Hey everybody! Merry Christmas! Thanks and praises be to our Lord Who blessed us abundantly this year. We saw so many miracles, especially cancers and diabetes getting healed. All things are possible for them that believe!
I just have a short message on my heart. We know Jesus wasn't actually born this time of year, but we celebrate His birth now, and His birth is a very significant moment for us. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory as of the only begotten Son of the Father. This glory is not necessarily glowing light, though it can be, but it is the works of Christ, manifesting the will of God, so that we can see who He is. In Matt 5 Jesus said to let your light so shine, so that all men can see our good works (faith works, not high morals). When there is a demonstration of miracles, the Father is glorified, and He becomes visible. The works of the devil (sickness, poverty, sin, death) is destroyed and God's works are made visible.
Jesus came to shine the light,and destroy the darkness. He broke the chains that ensnared us, and set us free, so that we too could free others by the message of what He did for us.
1Jn3:5 says: And ye know that He was manifested to take away our sins; in in Him there is no sin.
verse 8b: For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil.
The Son takes away sin, sin not, and destroys the works of the devil.
John 1 says that to as many as did receive Him, gave He the power to become the sons of God. We are here and now the sons of God. When we celebrate the birth of Christ, the manifestation of the Son of God, let us remember that we too are born from the same Seed, and have the same power to destroy the works of the devil. Jesus did it all for us on the cross, now we find our identities in Him, and operate by His Spirit and His power in His will in unison, destroying all the devil has done in people's lives.
May this Christmas remind you of Christ's birth, your rebirth in Him, and Who we as the church are and what power we have by His grace!
Thursday 24 December 2009
Sunday 6 December 2009
Religion and the chuch
I just listened to a podcast about how people of the world see the church and religion as a whole. The conclusion was that you can subscribe to whatever religion you like, as long as you see the goodness in people. The ultimate law therefore that saves man is according to them to recognise goodness in others. Sounds noble, but what about the sacrifice of Christ. Yes undoubtedly most churches are dead and void of any life whatsoever. This is sad, because they are not really part of the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. The church is the body of Christ: People in which God dwells.
It is impossible to change the nature of man with laws. It is just as impossible to teach a cat not to meow and do its business in a hole in the soil, or a dog not to bark and wee against the wheels of your new car. It stands to reason then that if you don't like the nature of a cat, don't have one. It is ludicrous to expect of a cat to behave like a dog. It can not. It is not programmed to do so, and it is not possible to change the code by which it was made.
The sinful nature of people are part of their make-up and disguising that nature or presenting it as something at least refined or civilized, does not change it, neither does it change how deadly it is to our spirit-man inside us. It is like instinct. A human is programmed to act in a certain way. The basic sinful nature is shared, but it is dressed up in different ways. Man's reaction to sinfulness is different all over the world, but the core sinfulness remains. Reacting to sinfulness makes that sinfulness the object of our attention and even further embeds it in our identities.
For example: If I would have a desire to steal, how could I know what stealing is, if it were not for the law repeatedly prohibiting it. Though the law is good, the sin in me uses the law as a weapon against me, and dictates my movements at gun point. We are therefore by sinning admitting that the law is good, because we can only know sin by knowledge of the law, but our desires are set against the desires of the law by the sin indwelling us so that we keep on doing what we don't want to , and are not free to do what we ought. By the law we were therefore made hostages of sin. If I try to pass this sin off as civilized, it still stays sin, and I am still in bondage, though it is more acceptable to others. This is what religion is trying. The religious tries to disguise their sinfulness of which they could not rid themselves over the years by trying to put blame on others, or by trying to compensate by doing opposite "good" works. This does not save us from our very nature which is systematically killing us.
It all started with Adam. Adam and Eve ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thereby getting knowledge of sin. They partook of the law: the distinction between what is good and what is evil. This produced death in the world, of which death God warned them beforehand, but they would not heed. Their make-up, they core values; their code of identity; their very nature was changed from being ignorant of sin, to being conscious of sin. Being ignorant of sin, makes one to be conscious of God. Being conscious of God, makes one to be ignorant of sin. If one has no consciousness of sin, it is near impossible to imagine that such things are possible. If one has a consciousness of sin, it is near impossible to imagine that one can have fellowship with God. We only get a consciousness of sin by the reading of the law.
The law is given to the unrighteous. It presupposes that you are unrighteous. By trying to become righteous by the works of the law, one affirms that one is unrighteous and in need of justification. This very law people look to for justification is actually the very source of the consciousness of sin in their lives. The more we look at the law, the more our hearts are embedded in a sinful identity, because the sinful desire just never goes away. Just disguising it, or focusing on the good, will dress it up nicely, but the judgement and condemnation will remain.
