Preface
As an introduction
to this
paper I’d like to state clearly and as emphatically as possible that
after 40+
years enmeshed in God’s Word, I’m convinced that repentance as a
theological
concept is one of the most crucial aspects of God’s Plan of Salvation
and
thereafter His Plan
of Sanctification for all those who find themselves
awakened by His Calling.
This
offering jumps back and
forth between those who are not yet regenerated and those who
are. Hopefully, I have
adequately differentiated
clearly between the two.
True repentance, if it’s to
come about God’s Way, must be done for the right reasons.
Most people go through life doing the wrong
things
for the wrong reasons, the wrong things for the right reasons, the
right
things for the wrong reasons, and finally a very small percentage of
folks do
the right things for the right reasons.
When considering the essence
of Biblical repentance (metanoia, Greek
for change of heart/mind), we need
to contemplate the concept of
intent or purpose for repenting. God wants
repentance (the right thing) for the right reasons.
If this doesn’t happen, then repentance is in
vain.
God will only honor actions that
are done for His right reasons.
We’ve all been guilty of
saying, “I’m sorry” in order to get
what we want, and to maintain one’s self created status quo. In fact, fallen man is an
expert in deceiving
others into believing a lie. However, no
matter how easy it might be to mislead man, no one can hoodwink God,
for He
reads the heart (your intent). And
remember, this is the All Seeing Eye we’re talking about, Who says in
His Word,
“I am not mocked (to be
taken lightly), for as you sow, so shall you
reap”. This is one of God’s immutable
laws that few take into account when making everyday choices
like choosing to
repent. A companion verse to Galatians
6:7 (sow/reap) is I Corinthians 3:6, and following.
I say this because it is God Who
gives the
increase to what we sow, a fact that should keep believers from blaming
anyone
but themselves and God when they reap what they
have negatively sown.
It is this writer’s belief
that complacency in people is the root cause for the lack of true
repentance
towards sin. Today’s middle class are
the
epitome of an attitude that is as anti-repentance one can imagine. Minds that are primarily focused on material
things, respectability, entertain-
ment and middle class mediocrity – these
lifeless, self-satisfied minds are not about to change, unless of
course God
grants someone with the
gift of healing their spiritual blindness. This
is the only way a person will truly repent
of what they will then see as an inner condition of utter foulness.
Only God can draw back the curtain and
thereby allow an individual to see deep inside, wherein lies the cause
of all
unrighteousness.
We hear a lot today about
the “dumbing down” of
modern inability to understand or have a sense of sin and especially
the meaning and the need for Divine forgiveness.
And without these, true
repentance is
impossible. And what causes this
Novocain/numbing
syndrome? I believe it’s linked to an
interesting “one liner” I recently read
that says, “nothing focuses the mind
quite like the hangman’s noose”. In
other words, people need to be motivated in order to seriously examine
themselves in light of their conscience.
And where is there any motivation in a comfort zone created by a
lifestyle for the masses that rivals King
Solomon’s? People today have access to
every food known
to man, all the knowledge one could hope to ever absorb, sexual
licentiousness
un-
precedented up till now, and material possessions that would have made
monarchs of the past envious. Throw in
mountains of entertainment
and drugs, and the result is a society that is not
just self-satisfied but utterly satiated.
Repent? For what?
Unprecedented pleasure? Not likely!!
The first mention of counterfeit
repentance (repenting for the wrong reason) is recorded for us in
Matthew 3:6
when many Sadducees and Pharisees
came to John’s baptism of repentance with selfish
ulterior motives and were turned away by God’s Spirit operating through
John. These self-centered
spiritual
leaders were trying to escape God’s wrath, which was ready to be poured
out on
account of
outward show
rather then having an inner change of heart.
We need to be aware that
repentance is not sadness. Repentance is
change, prefaced by Godly sorrow and heart felt grief over sin and
sinfulness(2
Co. 7:10), as one reviews in a moment of time all that has gone on
before
that’s anti-God, followed by a burning desire for amend-
ment. Again, repentance is change...
