This paper is
addressed to all those who truly love God and who have
been born from above by the deliberate Will and plan of The Almighty,
and have,
at some time in their sanctification walk, questioned the relationship
between
Old Testa-ment law and New Testament grace.
We all know
there are the hyper grace folks and the rank legalists, and
many gradients in between. But believe
it or not, few have ever really come to
theological grips with the question of
where, if anywhere, do God’s Old Testament laws impact the lives of
those who
are a part of the New Testament
“Body of Christ”. In other words, as the
espoused Bride of
Christ, is it imperative
that we keep
the law (the ten commandments), or not?
And if it is
compulsory, what are the consequences if we fail at this
endeavor?
Ever since the
first Pentecost after Christ’s crucifixion there has
been a kind of tension between law and grace.
In Galatians 3 the Apostle Paul invoked
a double curse on those who
tried to bring Jewish Christians back under the law and who even
insisted that
the Gentile Christians be told they, too, must
be circumcised and come under
the Mosaic laws. Then 1,500 years later, we hear that Martin Luther
felt the
book of James was too legalistic and, therefore,
should never have been
canonized into New Testament Scriptures.
At one point he even wanted to tear the book of James out of the
Bible! This was hyper
Grace at its worst
and as a contrast to this extreme Grace there were (and still are to
this day)
the rank legalists who quoted from James and his epistle
more than any other
New Testament book. The battle rages on!
So from the
standpoint of obedience to the Old Testament Mosaic law,
just what is our obligation towards God once we have been regenerated
from
above?
We all know what happened to
Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5 for bearing false witness (lying) to the
Holy
Spirit, and anyone doing a careful read of 1 Cor. 5
will right away see that
Paul decreed to that congregation how they should disfellowship a
member who
was caught up in a sexual relationship that in the Old
Testament law was
specifically condemned, (Deut. 22:30).
So, again, do we keep the law, or don’t we?
Are we under law, under grace, or both? And
if we
are under grace, does that mean
that we should or should not be guided in our actions by God’s laws
given to
Moses? And if Christians today are not
under
any obligation to keep the ten commandments, then is it O.K. to murder,
steal, covet, disrespect parents or to have your way with someone who’s
married
to
another? And how about the Sabbath? Do we keep one day holy each week, and if so,
which day is the true Sabbath? It’s
enough to drive a person to drink
and to wonder just what God expects from a
New Testament believer.
In hindsight it
was natural that the first major conflict within the
church (the so-called “Jewish conflict”) should be over the issue of
whether
the early Christians
should remain within Judaism, or whether their uniqueness
demanded that the corporate Body become an independent and distinct
religion. If Christianity were
simply a
variant of Judaism, Gentile converts to it should submit themselves to
circumcision as an accepted initiatory step for admission into a newly
evolved
form of Judaism and into the overall Jewish community.
And also, it would have been an essential for
them to share in the special covenant which Jews believed
had been made between
God and their progenitor Moses. The
Gentile converts should also observe all aspects of the Jewish law,
including
the Sabbath and
the distinctions between clean and unclean foods. To
a great extent, this was the conviction,
held by many in the Christian community which remained in
salem
spokesman,
maintained that to insist that disciples of Christ become members of
the Jewish
community and submit themselves to the Jewish law was to utterly
fail to grasp
the essence of the Gospel. They declared
that in Christ and the Gospel, God had done something quite new,
foretold, to
be sure, in the Jewish
scriptures, but a fresh and unique act. They said that
men were to enter into a sanctified life by being regenerated (born
again) from
above, not by earning it
through the observance of God’s commands as expressed
in the Jewish law. And then once
regenerated into resurrection life by the determinant Will of God,
there would
be the gift of resurrection faith in the love and forgiveness of God as
seen in
the death and the resurrection of Jesus, that glorious moment in time
which
brought about an atonement that far surpassed anything having to do
with the
blood of animals and a fixed set of imperative “do’s and don’ts”
relative to
ones behavior. This New Testament faith
would issue forth out of believers in gratitude and love towards God,
with His
New Testament Will being submitted to
out of love, with no thought of winning
His acceptance and approval, for these had already been appropriated by
Christ’s having satisfied His Father’s Just
demands. The theological word for this
satisfaction is
“propitiation”, a word we should all indelibly imprint in our hearts
and
minds. For without this word, none
could
or would ever be saved.
Page 2
Everything a
person has as a new creation being is because God’s
Perfect Justice has been propitiated (satisfied) by the atoning work of
Christ. And this “work”,
along with all
its consequences, is what prompted Paul to write, “As in Adam all die,
so in
Christ all (the same all) will be made alive”.
