Daily Archives: January 8, 2015

Dead, But Alive

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DEAD, BUT ALIVE

Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you have died and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you will also appear with Him in glory (Col. 3: 1-4).

The ‘elemental spirits’ of which Paul spoke still hold sway over the minds of unbelievers, ‘But,’ said Paul, ‘you have died to the ideas and beliefs and philosophies which are lies spawned by the devil to keep you in bondage.’ You have died to the demonic spirits responsible for the lies you believed, and they no longer have the power to influence your life and do to you what you believed they could do.

How sad that there are still many believers in Jesus who also believe in the power of the devil to ‘attack’ or harm them outside of God’s control! We have to make up our minds, once and for all, about who is in charge. What we believe is of vital importance because it is what or who we believe that ultimately has the control of our lives.

Jesus’s first words, after His inauguration into His public ministry at His baptism, when He was anointed with the Holy Spirit, was to announce, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of God is here!’ What was He saying? ‘Get your thinking straight. God is in charge!’ Prophet Isaiah had the same message for his people when the world seemed to be turning upside down for them:

How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, ‘Your God reigns!’ (Isaiah 52: 7)

What better news can there be in a world that seems to be spinning out of control? The solution is to believe what is true, not what seems to be true or what those who think they are in charge are claiming to be true. The only thing that will steady us in a world gone crazy, is the knowledge and assurance that God’s appointed king is on His throne.

Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth rise up and their rulers band together against the Lord and against His anointed, saying, ‘Let us break their chains and throw off their shackles.’ The One enthroned in heaven laughs; the Lord scoffs at them. He rebukes them in His anger and terrifies them in His wrath saying, ‘I have installed my king on Zion, my holy mountain’ (Psalm 2: 1-6).

Paul’s counsel is: ‘You know it; now believe it!’ When you watch the news on TV or read the goings on in the newspaper, screen the information through the truth – who is in charge? Set your heart and mind on the non-negotiable truth that God has raised Jesus from the dead and given Him the name and the position of highest authority (Phil. 2: 6-11). In spite of appearances, Jesus Christ will reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet (1 Cor. 15: 25).

Why, then, does the world, and often our own lives, seem to be so out of line with who we know God to be? Where is the peace and joy that Jesus insisted He came to bring? What about suffering and evil? Why do bad things happen to good people? How does that line up with God being in control?

It all depends on our expectations. If we think that the real life Jesus came to bring is about living a trouble-free existence in this life, we have misunderstood His message.

I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world’ (John 16: 33).

We cannot expect to live a perfectly untroubled life in an imperfect world. We are surrounded by imperfection and cannot escape the consequences of Adam’s rebellion. The good news is that God uses it all, good and bad, to shape us for the real world which is still to come.

God has one overriding purpose in permitting us to be part of the suffering – the purifying of our faith, that is, bringing us to the conviction that, in spite of everything, He is in charge and He is trustworthy.  Why? Because what we believe will determine who controls our lives.

In every adversity He demands that we keep our hearts and minds steadfastly committed to the truth that He is good and that He is in charge.

These have come (all kinds of trials -1 Peter 1: 6) so that the proven genuineness of your faith – of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire – may result in praise, glory and honour when Jesus Christ is revealed (1 Peter 1: 7).

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

 

The Heart Of The Matter

Christian Life, , , ,

THE HEART OF THE MATTER

Since you died with Christ to the elemental spirits of this world why, as though you still belonged to the world, do you submit to its rules: ‘Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!’ These rules, which have to do with things that are all destined perish with use, are based on merely human commands and teachings. Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack value in restraining self-indulgence (Col. 2: 20-23).

Paul’s use of three words gets to the heart of the matter – the matter of the heart. Religion with its rules and regulations may be able to control behaviour to a point but it can never restrain the passions of the heart. Jesus made it clear that the problem lies much deeper than what we do. The issue is what we are. Even the Jews, who had God’s Law – and if there were any group of people who would have been acceptable to God, it would have been them – were under the wrath of God because of their evil hearts.

Paul’s sorrow, both here in the case of the Colossians who were in danger of being lured away from their faith in Christ through Gnostic philosophy, and the Galatians who were tempted to become embroiled in Jewish law, was that they were being fooled by ‘human wisdom’. From the outside these teachings appeared to make sense, but their demands were no more than cosmetic. You can stick a plaster on a cancer but it will not cure it.