But God has done what the law could not do, its power being weakened by the flesh, God condemned sin in the flesh over all who accept the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Jesus took all the condemnation according to the law upon Himself, and thereby satisfied the wrath and judgement of the law. The wrath of God was completely expressed in Him. Now, in stead of the code of the law (which kills us) He gave us another message, another code, another identity and another nature, which is disclosed and revealed to us by hearing the Gospel of Jesus Christ and believing it.
It's all about realising who we are. If we look to a law to justify us by our acts (be it recognising the "goodness" in others or not), then we are bombarding our hearts with the wrong identity. We keep on hearing something which implies that we are sinners, when in fact by faith we have died to our sinful nature, and have received a whole new nature which is in Christ. This is only deception, which is good news, because it means that we are not really condemnable under the law any more, so we can change everything about us by just accepting the goodness of God in our hearts. We then totally rely on His goodness, and not our own goodness, or the goodness of others. We rely on the unchanging character of God, who is Himself love, and goodness personified. He who does not love, does not know God. So lets introduce them!
The Gospel tells us about what Christ did. Its a new code to which our hearts are programmed. Our instinct changes. The cat becomes the dog. Since the cat has realised that by the death of Christ, it has in fact become a dog, it just lives, and the natural actions of that cat (which has become a dog) is simply that of a dog. The sinner becomes a saint. The sinner will now act as a saint, because by faith he has been justified, so he does not have to seek justification by a law. He is now in fact made holy by grace. This changes the identity of the sinner, and also with it, the desires of his core identity and nature. The same man the was a sinner now prays for the sick, and they recover. He does not desire to steal any more, because that instinct has been deactivated, and removed. He now does holy things simply by living and breathing. Everything he now does is holy, because he has received justification. He just lives, and doesn't try anything. He now doesn't need to deny himself all the time, because the change has taken place and the old evil sinful instinct has been deactivated.
Heb 8:10 For this [is] the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people:
8:11 And they shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest.
8:12 For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.
Rom6:1 WHAT SHALL we say [to all this]? Are we to remain in sin in order that God's grace (favor and mercy) may multiply and overflow?
6:2 Certainly not! How can we who died to sin live in it any longer?
6:3 Are you ignorant of the fact that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?
6:4 We were buried therefore with Him by the baptism into death, so that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious [power] of
the Father, so we too might [habitually] live and behave in newness of life.
6:5 For if we have become one with Him by sharing a death like His, we shall also be [one with Him in sharing] His resurrection [by a new life lived for God].
6:6 We know that our old (unrenewed) self was nailed to the cross with Him in order that [our] body [which is the instrument] of sin might be made ineffective and inactive for evil, that we might no longer be the slaves of sin.
6:7 For when a man dies, he is freed (loosed, delivered) from [the power of] sin [among men].
6:8 Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him,
6:9 Because we know that Christ (the Anointed One), being once raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has power over Him.
6:10 For by the death He died, He died to sin [ending His relation to it] once for all; and the life that He lives, He is living to God [in unbroken fellowship with Him].
6:11 Even so consider yourselves also dead to sin and your relation to it broken, but alive to God [living in unbroken fellowship with Him] in Christ Jesus.
We need to see the goodness of God, then we will be activated for goodness. Yes, let us recognise the goodness in others, so that we can stir each other up towards love, but let's realise that all the goodness comes from God. We can now, because of Christ treat one another as holy people. If one is treated as a holy one, one starts acting holy. The basis of this holiness is not in our minds only, but it is a reality which was given to us by God in His great love. He now treats us as holy people. Please realise that you are not under condemnation, but that your sins are paid for, and now for once, you are free to do the good holy things that you always desired to do.
It is impossible to change the nature of man with laws. It is just as impossible to teach a cat not to meow and do its business in a hole in the soil, or a dog not to bark and wee against the wheels of your new car. It stands to reason then that if you don't like the nature of a cat, don't have one. It is ludicrous to expect of a cat to behave like a dog. It can not. It is not programmed to do so, and it is not possible to change the code by which it was made.
The sinful nature of people are part of their make-up and disguising that nature or presenting it as something at least refined or civilized, does not change it, neither does it change how deadly it is to our spirit-man inside us. It is like instinct. A human is programmed to act in a certain way. The basic sinful nature is shared, but it is dressed up in different ways. Man's reaction to sinfulness is different all over the world, but the core sinfulness remains. Reacting to sinfulness makes that sinfulness the object of our attention and even further embeds it in our identities.
For example: If I would have a desire to steal, how could I know what stealing is, if it were not for the law repeatedly prohibiting it. Though the law is good, the sin in me uses the law as a weapon against me, and dictates my movements at gun point. We are therefore by sinning admitting that the law is good, because we can only know sin by knowledge of the law, but our desires are set against the desires of the law by the sin indwelling us so that we keep on doing what we don't want to , and are not free to do what we ought. By the law we were therefore made hostages of sin. If I try to pass this sin off as civilized, it still stays sin, and I am still in bondage, though it is more acceptable to others. This is what religion is trying. The religious tries to disguise their sinfulness of which they could not rid themselves over the years by trying to put blame on others, or by trying to compensate by doing opposite "good" works. This does not save us from our very nature which is systematically killing us.