When God implemented the
death penalty that He had decreed to Adam, He
had already set in place His Plan of saving Adam out from this death
into new
creation life. And in “the fullness of
time” that portion of His Plan was perfectly brought about by Christ. All that remained after God’s Justice was
satisfied (propititated) was for Him to begin raising
mankind out of the sleep
of death. And this awakening process
began 50 days after
for the time being,
only the first fruits elect Bride, during this Gospel Age, have been
raised out
of their sleep walking state of death, and thereby have been given
resurrected
life (regenerated/born again) before they physically go to the grave. This is the essence of Paul’s Gospel that was
only alluded to by Christ when He
told Nicodemus that a person had to be born
again before he could even see the
of mankind will be
resurrected from their sleep of death/grave, and forthwith be
enlightened
during the 1,000 year reign of the completed “seed of Abraham”, Christ
and
His
Body/Bride. These truths are known as
pure Grace, for they represent a work of God, not a work of man. Law is based on man’s work performance,
whereas
Grace is based on God’s. In practice,
many Christians took positions between these two extremes of law and
grace. And so it goes to this day.
Attempts were
made by the new Christian elders to reach an agreement in
order to maintain unity. Paul and
his
companion missionary, Barnabas, journeyed to
Jerusalem
which
yielded most of what Paul stood for.
There was no demand for circumcision.
At this point, we must be aware that this was a time of
transition from
one dy-
namic to another. In
other words,
major change was taking place, and for most, change never comes easily.
During this New
Testament transitional period, the overwhelming
majority of Christians took a view that was loyal to Paul, but which in
practice still had legalistic
features and an adherence to certain aspects of
Judaism. A major part of the problem
then (as is still the case today) was the failure to differentiate
between the
two phases of salvation. Phase one,
regeneration/justification, was (and is) 110% an act of God, having to
do with
Christ’s Blood applied to the heavenly Mercy seat.
However, once a person is called by God and
birthed anew from above into a new creation life, there is a
sanctification
process before a person is translated out of
his corruptible physical state,
into his spiritual body (salvation’s second phase).
And it is this sanctification process that has
everything to do with one’s willful
choices to lead (or not lead) the born
again sanctified life. The yardstick
that a person is to use to measure his or her growth in holiness is not
the
Mosaic law,
but the spirit (the unseen aspect of law keeping) of the law. For example, the New Testament born from
above Christian is not to focus on adultery, but rather on
the whole syndrome
of unseen lust. He’s not to concentrate
on murder, but on hatred. His attention
is not to be on a one day Sabbath, but on a daily Hebrews 3,4
rest. This rest is a state of utter
dependence on
God and a surrender to His Will and care in every aspect of life. In other words, if one focuses more on the
subtle
inner unseen parts of the law, he will never break the outer seen
letter
of those laws. By not hating, he’ll
never murder, either by character assassination or the
physical act
itself. Resting every moment of every
day in Christ means one will thereby automatically keep the Sabbath,
for God
through His Spirit, now living in
him, has been in His Sabbath rest since the
seventh day of creation. When a person
is truly “in Christ”, he/she is in God’s Sabbath rest – 24/7! Also, never
lusting means adultery will not
be an option. Stop coveting, and
stealing will be a non event. And so
on. But, con-versely, if a person
continues to focus on the
outer law, he will most likely never deal with the
more refined aspect of each commandment.
Giving attention to avoiding murdering someone will do little to
prevent
hatred. Keeping a weekly Sabbath will
surely have a person not resting in God the remainder of the week. And no matter how diligent a person is to not
commit
the physical act of adultery, he’ll most likely find himself secretly
lusting after the opposite sex. Christ
spoke to this whole syndrome in Matthew 5 when He said,
“Except your
righteousness exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye
shall
in no case enter into the
possibly
meant by this? After all, Saul of Tarsus
as a Pharisee was “blameless before God” in law keeping.
Or at least he thought so. But God
says that if a Jew
broke even one of
His laws just once, he was just as guilty as if he had broken them all
over and
over again. In other words, God’s a Cosmic
Perfectionist and this
Holiness means He can accept no less, if one hopes to
ever approach His Throne of Grace. And
it’s precisely here that Christ enters the picture, who was the
only One who
could and did perfectly fulfill the Righteous demands of our Holy God. So for fallen man to ever hope to interact
with such a God, he must do so on
the “coast tails” of Jesus Christ. And
this is why Christ is the only Way to God
and why early Christians called themselves “people of The Way”. So how could
a good Jew like Saul every hope
to enter into the
only reasonable and Biblical answer is to
be found in a person taking on the Righteousness of Another, Jesus
Christ. This was a Righteousness that was
(to a
believer) a reckoned Rightness, due to The Spirit of Mr. Right having
set up
residence in a person by virtue of regeneration and imbued perfection. Christ took on
our imperfections and in
exchange gave us His Perfection. This,
some correctly refer to as “the exchanged life”.
