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Have you ever “examined” yourself,
your performance, and not come up short? Don’t you always conclude
that you could have done better or done more? Or do you question your
motives and then excuse yourself concluding that your motives are absolutely
pure and perfect? I doubt it.
The ONLY Person Who ever had
perfect motives was hung on the cross for our sins. Continual
self-evaluation is sure to stagnate your progress in discovering all you
have in Christ Jesus. Self-analysis is self-paralysis. Analyze Him, not
you outside of Him. We do better “fixing our
eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith.” His work in
our behalf is sufficient, complete, perfect and lacking nothing.
The text in our last article in the
series
THE OBEDIENCE OF FAITH says, “For by
these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, in order
that by them you might become partakers of the divine nature,
having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust.”
(2Peter 1:4)
In Him we HAVE ESCAPED. “There
is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”
Don’t let the deceiver, the legalist, or the well-meaning Christian convince
you to “be subject again to a yoke of slavery.” If you allow it “you
have been severed from Christ, you who are seeking to be justified by law;
you have fallen from grace. For
we through the Spirit, by faith, are waiting for the hope of
righteousness. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision
means anything, but faith working through love.”
All that God has accomplished is to
be received the same way: “BY FAITH.”
“And without faith it is impossible to please
Him.” It is a question of faith in God--a very rare thing. We
tend to only have faith in our feelings. We won’t believe God until He puts
something tangible in our hand, so that we know we have it. Then we say,
"Now I believe." That is not faith. God says, "Look
to Me, and be saved . . .". To have really transacted
business with God, it must be on the basis of His covenant, letting
everything else go. There is no sense of personal achievement—no human
ingredient in it at all. Instead, there is a complete overwhelming sense of
being brought into union with God, and my life is transformed and radiates
peace and joy. After all, God says we are “predestined to become conformed
to the image of His Son.” It is His work in us, not our work in ourselves.
Paul tells us, “It is God who is at work in
you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.”
Now I must continue as I began, “the
righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith.” You began
in faith and you will conclude in faith. “As
it is written, ‘BUT THE RIGHTEOUS MAN SHALL LIVE BY FAITH.’”
“Are you so foolish? Having begun by the
Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?” All the great
blessings of God are finished and complete, but they are not mine until I
enter into a relationship with Him on the basis of His covenant.
Those that would accuse me of
teaching “perfectionism” are wrong. In over twenty-five years of counseling
these truths I have never seen one person become a follower of the teaching
called “perfectionism.” If that was what I was teaching, I am sure there
would be evidence of the error in the lives of those to whom I have
ministered. Instead we are seeing Christians coming into the freedom and
identity that is theirs in Christ Jesus, according to “His
precious and magnificent promises.”
As Christians, when we cling to
guilt and condemnation we trample the blood of the Son of God underfoot if
we think we are forgiven because we are sorry for our sins. The
only reason for the forgiveness of our sins by God, and the infinite
depth of His promise to forget them, is the death of Jesus Christ.
Our repentance is merely the result of our personal realization of the
atonement by the Cross of Christ, which He has provided for us. The
Scriptures declare Jesus Christ “became for
us wisdom from God--and righteousness and sanctification and redemption".
Once we realize that Christ has become all this for us, the limitless joy of
God begins in us.
God’s justice in saving bad people
is only realized as He makes them good “in
Christ.” Our Lord does not pretend we are all right when we are
all wrong. The atonement by the Cross of Christ is the propitiation God uses
to make unholy people holy. “According as
he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we
should be holy and without blame before him in love.” Don’t
BECOME holy. “For it is written: ‘Be
holy, because I am holy.’” Your thinking is completely opposite
of the thinking of the world. You are completely “other” than they are. “Without
holiness no one will see the Lord” and unless He gives it to us,
there is no way we can attain to it. This is why Jesus died for the Church:
“That he might present it to Himself a
glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it
should be holy and without blemish.” It is His work. It
is what He has accomplished. It is yours only “BY
FAITH.”
If there is even a trace of
attempting individual self-satisfaction left in us, it always says, "I just
can’t seem to do it," or "I don’t know how to be free." But the spiritual
Christian of FAITH never says, "I can’t"; you simply soak up everything in “His
precious and magnificent promises, in order that by them you might
become partakers of the divine nature.”
Our spirit hungers for more and
more. It is the way we are built. We are designed with a great capacity for
God, but sinful thinking, with no faith in what He tells us, and wrong
thinking about ourselves apart from Christ robs us and paralyses us. God
delivers us from sin—we have to step away from our faithless thinking and
into faithful thinking. This means offering our natural life to God and
sacrificing it to Him, so He may transform it into spiritual life through
our “obedience of faith.”
God pays no attention to our natural
individual effort to be holy. “Those who are
in the flesh cannot please God.” The only way we aid and assist
God is to believe Him and not stand against Him by saying, "I can’t do that"
or “That isn’t who I really am.” We must bring our "arguments
. . . and every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.”
The battle is in
YOUR MIND. Think as He says, not as you feel. Don’t say,
"Oh, Lord, I suffer from wandering thoughts." Don’t suffer from wandering
thoughts. The ONLY thing in life that you can control is YOUR MIND. Stop
listening to the tyranny of your individual natural life and win freedom
into the spiritual life by faith. He said, “If
therefore the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed.”
Paul said, “It was for freedom that Christ
set us free; therefore keep standing
firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery.”
"If
the Son makes you free . . .." Do not substitute “Savior”
for “Son” in this passage. The
“Savior” has set us free from sin, but this verse is the freedom that comes
from being set free from myself by the Son. It is what Paul
meant in Galatians 2:20 when he said, " "I
have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but
Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live
by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered Himself up for
me. I do not nullify the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through
the Law, then Christ died needlessly." " Paul’s individuality
had been broken and his spirit had been united with his Lord; not just
merged into Him, but made one with Him. "You
shall be free indeed"—free to the very core of your being; free
from the inside to the outside. FREE FROM CORRUPTION. We tend to
rely on our own energy, instead of being energized by the power that comes
from identification with Jesus.
“And
although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind, engaged in
evil deeds, yet He has now reconciled you in His fleshly body through
death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond
reproach-- if indeed you continue in the faith firmly established
and steadfast, and not moved away from the hope of the gospel that
you have heard, which was proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of
which I, Paul, was made a minister.” Col 1:21-23
Now, according to our text, 2Peter
1, “seeing that His divine power has granted
to us everything pertaining to life and godliness” and this is “through
the true knowledge (discernment)
of Him.” So, we by these we know “He
has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises” so that
by faith we know “that by them you might
become partakers of the divine nature” and thus you have “escaped
the corruption that is in the world by lust.”
Having come to all of this by
faith, we are now ready to look into the vast “tool chest” we have by
His life in us and as our text goes on to say: “Now
for this very reason also, applying all diligence, in your faith
supply moral excellence, and in your moral excellence, knowledge;
(intellectual) and in your
knowledge, self-control, and in your self-control, perseverance, and
in your perseverance, godliness; and in
your godliness, brotherly kindness, and in your brotherly kindness, love.”
You are fully equipped in Christ and Christ in you. We are “as
having nothing yet possessing all things.” Because of the
sufficiency of Christ “all things belong to
you.” With Christ in you, you lack nothing.
Now continue on in
this wonderful life of discovery. Discover through all events in your life,
whether through sickness, trials, tribulations or whatever, Christ in you is
sufficient. “Not
that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves; but
our sufficiency is of God.”
“And
God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all
sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work.”
(You
may want to go to the next article in this series: FORGET NOT)
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