Tag Archives: transgressions

DEAD AND STINKING!

November 17, 2020Bible Studydead, disobedient, transgressionsLuella Campbell

DEAD AND STINKING!

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit which is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were all by nature objects of wrath (Eph. 2: 1-3).

Have you ever smelt the stench of rotting flesh? It is not pleasant, to say the least. If dead flesh smells bad, what do you suppose a dead spirit smells like to the Father? From God’s point of view, we were dead in our sinful nature and lifestyle – dead to Him because our sin created a chasm between Him and us and left us lifeless and alone.

What a gloomy picture of the people in the world who have nothing to do with God and are therefore nothing more than empty shells with no real life in them! Paul vividly describes all of us in our state of alienation from God – selfish, ungodly, and living only to gratify every craving and desire with no thought for the way our lives and behaviour affect others.

The world of entertainment and what it dishes up, including the filth that Hollywood spews out and everything that flows from the mass media – scandal, violence, illicit sex, crime and every form of unsavoury behaviour – is the diet we feed on, and then we wonder why the world is so bad. Sin is like a snowball. The more sin we feed on, the more sin we practice.

Paul makes no excuse for anyone. Whoever we are, if we are not in “Christ”, we are all in the same boat. It’s just the degree that varies. Even the most respectable of people are separated from by God by their sin.

Unfortunately for us, unlike the belief system of some religions, God does not weigh our sin and our good deeds in the balance. We were infected with a sin nature from our conception, which we inherited from Adam and which makes us dead to God before we took our first breath. No one has to teach a child to sin. It is as spontaneous as breathing. Even if we teach him to live a moral and upright life, the nature within him pulls him towards sin. No one can see the sins of the spirit – greed, selfishness, lust, jealousy, resentment, bitterness – and the list goes on, but they are there in all of us.

Paul calls us all “objects of wrath”. How can we be under the wrath of God? How fair is that when we were born in sin? Unfortunately, we had no choice in the matter because we are all descendants of Adam. As representative man, he chose to defy God’s instruction and brought condemnation on the whole human race. But not only that. Every time we do what is natural to us, we confirm our own status under God’s wrath. God must punish sin because it is a violation of His holiness.

But, because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ, even when we were dead in transgressions – it is by grace you have been saved. And God raise us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages, He might show the incomparable riches of His grace, expressed in His kindness to us in Christ Jesus (Eph. 2: 4-7).

Out it comes in a rush! It’s almost as though Paul enjoyed painting as gloomy a picture as he could about our sinful state so that he could pour out in lavish language, the magnitude of what God has done for us in His Son. How sad that many so-called preachers of the gospel miss it altogether. They present Jesus as the cure for all ills. They preach a message and issue an invitation that makes it sound as though we do God a favour by “accepting Jesus as our personal Saviour”.

God was not obliged to do anything for us. His wrath falls on us because we are responsible for everything we have said and done. We can blame whoever we like but, in the end, whatever we do and however we live is our choice. We decide how we will respond to whatever life dishes up for us.

God stepped in with a masterful plan to rescue us from our plight, and it had nothing to do with us. In fact, He didn’t even do it because He felt sorry for us. He did it to put His glory on display. It was His opportunity to reveal His true nature to the devil and his minions who are at war with God. He sent His own Son as a substitute for man, to take the rap for what we have done in rebellion against Him, so that we can go free. No more debt. No more guilt. No more barrier between Him and us.

He made it possible for us to have life, to forgive our sin, change our hearts and embrace us as His beloved sons and daughters. Who in their right mind would not respond in love to someone who did that for us?

It’s all about Him from beginning to end. God does not beg us to accept His offer. He graciously extends it to us, in fact, He commands us to repent and believe the gospel… but the response is ours. We can come home to Him and live under His authority and in His family, or we can remain in our dead and stinking state. He will not choose for us.

ISBN: Softcover – 978-1-4828-0512-3, eBook 978-4828-0511-6

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or Kindle version, on www.takealot.com or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

My second book, Learning to be a Disciple – The Way of the Master (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing), a companion volume to Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart, has been released in paperback and digital format on www.amazon.com.

Dead And Stinking!

December 23, 2015Bible Studydead, objects of wrath, sinful nature, transgressionsLuella Campbell

DEAD AND STINKING!

Paul makes not excuse for anyone. Whoever we are, if we are not in “Christ”, we are all in the same boat. It’s just the degree that varies. Even the most respectable of people are separated from by God by their sin.