Achange from a
rebellious mind and state of alienation to an attitude of submission
and
separation from
iniquity. The axe of God
(God’s Word, also referred to in the New Testament as “the sword of the
Spirit”) cuts deep at the root of sin causing true
repentance. This is true of those being
called and
converted by conviction (the born again experience) and it’s also true
of those
already in the
household of faith who are persuaded by God’s Word that their
“old man” and on-going sins need to be faced and dealt with. Many, however,
hide themselves behind the
seeming shelter of the Cross, and claiming with their lips to honor the
Lord, they
disallow the work of God’s axe to
touch their hearts and sever the various
roots of bitterness, jealousy, pride and inordinate desires. They regard the Cross of Christ as a cheap
Grace which avoids the pain of the blade that strips us bare before God. Whenever a preacher or prophet of God touches
home as God’s
“woodsman” (axe bearer), the cry goes out that the preaching or
exhortation has gone from edification to “meddling”.
For these deluded souls,
facing and dealing
with “the sin which doth so easily beset us”, this work of cleansing
the temple
is contrary to the Bible. For them the
facing of
the sinful nature ceased when they accepted Jesus as Savior (and most
never really faced it then). Millions of
Christians are hiding from God
and from their own flesh in the very sanctuary
of The Lord. The flesh clings
tenaciously to the service of self and opposes nothing so vehemently
as the
confession that is utterly damnable.
Close to the bosom it clutches its favorite sins, often
unwilling even
to consider that they are sins.
What a
horrible burden the soul carries around, whether recognized or not,
when it
refuses to repent.
In sharp contract to the
above, over and over again, true sanctification is earmarked by
continued
repentance as the believer is driven deeper
and deeper into the cesspool of
self. Strong words, but appropriate when
one contemplates the sheer horror of what Christ endured so we
might be
reckoned (considered) cleansed by God and thereby put in a position
where we
are motivated through love to “clean up our act”.
No amount of “prosperity Gospel” preaching
can ever silence the message of “take up your cross and follow Me”
(Mattthew 16:24). Unfortu-
nately, many who are consumed with themselves as individuals will look
at the concept of self-sacrificial love with a mild form of
distain. To these deceived souls,
when they read in the Bible about a cross bearer, they see in that
verse a
command to go forth and preach or share about Christ's
cross and
salvation to the unsaved. And although it's true that all
believers
are to witness Christ crucified, this verse, and many others like
it, is
not speaking to "witnessing", but to the need for believers to
"crucify the fleshy self". Can you imagine the privilege and
joy felt by
Simon the
as he helped Christ carry His Cross to
some who feel Simon
resented having the cross of Christ thrust on him by the cruel Roman
soldiers,
and maybe at first he did. But I like to
think that
at some point during or afterwards he was deeply touched (in
a
positive way) by the experience. I say
this because many times we at first resent the burden of self
sacrifice, but if
truly regenerated, a person will eventually realize that we worship a
God of
sacrifice and it’s His Perfect Will that His adopted sons and daughters
die to
self.
As in the past, like so many
believers today, there is a built-in resistance to change because the
fallen “old
man” is in fear of losing control over
maintaining the comfort zone of a
self-centered life. Additionally, most
today only repent because they are troubled about the false doctrine of
a fiery
eternal conscious torment in hell (supposed God ordained punishment for
misdeeds). And this, rather than the
wrong doings in and of
themselves and how they impact a Righteous God and our
fellow man.
So we see John the Baptist telling the
religious charlatans of his day that they needed to prove their hearts
were
right before God, or else save their energy, and it seems they chose
the latter. Of
course, John’s baptism (Jews repenting for
having backslidden from the Old Testament law and there-
fore not in a proper
state to receive Christ as their Messiah and the earthly Kingdom He was
then
offering them) was not the same as New Testament
baptism into Christ’s death
and resurrection. Christian baptism has
to do with Christ’s spiritual Kingdom, and His rule and reign over an
espoused
Bride that through true repentance has had her self-confidence
shattered,
resulting in the Good News of the Cross being heard and accepted. And
this inauguration of a heavenly Kingdom was
due to Christ’s earthy Kingdom offer having been rejected when His Old
Testament people had him
killed. However,
praise God, death was not the end for Jesus but the means through
resurrection
whereby the unseen heavenly Kingdom phase
of God’s Plan would kick in and be in
place for 2,000 years. And this Gospel
period is about to culminate with the translation of Christ’s Elect
Bride followed
by seven years of extreme tribulation, succeeded by the “battle of
Armageddon”. Immediately followed by a
“new heaven and a
new earth” and a thousand year period of God’s earthly Kingdom, the
Government
of God. This
was rejected by the Jews two thousand
years earlier, for sooner or later God’s purposes will come about. Remember, God is not saddled by time
so to Him
a 2,000 year delay is no delay at all.
