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June 27, 2005 In several of The Apostle Paul’s letters, he contrasts what we were before the Spirit came to indwell us. The pictures are not pretty, but they are certainly accurate. We were Gentiles after the flesh. So each sin of the flesh was ours for the doing. We were liars, cheaters, stealers, and sexually immoral in all kinds of manners. We were drunkards and gluttons and ill mannered brutes; looking for way to gain advantage over the meek. It’s not like today’s sinners. They’re good people. They wouldn’t harm anyone. They just want to get along with everyone. The best way for that to happen is to ignore God and go on with life. Surely people don’t lie, cheat, steal, get drunk and conduct sexually immoral activity these days. Most of that has been deemed legal by the world’s judicial community. So it’s no longer sin I guess. We who know better can agree with Paul’s contrasts. He likens the New Life with a New Man or a New Creation. “New” is what it means. It is starting over with a clean slate. It is not that we cannot tarnish the slate, but now, with the Spirit of God, we have the “advocate” which allows us to use erasable chalk. If we are faithful enough to confess or sins, surely he abides by his promise to forgive and cleanse. The point is; before Christ came to us, explained himself to us and indwelt us; we were dead. Paul wrote: “You have been made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins.” That is where we were. We were dead. Walking, talking, struggling through life; and quite dead. As “new” men and “new” creatures; having obtained “new” life; we turn ourselves over to the things we did not previously do. We were not creatures of virtue, or love, or charity, as we could have been. But now, having been blessed with new life, we know the right way to practice and execute the proper relationships among natural and carnal men. We go the extra step, we give away our cloak, we turn our cheek, and we accept scorn with grace. We can do that because God is real and we have discovered that his promises are true. The True Christian still needs to be polite and accepting of the attitudes and incorrect assumptions of unbelievers. They will always declare that you [the Christian} should be smarter than to believe the silly myths and stories of the Bible. They don’t offer alternatives that are worth anything for the spiritual comfort of the individual. Most of the offers are to ignore the comfort you have in knowing God and reject your “religious bondage”. This is a proof of their misunderstanding about true faith in the true God. True faith has liberated the individual from the trap of sin and the yoke of religious enterprise. The error of the unbeliever is that the people of True Faith somehow relate that to a religion. This is not the case. Most religions trap the individual into rites and dogmas that have nothing to do with actual relationship with God. Will natural men without the Spirit of God ever understand that men of faith do not rely on religion for relationship? We call ourselves Christians because it is only through the only son of God that was can gain and maintain our standing as a child of the King. It has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with the sovereignty of Lordship in the individual life. How else does one explain Christians in China, or Niger, or Libya, or even Saudi Arabia? I have had people write to me and tell me I would be Islamic, had I been born in an Islamic nation. Well, I would have to say the proof of Christians in Saudi Arabia and other very Islamic nations speaks against that assumption. Knowing God personally, and seeing the life of Paul the Apostle is proof enough to anyone that God is capable of saving any soul out of any circumstance. The determining equation is Jesus Christ, the Righteous. So Christian, it is not we who need to change. We have already done that. We have gone from the evil to the adopted and we are the ones who have been born anew. There is no need or reason to go back to what we were. ------------ Email Skip: skiptoomaloo@hotmail.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com. Please link to this article rather than copying and pasting it onto your site (which would be unauthorized and illegal). |
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