousness that God ascribes (which makes one acceptable to Him in word, thought, and deed) and seeking to establish a righteousness (a means of salvation) of their own, they did not obey or submit themselves to God's righteousness."
In this last day, we need to be watchful that we don't get caught up in trying to establish our own righteousness like in Romans. But, we must accept by faith that we're already counted as righteous because of Jesus. This doesn't mean that we live any way we want, but that we learn how to walk by the Word and the Holy Spirit in right standing with the Father. We need to take full advantage of this right standing with God to come to the throne of grace, to learn, to grow and to receive God's favor in every portion of our lives.
To understand our new and great righteousness in Jesus, is a vital part of our assurance in prayer, fellowship, faith and lack of fear or torment from the enemy. Our righteousness doesn't depend on our being good, but on His being good. We gained our righteousness when we received Jesus as our Lord. It's His righteousness that we have and not our own. We didn't earn or deserve it. It's not based on us, but on Him. If it is His righteousness that we're walking in, then you cannot improve upon it. You can't be any more righteous than Jesus is no matter how good you try to be or how hard you might work at it. You've been made the righteousness of God through Christ Jesus. Trust in and receive it by faith.
,
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)