In order to cut His children the necessary
slack
to “work out” what’s been worked within, God reckons the believer
perfect
because of the righteousness of Christ within, our Hope of Glory. So now we know why
Christ said in Matthew
5:19, “that except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of
the
scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the
Kingdom of heaven”. How many folks have
read that pivotal verse
and inwardly gone into shock over knowing their failure to have a
righteousness
even equal to
the Jewish Pharisees, much less exceeding theirs. Again,
Paul, as a Pharisee, kept the law
“blamelessly” but in hindsight, after regeneration, he called himself
“wretched”. It is here, thank God, that we race
into the
arms of the word “imputed”. In the Bible
it means to be credited with the Righteousness of Christ.
This is
how our righteousness exceeds the
righteousness of the Pharisees. We are
given by imputation the very Righteousness of Mr. Right, Himself. That should make
any true believer do
spiritual cartwheels, because without being born again, followed by
this
reckoned/imputed perfect goodness of Christ, no one would ever even
“see the
Page 3
So for many of
its adherents, Christianity seemed to be primarily
obedience to a moral code, a code which embraced the Jewish law, but
which went
beyond it by
focusing on the internal attitude of the believer and was, therefore,
earmarked by a higher law, the law of the Spirit of Life in Christ
Jesus.
The
primary difference
between the Old Testament law and New Testament Grace is that in the
old law
economy it was do the right thing (obedience to God’s laws)
in order to be
saved, and in the new economy God says to those He has regener-ated,
you are
now saved (resurrected out of death/separation from God into new
creation life
in Christ) by Christ’s shed Blood applied to the heavenly seat of
Mercy, and
because this is so, and out of appreciation of the fact that believers
have
been translated (saved) out of death into life, their actions will
begin to
indicate their love for God by doing what is right (obedience to the
outer law
by focusing on
cleaning up the attitudinal inner thought life). One
(the Mosaic law) is in the imperative
mood, the other (the law of the Spirit of Life) is in the indicative
mood.
And be assured, this inner “work”
is only possible if one is born from above and has had a new creation
heart
transplant with Christ as the donor.
The
operative word in this
discussion, about the difference between the Old and New Testament, is
the verb
“do” (a word that denotes action). Doing
is basically
performance. It is an
effect, not a cause. What one does is
his behavior. How a person behaves is an
indicator, or the effect, of his inner state of being.
A person’s
demeanor is how he conducts
himself, or in the language of the 60’s, how he “passes through space”. How a person acts is an indicator of how he
thinks
and feels.
What a person says, the
volume of his voice, the quantity of words he uses, whether or not he’s
an
inconsiderate “motor mouth”, his concern for others sensibilities
during a
conversation (ie., is his interaction with others a dialogue or a
monologue?) –
all these are indicative of a believer’s inner thought life and
his
degree of
Christian maturity.
If
a person talks
incessantly around others and basically “hogs” the conversation, this
is an
indicator of unresolved internal issues.
How loud a person expresses
himself is also an indicator of his
emotional sanctification development.
How well someone stays focused speaks volumes about his or her
unseen
mental/spiritual
state. Also, one’s
patience (or lack of) paints a picture about their spiritual progress. All these things and more are indicators (or
fruits) that give away a person’s
true inner condition, their unseen inner
realm. So to any conscious observer, a
lot about a person can be deduced simply by listening to what they say
and
how
they say it. A person’s body weight is
also an indicator about a person’s unseen constitution.
“The scales don’t lie” is the key phrase
here. A lot of internal
conflicts and
issues can go undetected, but obesity is hard to overlook, unless, of
course,
you buy into today’s politically correct rhetoric that human hippos
are “full
figured” (they were born without a waist), or the equally deceptive
rhetorical
ploy that says he or she has a “glandular problem”.
No, they have an unre-
solved gluttony, greed
and self control problem.
All
these discernments about
people are quite simple if a person will just take the time to observe
and
focus his attention on others. Not to be
critical of others,
but to read them and thereby be a help to whatever their
needs might be. We must consider all this if we are to creatively
interact with
people and not get pulled
into their deceptive ways. We need to read
the signs, and between the
lines, if we are to relate to others in a coordinated and purposeful
manner. By
the same
token, and in the same way, we need to consciously listen to and
scrutinize ourselves. We need to be
acutely aware of our own actions, as well as the actions
of others. We need to question our motives
as to why we
do and say what we do, (someone once said, “The unexamined life is not
worth
living”). This was the
whole thrust of
Christ’s teachings, along with the New Testament epistles that over and
over
again exhorted believers to be in a constant state of humbling them-
selves via a
repentant (change of mind) attitude, and letting their minds be
conformed into
the Mind of Christ.
One
of the reasons for
Christ’s sayings and teachings was for His followers to begin to
internalize
their awareness and to not discern/judge themselves and others
by an outer, but
an inner standard. And the judgment that
Christ talked against was not a discernment judgment but a condemnation
judgment. Only God has
the right to
condemn, but we are to definitely discern (by His Spirit).
