Monthly Archives: April 2021

NO CONDEMNATION!

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NO CONDEMNATION!

“Therefore, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus because, through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life, has set you free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so He condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” Romans 8:1-4.

Ahhh! Romans 8! Like a breath of fresh air in a stuffy room comes the grand climax of Romans 8. The first seven chapters of Romans are gloomy and depressing, but for a reason. Paul must make clear how desperate our situation was until God stepped in with His solution.

In one great act of intervention, God sent His Son into a hopeless and helpless world to rescue us from our plight. No condemnation! What magical words after setting the scene of our despair! But how many believers are still trapped in their insecurity and fear because they have failed to embrace these two liberating words!

The woman who was caught in adultery and dragged before Jesus for sentencing knew what it felt like to hear His words, “Neither do I condemn you. Go, and leave your life of sin.” She had just been pardoned by none other than the Son of God and escaped the death penalty to go free, both from guilt and from the life that had imprisoned her for so long.

It was not Paul but God Himself who had pronounced the whole of mankind “Not guilty!” But how could He do that? Someone had paid the debt and set all the prisoners free. It was the season of Jubilee then, the time for setting prisoners and slaves free and we are still living in that season until Jesus comes.

But what if we sin again? No condemnation! What of those who have committed heinous crimes against humanity? No condemnation! What about those who died before Jesus came? No condemnation! What of those who have not yet been born? No condemnation! What about those who have never heard about Jesus? No condemnation!

Jesus died for the sin of the world – before the foundation of the world. What does that mean? From God’s perspective, although He sent His Son into the world at a point in time, and He died on a specific day in history, the effects of His death are for all people for all time. Does the mean that all people are automatically saved? Of course not! God’s forgiveness must be personally appropriated to become effective in our lives.

God’s holy law can do no more than show us where we have gone wrong. Only the power of God’s Holy Spirit can set us free from the power of sin to live a new life of righteousness in Christ Jesus. The struggle is over. The voice of condemnation has been silenced. Whose voice do we hear when we feel condemned? It is not the voice of God nor the voice of conscience because God has pronounced over us, once and for all, His verdict, “No condemnation!” It is the voice of our enemy, repeating what he hears about himself.

By offering Himself as an atoning sacrifice, Jesus both agreed with God’s verdict that all people are guilty of breaking His holy law, and He accepted in our place the punishment that God required. God carried out His sentence on Jesus that we might go free.

“…God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them…” 2 Corinthians 5:19.

No condemnation! Do you believe that? Have you received His verdict? You are free! Like His words to the guilty woman, Jesus says to you, “Neither do I condemn you. Go, and leave your life of sin.”

Acknowledgement

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

THE BEAST IS DEAD!

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THE BEAST IS DEAD!

“So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work in me.

What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.” Romans 7:21-25.

Despair! Was there ever despair like this?

Trapped by a power much stronger than himself, Paul felt as though he were caught in the claws of an enraged beast which was destroying his life and he was powerless to overcome it. Have you ever felt like that?

Years ago I was in a relationship that produced ongoing cycles of anger, resentment and bitterness which lasted until I was able to forgive, only to begin the cycle all over again when the same provocation happened. In despair I cried out to God, “How will I ever get free from my old nature?” I, who am not given to seeing visions, had a vision that morning on my knees.

I found myself in a walled garden. It was springtime and the garden was full of new growth. There were trees and flowers everywhere; new plants were coming up and the garden promised to be a riot of beautiful, but… there was also a huge black beast in the garden. It was pacing up and down, trampling the plants, and causing destruction wherever it walked. I cried out to God, “O God, how can I get rid of the beast?”

I heard a voice say, “Turn around.” As I did so, my vision changed. I was inside an ancient tomb. The tomb was empty, but there were signs that a body had been there; bloodied grave clothes lay on the stone slab. Again, the voice said, “Turn around.” As my eyes became used to the gloom, I saw the beast lying dead on the floor of the tomb. My heart leapt for joy.

Once again, my vision changed; I was back in the garden but this time there was no beast to destroy. The trees were heavy with luscious fruit and the flowers were in full bloom. There were no weeds and the paths were neatly laid out. Jesus, the gardener, was walking with me in the garden. “This is my garden,” He said. “The fruit belongs to me. You may walk in my garden but you may not pick the fruit.”

When the vision faded, I felt light-hearted and free. I understood that God had given me a vivid picture of Romans 7 and 8. The beast in my vision was my old nature, ruthlessly destroying everything wherever it walked and I had not power to control it. But…Jesus put the beast to death when He died on the cross. When He rose from the dead, the beast was left lying in the tomb. It no longer had the power to destroy in my life.

The garden represents my life, and Jesus, the gardener is in control. By His death He has put to death the power of my old nature to control me and to destroy what He is cultivating in me. As long as I allow Him to take care of my garden, my life will bear fruit for Him because the beast is dead and no longer has any power to destroy what He is growing in me.

