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So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God. (Romans 8:8) |
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As long as we give most of our attention and strength to the material world it is impossible for us to please God. |
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The Lord Jesus Christ came to the earth and portrayed how man is supposed to conduct himself. Christ did not live "in the flesh" but in the Spirit of God. |
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While the disciples were concerned about food Christ was busy doing the will of the Father. He knew the food would be provided. |
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While the disciples were concerned about the temple tax Christ told them to go catch a fish and the temple tax would be in its mouth. |
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While the disciples were concerned about drowning Christ was walking on the water. |
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While the disciples were getting their much needed rest Christ was in the mountains praying. |
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I understand we all can't leave our family and job and live like Sundar Singh. The life of complete separation to God is given only to a few. |
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But every one of us can choose to begin to bend our life toward more prayer, more reading of the Word, more fellowshiping with the saints. |
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This is why I inveigh against spending endless hours watching professional sports. While the sport may not be sin of itself it is just one more material distraction, occupying time that could be spent living in His Presence. The reader will have to apply this thought to his own life, asking the Lord's guidance. |
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Often we hear believers asking, "Can I drink wine? Can I smoke cigarettes? Can I spend time at the beach? Can I go to the movies?" and so forth. |
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The victorious saints do not ask these questions. They are not trying to find out how close they can walk to the Lake of Fire without toppling in. Rather they are looking for ways to draw closer to the Lord. It is a whole different approach to Christianity. |
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Praying can be a lot of fun, but not at first. When you first determine to spend time in prayer each day you had better settle for ten minutes. It will seem like hours. Prayer is like a muscle. You don't start off trying to lift 300 pounds over your head. |
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After a month or two you can bump the prayer to fifteen minutes, and then twenty. Somewhere along the line you will get hooked on prayer. Maybe the Lord will appear to you or something. In any case, once you get hooked on prayer, listening to the Lord, you will look forward to this part of the day (instead of dreading it) and an hour will be all too short. |
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I wonder what Jesus saw in the mountains. Maybe Moses and Elijah talked to Him. I wouldn't mind spending all night in the mountains with Moses and Elijah. How about you? |
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John was on the Isle of Patmos. He was handed a video cassette from Heaven. Boy, what I wouldn't give to see that one! |
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Are you getting interested? Can you smell the coffee? |
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This too is part of the resolution of Paul's dilemma. |
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To rehearse where we are in the study of Romans: |
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Chapters Three through Five tell us we are not to try to gain righteousness by adherence to the Law of Moses but by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. |
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Chapter Six informs us that even though faith in Jesus Christ brings righteousness to us we still are not to continue in sin. If we do we will die spiritually. |
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Chapter Seven portrays the dilemma of the person who desires to keep the Law of God but who finds sinful tendencies in his or her flesh. |
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Chapter Eight presents the resolution of the dilemma. We are righteous with the righteousness of Christ provided we move each day from a life occupied with the things of the world to a life occupied with the things of the Spirit of God. |
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But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. (Romans 8:9) |
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As we have stated, Romans, Chapter Eight is the resolution of the dilemma in which the righteous person finds himself or herself. He wants to keep God's laws but his flesh wants to break God's laws. |
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Paul expressed his dilemma by crying out "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" |
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How do we extricate ourselves from this trap, this law of sin and death? By living in the Spirit of God! |
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When we receive Christ God gives us His Holy Spirit. We do not belong to Jesus Christ until we have His Spirit. It is not our profession of doctrinal correctness, our calling Jesus "Lord," that assures our possession of Christ. It is His Spirit! |
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There is a multitude of "Christians" who think they belong to Christ and hold rigidly to their view of what salvation is, how it operates, what you must believe to be saved. But when you are around them you do not feel the Spirit of Christ. They are doctrinally correct but the Spirit of God is not with them. |
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They are in the flesh. They are not living in God's Spirit but in the flesh. Their very religious dogmatism comes from their fleshly mind and this is why it is the enemy of God. |
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The Pharisees and doctors of the law who adhered faithfully to all points of the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms murdered the One who gave the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms. Why? Because they did not have His Spirit. |
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Moses, the Prophets, and David spoke by the Spirit of Christ. In order to understand them you must have the Spirit of God. This the Pharisees and the doctors of the Law did not have. But Anna and Simeon did and this is why they recognized their Messiah. |
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We do not recognize a Christian by what he believes but by the Spirit of Christ. |
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One night while in Bible school I was walking to the bus stop. I had just finished mopping the floor of the restaurant where I worked as a dishwasher. |
