Earning Death. Accepting Life.

 

You earn death. Not the first death, but the second. Yes, there are two deaths. The first death is the one of the flesh returning to the dust and the breath returning to God, and all thoughts ceasing until the last trump when Christ returns to call all those that are His to be with Him in heaven.  The second death is the death there is no resurrection from because you are completely and utterly no more- not even dust, not even a breath returned to God. The second death will come upon all of those who are not called to be with Christ when He returns. We don't earn the first death, that is ours from the moment we are born- the death sentence of this fragile flesh form wracked with so much potential for illness, disease, accidents, sicknesses, injuries, deformities and so on. We do earn the second death, the eternal death. We earn that death by embracing a life of sin which is self-focused.  We earn that death when we refuse to accept the free gift offered to us which is eternal life in Christ. A gift is offered it isn't forced upon us. The gift is ours for the taking. When we accept that gift we are accepting the truth that our salvation is something we cannot give to ourselves, we cannot earn it for ourselves, we cannot buy it for ourselves. We must accept the gift, and when we accept this gift we are accepting all that the gift is! We take the gift and this gift becomes a part of our life, this gift becomes our life. We take our focus off ourselves and put it on the gift that is now our life- our eternal life.

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Distressed by the threatenings of the law which we have broken, we flee for refuge to Christ, who is "full of grace and truth." There we find freedom from sin. In him we not only find grace to cover all our sin, but we find the righteousness of the law because he is full of truth, and the law is the truth. Ps. 119:142. Grace "reigns" through righteousness (or obedience to the law), unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.

The Wages of Sin. In the second chapter we learned that those who reject the goodness of God are treasuring up to themselves wrath. Now wrath comes only on the children of disobedience. Eph. 5:6. 

Eph 5:6  Let no man deceive you with vain words: for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience.

Those who sin are laying up wages for themselves. "The wages of sin is death." Sin has death in it, therefore "sin, when it is finished,  bringeth forth death." There can be no other end to sin than death, because sin is the absence of righteousness,  and righteousness is the life and character of God.

Persistent and final choice of sin is therefore choice of complete separation from the life of God, and so from all life, since he is the only source of life. Christ, who is the wisdom of God, says, "All they that hate me love death." Prov. 8:36. Those who suffer death at last will be only those who have worked for it.

The Gift of God. But we do not work for eternal life. No works that we could do would make the smallest part of payment towards it. It is the gift of God. True, it comes only through righteousness, but righteousness is a gift.  "By grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God; not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained (prepared) that we should walk in them." Eph. 2:8-10.

"O how great is thy goodness, which thou hast laid up for them that fear thee; which thou hast wrought for them that trust in thee before the sons of men!" Ps. 31:19. When people sin, God gives them only what they have bargained for. But if any yield themselves as servants of righteousness, he provides the righteousness for them,  and gives them eternal life with it, all as a free gift. "The way of the transgressor is hard," but the yoke of Christ is easy, and his burden is light.'

Not Under the Law

 

Endure Now for Joy Later.

 I desire a heavenly country. No, not a country here on earth that is really wonderful, I desire a very real country existing in heaven. 

We human beings have lived in a world of chaos from the moment sin entered. People have idealized certain time periods in our history, the so-called glory days of the past. Each generation seems to have this tunnel vision that times were better and there is often a longing to return to those better times. The truth of the matter is -time from sin's inception has been hard for all of us. Yes, there may have been pockets of time that we try to imagine were the good ol' days. However, even during those times the good life was NOT shared by a vast majority of people around the world. Our sin soaked world is filled with evil beyond measure and for us to ignore that is to keep from realizing that this evil world is NOT how we were meant to live! We were NOT created with the intent for us to live horrific lives interspersed with various moments of joy. Life was NOT supposed to be the awful struggle that it is for most of us. Mentally, emotionally, physically we live in a nightmare world that we can't wake up from. Try as we might, this world will NEVER become the idealized place we all seem to want and deep down we comprehend this. We are all in a huge sinking boat called earth and this boat has been taking on water since sin took over. Our lives are spent with bailing buckets in our hands, and it's a constant effort to bail out the waters threatening to ruin us at any given moment. NO this was NOT how we were meant to exist! I refuse to believe it! You can't make me believe this horrific life with all its pain is a wonderful way to live simply because there are joys mingled in with the heart aches. This life is NOT the life we are to live for, we are to live for the BETTER COUNTRY, the HEAVENLY COUNTRY, the PROMISED COUNTRY, the HEAVENLY MANISONS PREPARED FOR US!

