THE ROMAN ROAD TO DESTRUCTION

THE ROMAN ROAD TO DESTRUCTION

               

                “Professing to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of a corruptible man and of birds and four footed animals and crawling creatures. THEREFORE GOD GAVE THEM OVER IN THE LUSTS OF THEIR HEARTS TO IMPURITY THAT THEIR BODIES MIGHT BE DISHONORED AMONG THEM,  for they exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator who is blessed forever. Amen. “   Rom. 1:22-25

                Our lesson for this week has been about the supreme sacrifice of Jesus on Calvary’s cross. So during the week I have pondered its meaning from different angles and yet I didn’t feel satisfied as to what to teach. We can describe the horrible pain and suffering of Jesus on that epic day. We can discuss the changes it made in the world as Jesus signed a new Covenant in His blood. We can discuss the church as the Bride that was drawn from Jesus’ side even as Eve was drawn forth from Adam’s side. The subjects are limitless when it comes to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

                So I prayed about it yesterday, asking the Lord what He wanted to bring out from this lesson. Then sometime in the dark of night I was awakened from a dream in which these solemn words had been spoken.

1.       Sin contains its own punishment    Romans 6:23

2.       God doesn’t need to punish us…He sadly gives us over to our sins. Romans 1:22-25

3.       God often judges us by giving us what we want. Mt. 25:41-46

4.       We reap what we sow   Gal. 6:7

5.       In the end God will say to the sinner… “Not My will but thine be done.” Romans 1:26-32

                Of course I checked these statements over according to the Word of God and found them to be true… but what does this have to do with the death of Christ?

1.       We know that Jesus took our sins upon Himself.

2.       We know that He died in our place, for our sins. He reaped the harvest of our sins and died for them so that we could reap the harvest of His righteousness and live.

                We know these things and have heard them many times, but we don’t often understand this one thing. JESUS NOT ONLY DIED FOR US AND AS US, BUT HE ALSO TAUGHT US HOW TO DIE.

                Many of us are victims of legalism and don’t know it. Our idea of sin and salvation is that we broke the Law, but Jesus stepped in and took our death sentence. This satisfied the Law, so now the Law is done away and we are free.

                This is legalism. It is all about a legal transaction in which the Law must be fulfilled one way or another. So the Law is the big monolithic power here and both we and Jesus are its victims. Luckily Jesus is big enough to pay the penalty so that the Law’s demands can be satisfied.

                But what important fact is left out in this above scenario? Is it not the fact that we were created in God’s image… that we were created for glory and yet through sin we have fallen short of the glory of God? Is it not that we failed to be faithful sons and daughters that bore the image of our Father?

                If we take this from a strictly legalistic point of view, we can legally receive Jesus death in our place and say, “Thank you very much” and then walk off unchanged… no closer to what we were created to be than we were before.

                This is why we must realize that Jesus not only died FOR us. He also taught us how to die. The bottom line is that we have been predestined to be conformed to the image of God’s Son. Romans 8:29. We have been predestined to enter back into the kingdom from which we fell… to once again become sons and daughters of God, but how do we get there?

                Jesus is the model of the New Man. He is the model of the eternal Man… the Man that has been reconciled to God and restored to what we were created to be in the beginning. Therefore all of creation is anxiously longing for the sons of God to be revealed.” Romans 8:19-23

                This transformation into sons and daughters entails much more than legally accepting Jesus’ death in our place. If it is merely a legal transaction then we can accept the fact that Jesus legally died for us and we can go our own way, following our own will and living just like the rest of the unsaved world and in fact this is exactly what false grace is teaching us today. But again I say: “A legal transaction will not transform us into sons and daughters. Sons and daughters are made by conception and birth.