The discerning of spirits (one seeing the
unseen state of a person) is one of the gifts of the
Holy Spirit, so it’s not
reasonable to suppose that Christ spoke against this discerning aspect
of
judgment.
The
cry of the person who
does not want to change is “don’t judge or scrutinize me” (because
they’re
comfortable being stuck right where they are).
In others words,
don’t discern my faults and encounter me. But
this is the whole basis of Christian
community, to judge (discern) one another and then, in love, discuss
those
things
that might be contrary to God’s Word and a proper sanctification
walk. However, to be a part of this
sanctification game, all the players have to consecrate them-
selves to becoming
holy even as Christ is holy.
Unfortunately, most of today’s professing Christians are
self-satisfied
in their worldliness and aberrant behavior.
And their pitiful cry is, “I don’t care what anybody says (including
God’s Word) about the need for holiness, I’m saved and going to heaven
and
that’s all I care to
consider. So leave
me alone while I continue to indulge my ‘old man sin nature’ and, in
turn, I’ll
leave you alone with whatever sins that are so easily besetting you”.
By mutual unspoken agreement, today’s
professing Christians are simply “looking the other way” when it comes
to
anti-Biblical behavior. Their “don’t
ask, don’t tell”
attitude has prevailed in Churchianity long before the
military adopted that slogan with regards to sodomites in
Page
4
To
many, it’s obvious that
the Old and New Testaments are light years apart, as far as God’s Plan
for man
is concerned. The main thrust of the Old
Testament
was God laying out a set of rules and ordinances so that fallen man
could know beyond a doubt that he was unable to keep God’s perfect law,
and
therefore was
truly fallen and rebellious down to the core of his being.
The law showed him that he was a failure
before God and desperately needed a Savior Who would do for
him what he was
unable to do for himself (get saved from the bondage of sin and death). The law also kept God’s chosen people (the
Jews) somewhat in check
so their collective sin natures didn’t consume and
destroy them. And it did this by the
fear of punishment. With minor offenses
God used that fallen attribute of
man called greed in order to keep His people
in line. For example, through man’s
fearing the loss of valuable livestock, or monetary loss due to being
caught in
stealing, God was able to somewhat keep
for obedience, (“the hangman’s noose
miraculously focuses the mind”).
Overall
we see that the
byword in the Old Testament was fear…fear of loss, the loss of
possessions or
the loss of life. All through this first
testament we find that
the relationship between fallen man and God was fear
based. This is how God exercised control
over His people. Yes, God was the first
terrorist! (“The day you sin,
you will
surely die!”) Nothing controls guilt
ridden man quite as well as fear. Why do
you think today’s Muslim extremists use fear tactics in order to bring
about
their agendas? They are a radical Old
Testament religion and because of this, they are governed and
controlled by
fear and, therefore, use that same M.O. to try
and govern and control
others. (Remember, you can discover what
your enemy fears the most by observing the means he uses to frighten
you). But don’t condemn
them too quickly, because
this same tactic (in a more diluted form) is pervasive throughout
Churchianity. From today’s Catholics to
the Baptists, and
everything in
between, we see a modified form of this same devise to gain and
maintain control over entire congregations.
These law based relationships are earmarked by control
and fear…fear of
rejection, disfellowship, or fear of eternal conscious torture by a
benevolent
and loving God. While in actuality, the
kindest and most loving thing
God can and will do with mortal incorrigibles is
to annihilate them, not torture them forever.
Consider
for a moment the
old adage, “Does Love plan torture?”. In
other words, if God is our super conscious, all Wise and all loving
Sovereign
Divine Creator, then
how can anyone suppose that when He conceived and
implemented His Plan of Creation, He built into the fabric of this plan
a
future place of conscious suffering and
torment? And not for a few months or
years, but for
all eternity. Does love plan torture? Of course not! Then
why do millions harbor an inner
agonizing fear that they
may someday be consigned to a conscious state of never
ending torture in an everlasting “lake of fire”? The
answer is both simple and
complicated. First off, if you
want to
control people, keep them in a state of fear, the opposite of the state
of
love. Fear works and if it didn’t,
churches would be virtually empty. Fear
works be-
cause everyone has a guilty conscience because we’re all born guilty
with Adamic sin, and as a consequence, over a lifetime, each person has
become
an expert
in rebellion and disobedience.
And the guilt and fear that stem from this reality is what
“church
leaders” use to fill their pews. The
complicated part of the question
about the state of hell is how one reads and
understands God’s Word on the subject.
