Written Word

Jesus Has Not Failed to Save the World; the World Has Failed to Obtain the Grace of God

Jesus gave His utmost to save the world. He gave up majesty and glory and power. He surrendered His life and His place at the Father's right hand. He relinquished His right of divinity and let men slay Him and hang Him on a cross in the company of two thieves. There He was, naked and greatly humiliated, utterly crushed by the sins of the world. Jesus had no more to give.

So when any vile, unrepentant sinner spurns this greatest of sacrifices, when they turn away from this Lamb of God who freely gave His last shred of dignity, Jesus does not and has not failed to save the whole world – the individual sinner, whoever he may be, has failed to obtain the grace of God that God grants to whomever wills to receive it. Salvation is no doubt there for the whole world to receive it. God has never failed at anything He determines to do, and this one composite event, consisting of Bethlehem, Gethsemane and Calvary in one grand sweep, is no exception.

"See to it that no one fail to obtain the grace of God; that no 'root of bitterness' spring up and cause trouble, and by it the many become defiled…" (Heb 12:15 RSV)

God has not failed to do what He set out to do; it is you who reject Him again and again that have deliberately failed to obtain the grace He extended to you with His unutterable sacrifice.

Beware: You will not go unpunished. You freely made your choice; however your damnation will come upon you not so freely. You will wish it to go away, but it will be inevitable and merciless – and forever.

The Christian at Home

There are various settings in which the genuineness of a person’s profession of Christianity can be effectively tested. Home is one of them. Church is the least reliable because in the hour or two that the Christian is worshiping at his church it is easy to put on a good front. But when a professed Christian is at home he or she tends to let their mask of Christianity slip and reveal their true face. That is, if they are merely pretending to be Christian.

There are many facets to True Christianity in the home. We will look at a few of them in this chapter.

The Christian Husband and Wife

Husband, do you love your wife? That question caught you off guard, didn’t it? But, now that you have had time to think it over: Do you love your wife, or are you in that marital yoke because “It’s cheaper to keep ‘er”? Are you hanging around because it is more convenient for you – or for the sake of appearances, or any one of a dozen other less than noble reasons?

The same type of question applies to you wives. Are you there only “for the children”? Perhaps you don’t know how you would manage financially without his paycheck. There is also another reason for staying that pertains to the peculiar makeup of a woman: She just does not know how to get out of the rut she is in. Some women lamely say, “I love him!” Love does not require you to put up with violence and/or drug and alcohol abuse for five, eight years or so. Take stock of where you stand – and, above all, pray for divine guidance.

I am not a marriage counselor; God knows I do not qualify for the position, nor would I want it. But there are some things I know as a battle-scarred veteran, and one of them is that a good marriage and a good stable home for any children involved require that both parties love one another. There are too many outside pressures and stresses that the marriage has to contend with without any added pressure from within.

Love Is the Tie That Binds

Without love in the marriage you are in serious trouble, and I am not referring to the sort of “love” that tends toward the self-destructive. If you are quite openly and honestly staying because you love the guy, what can anyone else say? Stay. But be sure that the reason you are staying is not fear, either fear of him or fear of the unknown future without a husband. How much worse could your future be without a husband than your present is with him?

Love in the marriage, that is, love on both sides, will take a couple through crisis on top of crisis, poor financial standing, a houseful of babies still in diapers – you name it. But without love no amount of money and no absence of crying babies can make the marriage successful. Marriage is all about love (the scriptural kind) and too many couples haven’t a clue as to what real love is.

The text above was excerpted from True Christianity at All Levels of Life. The excerpt consists of a segment of chapter three, “The Christian in His Home.” You may get more info on the book here: http://bit.ly/13PkBK

A Fish Named Larry

There was once a fish named Larry. His parents didn't give him that name. We did to distinguish him from all the other fish that other writers with fancy imaginations might have named Harry or Joe or whatever. Larry was a rock bass hatched unnoticed in the roily waters of the Mississippi River. No record was made of his beginning of life or of his course through that life.

