FOUNDATIONS

FOUNDATIONS

                I asked for a statement of faith from our church and Pastor Alice, our music director brought me one. It contains 14 points and fits on a half sheet of paper. Statement number one is all that is necessary for the person who is seeking God with all of his heart, but thirteen other statements are given in order to establish foundational truths. After all, in this world there are so many variations of the truth based upon either ignorance of the scripture or in going off on one tangent or another and so a definitive statement of faith becomes necessary.

                So, statement number one consisting of just seven words could stand alone as the only statement that a church needs to have. The statement of faith begins with the two words, “We believe” and after that come the 14 statements of faith, but number one is:

1.       In the verbal inspiration of the Bible

                If we believe that the Bible is God’s Word to humanity, then we will believe that His Word is sufficient for every human need and question. We don’t need someone to interpret it for us. We don’t need a Talmud in which extra laws are written. We don’t need doctrines to push a certain point of view. We don’t need prophetic interpretations that would force us to think one way or another. We just need to study the Word and walk in the Word asking the Holy Spirit go guide us into all truth and we will be true and genuine Christians.

                I am in the music field so I will use music to show us how so many denominations are formed.

                Some believe that there should be no musical instruments in the church. Where on earth do they get that? The Bible is full of musical instruments of all kinds along with singing and dancing and hand clapping, shouting, singing praises, lifting up holy hands singing in the spirit. So someone who comes along and makes a doctrine that says there should be no musical instruments in church,  is clearly  in defiance of God’s clear Word on the subject. He is operating in illegitimate authority.

                Others say that our music must be somber and there should be no beat, no drums, cymbals and tambourines and such… and while we agree that the Bible speaks of solemn assemblies, they were the exception and not the rule. We are instructed to make a joyful noise unto the Lord. Psalms 149 and 150 tells us all we need to know about Christian music   and I am here to say that some of the draconian laws that have been enforced especially in the past, have rendered many churches not only musically dead, but spiritually dead as well. Stifling music also stifles worship.

               

                But I didn’t really come to talk about music. It is just an example of how denominations are formed, not on the basis of the Bible, but on someone’s opinion, someone’s hobby horse, and someone’s unbalanced overemphasis on one point or another.

                What we really need is a solid return to the Bible itself and we need to take the restrictive training wheels off by which some have sought to interpret the scriptures for everyone else.

                So once we have established that the Bible is God’s definitive Word and that believing in that Word and walking in that Word just as it is given as sufficient, then we find Jesus making a clear statement that must also be foundational to all that is called “Christianity.” Jesus said it to Nicodemus and He said it in a way that cannot be controverted. “Truly, truly (emphatically) I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” John 3:3.

                So how is it that a large part of Christianity, avoids, or does not believe in, or in some way despises those fundamental Christians who believe in the New Birth?

                Now we need to understand that being born again, though being related to conversion is not mere conversion. Conversion is what happens when you have a series of meetings in which you convince people of your version of the truth and you eventually join their church believing that they have the correct interpretation of the Bible. This is conversion, but it is not the new birth.

                The new birth happens when one puts his full faith in Christ’s death. By faith we enter into that death, as is shown by baptism. We die with Christ and when we come up from the dead, we now live in a new kingdom. We have died in Satan’s kingdom and we are now born into Christ’s kingdom and whereas we once lived by the flesh, and by the Law that governs that flesh and by the fleshly mind and will, we are now living by the Spirit. A new Spirit has been planted in us by the Holy Spirit and we are to learn to live by that spirit rather than by the flesh.

                In this transaction we have not only been converted, we have been transformed into new creatures. That which died in Adam at the fall, is born afresh in us as it has come to us from the new Adam, Jesus Christ. The curse is reversed, the fallen kingdom is put behind us and we now walk in newness of life. We are no longer slaves to sin and death, but we are more than conquerors through the blood of Christ and through His Holy Spirit which He has placed in our hearts.

                There are a whole lot of “converted” Christians running around in the world that can no longer remember exactly what it was that converted them. They have lost their first love, since they perhaps never fully had it in the first place and now they are dragging along through life as if being a Christian is a mundane and restrictive thing. But Paul lays that attitude to rest in Ephesians 3 saying:

                “For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you according to the riches of His glory to be STRENGTHENED WITH POWER THROUGH HIS SPIRIT IN THE INNER MAN, SO THAT Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you , being rooted and grounded in LOVE may be able to comprehend with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height an depth, and to know the love of Christ WHICH SURPASSES ALL KNOWLEDGE, that you may be FILLED UP TO ALL THE FULNESS OF GOD. Now to Him who is able to do exceeding abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, ACCORDING TO THE POWER THAT WORKS WITHIN US, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to ALL GENERATIONS, FOREVER AND EVER. AMEN.

               

                There is nothing mundane about true Christianity and even though we die to self, we do so in order to enter into a limitless and eternal kingdom that exists by the power and presence of God.

                So if our Christian life seems mundane and restrictive, then it is because of one of two things:

1.       Someone, apart from the Bible has imposed restrictions upon us.

2.       We have no comprehension of what it actually means to live by the Spirit and power of Jesus Christ.

                2Cor. 3:17 says, “Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.”

                We need to understand that living in the flesh puts us in bondage, in limitation, in powerlessness, in addiction, in self- centered misery. But Jesus came with the stated purpose of setting the captives free. Isa. 61:1-3. We have become letters of Christ, not written with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone, but on the tablets of human hearts…” 2 Cor. 3:2,3.

                We have become temples of the living God. 1 Cor. 3:16. We have this treasure in earthen vessels that the surpassing greatness of the power may be of God and not from ourselves; we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing, persecuted, but not forsaken struck down, but not destroyed, always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body.” 2 Cor. 4:7-10

                Is this not the new birth that Paul is describing here? He is always carrying about in his body the dying of Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested. We lay down one in order to receive that which is greater. We lay down our weakness, in order to live by His Strength. We are not just converted… we are transformed. We went into the cocoon of death as a grub worm and emerged from it as a new butterfly with wings and a whole new purpose in life. In Christ we can do what no grub worm could ever do. The wind of the Spirit has caught us up on the wings of the dawn, where we now revel in our great and awesome freedom.

                Even the power and fear of death has been dashed to the ground for we have become eternal beings and death as the world knows it is now only a transition point. For us to live is Christ and to die is gain. Phil. 1:21 And if we are to live on in the flesh, this will mean fruitful labor for us; and we do not know which to choose, But we are hard pressed from both sides, having the desire to depart and be with Christ, for that is very much better…” Phil. 1:22-24 But we have been placed on this earth for a purpose and it is our desire to fulfill that purpose before we leave.

                Do we have this biblical perspective on the meaning and purposed of life or are we dragging along without vision or meaning, or purpose in our lives?  Are we dragging along as victims of a long list of rules or are we living by the very Spirit of Christ and learning how to become full- fledged sons and daughters of the Most High God?

                I think we will spend some time on the foundational declarations of faith by which we Christians live, but as you can see, we only need the first one, because if we really believe the Bible and live by its Spirit and its truth we will have everything. So go out there and live life the way it was intended to be. Shake off the chains and walk in the light even as He is in the light.