Yes, the Bible does speak of the “lake of fire” and “the smoke
of their
torment...”,
etc., etc. And yes there is
a Luke 16 account that seems to support a conscious state after death,
but on
closer study, all these references are not what they
appear to be with just a
cursory reading of God’s Word. And
because the overall mindset of the overwhelming majority of Christians
is to
not study God’s Word on
their own, but rather let the doctors of divinity do
all the thinking , the result is the same in churchianity as it is in
the
medical profession. The nominal
Christian’s
cry is let the professionals oversee and be responsible for my
spirit and my body while I go about my personal life of fun and games
and work,
never once being
accountable to anything but Satan’s kingdom of self
indulgence.
Fortunately,
for the
professional rebellious multitudes, the immortal soul doctrine is not a
Biblically sound precept, so there will be no conscious immortal souls
being
forever tortured. But rest assured, God
is instead quite able to destroy the whole person if folks choose to
remain
rebellious. (soul – “nephesh” in Hebrew
means the
whole being or person, not something inside a person that’s
immortal). If, early on, God had said to
Adam, “The day you sin you shall surely die and then something
inside of you called
your immortal soul will go into a conscious state of torture”, then
we’d have
to deal with that reality, but that’s not what He said.
Death (lifeless-
ness and utter dissolution of
the soul/being) was His decree to Adam and this is why without Christ’s
atonement and resurrection, we’d all return to, and remain in,
a state of dust
or oblivion.
Most
honest Bible scholars
know that the immortal soul doctrine didn’t come from Scripture, but
from Plato
and all other heathen religions. Even
Martin Luther wrote
that the doctrine that man has an immortal soul was nowhere
to be found in God’s Word. So what
happens when a person “dies” is that he goes into a state of sleep,
as Jesus
and the Apostle Paul confirmed a number of times, and it is from this
state that
all of mankind will be raised to life in the thousand year Millennial
reign of
Christ and His Church. This will be
mankind’s first opportunity to really hear the Good News and have a
chance to
go on into everlasting life. As a final
note about
the nefarious doctrine that man has a soul (as opposed to being a
soul), and that it is immortal, I want to state as strongly as possible
that if
a person or group
believe this unbiblical precept, then their whole
understanding of God’s All Wise and Reasonable Plan will be flawed. I can think of no other doctrine which is so
pivotal and that has caused so much confusion amongst sincere believers.
Page
5
So,
“in the fullness of
time”, along comes God’s only begotten Son and we find Him ushering in
a new
paradigm, or standard. God’s Predestined
Plan for Spiritual
Israel was now ready to kick in and take a quantum leap
towards a new way for His people to relate to Him, a way of grace and
love,
rather than a way of law and
fear. Man
would now be introduced to a lifestyle of actions based on a change in
his
innermost being, a change initiated and instigated by God, and God
alone,
via
regeneration into resurrection life. For
Christ’s Bride, this new creation life happens before the grave. For the rest of mankind it happens after the
grave.
By
the atoning work of
Christ, God’s Justice was forever satisfied so He could be Just, while
at the
same time justifying those whom He had called out of the darkness
of sin and
death into His Good News Gospel Light.
Through Christ and His Holy Spirit, He would focus our attention
not on
the outer, but on our inner realm, (again,
“the law says no adultery, but I say
you must not even lust after a woman”).
Remember, God was now shifting man’s attention from outward
performance
to the
internal causal place that determines outward behavior.
Of course, I’m referring here to man’s
heart. It was never God’s Plan to
continually address just the outer a
ctions of His fallen creatures, but rather,
when the time was ripe, send forth His Christ to not repair the heart
of man,
but replace it. He would give His elect
a heart
transplant. This “new heart of
flesh” (replacing man’s stoney heart) would now be the very heart (the
Spirit)
of Jesus Himself. Christ is the donor
and the new man
the recipient. The Old
Testament deals with the old heart, and the New Testament with the new
heart. Without a transplant, there can
be no new creation man.
With this new
heart, man is now capable of keeping God’s law, which is His Christ. And we keep Christ by being filled with
Christ’s Spirit, then maintain that status
through restful obedience, not
obedience to the letter of the law, but obedience to a greater law, the
spirit
of love behind the law. And again, I
must stress the point
that this obedience is indicative, not imperative.
It is the natural consequence of having been
born from above and stems from a desire to please God and do what
is
right.
There’s
an old legalistic
adage that says, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”. Nothing could be further from the truth,
for
its heaven’s highway that is
covered with the intent and desire to do
good. And God reads the heart with His
Divine Scrutiny being the basis for His final analysis of each
individual’s
performance.
A person may have a widow’s
mite of moral achievement coupled with a Ft. Knox amount of intent and
be more
acceptable to God than one who has a train load of
doing what’s right, but for
wrong selfish reasons (intent, we see, is everything).
No longer would man strive to keep the law
out of fear, with his heart of stone, but
now, with his new heart he would
strive to keep the essence of God’s laws out of love and appreciation
based on
his new grateful understanding that God has raised
him out of death into New
Creation life. Now a regenerated, man
was able to lovingly do, out of knowing he has been saved,
rather than
fearfully doing in order to be
saved.