His parents' doing what came as a matter of instinct brought Larry into this world. He lived his insignificant life by doing what came naturally and in the end he died a natural death. That is, he either died of old age (an unlikely happening) or was eaten by men or another creature larger than he. So goes the life of a fish.

At the same time that Larry made his appearance in the murky waters of the Mississippi, an infant named Charles was born withjout fanfare in the small town of Podunk, U.S.A. No notice was made of his arrival in this life other than the mandatory birth certificate, and no record was kept of his course through life. His parents' doing what came as an innate urge brought Charles into this world. He lived virtually unknown, doing those things that came instinctively to him. In the end, following a lifelong bent of doing things the simple, uncomplicated way, Charles died a natural death of old age. So goes the life of a man.

There is something vaguely disturbing about the similarity between the life of a fish and the life of a person made in the image of God. A fish has no choice in the course its life will take. It neither senses or knows of a Supreme Being who wants to get involved in what it does. A fish doesn't have the mental capacity to want to do better. In its  dim awareness of its existence all it wants is to eat, mate and swim by innate prodding.

A human being has the potential for a much better fate than a fish. Men and women, patterned after God Himself, are creatures born of the love of God. They are surrounded by that love and can voluntarily surrender to it at any time. A fish knows no such thing as love, has no noble aspirations engendered by love and can only live and die like a fish.

Man is living underprivileged by choice. He has at his fingertips God's love and God's Word that tells him how to avail himself of divine love -- but it is too inconvenient for man to exert himself to seize the opportunity. Love demands too much for the human race. They willingly ignore the tremendous good that will accrue from simply acquiescing to love's demands. They largely prefer to live and die like an animal -- or a fish.

So man with his vast untapped potential comes into this world by natural course. He lives by doing what comes naturally without making any good impact on the teeming needy throngs around him, and he dies a natural death. What is there that sets such a creature apart from an animal or an insect -- or a fish?

You are living an instinctual life by choice and you will some day die like all the other unthinking creatures in God's world, but you will suffer an eternity of hell like a man because animals and fish do not exist forever.

You will.

The Christian and Morality

“Morality 1 moral quality or character; rightness or wrongness, as of an action 2 the character of being in accord with the principles or standards of right conduct; right conduct; sometimes, specif., virtue in sexual conduct.”

(Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia © 1999 The Learning Company, Inc.)

Who Determines Right and Wrong

I shall go with Compton’s definition and address the subject of morality in general, including sexual matters. In short, I am dealing here with the basic idea of right and wrong, and that covers quite a bit of territory. God has determined what is right and what is wrong from the beginning of creation. He has given us the Ten Commandments in the Old Testament and the teachings of Jesus and the Apostles in the New Testament to show us what we should do and what we should not do. If we fail either to do what He wants us to do (sins of omission) or to abstain from what displeases Him (sins of commission), we have sinned.

Sin Starts in the Heart

If it is in your heart to commit a sin, that is, if you want to do it, you are guilty of the sin before you have done it. When the desire is there to go against God’s law and you are either 1) too timid, 2) afraid of what others might think of you or 3) you are just waiting for the opportunity, you have already sinned in the sight of God. This does not mean there should never be an impulse to do wrong in the mind of a believer: that is known as temptation and we all experience temptation. But when the desire is strong enough that it demolishes the barrier of your Christian conscience, it becomes a sin to you. It has become lust.

Yet lust, if it is quickly contained and “mortified” (when you, late, deny yourself the fleeting pleasure of fully performing a deed already begun], although it will, for the moment, defile you, upon your turning away from it, the defilement is instantly removed by the blood of Jesus Christ.

When you are falling, or when you have already fallen, never give up in despair. Christ has not given up on you. Cry out immediately, “Lord, save me!” and He will stretch out His loving powerful arm and catch you while you are falling or lift you up from where you have already crashed so disastrously. This is what is meant by your faith not failing. You may fail, but never let go of your faith in Christ. If you fall a thousand times and a thousand times repent – He will be there a thousand times to hear your call for help.