All of this is part of God’s Perfect Plan to have not only an
unseen heavenly
Kingdom, but additionally
an earthly Kingdom with its postponement used to call
out and sanctify a Bride for His Son.
And it is from this unseen portion of God’s Kingdom
that the completed
“seed of Abraham” (Christ and His Church) will rule and reign over the
earthly,
physical plane Kingdom.
Returning to the issue of
regret and Godly sorrow, which has to do with the repentance that
prefaced both
John’s and Christian baptism, this
repentance was designed to be earmarked by a
change of heart and not be for some ulterior motives or hidden agendas,
such as
fear of reaping
painful consequences due to self-centered choices.
In today’s evangelism we see little or no
rhetoric about true repentance, and this lack shows
itself in multitudes
“coming to Christ” through the front door of churches and most of these
same masses
leaving soon after through the back door.
They may leave some tithe money in the collection plate on their way
through, but without true repentance there is no lasting commitment to
God
and
His Christ.
How many folks today, like the Pharisees
and Sadducees of the past, have supposedly
come to Christ in repentance based on their fear-based,
self consumed, selfish
agendas, and
this in order to escape God’s wrath? (and again, most today believe
this wrath is the tortuous hell that
Churchianity puts forth in
order to
fill their ranks with fearful, self absorbed converts). To
be sure, God’s wrath is to be feared, but
only when it’s understood as His carry through to His death decree to
Adam
(“The soul that sins must die” and “it’s appointed once for man to
die…”).
Death
(both the first and second death) is to be respected as God’s Plan for
dealing
with sin. However, He also has a Plan
for the restitution of
all things (Acts
Christ’s Atonement was all about, and it will come to pass
as surely as God exists. But not all will
be raised at the same time; first the Bride andthen the rest of
mankind – each in their own season.
Authentic, 24 karat Biblical
repentance is not a self serving cry of “I
don’t want to go to hell, I want to go to heaven!” or other such
self engrossed
declarations. That’s what true
repentance isn’t. To confirm this fact I
would suggest more than just a cursory reading of Peter’s convicting
speech
recorded in Acts 2. Most of his
audience, after hearing this extraordinary wake up call were “cut to
the heart”
(“The Word of God is sharper than
any two edge sword, piercing to……, and is a
discerner of the thoughts and intent of the heart”, Hebrews 4:12), and
their
response was, “Men
and brethren, what shall we do?”. At this
point, you’ll notice what was not said to the
crowd by Peter,
ie., you had better accept Christ as your
personal savior or you’ll spend
eternity in a conscious, tortuous hell.
Nothing even close to this was suggested by Peter, who instead drove
home to the heart of the people a
message designed to cut to the quick those who would soon be convicted
and ask
in one accord, “What
shall we do?”. And here
we see what for the next 2,000 years would be true, life changing
repentance,
the result of a changed heart towards
God, not out of fear (that’s “fox hole
conversion”), but out of deep felt remorse for having wronged and
offended our
Righteous God. The one
works just fine in
order to pack the pews with people motivated and controlled by fear,
the other
makes for true consecrated believers.
So what is genuine
repentance? It is responding to the Good
News by an inner persuasion regarding the bad news, ie., that the
unregenerated
heart condition is totally bankrupt. And
this, by the way, everyone down deep knows to be true, based on the
fact that all
men know God exists
and they stand guilty before Him, having offended Him on
all levels throughout their entire lives.
