Monthly Archives: February 2021

A NEW OUTFIT!

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A NEW OUTFIT!

Do not lie to one another, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all (Col. 3: 8-11).

A bath and a set of new clothes changes our image, doesn’t it?

Our lives are like that too. Imagine yourself living on the street for years – nowhere to sleep and nowhere to take a bath and put on fresh clothing. However you lived in your homeless existence, you accumulated the filth and the vermin of the streets and there was nowhere you could go to take a bath or change your clothes. You were doomed to live in your environment of dirt with no hope of even changing your circumstances.

Then someone sees you in your plight and takes pity on you. He drives you to his home in his luxury vehicle, runs a hot bath, sets out soap, shampoo, perfume, a thick, fluffy towel, and a set of new clothes. He leads you to the bathroom and invites you in to clean up.

How would you feel when you emerged from the steamy tub, towelled off and dressed in clean clothing? You would feel like a million dollars! You would have no desire to return to your life on the street, complete with its filth and the vermin that were your constant companions.

Then, on top of that, your compassionate benefactor does the unthinkable – he invites you to become a part of his household – a son, in fact. There is a place at his table for you. He shows you to your own bedroom, complete with a closet full of new clothing and everything you need to live a clean and respectable life. Would you be fool enough to refuse his generosity and go back to your old life of poverty and squalor?

That is what happened to you spiritually when you accepted Jesus’s invitation to go home with Him and ‘clean up’. You shed the filthy rags of your old life; your efforts to live a good life; to earn God’s approval for your attempts to live up to His standards; or even your couldn’t-care-less, happy-go-lucky, selfish, unrestrained, boundary-less, anything-goes life.

He took you home to the Father who welcomed you as His lost son. He power-washed your innermost being in His own blood, removing all the fear, guilt and shame of your old life. He clothed you with the spotless garment of His own righteousness. He gave you a place at His banqueting table and a room of your own in His house. He gave you access to all His resources and the right to use them as long as you use them in line with His character and will.

He asks of you only one thing – to live in union with Him so that you can accurately represent Him to a world that does not acknowledge or know Him. You are a new person now, no longer alone and having to fight for an existence. You are part of God’s family, those who have been rescued from their terrible plight, with a new identity – children of God. All the credentials of your old life no longer count.

‘Now,’ says Paul, ‘since you have been washed, clothed, given a new identity and a new family, live like a member of God’s household. Forget who you were and live who you are, a son or daughter of God. You don’t have to cover up who you were. Your past has been obliterated forever. You don’t have to pretend to be who you are not. You have been fully accepted as God’s child and you are fully loved. Just be who you are, a beloved son or daughter of God.’

What a relief to know that you can just be you because God is working in you! He is renewing His image in you as you get to know Him and learn to obey Him as your loving Abba, papa, daddy. You no longer have to be a homeless beggar, living by your wits just to exist. You are no longer an orphan.

You have a name, a home and an inheritance because you are God’s child!

See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is who we are! (1 John 3: 1a).

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.

WHERE THE RUBBER MEETS THE ROAD

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WHERE THE RUBBER MEETS THE ROAD

Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. But now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander and filthy language from your lips (Col. 3: 5-8).

This is where the rubber meets the road!

This is the place where religion and faith in Jesus Christ come to the parting of the ways. Every religious philosophy offers some sort of goal in the afterlife to which their teaching points – Nirvana, Utopia, 70 virgins, heaven, whatever, but there is no proof of the truth of what they teach because no one has ever returned from the dead to verify their aspirations.

One person did – Jesus Christ! He not only proved by His resurrection that everything He taught is the truth; He also made it possible, through His death and resurrection, to begin the process of restoration in this life! No other religious belief empowers a fallen human being to overcome sin and live a completely new life. Many thousands, many millions of people have been transformed from losers to brand new people through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Apostle Paul, in fact, who experienced it for himself and was able to write with conviction, said:

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come. The old has gone, the new is here! (2 Cor. 5:17).

The proof that a person has surrendered the ownership of his life to Christ, is that he is a changed person. The old passions and desires to live for and serve self and sin have given way to a new love. Where there was once enmity against God, the fear of punishment and the uncontrolled appetites of the sinful nature which acted like slave drivers, the peace of Christ now rules.

The sin nature is still there but it is no longer the driving force of our lives. Apostle Peter put it even more clearly:

His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and goodness. Through these, He has given us His very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires (2 Pet. 1: 3-4).

The potential for us to live a godly life is there but we still have choices to make that activate that potential, making it actual as we choose, thought by thought and action by action, to nurture the divine nature within us and put to death the appetites that indulge our old fleshly passions and lusts.

Obeying rules can never kill our sinful nature. Christ’s death and resurrection has done away with the guilt and shame of our past sinful lives, and set us free to pursue a life of trust in Him and obedience to His ways. Making the choice to obey Him rather than our fleshly desires is the first step towards activating the power of the Holy Spirit who is in us to do what we have chosen to do.

Where once, even when we said ‘No’ to our sinful desires, our lusts drove us to do what we did not want to do, now we can say ‘No’ with the assurance that ‘No’ really means ‘No’! Paul said we are to put to death whatever belongs to our earthly nature. God has set boundaries around our physical appetites within which it we may satisfy them. Food is to sustain the body; sex is to be enjoyed within the confines of marriage; money and possessions are to be our servants, not our masters.

There are legitimate desires which are part of life and illegitimate passions which are detrimental to life and relationships. The destructive desires and emotions are the things we must identify and put to death – because, in Christ, we have already died to everything that drives this world system, and upon which the wrath of God will fall.

What a relief to know that we need no longer be driven by unruly passions but led by the Spirit when we submit to Him!

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.

 

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 supreme 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

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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 to 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 think which reveals what we are. Even the Jews, who had God’s Law – and if there was 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 and 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.

In the Old Covenant, 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.