G
gideons300
Guest
There can be no doubt that God's will for us is our sanctification, our being delivered from the grip of evil and the self nature, so that we can BE witnesses, not DO witnessing, to a lost and dying world. At the heart of this discussion is whether or not our salvation, our being rescued, forgiven, delivered, changed and empowered is something God takes responsibility for.... or whether, once we are forgiven, He sends us off with a set of instructions..."goals to shoot for", a still broken nature and says "Do the best you can" and my grace will make up the difference. Is this Christianity? Is this the gospel?
Basically, to sum up what most of our modern Christianity is putting forth, we are told that because we are only human, even with the best of intentions, we mess up. We want to do good, but sometimes we fail... a lot, LOL. We want to avoid doing bad and giving into temptation and yet, we are weak and slip at times. Correct?
Do we not see that this is Romans 7 in a nutshell? This is exactly where the church, almost every single denomination, has planted their flag. The different denominations may disagree on a thousand doctrines, but this one doctrine, our Romans 7 existence, THAT we all agree on. But Romans 7 is the wilderness we were destined to pass though, not make our home. Paul passed through, learned what he needed to learn, and then proceeded to Romans 8. Guys, there is a huge difference between us and Paul. Paul hated his life in Romans 7. His view of himself was as a prisoner, trapped by sin... a wretched man in great need of deliverance. We are taught that this is the best God can do and to make peace with our "humanness". It is not our humanness we are making peace with, but our fallen nature ruled still by the world and the god of it. We accept our imprisonment as an inevitability so our struggling has, for all intents and purposes, has ceased. We even use Paul as our evidence to back up our contentment, our acceptance of our lack of godly, single-eyed, sold-out hearts. But listen. There was no contentment in Paul's heart when he was bound there. He needed deliverance from the nature that would not bow the knee, all day, every day, every second of every day. He HATED his life of failing God, and his constant weakness and disobedience. His heart cried out for the prison cell he was bound in to be flung wide open, and you know what?He got what he cried out for. And I am convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that we will too, but first we have to long for it, and then believe it is possible to be delivered from the hand of the one who hates us by our God who cannot lie.
The Ephesians were a pretty stable church. No major sinning going on. No divisive members. God was working in them. But Paul wanted more for them. Listen to what he prayed for them:
"...that the eyes of your understanding might be enlightened, that you might know the hope of His calling, and the exceeding greatness of His power to usward who believe....even the same power that God used when He raised Jesus from the dead."
Whoa. Do we see? To these saints, who were indeed walking with God, he longed for them to get a higher vision of what God had for them, power to overcome the enemy, power to rise from the grave of being "only human", where sin still reigns.
Jesus said:
"He that commits sin is a servant to sin."
...and then promised that the freedom He was offering us would make that fact a moot point. Deliverance was His plan for us, not based upon our efforts to obey, but upon a free gift of an obedient nature.
Paul has told us.... beseeched us.... that we might earnestly contend for the faith that was once delivered unto the saints. Why was the early church so holy, so mighty, full of zeal, so loving, so victorious? They BELIEVED. They did not limit the Holy one of Israel with they unbelief. And what did they believe? They believed that when Christ died, do did our old nature, and when Christ arose, He took us with Him into newness of life and gave us natures that were holy, new, capable of obedience in all things able to love fully and be loved linitlessly. That is why he said that nothing profits us but this new nature. We must put it on.
I so pray for any who are reading these words that we all see what we have been led to miss..... that God is the potter in the new covenant, not us. He has not left us comfortless, nor has He left us powerless. He is IN us, not just with us. Our part is to believe it. He has clearly promised that the new covenant would be different from the old. No more would He ask us to do things that we cannot do.
So what was the purpose of the law, the old covenant? Why would He do that, put us under a requirement that we cannot fulfill? He certainly knew our state, our weakness, our frailty, our humanness, our fallen nature, did He not? He did it for one reason, that we might understand that grace must be for more than just forgiveness. There must be power there to equip us to actually obey Him, to walk as overcomers.He did it so that we might see how deeply sin goes in us, how impotent we really are. He did it so we could finally admit to Him that He must do it for us if it is ever going to get done.
I so pray you see this. We have thought that believing for forgiveness is all we need, all we can expect. Then the responsibility shift onto us to try our best. We have been in error. We have settled for healed only slightly, forgiven but left with old natures that cannot do what our forgiven hearts want to do. Romans 7.
But that is not all God has for us. He has overcoming holy natures we can literally put on, armor to protect us and insure we do not fall when attacked with temptation.It is called our new man, but in truth it is Christ in us, causing us to will and to do of His good pleasure. We must put Him on, by faith alone, and when we do, our entire world will change, and we casnnot yet even comprehend what He plans to do through us.
We have turned upside down the relationship of the potter and the clay. We have tried to form our God to what makes sense to us, instead of yielding ourselves to the one who loves us beyond our comprehension do that He can change us into the children we so want to be. When we finally let God be God in us, we WILL rise up with wings as eagles. We WILL overcome the world, the flesh and the devil. The church will arise from being a splintered shell of itself and just as Ezekiel predicted in Ezek. 36, the world will look on and exclaim:
"Look! That which has born only briars and thorns has become again like the garden of Eden."
That, dear one, is what God has for us, and when we finally tire of trying and failing, and in our wretched state of wanting to be good children but knowing we will fall again, we cry out to Him to do it for us, He will. Not theoretically. Not positionally. REALLY.
May we all admit our great need but not stop there. Let us bombard the throne room of our God to do for us what He has promised to do for us, make us new creatures who can follow Him all the way into eternity, obeying Him because we LOVE to obey Him and please Him.
May there be no more war between us, sister. What we are is sadly undeniable. We are not sold out or single eyed. Parts of us do not want to follow Him, to our shame, but it is what happens if we remain in the flesh, in content our fallen nature. No more.
No more Romans 7. That long era in the church's walk is coming to a close. It is time for us to inherit Romans 8, where we can agree with God that we are no longer in the flesh but in the Spirit and that we owe the flesh NOTHING. Big changes are coming, wonderful ones..... and if our own eyes did not see them, we would never believe it possible. We cannot yet even comprehend what He has for us but He is now revealing them to us by His Spirit.
He is coming for a bride without spot or wrinkle, and He meant every word there. He will not find His church worldly, disfunctional, divided. He will find His believed single eyed and full of light. It is HIS job to make us that way, not ours. Our job is to cry out to Him admitting we need that more than our next breath. There is no pressure here, no legalistic guilt trip, just honest hearts crying out for our God to deliver us from evil, set us free indeed as He clearly promised from the power of darkness, and from the old us that refuses to bow the knee to a God who loves us beyond comprehension.
Blessings, my dear brothers and sisters in Christ
Gideon