God’s Spirit best lays out what all know to be
true about their inner
condition when He says in Isaiah 64:6 – “You
are all as an unclean thing, and all your righteousness (your
so-called
“good qualities”) are as filthy rags…”.
This inward condition known by unre- generated
man is protected from exposure by walls of self-congrat-
ulations, pride, and
self righteousness, constantly maintained and repaired with the mortar
of self
justification. The Only One Who can
bring down
these walls is the God of The Bible, Who is an expert at piercing
and pricking the conscience, exposing every deception.
And like the walls of
Jericho
Atonement.
In the original language of
the Scriptures, “filthy rags” is descriptive of something far worse
than some slightly
soiled pieces of material. These
“rags” denote the unwanted scraps of cloth
that Biblical lepers found discarded in the dumps, which they
subsequently
wrapped around their
bloody, pus ridden sores to cover the rotting flesh caused
by the horrible disease of leprosy. These
discarded scraps of cloth somewhat
protected their open sores from the blazing
hot Judean sun, but they soon became dry and hardened and caked with
dust,
mixed with contin-
uously oozing blood and pus.
The smell alone was atrocious.
This is why they were required to constantly scream aloud,
whenever in
close
proximity to other people – “Unclean,
unclean, unclean” (remember the first line of Isaiah 64:6, “You are all as an unclean thing…”). This
alerted others to give them a wide birth to avoid the smell of rotting
flesh
and possible contagion. Now, overlay
this solid Biblical concept
with today’s rhetoric about “love yourself, build
your self esteem, be proud of who you are, God loves you just the way
you are
and accepts
you and all your faults as long as you simply slip up your hand,
nod, blink three times or make an altar call and then regularly attend
church”.
Talk about deception! No wonder there’s so
little true repentance
today.
All these realities raise
various questions about why our Sovereign God did, and still does,
allow all
the pain and suffering and eventual death
of His creatures. Most pose these
questions, at least in their
minds, but never take the time to go to His Word of Truth for the
answers. Con-
sequently, there is a lot of fear and resentment
towards the very God some profess to know and worship, the God Who
loves us (not
as we
are, but who we are to become) and gave His Son to die for us as a
sacrifice for sin. The result of these
unanswered questions about God
creates in many a judgmental attitude towards
His Person that manifests itself in all sorts of every day inordinate
choices
and actions.
And why is true repentance
so crucial and important to God for those He’s now calling into the
household
of faith and also for those who are
already regenerated, but somehow have never
fully admitted to their “filthy rags” righteousness?
It goes without saying that He doesn’t need
to hear our cry for deliverance,
as He already knows our hearts, our circumstances, our fears, and our
condition. He also knows that each of
his creatures down deep knows they’re lost, sin sick, and in tremendous
pain on
all levels of their being. So real
repentance is what people
need to feel and voice in order to manifest true
brokenness before a Righteous God. In
other words, people must admit that they’ve been l
iving a lie before Him and
others, and that they’ve been putting out a false persona
(personality/mask)
that says everything’s “hunky dory”,
with the lie that says, “I’m O.K., you’re
O.K”. The cry goes out by most, “Hey, nobody’s perfect, right?” or “I’m just
human and truly not as
bad as most!”.
Well as far as God is concerned, that’s the same as saying that
our rags
are a bit soiled, rather than soaked with rotting,
putrefied flesh.
Once a person focuses on his
or her true condition, they will feel utter shame and sorrowful grief,
void of
any ulterior motives except for an
uncontrolled impulse to finally “come clean”
before God and man, and that they’ve been living a lie and have been
practicing
deception their
whole life. They’re
finally admitting to being guilty of the greatest of sins – “identity
theft”,
or playing God (also known as pride).
And by this
admission of being guilty before God, a person is publicly an- nouncing
that the jig’s up and for the first time they’re ready to be the
created
rather than playing at being the Creator. This
desire to be God was Lucifer’s sin that
plunged him down into his new identity as Satan. And
it’s the one thing (living the lie that
you’re God) that the devil does not want changed in people, which is
why we hear
so little said today about
true repentance.