Despair has been changed to hope. I am no longer a slave of sin. My old nature remains but it lies dead in the tomb. Its only power to influence me depends on whether I allow it to do so by believing that it can still hurt me. As long as I believe the truth that Jesus has set me free from the power of my sin nature, I can choose to obey God and allow the Holy Spirit in me to strengthen me to obey.

Once again, it’s a partnership of faith between me and God. I believe what God has said; I make the choice to obey Him; by His grace He enables me to do what I have chosen and He gets the praise!

Acknowledgement

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

CIVIL WAR

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CIVIL WAR

“As it is, it is no longer I myself but it is sin living in me. For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.

For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do – this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.” Romans 7:17-20.

Spoken like a true Hebrew!

Every year, during Elul, the last month of the Hebrew calendar, prior to the Feast of Trumpets (Yom Teruah or Rosh Hashanah) which preceded the most holy day of the year, (Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement), a trumpet was blown daily as a reminder to every Jew to prepare for Yom Kippur. This was the day when God judged and forgave all sin for another year.

Preparation consisted of three things, teshuvah, tephillah and tsidaqah – repentance, prayer and works of righteousness. However, repentance was not about turning away from sin but returning to the person God created them to be. Prayer was not about petitioning God but about turning towards Him and learning to think like He thinks. Works of righteousness were not about doing things for less fortunate people even though they were undeserving, but about being merciful and generous to others because God had shown mercy to them.

Paul recognised that sin was an invader, illegally occupying the person God had created him to be. This was not as God intended. He had been taken over from conception by a squatter who had no right to be there but whom he had no power to evict. He differentiated between his true self and the sin that ruled his life. He was not making excuses for his behaviour or trying to evade responsibility for his choices, but rather recognising that God was not responsible for what he was because sin was not in His blueprint for man.

God is good (functional) and everything He made, including man, was good (functional), working together in perfect harmony with God’s nature and with one another. The entire universe was created to be a unit. It would remain that way as long as human beings, who were to rule the earth, chose to live in harmony with God’s will.

When man rejected God’s way and set up his own rules, he and the whole universe became dysfunctional. He has repudiated God’s right to tell him how to live by giving his allegiance to a usurper, and paid the price God had warned him about – death. He was still man, made in God’s image with the potential to be one with God, but now his bent was towards rebellion. There was a foreigner in charge and he was obligated to obey Satan because he, man, had relinquished control.

Paul recognised that his sinful nature was dysfunctional, incapable of obeying God and doing the right thing. There was civil war in his inner being. He longed to be obedient to his Creator, but he had no power to change his nature which was under the influence of the enemy and driven by enmity towards God.

He was trapped in this inward conflict with no hope of ever getting out of it by his own efforts. The problem was that, legally, he in the dock, judged guilty, living in shame and fear and awaiting sentence on the Day of Judgment. By his own sinful life, he proved that he was in cahoots with the usurper and rightfully declared guilty.

What a terrible plight he was in. He knew he was condemned yet, at the same time, he yearned to be free to worship God and follow His ways. He was inside his prison cell peering wistfully through the bars at the beautiful world outside, with no way to get out and enjoy the freedom that should have been his.

What was he to do? He needed someone to step in and rescue him.

Acknowledgement

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

CAUGHT IN THE SPIDER’S WEB!

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CAUGHT IN THE SPIDER’S WEB!

“Did that which is good, then, become death to me? By no means! Nevertheless, in order that sin might be recognised as sin, it used what is good to bring about my death, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful. We know that the law is spiritual, but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin.

“I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate, I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me.” Romans 7:13-17.

The path of understanding how helpless we are without the Lord Jesus Christ is quite a tortuous one. Paul was obviously aware of his own spiritual journey from thinking that his law-keeping efforts were quite successful to realising that he fell very far short of God’s standards when he was honest enough to evaluate himself against the inward requirements of the law.

Paul came to realise that the law of God was only a measure, like a ruler, which accurately measured us against God’s holy standards. Therefore, the law had no power to do anything else but show him whether his life measured up or not. Therefore ,the law had no power to kill him. It only showed him whether he was worthy of death or not.

Sin is a factor of human life, but different religions define sin in different ways. For most, sin is defined by the values people attribute to their gods. If we keep in mind that people who reject the one true God create gods in their own image, the character and requirements of their gods depends on how they want to live their lives…which, of course, accurately reflects Adam’s rejection of his Creator in the beginning.

Satan offered him the alternative; you don’t have to obey God because He is short-changing you, keeping you from partaking of the fruit of that one tree. If you listen to me, you can make your own rules. However, Satan did not tell him to read the small print, the part that said, “If you follow my way, you will be my slave. You won’t really be free because you will be in my power and I will see to it that you utterly destroy yourself!” So, Adam fell for the devil’s little scheme and lost the freedom he had, to become a slave of sin.