No human is perfect. We fail, we stumble at times, we have even fallen. That is because we have entertained a sinful thought instead of rejecting it right away. There have been occasions when, instead of rejecting the thought as soon as it came into our mind, we have harbored it a second too long and it has gone deeper and deeper into our minds until it has entered the heart and become a part of us. Even though we may never act on the thought, we are guilty of the overt deed. We have given over to "lusting" to do what God said not to do.

The Thought, Rejected, Does Not Contaminate Us

As you may infer from what I am saying, lust, as the Scriptures use it, is any strong desire to do what God has commanded us not to do. Now remember: Although the powerful thought that assails you can make you feel guilty of sinning, it is not so. You feel violated because you know that God hates the thought, but if you get rid of it, it will not defile you.

In His 40-day ordeal in the wilderness Jesus was tried in the same manner. It was a rigorous ordeal that Jesus voluntarily endured to take away any excuse we might make that God does not know what we are going through. He does and He did and His time of trial was crueler than any we know because He was the Supreme Spirit who is Lord over His entire domain – can you imagine the extreme contradiction and upheaval that tore at Jesus’ emotions? – yet  He submitted Himself to the meanest of indignities heaped on Him by wicked men and evil demons.

Why We Lust

Why do we lust? It is because the feeling of rage, hatred, sexual desire, vengeance or whatever emotion is against the will of God, is natural to our carnal makeup and there is a perverse sort of pleasure in giving in to what is so much a part of our basic self. Ever since the Fall in the Garden of Eden, the nature of all men has been grossly distorted from that which God originally gave us. When a person is converted or “born again,” God gives him a clean heart or a new nature through the person’s faith in Jesus Christ. The “old man” is put to death by the same faith.

Beware of Your Carnal Nature

The new convert has to be careful, however, not to be lulled into a false sense of security based on his having experienced such a drastic change in his way of thinking and acting. Don’t let the old carnal man fool you: he is not literally dead. He is dead by faith and you have to crucify him daily as he tries at every moment to resurrect himself.

The new Christian’s position is analogous to that of a newborn infant. The baby has an automatic immunity to certain diseases for the first six months. This is God’s way of preventing soaring mortality rates among these frail little beings. Their immune system is not developed sufficiently to handle some diseases. It is the same with the new convert. He is a fragile, untaught, naïve soul that needs even more of God’s protection than the canny veteran of years of spiritual warfare. Of course no one, new saint or old, can make it on his own. We are all, each moment, in critical need of the grace and strength and protection of God.

God will bring the spiritual neophyte along carefully and judiciously, but the newborn saint has to avail himself (herself) of all the means of grace God affords him. These “means of grace” are the opportunities all of us have to grow and develop in Christ. They include fasting, prayer, reading the Word of God and attending Bible teaching sessions. As Peter tells us,

“Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation...” (1 Peter 2.2)

The writer of Hebrews maintains that

“Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food [advanced instruction] is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.” (Heb. 5.13, 14)

Later on, as you grow and if you grow in your walk with Christ, you will relate to the latter group who are better equipped to deal with the convoluted tests and situations that every Christian must face at some time.

The text above has been taken from True Christianity at All Levels of Life, “The Christian and Morality.” You may see a preview of the book and purchase it online by pressing here: http://bit.ly/13PkBK

The Indefinable Nature of God

How do we measure measureless grace… or comprehend incomprehensible mercy… or probe the depth of fathomless love? We can neither measure nor comprehend nor probe these items of divinity; they are clearly beyond our full grasp. They smack of infinity and we are so obviously finite. We are left stretching our limited minds in order to get just a faint appreciation of what grace and mercy and love – all essential parts of the infinite God – are.

There is an eternal Reality that is all around us and extending out on either side further than the encircling horizon and above our heads far past the vaulted skies. There is a divine Reality that will someday make our limited definitions of the things of God pale into a ridiculous insignificance. We speak haltingly of grace; we stammer uncertainly of mercy and talk in generalities of the love of God while even those among us who are relatively close to God can never in this lifetime have a valid concept of things that cannot be conceptualized by a pea sized brain encased in a head made of flesh and blood (1 Cor. 15.50).