Once a person admits that their “heart is deceitful above all
things and
desperately wicked”, they begin a journey and rela-
tionship with God that will
never end. And it’s this admission that
drives home the Biblical precept that everyone knows God exists and
that
they’re guilty of usurping His Throne with the same pride that was
found in
Lucifer with his audacious arrogance to suppose he could presume
to be equal
with God.
People know their true inner
condition and that they’ve been avoiding God’s Scrutiny all their life. And why do so many avoid God?
Because
everyone knows that once they admit
openly what each rebel knows down deep about his or her own filthy rags
condition – once that cat is out
of the bag, God will most likely kill
them. Remember as a kid your mother or
siblings saying to you, “If your father
ever finds out what you’ve
done, he’s going to kill you!. Just wait
till your father gets home.”. Dread,
dread, dread. Avoidance, avoidance,
avoidance. No wonder man
puts God on the back burner or
denies He even exists! The funny thing
about all this is that our fear about God “lowering the boom” on us is
well
founded. If and when we do come to God,
in true heart felt remorse (repentance), He does
kill us – the “old us” that is. He
reckons as dead
the very thing in man (his old nature) that has kept him a card
carrying member of Satan’s kingdom. That’s one of the many reasons
Christ died
for us, so we can accept His Atonement and thereby make His death count
on our
behalf so God can consider our “old man” dead, before we
go to the grave
and, again, He wants believers to do the same, ie., consider their old
man dead. And this is why I believe God
allowed leprosy
to be one of the many maladies of mankind, in order to show forth His
Glory! With the leper, God was saying to
“Take a good look, here you are (from My Perspective) in your true
state of unrighteousness. Here’s My
human billboard announcing to
anyone with eyes to see that you are all unclean
and dead in your sins!”.
If the above is really true
about man’s polluted condition, then what do we have to boast about, or
be
proud about, or pontificate about, or be
self consumed about, or offended
about, or be egotistical about, or expect others to respect us about,
or be
conceited about, or be narcissistic
about, or feel superior about, or be arrogant
about, or hostile about, or dominating about, or controlling about, or
haughty
about, or preen about,
or act proper about, or feel satisfied about, or have
high or low self esteem about, or think anything about, other than
Christ
crucified on our
behalf because of our unmitigated filth and self importance. Very few who are part of the “household of
faith (regenerated believers) realize
(and fewer get taught)that the New
Testament is replete with the theology of the Cross rather than today’s
theology of glory. Glory theology
says
Christians can now have their crown without first bearing Christ’s
Cross (a
type or “shadow” of this cross bearing is found in Matthew 27:32
and referred
to earlier). And woe be to anyone who
speaks forth on the basis of the Scriptures that the “glory now” folks
have the
wrong theology
and that their subsequent teachings and choices are displeasing
to God. Prosperity and “glory now”
theology is a mindset held by believers
with a pacified conscience who become
their own God while turning the God of the Bible into Someone Who is
subject to
the personal whims
of His children. This
would be quite harmless if it weren’t for the fact that the One, True
and Only
God is the God of the Cross. Jesus calls
us
into submission to bear His Cross that by His Spirit He sends to us
through
life circumstances. He did not come to
entertain (or wants for us
to entertain ourselves), but to redeem us by His
Blood so we could stop playing at being God and instead bend low in
daily
submission to His
Word and then to the Cross that He is pleased to send us, one
after another, for us to bear. But
unfortunately, we pursue pleasure and self grat-
ification and then when we
experience the resultant pain, we feel we’re suffering for the sake of
Christ,
rather than from our bad choices. And
then, to relieve the pain, most pursue
the newest quick fix in pill form (herbal and chemical supplements,
over the
counter or prescription drugs,
and finally illegal drugs).
In addition to quick fix
substances, most Christians are addicted to entertainment and want
church to
also be entertaining. Fake Christianity
offersthe believer an imitation of Christ’s heavenly glory rather than
His
humiliation when He was on earth. With
this kind of “church experience”,
everyone goes away fat, dumb and happy,
playing at being their own god, with their own Bible and their own
source of
ultimate truth and salvation.