                But what are we born from? Jesus told Nicodemus that we must be born again… and Nicodemus, being flustered at the idea asks how we can enter once again into our mother’s womb. But in truth we are already children of Satan’s kingdom… so how do we get born again if we are already in the womb of this fallen world? The answer is this:

                We must enter into Christ’s death and we must die there. And then, having died to this world, we must be born again by the power of His resurrection, so that when we come forth from the womb of Christ’s death, we are now born as sons and daughters of God who are predestined to be conformed to the image of God’s Son… our big Brother… who was conceived in us by His same Holy Spirit so that we, together with Him might bear the image of our Father in heaven.

                So Jesus not only died for us, but He taught us how to die and in fact, apart from this death there is no entrance into the kingdom of God. It is entered only by death and rebirth. So until we actually die, the Law still has jurisdiction over us. Its job was to lead us to the cross where our death sentence is commuted. By faith I enter into Jesus’ death with Him… and since Jesus died the physical death for us, we can die the spiritual death to the kingdom of this world and we can be spiritually born again into Christ’s kingdom wherein we cry “Abba Father.”

                “For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God. For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, “Abba Father!”  The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.” Romans 8:14-16

                So if we go through the new birth only to serve the Law which put us to death, we are slaves instead of children… and though obedience is still an issue, we do so as children… as sons and daughters of God who share His Spirit and walk by His Spirit rather than by our flesh. And we are assured that if we will walk by the Spirit then the demands of the Law will also be fulfilled.” Romans 8:4

                The Law of God has always been about loving God and loving each other. This is the royal Law of liberty which was expressed in negative terms and added because of our transgression. Gal. 3:19

                Neither heaven nor earth had any need for a negative Law before sin came. Why tell either angels or unfallen men, not to murder, or steal, or commit adultery? They would have no idea what you were talking about. No, the Law as we know it today was added because of transgression and since we are born into sin, there is absolutely no escape from that Law, except to die. So we can either reject Christ’s death thereby dying for our own sins; or we can enter by faith into Christ’s death and literally die to Satan’s kingdom, to be born again by the power of Jesus resurrection as sons and daughters of God.

                Jesus did not go through all that He went through to make us slaves of the Law that killed us. If that were the case, He would have left us in the Old Covenant. Instead, He gave us a way to die to the Old Covenant so that we could be born into a New Covenant in which we have become sons and daughters rather than slaves.

                We really need to spend more time discovering what it means to be sons and daughters. It is by the power of His blood first and by His resurrection and High Priesthood that we as children of our heavenly Father are learning to live as His royal children rather than as slaves.

                This is another subject for another time, but the story of King Saul and King David represent two kinds of churches. One, represented by Saul, is manmade and built according to the flesh. He was originally anointed by God, but He chose His own path. We can follow the pathway of those churches and institutions in the world that have been built by man. They operate by law rather than by the Spirit. They often operate by force and the Saul type churches usually persecute the David type churches. Think about the Dark Ages.

                David, on the other hand represents the anointed church… the Spirit filled church… adopted sons and daughters who are destined for the throne, but are often persecuted by the Saul type churches. Think of all the people who have been burned as heretics throughout the ages simply because they could not in good conscience surrender to King Saul. They followed King David who carried the anointing of God and did not depart from it. Saul was a slave and he made slaves of all who served Him, but David was a son and so into his line was born the Messiah the Son of God who came to bring us back into His family to share in His Spirit.

                This then is another aspect of the meaning of the cross and it is an important one for we have either entered into Christ’s death and been born again as sons and daughters of God who live by His Spirit, or we are slaves to this world system... including its religions. Think about these things because they have everything to do with why Jesus came to earth to die for us. He came to bring us a New Covenant in His blood and empowered by His resurrection. Praise God! We have been redeemed by the blood of the Lamb!

                By faith we are no longer on the Roman road to destruction, but on the road to glory!!! We are sons and daughters of God through Jesus Christ and we are learning how to live by His Spirit rather than by our flesh. We truly cannot enter into His rest until we have truly died. Only then will we be free to live by His Spirit and to walk as sons and daughters of God. The cross is that point of transition and there is no other way.