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Suddenly I was accosted (I use the term advisedly) by two persons who asked if I was a Christian. I replied that I was. |
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Then they wanted to know if I believed in eternal security. I responded that I did not. |
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On hearing this they set upon me as if I were a pagan. I do not believe the Spirit of Christ was in them. |
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In another instance I was painting my father-in-law's house. A lady stopped by and asked if I was a Christian. I replied in the affirmative. |
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Then she became angry and wanted to know why I wasn't going door to door with the Gospel. She did not exude love, joy, or peace. |
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I don't think she was a happy camper. |
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To live the Christian life means the Spirit of Christ, of God, is dwelling in us. This is not something that happens at some point in our history but a continual way of living. |
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When we are living in the Spirit we are free from the Law of Moses. We are without condemnation. And we are gaining the victory over sin! |
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Come along with me and let us press forward to the fullness of victory that there is in Jesus Christ, the Son of God. |
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And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. (Romans 8:10) |
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We have written in prior booklets that the word "Spirit" (above) should be capitalized (as in King James) because the contrast is not between our flesh and our human spirit but between our flesh and the Spirit of God. This possibly is the case. |
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But as we have been writing these brief essays on the eighth chapter of Romans we are looking favorably on some of the newer translations which use a lower-case "s" since they believe Paul to be offering a contrast between our flesh and our spiritual nature. (I can go either way on this.) |
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I am coming to think they may be correct because of the logic of the text. |
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We know the physical body is dead because of the sin that dwells in it. Sin always brings death. |
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But is there any eternal life in us? Yes, there is, because the righteousness of Christ has been ascribed to us. So I think it is fair to say we are dead on the outside and alive on the inside. In the Bible righteousness and life always go together. The soul that sins dies. The person who acts righteously gains life for his efforts. |
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To this point we have found Paul partly out of his predicament in that he now is without condemnation. He is righteous in his inner born- again nature because the righteousness of Christ has been ascribed to him. |
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Remember, all of this inner righteousness depends on Paul following the new law the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. If Paul should go back to living in the flesh he will die. Paul states this fact in several places in his Epistles. |
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Are we eternally secure? Absolutely yes if we walk in the Spirit of God, abiding in Christ. Are we eternally secure if we do not obey God in this matter? Absolutely not, and here is the deadly error of today's preaching. |
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We have assigned our body to the cross along with its sin. We rejoice in Christ because our inner nature is alive in God's sight because of the righteousness of Christ assigned to it. |
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Now we are to obey the Apostles until Christ is formed in us. |
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Do you remember our model of salvation? It comprises three steps that operate in a specific framework or environment. |
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The specific environment is that our whole first personality is dead on the cross with Jesus. Our new born-again nature has been raised with Christ and has ascended with Him to the right hand of the Father. |
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The first step within this framework is our receiving total forgiveness for the sins of the past (and of the present and future also if we continue in the Spirit of God.) |
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The second step within the framework of death and resurrection is our keeping the commandments of Christ and His Apostles through the Spirit of God. It is this second step that is largely misunderstood in Evangelical circles. But there is no way of validating the first step and passing on to the third step other than by keeping the commandments of Christ and His Apostles, looking to the Lord continually for His help. |
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With regard to looking to the Lord for help in keeping His commandments we need a word of caution. God is graciously sending deliverance ministries to the churches. These are desperately needed. But we must always keep in mind that the purpose of our being delivered is that we might be better able to keep God's commandments, not that we might just have a better life or a happier family. The objective of the Bible is not that we might have a happier, more successful life but that we might be reconciled to God and gain victory over sin. |
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Now to the third step within the framework of death and resurrection. The third step is the forming of Christ in us. As we keep the commandments of Christ and His Apostles the Divine Nature is formed in us. It is the forming of Christ in us that is the new covenant, the Kingdom of God, and eternal life. |
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Are you with us thus far? |
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But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you. (Romans 8:11) |
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Oh boy, I'm finally here. Romans 8:11 is one of my best verses, as the kids would say. |
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(Mother, are we there yet?) |
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Ta-dah! Here is one of the really big answers to Paul's struggle with "the body of this death," with his dilemma. God has in mind to make alive even our mortal body. Redemption is not going to cease with our inward nature. |
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Since it is the dead, sinful flesh that interacts with the Law of Moses, producing condemnation and separation from God, the grace of God through Christ Jesus includes a making alive of the body by God's Spirit. |
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Let us look at some of the parts of the verse. |
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We are speaking of the Spirit of the Father for it is the Father who raised the body of Jesus from the grip of death. |