But we do what we can. It is only right and needful that we come up with movies like The Passion of the Christ and draw from devout hearts discourses like A Monumental Event. It is through these devices that we get a glimmer of truth, a truth that makes us know we don't yet know all the eternal reality of God; we have only a smattering of truth. Paul tells us in 1 Cor. 13.8b-13,

"…whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things."

There is a greater knowledge awaiting us that will impact on our hearts and minds the totally awesome magnitude of the grace, mercy and love of God and the utter horror of the sacrifice He made for us, a sacrifice driven by the grace, mercy and love of God.

 

Father, Son and Holy Spirit - One God

Are the lines of demarcation between Father, Son and Holy Spirit clearly drawn? Well, are the lines of demarcation between my roles as a father and a son and a living spirit clearly drawn? At times the last three appear to be clearly defined, but at other times there is a blurring of the lines of separation between the roles.

For instance, when my parents were living, there were of course times that I would be alone with them. Then my role as their son was unmistakable. But whenever my children and I were together with my parents, there would be a fuzzing or fusing of my positions as father and son. I was, at one and the same time, both. In that setting there would be moments when I had to take on the two roles simultaneously. I would tell my children, as their father, what my parents wanted me, as their son, to pass on to them. In order to make the roles of father and son completely separate and distinct, I would have had to be two persons. Impossible.

In like manner, you cannot have a complete separation of the roles of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit without having three separate Gods. Oh yes, all things are possible with God, but God does not always will to do the impossible. He said through His servant the Apostle Paul,

“For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead…” (Rom 1:20)

This means that God intended for His creatures to get at least an elementary idea of what God is like from looking at the things He created. It seems that what God CAN do and what He chooses to do are often different things. God could have split Himself into three individual Gods – but knowing this ONE great God as we do, that seems like a ridiculous tale taken from Greek and Roman mythology. It would be so not like the God we are familiar with.

God imself HimeHimself into three aseparate individual Gods.HHHHHGod  chose to pattern “the things that are made” (mankind) after “the invisible things of him…even his eternal power and Godhead.” If we want to get a better understanding of the Godhead, we can look at how we are made. We should not focus on that part of us that was miserably marred when Adam fell in the Garden of Eden; not the wretched whole, but the human essentials that were not so altered by the fall as to be unrecognizable. We (mankind) are still three essential parts, no matter how they have been distorted by sin. We are body, soul and spirit. The Godhead consists of three “expressions” (a better term than “manifestations” or “persons”): Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

The Gospel of John informs us,

“...the Word [God] was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.” (Joh 1:14)

We know that “the word was God” (John 1.1), so it is evident that “the word” (Grk. Logos) and the Father are ONE, yet each is distinct – but not separate. If they are distinct but not separate, it  follows that there must be a certain melding of the two and we cannot say they are always fully distinct and distinguishable one from the other any more than my own roles as father, son and spirit are fully distinct and distinguishable one from another. Although Father, Son and Holy Spirit are in truth distinct expressions (persons), theologically speaking, we cannot say they are totally distinct one from another so that one is never, and under no circumstances, to be seen as the other. If we insist on such a total distinction, we shall have two separate Gods, and that cannot be. It is contrary to Scripture and the very nature of God.

To repeat: If we say that the Father is God, and Jesus is God, and the Holy Spirit (who is also as much a part of God as the Father and the Son) is God, unless we admit of a certain indistinctness of the three or a subtle blurring, as in the example of a human who is father and son and his own spirit, we will have three Gods on our hands – and what will we do with three when we cannot serve one God as we should? That would fatally flaw our perception and worship of God and divide our affections for the concept of the God we had artificially set up, whereas the ONE God we now know and worship admits of there being no other God.

“Fear not, nor be afraid; have I not told you from of old and declared it? And you are my witnesses! Is there a God besides me? There is no Rock; I know not any." (Isa 44:8 RSV)

“Declare and present your case; let them take counsel together! Who told this long ago? Who declared it of old? Was it not I, the LORD? And there is no other god besides me, a righteous God and a Savior; there is none besides me.”  (Isa 45:21 RSV)