DON'T LET IT CONFUSE YOU

DON’T LET IT CONFUSE YOU

                My last article is fairly deep and I don’t want anybody to get mired in the details. My concern is that so much of the church lives in presumption rather than true faith. Many are not actually being conformed to the image of Christ. They are serving the flesh rather than the Spirit and they don’t seem to understand that salvation involves the spirit, soul and body of man.

                People routinely excuse character flaws saying, “that’s just me.” or they presume that God just ignores their sins and forgives anyway. If that were true, then Jesus certainly could have avoided the horrible death of the cross.                We need to understand that through the cross, Jesus provided a way to die to the flesh and to live by the Spirit to the saving of our souls and it is for this purpose that God intends to preserve us complete, body, soul and spirit at His coming.

                I am crucified with Christ so that Christ may live His perfect life in and through me. This is a free gift, but as long as we are in this flesh and on this earth, we must choose to live by Christ and not by our flesh, for our flesh is at war with our spirit and will be until we are glorified. This means that we must walk in cooperation with the Holy Spirit, being led and empowered by Him every moment of every day.

                And contrary to what I thought before I was born again, it is not a tedious walking on eggs. It is rather complete freedom. “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, for the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set us free from the law of sin and death in order that the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. Romans 8:1-4.

                Many of us walk in a miserable limp between life and death, simply because we do not know the power of God to set us free. If we feel condemnation in our lives then we have not received the fact that in Christ there is now no condemnation. We live in partial salvation.

                I used to feel guilty and condemned constantly. I knew that God had forgiven me, but I could not forgive myself and I could not imagine God ever smiling at me or saying “Well done good and faithful servant.” There were always nagging tapes playing in the back of my mind… borne of legalism and a lack of understanding of God’s grace and love for me, I could never seem to please God enough to climb above condemnation.

                Now, of course I understand that it is not I but Christ who lives in me. It is His righteousness and not my own. I no longer look at me… I look at Him. But Jesus is in the business of saving me and bringing me into conformity to His image and so, I surrender to His work in me.

                In the days of my pain and toil, I used to go to God and cry out as if He was requiring something of me. He wanted me to do more… to try harder. His demands were beyond my reach. There was no rest in it.

                Nowadays, I do not promise God anything. When flaws or sins come to my attention, I go to God. I remind Him of His promises to me. I live in a covenant signed by the blood of Jesus that guarantees that what He has started in me, He will also finish… that He is able to save to the uttermost, every aspect of my life. I don’t try to manhandle my sins and flaws. I take them to Jesus. I surrender them to His infinite power and grace. I release my control of them into His infinitely capable hands.

                So, now that you know that Jesus wants to preserve you complete body, soul and spirit at His coming… place your faith in Him to do just that. He doesn’t ignore our sins, He gives us victory over them because Jesus living in us is greater than any sin and He is well able to deliver us from them.

                We see a picture of this in the exodus of Israel from Egypt. They smeared the blood on the doorpost representing what Jesus was doing for them. They ate the whole lamb, representing what Jesus would now do IN them. He marched them through the Red Sea representing their entering into His death and then out of the Red Sea, representing their new lives in the power of His resurrection. In all of this they put Egypt behind them with no provision remaining for their return and then He took them to Sinai where He taught them His will and His ways.

                Jesus repeated this same sequence during His life on earth and then upon His resurrection, He sent us His Holy Spirit so that we can follow Him through this same sequence as we follow Him to the Promised Land. He has empowered us to do His will. It is not our will, but His that we must live by.

                This is why we must lay down our partial belief systems and our selected doctrines and begin to believe the whole Bible. We are selling ourselves short of the full Gospel and therefore the full power of God unto salvation. The full Gospel runs from Genesis to Revelation.

                Nowadays, we see large swaths of the church abandoning the foundations of the faith from Genesis to Revelation and that is what the Bible calls the “great falling away” that will give rise to the antichrist. (2 Thess. 2:3, 4.) Once we have compromised our faith enough to be united with all of the religions of the world, then our apostasy will be complete.

                This is why we must take a hard look at where we are slipping and falling. We must shore up our faith and base everything upon the Word of God and let the chips fall where they will. And this we will do, not by the power of our flesh, but by the power of His Holy Spirit working in and through us, forever conforming us to the image of Christ.

                Jesus is the Champion of our faith. What He has promised, He will do. His Word is absolutely true and His promises are unfailing. Hang in there my friends. I think we are about to be tested and we have to ask ourselves how we can make it through the tough times.

                “But in all of these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:37-39.