And again, keep in mind that the word “saved” means saved from
the state
of death we’re all born into. By Christ
taking His sacrificial life (His Blood) into the
heavenly Holy of Holies and
presenting it to His Father, we have the glorious reversal of Adamic
sin and
death. This is why salvation is from
above and is in no way
dependent on man’s performance. It was
accomplished by Christ alone before
those living today were anything more than genetic material in the
loins of our
ancestors. So a person must be
regenerated from above by God, and only then can he come to know that
he has
been given new creation life, by the power and
enlightenment of God’s
Spirit. And this knowing is crucial, for
it is by this experiential knowledge that a person fully appreciates
the
fullness of what the Blood of
Christ has accomplished. And again, it is
out of this appreciation
that true love flows from our new heart, the heart of God.
Like God’s decree about David, believers
are
now men “after God’s own heart”. For the
Holy Spirit is the essence or Heart of God and He has put this new
heart/Jesus/Holy Spirit in us, “Christ in
you, the
Hope of Glory” (Col.
1:27b).
We
currently live in New
Testament times with a secular and pseudo religious society/system that
is
embroiled in Old Testament fear tactics to control the masses.
The secular system we live in, in the
nd it
works. And as I said, the religious
line thinking. Fear of rejection, if
anyone questions any of
their anti-Biblical theology, keeps the masses in line and Old
Testament
tithing laws keep this religious
system’s gears well oiled. Seldom do we
find early New Testament Love
theology being taught or adhered to, and virtually no one wants to even
consider the first
century early New Testament monetary economy that had
believers pooling their resources (Acts 2:4) in order to further God’s
Kingdom.
(In other words, out of
Christ’s Love that they had been baptized into, they
gave their all, just as their Lord had given His all).
Today, true New Testament Christianity is
seldom taught
and when it is, it falls on deaf ears, for most have never truly
been born from above and had their spiritual sight and hearing restored. And most of those who are
truly born again
are so embroiled in Satan’s worldly kingdom that they are blinded to a
life of
full consecration to God. Counterfeit
Christianity is rampant (and
quite successful) today. Christ predicted
a great falling away from
the truth before His return and for this reason alone I believe He is
about to
come back for His
true Church.
Unfortunately, a lot of people are going to hear those ominous
words,
“turn away, I never knew you”. For to
know Him is to know that He has carried
His Blood into the heavenly realm and,
thereby, made it possible for a person to be transformed from an
attitude of
fear to an attitude of non-manipulative, non-
selective love. This is sanctified
holiness!
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6
Along
these lines, let me
give you a graphic example of two very different types of love, showing
that
people can do the exact same thing for totally different reasons,
with both of
the acts appearing to be loving and self sacrificial.
(One is justified in the sight of God, the
other remains lost). Take for example
the actions of two men
outside a burning building with a small child yelling
for help from an upper window. Both men
rush into the building and all three people emerge unharmed. The
media deems the two men heroes and
self-sacrificial. But one of the men had
seen the T.V. news team van approaching in response to the fire, and
the other
did
not. Both men’s actions were the
same, but their hearts were different.
One had a selfish ulterior motive for fame, fortune and
self-aggrandizement, the other did
not.
We know that God reads the heart and that there’s a time coming
when God
will judge the hearts of those who are to be accepted or rejected into
the Body
of Christ. Is yours an appreciative new
heart
intending to please God, or do you still need a heart transplant? Are you doing good out of fear in the imperative
mood,
or out of love in the indicative mood? Remember,
the New Testament speaks of
Christian believers’ obedience as indicating they have been saved, and
the Old
Test-
ament speaks of
So
two men could be “towing
the line” with God’s law, but one could be doing the right thing out of
fear
and/or pride, and the other doing the right thing out of love and
appreciation
for the miracle of God’s Grace in his life.
We, as new creatures in Christ, are to do the right thing for
the right
reason, (doing the right thing for the wrong
reasons won’t “cut it”.) Our
actions and words are to be indicators of a changed heart, not a heart
that is
still stoney and performing out of fear.
And again, the final
“judgment call” about the status of one’s heart is
reserved exclusively for God.
A
lot of people today use a
strip of chemically treated paper in order to determine their body’s PH. They touch this litmus paper to their tongue
and when the saliva
comes in contact with the treated paper, a change in color
takes place that will indicate the body’s PH value.