Paul calls us all “objects of wrath”. How can we be under the wrath of God? How fair is that when we were born in sin? Unfortunately, we had no choice in the matter because we are all descendants of Adam. As the representative man, he chose to defy God’s instruction and brought condemnation on the whole human race. But not only that. Every time we do what is natural to us, we confirm our own status under God’s wrath. God must punish sin because it is a violation of His holiness.

But, because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ, even when we were dead in transgressions – it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages, He might show the incomparable riches of His grace, expressed in His kindness to us in Christ Jesus (Eph. 2: 4-7).

Out it comes in a rush! It’s almost as though Paul enjoyed painting as gloomy a picture as He could about our sinful state so that he could pour out in lavish language, the magnitude of what God has done for us in His Son. How sad that many so-called preachers of the gospel miss it altogether. They present Jesus as the cure for all ills. They preach a message and issue an invitation that makes it sound as though we do God a favour by “accepting Jesus as our personal Saviour”.

God stepped in with a masterful plan to rescue us from our plight, and it had nothing to do with us. In fact, He didn’t even do it because He felt sorry for us. He did it to put His glory on display. It was His opportunity to reveal His true nature to the devil and his minions who are at war with God. He sent His own Son as a substitute for man, to take the rap for what we have done in rebellion against Him so that we can go free. No more debt. No more guilt. No more barrier between Him and us.

He made it possible for us to have life, to forgive our sin, change our hearts and embrace us a His beloved sons and daughters. Who in their right mind would not respond in love to someone who did that for us?

It’s all about Him from beginning to end. God does not beg us to accept His offer. He graciously extends it to us, but the response is ours. We can come home to Him and live under His authority and in His family, or we can remain in our dead and stinking state. He will not choose for us.

ISBN: Softcover – 978-1-4828-0512-3, eBook 978-4828-0511-6

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or Kindle version, on www.takealot.com or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

For more details, check my website:

http://luellaannettecampbell.com/

Have you read my blogs on www.learningtobeason.wordpress.com ?

Torah!

October 21, 2014Bible Studyadded, faith, law, promise, transgressionsLuella Campbell

TORAH!

“Why, then, was the law given at all? It was added because of transgressions until the Seed to whom the promise referred had come. The law was given through angels and entrusted to a mediator. A mediator implies more than one party; but God is one.

“Is the law opposed to the promises of God? Absolutely not! For if a law was given that could impart life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law. But Scripture has locked up everything under the control of sin, so that what was promised, being given through faith in Christ Jesus, might be given to those who believe.” Galatians 3:19-22.

Wow! This is a mouthful! What was Paul getting at? Let’s unpick this passage bit by bit and try to understand what he was explaining.

Why did God give His people the Law? We must understand the word torah, which is translated law, from God’s point of view. It does not mean law in the same way as we understand it from a western point of view. Torah means teaching, rather than a rigid set of rules. Through the Torah, God was teaching them how to live the right way in line with who He is.

We must remember that, for 430 years, the descendants of Jacob lived in Egypt under Egyptian rule. When they finally left Egypt, they were an undisciplined bunch of slaves who had lived under the whip of Egyptian taskmasters. Once they were free from their cruelty, they had to learn how to live with one another under a different set of rules. It was not okay to do to one another what the Egyptians had done to them. But who was going to set the standards and tell them how to live?

Firstly, then, the Torah defined for them what was right and wrong and how to put right what they did wrong. Paul said it was because of transgressions. Sin is sin, but we don’t know what sin is until we are told what it is. That’s what the law does. For example, how do we know it is wrong to steal unless we are told that it is wrong and what to do about it when we do steal?

Secondly, God’s people had to learn that they could never reach His perfect standard by obeying His teaching. There was always a pull towards doing wrong and, just like little children, as soon as they were told not to do this or not to do that, they did it because of their natural bent towards rebellion. No amount of rules would keep them on the right way. They needed a change on the inside and no law could do that.

Thirdly, the Torah was intended to develop a culture that would prepare them for the coming of the Messiah. The sacrificial system with its different kinds of sacrifices, many reasons for offering sacrifices, and rituals they had to observe, were all intended as visual aids to show them and prepare them for the coming of God’s perfect sacrifice, the Lord Jesus Christ.