The end
result is self-consumed sanctification, which is totally out of step
with God’s
program of the cross before the crown.
This was the way
it was for Christ and the Apostles and this is how it
must be for us who are called, for as the Apostle Paul said, “imitate me as I imitate Christ”
(I
Corinthians 11:1).
In contrast to Churchianity’s
way, initial salvation comes about with radical repentance and
acceptance of
the all encompassing reality about
the sacrifice of Christ on behalf of the
fallen, self-centered, sin sick self. So
if the reader is already saved by the Blood, then forget about putting
a
picture of Jesus on your wall, or hanging a cross around your neck or
“Church”
attendance, that’s only a psychological ploy to avoid picking up
the Cross of
Christ daily and crucifying the “old man” and his addiction to self,
and
thereby become “a living sacrifice”.
Here is the essence of
true Christianity, however, this is the one thing
today’s professing Christians avoid like the plague.
The cry by most is… “Just leave me alone
to tip my hat once a week to the God of my own
imagination, watch a few glitzy “Christian” T.V. shows, have a few
personal
devotionals now
and then, pontificate to others rhetoric about Scripture and
the rest of the time I’ll do my own thing, thank you very much”. However, Christ
stands at the doors of our
hearts and knocks (Rev. 3:20), waiting to be invited in as He urges all
apostates to repent and be baptized daily into
His sacrificial death and
resurrection. He’s done it all for us so
we can do it all for Him. God does not
regenerate and then sanctify people so
they can use His Blessings to sanction their
old man’s attempts to stay in control. God
has reckoned (or considers) that “old man” dead, but
then in the here and now we
must crucify him by taking up our sacrificial cross on a daily basis. If not, his licentious behavior (immoral,
unre-
strained conduct) will dominate each of us in varying degrees based on
our
individual characters, from the quiet, reserved Englishman types
to the
over-the-top debased ugly American types, and everybody else in between.
There are a couple of old
clichés that speak to those who would rather be hearers than
doers of The Word:
“talk is cheap, put up or shut up”
and “money
talks, B.S. walks”.
Let those of us, who are truly
consecrated believers, finally stand up and be counted (if, in fact, we
have
ever properly repented and laid our
new creation life on the altar of sac-rifice). Possibly
a few lions and an arena would be in
order today to separate the men from the boys, and
this at a time when the only
arenas most Christians give energy to are those in which they are the
onlookers,
watching the modern NFL Roman
gladiators do battle for hire. Somehow,
after 2,000 years of playing at church,
believers have evolved out of the arena on up into the bleachers
to where
Christianity today is mostly a spectator’s sport. Just
take a close look at how Church meeting
places are set up. If you didn’t know
any
better, you’d think you were in a theater – stage and all. And the price for the show is our weekly
tithes.
As I said earlier, a lot of
questions crop up once a person really gets into God’s Plan of
Salvation. A couple of these may easily
be, “Why did
a Sovereign God allow early
believers to be thrown to the hungry lions or wild dogs? Or why did six
million
Jews have to go into Hitler’s ‘final
solution’?”. Hitler may have had what
he felt was the
“final solution”, however, what he was blinded to was the real problem. And it wasn’t the
Jews, but he, himself. The comic strip
“Pogo Possum” said it best in
one episode – “The enemy’s been sighted
and it’s me!”. It was in the
“funnies”, but it’s not funny. And
believe me when I say that there is a viable answer to the question
about the
lions and Hitler’s slaughter of
millions.
But I’ll save that subject for another paper.
However, if anyone is motivated to tackle
that theological issue on their own, a clue to
solving this “mystery” lies in
the axiom that Satan is on a leash and that leash is firmly in the hand
of our
Sovereign God.