This paper indicates to what degree the
person’s body
is alkaline or acidic. We
can say that the color of the paper is indicative of the
person’s
acid/alkaline condition. This is a good
example of what is meant by
indicative, but the metaphor falls short in
that it doesn’t take into account the important aspect of intent. As I pointed out in the burning building
story, two people
can do the exact same thing for two completely different
reasons. This is why Scripture tells us
there will be a day in which God judges the hearts of all who profess
Christ as
Lord and Savior and why to some He’ll say, “turn away I never knew you”. And to others He’ll say, “Come, you blessed
of my Father, inherit the Kingdom
prepared for you from the foundation of the
world”. With litmus paper the heart of
the person being tested doesn’t enter into the picture.
Whether it’s Hitler or Mother
Teresa, the
litmus paper’s PH value will be affected only by their body’s
acidic/alkaline
condition, not their hearts condition.
This reality is why Scripture tells people
to “examine yourself to see
if you be in the faith”. Each of us must
be ruthlessly honest about ourselves and why we do what we do. We can’t read another’s heart
with complete
accuracy, but we can read our own, via our conscience.
And if we are certain that our old heart has
been replaced by God’s grace, then we need to
monitor it daily for worldliness
to see that it’s not becoming hardened towards the things of God and
His
commands. Heart transplants are limited,
only one to a
customer. As Paul says in
Galatians 5:1, “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ
hath made
us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of
bondage”. And Peter agrees in 2 Peter
2:20, “For if
after they escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of
the
Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they
are again entangled therein, and overcome,
the latter end is worse with them than the beginning.
For it had been better for them not to have
known the way of right-
eousness, then, after they have known it, to turn away
from the holy commandment delivered unto them.
But it is happened unto them according to the true proverb, ‘
the dog is
turned to his own vomit again, and the sow that was washed to her
wallowing in
the mire’”.
This
tendency of being
pulled back into worldliness is one of the reasons why God’s Spirit
drove early
believers into tight communities.
Successful sanctification
depends on two or more people setting
themselves on a path of holiness.
Believers are exhorted to not forsake the fellowship of fellow
believers. In this context,
fellowship
is not just a weekly gathering in a religious sterile setting, but an
ongoing
close interpersonal, intimate existence where one’s faults and foibles
can be
experienced, noted, and lovingly encountered.
This kind of interpersonal scrutiny and accountability is what
most
recoil from and avoid like the plague.
That’s why
a couple of hours a week in a sanitized setting is all
today’s professing Christians can handle.
Their daily walk cannot stand up to the examination of others,
so
more
often than not, by silent mutual consent, believers agree to not meddle
or
watch over each other as they allow themselves daily to be pulled more
and more
into the unsaved world’s way of thinking and doing.
This unspoken agreement has spawned a worldly
church system and membership that is unprecedented in
the history of the
nominal church. It has gotten so bad
that anyone speaking out against this adulterous church (having an
ongoing
nefarious affair with Satan’s
worldly kingdom) is instantly ostracized and
labeled a disillusioned fanatic or a false prophet.
Page
7
What
all this boils down to
is whether or not a person feels the need to take seriously the command
in
Scripture to “come out of her my people least ye be
partakers of her sins”. The “her” in this
verse is the nominal church
system that has amalgamated herself with the world to the extent that
her
members are
indistinguishable (outside their once a week church setting) from
the masses of unregenerate folks that are habitually and compulsively
devoted
to daily
interacting with the mediums of T.V, the entertainment industry, the
business community, and the political climate that prevails over the
United
States. What
all this preoccu-pation
with Satan’s kingdom distills down to is one big ongoing “reality” show
sponsored by every conceivable addiction ever known to man.
Fat, dumb and “happy”, the masses of pathetic
pawns are used by nefarious unseen spiritual entities who are hell bent
on destroying
all mankind. And the
majority of those
who profess to be “Christian” are so amalgamated with this perverted
system
that never once does it occur to them that they are traitors to
the Cross of
Christ and their lives are steeped in “aiding and abetting the enemy”. The cliché I’ve heard that best
describes the
current dilemma I’ve been
speaking to is “If you were arrested for being a true
early New Testament believer, would there be enough evidence to convict
you?”. Sadly for most, the answer
is “No”! However, “as for me and my house,
we will
serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:15). And not
by mere “by rote” profession and confession, but by a lifestyle
that reflects a
consecrated hatred for the things of “the world, the flesh and the
devil”. At this point in one’s consecrated
walk in
Christ, His words will be
indelibly etched on the tip of one’s mind – “Come,
take up your cross and follow Me!”. Not
My cross, but YOURS! What most nominal
Christians do today
is gladly carry Christ’s cross like Simon of Cyrene, who
was compelled to bear the Savior’s cross to Golgatha.
But this is not the cross of Matthew 16:24;
Mark
The Bible says that those who are, and do, are just a “little
flock”, a
handful of “first fruits”, an elect espoused Bride, made up of living
stones
that will corporately
be a spiritual temple indwelt and inhabited by Almighty
God, Himself! Talk about a calling or
vocation, for what in this corrupt fallen world could possibly
compare to this
invocation from God? Carnal, fleshy
wealth?
the first person to set foot on
Mars? Or becoming the president of the
all end up in death and evaporate into dust. But
regenerative resurrection life and
subsequent cross carrying, now that’s a different matter.