They had to understand what sin was, a falling short of God’s holy standards, and what it did, making the sinner unclean; hence the need for the death of an animal and the offering of its blood, not only as a substitute for the sinner but also to cleanse the offerer from the pollution of sin.

The priestly system taught them that they could not bounce into the presence of a holy God because sin separated them from Him. He was unapproachable except through His appointed mediator, the high priest and the offering of the prescribed sacrifices. When Abraham’s “seed”, Jesus, came, He fulfilled all the pictures the law painted of the right way to approach God.

So, the Torah was not opposed to the revelation of God’s grace through His Son; it was a preparation for His coming. Without the Law, who He was and what He did would have made no sense to His people. But when He came, and when He died on the cross as an atoning sacrifice for all the sin of all the people for all time, there was no need for anyone to obey the law as a way of approaching God any more. The priesthood and the sacrificial system were fulfilled and done away with in Christ.

God does not need human mediators to stand between Him and His people. Jesus is the perfect Mediator because He is both God and man. God does not need animal sacrifices to teach us how terrible sin is – that it demands the shedding of blood to be forgiven. His own Son shed His blood, a once-for-all sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins, not just for Jews but for the whole world.

Why would Gentiles need to be circumcised, then? They do not need a physical sign to set them apart as God’s children. The Holy Spirit in them is the sign of God’s ownership. Doing all the things that the law demands and that are only pictures of what Jesus came to do is a foolish backward step. God did away with all that by sending His Messiah and now all we have to do is receive Him by faith and He takes us right into the presence of the Father, forgiven, clean and acceptable to God.

And He changes our nature and puts His Spirit in us so that we live according to His torah, not because we have to but because we can.

Acknowledgement

The Slain Lamb

July 8, 2014Bible Studyblessed, covered, forgiven, sins, transgressionsLuella Campbell

THE SLAIN LAMB

“David says the same thing when he speaks of the blessedness of the one to whom God credits righteousness apart from works:

Blessed are those whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the one whose sin the Lord will never count against him.” Romans 4:6-8.

Now we have another problem. If God can only forgive sin on the basis of the death of His Son, how could David experience the blessedness of knowing that his sins had been forgiven when he lived long before Jesus?

The writer to the Hebrews made it very clear that animal blood can never remove sin. It is only a picture of the greater sacrifice – that of God’s perfect Lamb.

“The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming – not the realities themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship. Otherwise would they not have stopped being offered? For the worshippers would have been cleansed once for all, and would no longer have felt guilty for their sins. But those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins.” Hebrews 10:1-3

“But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, He sat down at the right hand of God…for by one sacrifice He has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.” Hebrews 10:12, 14.

Did David somehow understand that his sin was forgiven on the basis of a sacrifice that was perfect and acceptable to God for all time? On what basis did the children of Israel escape the angel of death when he passed over Egypt and struck down the firstborn of the Egyptians? By obeying God’s instruction to paint the blood of a lamb on the door frames of their houses, they were placing their faith in God’s promise and in the blood of a lamb.

Jesus was often in trouble with the religious leaders for forgiving sin. They accused Him of blasphemy because only God can forgive sin. On what basis did Jesus have the right to forgive sin? Because He was God? But God, according to His own decree, declared that the only basis upon which sin can be forgiven was the death of a human being who had no sin of his own.

Now let’s look at God’s response.

“For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake.” 1 Peter 1:20.

“Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing at the centre of the throne, encircled by the four living creatures and the elders …The Lamb who was slain from the foundation of the earth…” Revelation 5:6; 13:8.

Since God exists outside of time, He views the effects of what Jesus did on the cross, although it happened at a time in history, as spanning all time, not just the time after Jesus died.

The sacrificial system incorporated in the Mosaic Law was intended, not to be the basis for the forgiveness of sin, but a visual aid to help His people understand the nature of, and remedy for sin. When they trusted in the shed blood of a sacrificial lamb for the forgiveness of their sin, they were actually acknowledging God’s provision of a perfect Lamb that would deal with sin once and for all, and trusting in His promise of forgiveness.

The Israelites learned slowly, through a process; one lamb for a family when the angel of death passed over them on one occasion, memorialised by their annual celebration of Passover; one goat for a nation to forgive their sins for one year and, finally, one Lamb, God’s Son, for the world, once for all.

“He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.” 1 John 2:2.

“For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring us to God.” 1 Peter 3:18.