God’s standard did not change. What changed was Adam’s ability to live up to it because his Helper, the Holy Spirit, had left him. He was on his own and helpless, like an insect caught in a spider’s web. The more he struggled, the more he became entangled in its death grip. He knew what was right because God’s law was written within his conscience, but he could not do anything about it.

All the law could do was to show him how far away from God’s ways he really was. Like the insect in the spider’s web, he could see the big wide world out there but he was powerless to get out of the web and fly free as he was created to do. Release from the silk’s sticky grip could only come if someone intervened and set him free.

A battle raged within him. He knew what was right because his conscience spoke loud and clear, but he could not do what was right because his natural bent towards sin was too strong. Like a bowling wood, he always veered off the straight path towards satisfying the demands of his selfish nature. He could neither silence his conscience by defending himself, nor appease it by living the right way. The very fact that his conscience accused him was an indication that he knew and agreed with what was right.

Guilt and self-loathing tormented him. But most of all, he was in despair because no amount of law-keeping could undo his past or give him hope for his future. Like the insect, he could only wait to be devoured. The same law that showed him how holy God is, would judge him and condemn him to eternal death. His problem was on the inside and no amount of trying to do good things would change his heart.

That’s the problem with man-made religions. Every ritual people perform, every regulation they adhere to cannot change their hearts. Washing their bodies, wearing special garments, eating or not eating certain foods, offering animal sacrifices, putting food in front of idols, bowing down to wood or stone, being nice to animals – are all in vain because none of these things can pay the debt of sin or change the heart.

Acknowledgement

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

TWO REALMS

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TWO REALMS

“So, my brothers and sisters, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to Him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God. For when we were in the realm of the flesh, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in us, so that we bore fruit for death. But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.” Romans 7:4-6.

Two realms – the natural, physical realm and the realm of the unseen – are operative in the universe. The physical realm is more real to us because we function in it in our everyday lives. However, with the harnessing of the energy waves, for example, microwaves, wireless, light etc., we have become much more aware of the unseen realm. It amazes me how, with a single touch on the screen of my android tablet, I can order a book from an internet company anywhere in the world and in a few minutes, via energy that I can neither see nor understand, the book appears on my device and I can begin reading!

It is not difficult for us to understand, then, that we can live in two realms spiritually. We have bodies that relate to and function in the world. We eat food from the ground, and our bodies convert it into energy which drives our systems, but we also function in an unseen dimension which is just as real. The world we live in is immersed in the presence of its Creator. The Bible says that He fills heaven and earth. He is fully involved in what happens on earth, and that includes us.

The very breath we breathe is His breath – life. When He removes our breath, we die. We have no life apart from Him. If it were possible, scientists could put all the elements of a human body together but they cannot produce life because both physical life and spiritual life come from God.  That means, of course, that if life comes from Him then we are dependent on Him and accountable to Him whether we acknowledge it or not.

Therefore, He has the right to dictate the way our lives are to be lived. When we confirmed our forefather’s disobedience by our own, we suffered the same consequences as he did, alienation from God. However, God did everything to put us back on track and to restore the connection between the seen and the unseen realms.

So, Paul says, we were cut off from the power of the sinful world to influence us when we died with Jesus. It is a fact. It’s real. It happened. God did it in the unseen realm when we turned to Him through Jesus. We died to our old lives and the power of sin to keep us enslaved but the reality of it is activated by faith, that unseen power, like the unseen waves of energy that network our planet and our universe, has connected us to a new power, the power of God.

From what were we cut off? Paul said we were cut off from the power of the law. Why the law? The law has the mysterious power to arouse sin in us. We know how this works. Just tell a kid not to do something and he will do it! Before you told him not to, he didn’t even think about doing it but, the moment you said, “Don’t,” he wanted to do it! Take away the prohibition and the desire to do it goes as well. That’s how we were wired by the sin nature in us with which we were born “in Adam”.

However, Jesus destroyed that perverse nature by His perfect obedience to all God’s “prohibitions”. He killed the desire, then they killed Him but He rose again and would never be subject to temptation again. Now, through faith, we are in Him, and have the potential to live as He did. In addition, He took away the necessity to have rules and regulations, and replaced them all with one “rule” if you like, the law of love. Then, just to make sure that we would follow that law, He gave us His Holy Spirit to produce His love in our hearts…

…which makes it all about Him and not about us. Paul said, “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” This means that Jesus in us by His Spirit makes it possible for us to reflect His character in the way we live. The old, rotten fruit of self-centredness and greed has been replaced by a new life of pleasing God by caring for others.

It’s the power of heaven breaking into the earthly realm and showing us what God is really like. It’s about having God’s will done on earth as it is in heaven. It’s about us being mirrors of Jesus. It’s about living in the realm of the Spirit while we are still in the flesh.

Acknowledgement

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