It all started with Adam. Adam and Eve ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thereby getting knowledge of sin. They partook of the law: the distinction between what is good and what is evil. This produced death in the world, of which death God warned them beforehand, but they would not heed. Their make-up, they core values; their code of identity; their very nature was changed from being ignorant of sin, to being conscious of sin. Being ignorant of sin, makes one to be conscious of God. Being conscious of God, makes one to be ignorant of sin. If one has no consciousness of sin, it is near impossible to imagine that such things are possible. If one has a consciousness of sin, it is near impossible to imagine that one can have fellowship with God. We only get a consciousness of sin by the reading of the law.
The law is given to the unrighteous. It presupposes that you are unrighteous. By trying to become righteous by the works of the law, one affirms that one is unrighteous and in need of justification. This very law people look to for justification is actually the very source of the consciousness of sin in their lives. The more we look at the law, the more our hearts are embedded in a sinful identity, because the sinful desire just never goes away. Just disguising it, or focusing on the good, will dress it up nicely, but the judgement and condemnation will remain.
But God has done what the law could not do, its power being weakened by the flesh, God condemned sin in the flesh over all who accept the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Jesus took all the condemnation according to the law upon Himself, and thereby satisfied the wrath and judgement of the law. The wrath of God was completely expressed in Him. Now, in stead of the code of the law (which kills us) He gave us another message, another code, another identity and another nature, which is disclosed and revealed to us by hearing the Gospel of Jesus Christ and believing it.
It's all about realising who we are. If we look to a law to justify us by our acts (be it recognising the "goodness" in others or not), then we are bombarding our hearts with the wrong identity. We keep on hearing something which implies that we are sinners, when in fact by faith we have died to our sinful nature, and have received a whole new nature which is in Christ. This is only deception, which is good news, because it means that we are not really condemnable under the law any more, so we can change everything about us by just accepting the goodness of God in our hearts. We then totally rely on His goodness, and not our own goodness, or the goodness of others. We rely on the unchanging character of God, who is Himself love, and goodness personified. He who does not love, does not know God. So lets introduce them!
The Gospel tells us about what Christ did. Its a new code to which our hearts are programmed. Our instinct changes. The cat becomes the dog. Since the cat has realised that by the death of Christ, it has in fact become a dog, it just lives, and the natural actions of that cat (which has become a dog) is simply that of a dog. The sinner becomes a saint. The sinner will now act as a saint, because by faith he has been justified, so he does not have to seek justification by a law. He is now in fact made holy by grace. This changes the identity of the sinner, and also with it, the desires of his core identity and nature. The same man the was a sinner now prays for the sick, and they recover. He does not desire to steal any more, because that instinct has been deactivated, and removed. He now does holy things simply by living and breathing. Everything he now does is holy, because he has received justification. He just lives, and doesn't try anything. He now doesn't need to deny himself all the time, because the change has taken place and the old evil sinful instinct has been deactivated.
Heb 8:10 For this [is] the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people:
8:11 And they shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest.
8:12 For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.
Rom6:1 WHAT SHALL we say [to all this]? Are we to remain in sin in order that God's grace (favor and mercy) may multiply and overflow?
6:2 Certainly not! How can we who died to sin live in it any longer?
6:3 Are you ignorant of the fact that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?
6:4 We were buried therefore with Him by the baptism into death, so that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious [power] of
the Father, so we too might [habitually] live and behave in newness of life.
6:5 For if we have become one with Him by sharing a death like His, we shall also be [one with Him in sharing] His resurrection [by a new life lived for God].
6:6 We know that our old (unrenewed) self was nailed to the cross with Him in order that [our] body [which is the instrument] of sin might be made ineffective and inactive for evil, that we might no longer be the slaves of sin.
6:7 For when a man dies, he is freed (loosed, delivered) from [the power of] sin [among men].
6:8 Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him,
6:9 Because we know that Christ (the Anointed One), being once raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has power over Him.
6:10 For by the death He died, He died to sin [ending His relation to it] once for all; and the life that He lives, He is living to God [in unbroken fellowship with Him].
6:11 Even so consider yourselves also dead to sin and your relation to it broken, but alive to God [living in unbroken fellowship with Him] in Christ Jesus.
We need to see the goodness of God, then we will be activated for goodness. Yes, let us recognise the goodness in others, so that we can stir each other up towards love, but let's realise that all the goodness comes from God. We can now, because of Christ treat one another as holy people. If one is treated as a holy one, one starts acting holy. The basis of this holiness is not in our minds only, but it is a reality which was given to us by God in His great love. He now treats us as holy people. Please realise that you are not under condemnation, but that your sins are paid for, and now for once, you are free to do the good holy things that you always desired to do.
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