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And here is an extremely important part: the making alive of our mortal body is contingent on the Spirit of the Father dwelling in us. |
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The Father shall make alive our mortal body. |
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The Father shall make alive our mortal body by means of His Spirit. |
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The last aspect, that the Father shall make alive our body by means of His Spirit who dwells in us may be thought of in two ways. The first way is that while God's Spirit is in us in the present hour, it will be an external rather than an internal exercise of His Presence that will raise us from the dead the same spirit but coming from outside of us. |
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The second way is the interpretation we tend to favor because of its implications. The second interpretation is that our resurrection is already present in us. One Word from the Father and that which now is in our inward nature will expand outward to our flesh, making our flesh eternally alive and free from sin. |
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The "expansion" will take place at the coming of the Lord and for most people will take place after they have died. It reminds us of the light that shone after the jars of Gideon's soldiers were broken. The light was there already but concealed. |
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I will discuss in a minute how it could be that hundreds of years after he or she has died the Spirit of God dwelling in an individual could expand to make alive his body. |
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The "expansion" interpretation makes some verses clear. Paul speaks several times that if we live after the flesh we will die. According to the expansion notion this means we now have the resurrection in us. Our task is to walk in the Spirit so that this life is maintained and continually increases so we have an abundant inward life. When the Lord appears He will speak the Word and our inner life will make alive our outward form. Then our whole personality will be housed in the "body from Heaven" that has been created by our response to the program of death and resurrection, to which we often refer. |
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But if we choose to live according to the impulses of our soul and the passions and appetites of our body, the resurrection life we were given will drain away. Then when the Lord speaks the Word there will be no inner response. We are a balloon without the hot air with which to rise. We are a jet plane with no fuel. We have slain our own resurrection. |
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To be continued. |
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For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 6:23) |
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When Paul says the wages of sin is death he does not mean if we sin we will die physically or if we do not sin we will live physically. Some sinners live a long life and some righteous die young. The good die young, they say, and I am seventy-one years old. What does that tell us? |
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So Paul must mean some other kind of death, some other kind of life. We submit that Paul is referring to our relationship to God and also, and perhaps especially, to the eternal resurrection life of Christ that dwells in the follower of Christ. |
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We have resurrection life in us now, the very Life of the Father. If we continue to sow to the Spirit of God we will continue in eternal life now and in the Day of Resurrection our inward life will expand into our outward frame and then our entire personality will be clothed with our house from Heaven. |
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This reminds us of the Ark being brought from Zion and the Tabernacle from Gibeon and both of them placed in the Temple of Solomon. |
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But if we sow to our flesh we lose our eternal resurrection life now. We do not walk in fellowship with the Father. In the Day of Resurrection there is no inward life present to expand into our outward frame. Also we have not endured the process of dying with Christ and living with Christ and therefore there is no house from Heaven to clothe our personality. |
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So our mortal frame is called forth from its place of interment by the voice of Christ (for all shall be raised) to stand before the Judgment Seat. Our flesh and bones will be animated by spiritual force but not by the incorruptible, eternal resurrection Life in which Jesus and His saints live, move, and have their being. Satan is animated by spiritual force but not by the eternal Life of God. |
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What can we expect? Salvation by fire at the very best. Eternal torment in the Lake of Fire at worst. But all of this will take place in the body. For man, unlike angels, is spirit, soul, and body. He will be judged in his body, rewarded in his body, and punished in his body. |
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To be saved by fire does not mean we will have a two- story mansion instead of a ten-story mansion. It means that most of our personality will be burned away and we will begin life again as a small child with no inheritance to bring with us into the Kingdom of God. By God's mercy we have been permitted to enter the righteous world to come. There we will be given into the charge of others who will raise us. After our punishment has been concluded our memory will be erased and we will start again. |
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To be continued. |
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Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation. (John 5:28,29) |
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A large part of the torment to come will take place in the memory of those who lived in sin. The abortion doctor will have a long, long time in which to gaze at the mutilated fetuses as they pass in review before him and there is no escape! He will see them now as happy boys and girls playing in the garden of God, realizing it was he who prevented their becoming what would have been true had they been allowed to live their allotted time on the earth. This is true not only of the doctor but of all who by their words and actions contributed to his practice, even at the governmental level. |
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We are not suggesting that someone who has engaged in an abortion judged by a competent committee to be a medical necessity will burn in Hell forever. Rather our point of view is that the taking of human life is an awesome responsibility. When it is practiced for no reason other than to participate in "reproductive freedom" or to earn money, then those who participated should be warned they will face an angry Creator some day. The experience will be so terrifying they will wish they never had been born. |