It’s tragic to see professing
Christians focused on anything but Christ crucified and their own
filthy rags
righteousness that has been cleansed
by the Blood of The Lamb. Most believers
talk a good game, but when it
comes to examining themselves through a fellow believer scrutinizing
their
behavior, their eyes glaze over, they look at their watch and remember
an
important meeting that they’re late to, or we may hear words to the
effect,
“Who are you to judge me, I’m not accountable to you, only God can deal
with me
and I haven’t heard from Him about any of this!” (probably
because they skip
over those numerous portions of God’s Word that speak to the sacrifice
of self). My answer to that ploy (which is
designed to
avoid
careful examination, followed by repentance and change) is to remind
folks that
most of the content of Paul’s epistles deals with the aberrant
behavior of
those he’s writing to. God used Paul to
blow the proverbial whistle on those using their new found faith as a
license
to avoid sanctifica-
tion change and growth.
And by this same Word, the apostles are still alive and well, if
today’s
believers choose to avail themselves of what these
godly men were inspired to
write. And believe it or not, there are
true prophets in the Body of Christ today and their role is to boldly
speak
forth,
according to the Word, and then beat a hasty retreat before the rocks
and arrows of character assassination begin to fly.
And fly they will, for Satan
has well taught backsliders
how to neutralize the message by defaming the messenger so the message
can
continue to go unheeded. How sad this
is
for those God has called to be shaped into the image and likeness of
His
Christ, via His Word of Truth. Maybe God
should allow more cases of l
eprosy in our society so all can be reminded just how
close we are (about 2 or 3 days tops without embalming) to the decay
and
corruption that will
one day soon consume us all.
In closing, I want to
publicly thank God for His having touched me 40+ years ago with the
gift of
true repentance through Isaiah 64:6. So
this,
for me, will always be a special part of His Word, for it was by this
portion of Scripture that, like Isaiah in Isaiah 6:4, I cried out, “Woe is me!
For I am undone!”. Similar to
the Apostle Paul, God knocked me off my “high horse” of self, and
showed me Who
He is and who I’m not, and
now I can say with all conviction that after having
played at being God for the first 30 years of my life, I am finally at
peace
with being the created
and not the Creator.
And whenever my choices lead to a reversal of these roles, the
peace of
God in my life is temporarily suspended.
I’m sure there are those
among God’s people who do not have the peace of God in their life. For those where this is the case, I’d like to
suggest
that it’s never too late to repent God’s Way, and for the right
reasons. Not to be saved (if you feel
you already are), but because you know you
have been regenerated from above,
and that you want to add “the peace of God” to your sanctification walk. My witness to all is that God’s Peace
can
only be a reality if and when a believer chooses to stop playing God,
relinquishes control, and submits to our Universal Sovereign. If you, the
reader, are a believer, but have not
yet done this and thereby ex- perienced the resultant peace, I
sincerely pray
that this slice of truth will drive you
to repent and be immersed into the fullness of
Christ’s Presence. And I speak as someone
who has not yet arrived,
but who is on the journey
of being filled more and more each day with The Spirit
of God.
And last, I want to speak to
something every true believer should seriously consider.
When God blessed us with Resurrection Life
and we became
a new creature in Christ, something radically changed within
us. Our corrupt physical bodies remained
in their downward spiral into a final disso-
lution back to dust. No one in their right
mind denies this, and
it’s confirmed by millions of headstones in cemeteries all over the
world. We live in
corrupt and corrupting
bodies. So what’s the difference between
a rank atheist serial killer, and say, Billy Graham?
Physically, as far as death is
concerned,
there is no difference. But the Bible
tells us that we are something more than just the physical. We have mind, emotion, will, volition,
“heart”, and consciousness. But so do
higher and lower animals! So what makes
man unique? The Psalmist asked, “Lord, what is man that
Thou carest for
him? What is mankind?
Why give a thought to them?” (Psalm
144:3). The question is never answered
in this passage, but
the entire Bible shouts from its pages that God created
man with something above and beyond anything on earth.
He was created “in the image
and likeness” of
God Himself. But with the fall of Adam,
that image and likeness was polluted and corrupted, and along with
Adam, all
mankind
fell into a state that on most levels is worse than the brute
beast. And then this estate
eventually
resulted in Adam (and all mankind in him) returning
to dust, and this, after a
relative brief sojourn of sentient being and consciousness.