That leads to immor-
tality
and a guaranteed
place in the Glory of God’s
pers! So who are the worshippers who will
come to
this temple. They can’t be the Bride of
Christ for the Bride is joined with Him as part of Almighty God’s
living
stones
worship God Who will be
dwelling in His living stones
life again, based on Christ’s Atonement/salvation for all.
And the environment that these will be raised
up into, with regenerated resurrection life, will be a restored,
Satan free
earth, “wherein dwells righteousness (2 Peter
This is what some believers know to be God’s Sabbatical
Millennium and its purpose is to be a vehicle through which all mankind
can
experience a restored
resurrected life that Acts 3:21 speaks to. Finally,
after 6,000 years of sin and death,
all men will know God and interact with Him through Christ and His
Body/Bride.
Here
then is why Christ’s
Bride to be has, down through the ages, been exhorted to indicate (ie.,
in the
indicative mood) openly to all, who they are, now that Christ l
ives in
them. And how do we, who are truly born
from above, indicate to a fallen world that we are different? Surely not by fornicating with this world and
contributing
to its darkness, except for an hour on Sunday. The
only Biblically acceptable indicator is
something that springs forth from a believer’s innermost being like so
many
rays that beam forth from the sun. Sun
rays can only shine forth with light in what would otherwise be
darkness. And the light of a believer is
best described
as self sacrificial love, the same sacrificial life and love that
Christ and
Paul and others lived, as they indicated by their actions the
undeniable fact
that the very
essence (The Holy Spirit) of The Almighty had come and set up
residence in the Perfect flesh of Jesus and also, afterwards, in the
fallen flesh
of all those who
would willingly drink the cup of affliction mentioned in
Matthew 20:22,23. Partaking of this cup,
then, is the prime indicator or fruit of the indwelling Holy Spirit.
Without this fruitage of Biblical Love, a
person’s profession/confession/declaration/avowal of faith or works of
any sort
is nothing more than a study in futile noise.
Or as the Holy Spirit though Paul so perfectly put it in 1 Corinthians
13:1, it’s something akin to the sound of a clanging cymbal.
Page
8
So
for the past two thousand
years, God has been putting together a corporate Body/Bride for His
Son, not a
one man brass band. Everyone in God’s
true Church
has a part to play, and once Christ returns, each living stone
member of His Temple will be cemented together with the mortar of love
and,
along with Christ, thereby
form the basis of Abraham’s “seed”, a corporate Head
and Body that will begin the glorious process of “blessing all the
families of
the earth”. This wonderful time will
see
the resurrection of everyone who has ever lived into a new creation
life and a
world free from any satanic influence.
This thousand years, with all of mankind
living in an environment of
“paradise on earth”, will allow each individual to personally
experience what
Adam enjoyed in God’s Eden, but with the all important benefit
and advantage of
having experienced the pain and degra-dation of sin and corruption
(unlike Adam
before his fall). Here we find the
unfathomable Wisdom of God’s
Plan, a Divine Course of action that saw it would
be eternally better for every man to experience sin and death firsthand
and
there- after enter eternity with a much
greater appreciation of righteousness
then if there had been no experience and consciousness of sin and
corruption. This is why God allowed sin to
enter the
human race through father Adam. Contrary
to the belief of many, God was not “blind sided” by Satan’s actions in
what occurred
at
good! Augustine summed up this concept
perfectly
when referring to
what
Augustine decreed from God’s Word was, in my opinion, not inspired by
God’s
Holy Spirit. But in this short sentence,
I feel he captured the essence of God’s
Sovereignty and inescapable Will.
So
once again, all who are
granted eternal life will enter eternity with a past set of experiences
and
therefore an acute consciousness of sin, so when overlaid with the
fullness of
righteousness, the life as a fallen corrupt creature will be viewed by
folks as
having lived in the cesspool of the fallen self. The contrast will be
enormous
and
will be one of the key factors that will make certain of an eternity
free
from sin. As Paul tells us in 1 Cor.
2:8,9…”But it is written, eye hath not
seen, nor ear heard,
neither have entered into the heart of man, the things
which God hath prepared for them that love Him”.
After
all is said and done,
and Satan is loosed at the end of the one thousand year millennial
period, in
order to test the faith of all those resurrected who have been
given new
creation life during the millennium, God’s full Plan of Salvation will
be over,
as He then consigns all incorrigibles that follow Satan, to be cast
with him
into
the lake of fire, and destroyed, once and for all.
And this, so that Christ will be able to then
hand over and up to God, all those perfected in Him, so that God will
forever
be “all in all”. AMEN!