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Anyone who has ever had anything to do with such a thing should repent right now and ask God's forgiveness through Jesus Christ. |
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The writer had the briefest of glimpses (hardly even that) of a supremely holy garden in which were resident, I believe, aborted fetuses. God is so holy, so loving, that these were in His very Heart. No human being could view this part of Paradise without being destroyed emotionally. Too holy for us to experience! |
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The scenario we have just presented will prove to be true of all who have chosen to satisfy their own appetites at the expense of others. We selected abortion but we just as easily could have spoken of the man (or woman) who leaves his family and runs off with a woman with whom he has become infatuated. He will have a long, long time to review the consequences of his behavior on the family he deserted through his own selfishness and lust, his lack of honor and integrity, his treachery. |
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In America of today it is "cute" to sin, and the churches throw a very feeble light. They hardly utter a whisper of protest against their own sins and then wonder why the secular community does not tremble with fear when the churches express their indignation against what the unsaved are doing. Do the Christians expect the unsaved to act righteously while they themselves wallow in bitterness, unforgiveness, lust, criticism, slander, and gossip? |
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In keeping with our "expansion" theory the question was raised concerning how our inner possession of resurrection life, the Life of the Father, could be maintained after we die, in anticipation of the coming Day of Christ. |
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I am not certain. Either it will remain with our bones, which is unlikely perhaps but not at all impossible (remember Elisha's bones?) or kept in God's memory, ready to be reassigned to our remains when the hour of resurrection comes. |
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In either case, we know that if we sow to the Spirit of God we will reap eternal life in the Day of Resurrection. If we live after the flesh we will reap corruption. This is true of Christians and was written to the church in Galatia by the Apostle Paul. |
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For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. (Galatians 6:8) |
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Isn't that neat? |
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To be continued. |
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For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? (Romans 8:24) |
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Let us review where we are. |
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Romans, Chapters Three through Five proclaim we no longer are to seek righteousness by means of keeping the Law of Moses but through faith in Jesus Christ. |
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Romans, Chapter Six warns us that even though we no longer are obligated to keep the commandments of the Law of Moses we still are not to sin. Notice here that Paul does not tell us in Romans exactly what sin is now that the Law of Moses no longer is in charge. The only possible conclusion is that sin is the behavior all men everywhere regard as sin, such as lying, stealing, violence, immorality, and so forth. Such behavior is condemned not only by the Law of Moses but by the eternal moral law of God, the law of righteous behavior found in the conscience of man and expressed in the commandments of Christ and His Apostles. |
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In addition to the common laws of righteousness, the Christian people, the disciples of Jesus Christ, are under laws of holiness to God such that we are to live not to ourselves but as a whole sacrifice to God. |
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The sixth chapter of Romans, then, warns us that even though we are free from Moses we still will die spiritually if we choose to offer the members of our body as slaves to sin (as defined by eternal laws governing righteousness and holiness). |
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Romans, Chapter Seven invites us to consider the fact we are in a dilemma. With our mind we desire to keep the holy laws of God (whether of the Ten Commandments or not) but the sin that dwells in our flesh is deceitful and powerful in its urges such that we find ourselves thinking, saying, and doing things of which we do not approve. |
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Wretched person that we are, who shall deliver us from this sin-filled, dead body of ours? |
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We found the answer, didn't we? It is Jesus Christ who at His glorious appearing will speak the Word and the eternal, incorruptible Life of the Father we have cultivated so diligently by obeying the commandments of Christ and His Apostles will burst into the dead flesh and demolish every worldly, lustful, self-seeking tendency in preparation for our being clothed with a wonderful new house of life from Heaven. |
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Romans, Chapter Eight takes the first step toward resolution of the dilemma. God has granted freedom from condemnation to those who choose to submit their members as slaves to righteousness by obeying the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. We are to keep our mind centered on things above, recognizing that our mind is the enemy of God and if we obey it in its folly we will be led astray. We are to follow the Spirit of God as He leads us to the heavenly Isaac. |
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We understand we have righteousness in our inward nature even though we still are dragging around a body dead because of the sin dwelling in it. |
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Now we find we have a promise of salvation to come in the future with the explosion of the Life of the Father in our personality such that all vestiges of sin are driven from us. This is the answer to Paul's cry concerning deliverance from his sinful body. |
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We are without condemnation. We have been commanded to follow the Spirit, presenting the members of our body as slaves of righteousness. We live in the Spirit, keeping our mind centered on the Spirit and on things above. We view our body with suspicion, recognizing it is spiritually dead because of its sin. We rejoice in the fact that our born-again inward nature is alive in the sight of God because of the righteousness of the Law-keeping Christ that has been assigned to it. |
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Now we have the hope that the struggle will not continue forever. The Life of the Father that currently is in us will one day make alive our dead body by driving out the sin that is in it. This hope is saving us. |
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What's next? Where do this knowledge and hope take us? |
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