The thought embodied in all
this is that without Divine intervention, man, the jewel of God’s
creation,
would be lost forever. And if there was
no
Divine Plan for Divine intervention, life would be unmitigated madness,
not
to mention consummate vanity, a study in futility.
But by the testimony
of God’s Word, coming
from Someone Who cannot lie, we find that man’s inevitable “dirt nap”
is not
the end of the story, for God is not only a God
of sacrifice, but also of resurrection
life, not just for His Son, but for the Church and the rest of mankind. In other words, God created nothing in
man that
is innately immortal and survives the grave without His resurrection
intervention. It’s all God and all about
His resurrection life that every
human will one day experience, in spite of
whether or not he or she dies a believer.
Erroneous churchianty teachings have all non-believers dying
with a non
existent immortal soul going to a temporary Luke 16 place of torment,
only to
be transferred out of this misunderstood state (at Christ’s
return) into a
permanent lake of fire of everlasting torturous suffering.
All this Luke 16 madness is a kind of
Catholic purgatory with a Protestant
spin put on it. In reality, Luke 16 was
spoken as a parable
and does not represent a literal place of conscious torment, for there
is no
immortal
soul in man to exist anywhere after his grave/death experience. Only resurrection life, granted by God’s
Justice, can and will raise all to life again,
and this with the express
purpose of allowing everyone to hear and interact with Christ and His
Bride. The key verse to remember here is
in 1
Cor-
inthians
differently, Christ’s Atonement and
Resurrection was for all, not just a few.
But each will experience this undeserved gift in God’s timing
and for
His purposes. And this writer swears on
and by the Word of God that I have been given resurrection life, here
and now, before
my grave experience.
And know it or not,
the same is true for all those who are a part of the true universal
Church. My body is seeing decay and
corruption and
within a
few years, this process will be complete. But
in the interim (which has now been 40+
years since I was raised into new creation life) I am enjoying
unprecedented
joy and peace in the presence of God Who is now dwelling in me, “Christ in me, my hope of glory”. This
is not the very Person
of Christ in me,
but His Spirit. And because Christ and
God are Holy, their Spirit in me is Holy.
And because I am indwelt with that Holy Spirit,
my being is now the
espoused
Bride is sanctified unto Him. This has
to be the case in order to allow His Holy Spirit to take up residence
in a
corrupt environment.
God declares holy and set
apart all those who come to Him through the gift of repentance. And He does this so His Spirit can indwell
the
believer and thereby establish a “beach head” in enemy territory. So somehow, by some incredible process, I am
now
Holy Spirit possessed
and my corrupting body has been proleptically (potentially)
transformed (by God’s reckoning) to be a mini temple of the Living God. My body
is now the Holy Grail
(chalice/container/temple) that contains the essence of Christ’s shed
Blood,
His Holy Spirit. And this inspired truth
is
the condition of all those who God calls into His heavenly Kingdom. And once in this blessed of all states, we
should
be repenting of all the
things we do, and the choices we make, that defile and
pollute this sanctified temple. This
makes our sanctification process a work whereby
we steer clear of anything that
would defile our being, a mini temple of the Living God.
How many of us, who have
been born from above and are Holy Spirit possessed, how many are we
that
profane that which is Holy within? I
suspect all of us are guilty of this in all sort of ways and means that
we
dismiss as minor glitches on the screen of life. But
God is not so cavalier
about how we live
as Christians. He “jealously” guards His
Temple and through various sacraments He attempts to have His people
become
more and more accountable for maintaining the inner temple in a state of purity by moving further and
further away from the contamination of
Satan’s worldly kingdom. This is the
narrow path that Christ spoke to,
that leads to the “prize of our high calling” – immortality and an
eternal
state of connectedness to Christ as husband to the believer, His Bride. This Union Life will be everlasting, but by
the Grace of God He has
purposed to give His espoused Bride a foretaste, an
earnest or down payment, and this advanced realization is gloriously
all caught
up in
His Holy Spirit now occupying the hearts and minds of all consecrated
believers who have come into the “household of faith”, through “The
Door”
(Christ), that has been opened with the key of metanoia.
AMEN!