Paul knew that there was only one cure for a heart that was at enmity against God. Remove the reason for the rift and restore peace. There is only one person who had the power to do that – God Himself, because there was nothing any human being could do to bring about reconciliation. We are the offenders and God the offended. It is the offended party who must reach out with forgiveness before the breach can be healed. The offender’s responsibility to initiate reconciliation once the offence has been removed.

This is exactly what Jesus Christ did for us. He removed the offence by paying the price for our sin and He initiated reconciliation by representing us to the Father.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them . . . (2 Corinthians 5: 17-19a).

Self-discipline may curb unruly behaviour for a while but it cannot change the heart. It may control choices temporarily but it can never control desires and appetites. There is only one thing that can effect permanent change – a new heart.

God knew that! He promised His people under the old dispensation that He would do exactly that through the Holy Spirit, but it was to be part of a whole new order of things.

‘For I will take you out of the nations: I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws (Ezekiel 36: 24-27).

How futile, then, to try to follow self-imposed rules when they have no power to change the heart.

The issue is: Who do you believe? If you continue to believe the lies of principalities and powers, they will continue to rule your life. If you believe that Jesus overcame these ‘elemental spirits’ at the cross, they no longer have power to influence your life. You are free from their deception to live under the authority and power of the Spirit of God who lives within you.

The heart of the matter is the matter of the heart!

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

 

Stay Connected

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STAY CONNECTED

Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you. Such a person goes into great detail about what they have seen; they are puffed up with idle notions by their unspiritual minds. They have lost connection with the head, from whom the whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow (Col. 2: 18-19).

Paul alluded here to two of the main ‘idle notions’ of the Gnostic heresy; ‘the worship of angels’ and ‘false humility’. To answer the problem of evil, they taught that a demiurge, the last of a series of ’emanations’ or angels, which separated God from creation which they regarded as evil, was responsible for creation. Denial of sensory pleasures, asceticism, was the way to overcome the evils of the flesh. This led to false humility – pride in their own effort to overcome the lusts of the flesh by self-denial.

The Bible consistently teaches that the world is in the control of fallen angels led by Satan. Paul made it clear in this letter, that Jesus Christ overcame all the principalities and powers that rule the world through the cross. Believers in Christ have died to these powers who rule by deception, and are no longer subject to them. Therefore, to continue to acknowledge their control is to deny the work of Jesus’ death on the cross.

The church, which is the body of which Jesus Christ is the head, is the custodian of the truth as long as the body remains connected to the head. At no time did Jesus appoint a human being to deputise for Him or to take His place as head of the church, as is taught in Roman Catholicism. The pope is not Christ’s deputy and representative of Jesus Christ on earth. Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to indwell believers, to represent Him, to reveal Him and to lead believers into all truth (John 16: 12-15).

Referring back to verses 16, 17, Paul counselled that they were not to allow these false teachers or any other body or group to set the standard of their behaviour or what they believed, but the church – the ‘body’ of which Jesus is the head. The Head and the body are inseparably joined together by their interconnecting relationships which provides the strength and causes the body to grow. It was the Head, through the body, which directed the lives and behaviour of the members of the body.

Eating and drinking were part of the celebration of their relationship with God. He instructed them to celebrate His goodness in providing for them through their annual harvests by a series of feasts. Even their deliverance from slavery in Egypt was remembered by an annual Passover Feast. Eating and drinking, far from being sensual indulgence which was forbidden by Gnostic teaching, was the way to recognise and give thanks to the Lord for His goodness to them.

These beliefs and practices which were being advocated by Gnostic teachers, were evidence that they were part of a group which was no longer a part of the body and had lost contact with the head.

‘Lost connection with the head . . .’ This was Paul’s answer to the question as to why there are so many deviations from the simple truth that is in Jesus Christ today. The church has become the laughingstock of the world because of its fragmentation. Where is the unity which is supposed to characterise the church and bear witness to the world that the Father sent the Son (John 17: 21)?

People are carried away by ‘idle notions’, thoughts and philosophies that arise from ‘unspiritual minds’, and not from God’s Word. God has given us His inspired and infallible Word as the foundation of what we believe and upon which we are to build our lives. Every thought and idea must be tested against the truth of God’s Word.

He has also provided us with the indwelling Spirit of truth but the ‘unspiritual mind’ would rather follow the convenience of its ‘idle notions’ which tend towards ‘false humility’ rather than the less palatable truth that everything we have and everything we need is in Christ.

Jesus’ response to the elaborate notions that conflict with the truth in people’s minds, is found in His simple prescription:

Remain in me as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. . . If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you’ (John 15: 4-5; 7).

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.