We NEED to believe, truly believe that we are living now, right now, for that future with our SAVIOR.  

LIVE for the heavenly right now! Endure the agony now with the knowledge that it is temporary! 

When CHRIST returns and HE WILL RETURN BEYOND A DOUBT, we will rise to meet Him in the air! We will go with Him to our heavenly country!

How do I know He will return?  Because I found a book that prophesized of many, many things and every single prophecy in that book either came to pass or will come to pass.  If prophecy after prophecy comes true, NOTHING will stop ALL of the prophecies from coming true! 

JESUS will return for us! Jesus wants us to be ready for Him simply by trusting in Him, believing in Him, hoping in Him! 

As we suffer the agonies of bailing out a never ending sinking ship, with periodic respites, let us know that someday all of the bailing- which is furious and exhausting in the midst of storms, and slower paced in times of relative calm, that all the bailing will be worth it for the never ending joy that awaits us.  

Lay your TREASURES in heaven, and DO NOT expect to get them here on this sin captivated world. You know as well as I do, any pleasure you derive from sin is fleeting, just masking the pain-- pain that God wants us all to realize is only temporary to the eternity that He offers to us.  God help us all to know Him and His love, His deep, deep love that goes beyond our ability to fully comprehend- we are after all the creatures, He is the CREATOR. What audacity we possess when we think we have the right to know the mysteries of God!

Deu_29:29  The secret things belong unto the LORD our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever…

Heb 11:16  But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city. 

Mat 6:20  But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: 

Mat 6:21  For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. 

Jesus' Joy.

Are you heavy laden?  These days most people are heavy laden, aren't they? We go through life heavy laden with the various burdens placed upon us by our existing in a world ruled by sin. It is a world ruled by sin, make no mistake about it. 

1Jn 5:19  And we know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness. 

2Co 4:4  In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them. 

Mat 4:8  Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; 

Mat 4:9  And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me. 

Mat 4:10  Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. 

The devil offered to give to Jesus all the kingdoms of the world, all the glory of them….  The devil couldn't have made these offers unless they were histo give.  Jesus didn't refute the devil's claim of kingdom ownership of the world, He told Him that He would only worship God. Jesus knew that there was a prince of this world who was evil.

Joh_12:31  Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out. 

The prince of this world is the devil, he rules this world. Few compared to the many choose to live in this devil ruled world and yet claim only to worship God in all truth. Satan wants every single human being to be one of his subjects. 

The heavy laden feeling we endure starts when we are very young and begin to comprehend life has hardships, life has pain, life has confusion, that life is unfair.  As we grow older the burdens change, that heavy laden weight alters. The weight of our living in this sin drenched world varies for each of us. My burden isn't yours, and likewise, your burden isn't mine.  We are given moments of joy that supersede the pains and those glimpses of joy give us a desire for more joy, less burden. We seek the joy and things that negate that joy which burden us. In TRUTH and I mean this…in TRUTH there is only ONE joy that should outshine all other joys, and that is the joy we find in our heavenly treasure. Our heavenly treasure cannot be stripped from us ever. Not a single thing on earth can take our heavens treasure from us so is there any wonder at all that we need to truly believe in the reality of that heavenly treasure?

Christ is our heavenly treasure. The good news of salvation through Christ is our heavenly treasure. The HOPE of eternal life in Christ, HOPE in the world to come, not this world, is our heavenly treasure. 

Abraham thousands of years ago lived with this hope…  considering himself a pilgrim on this earth. 

Heb 11:13  These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. 

Dying in faith, we need to live in faith, embracing the promises of God now.

Laying our treasures up in heaven NOW.

Mat 6:20  But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: 

Mat 6:21  For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. 

We are heavy laden, but we can find REST in Jesus Christ, making Him a reality in our lives. Our joy NOW needs to be the HOPE of heaven- Jesus Christ, now.  We can lay the world's weight down now as we pick up heaven's hope, heaven's treasure, heaven's joy.

The burdens are going to hit us, day after day. The huge irritations and the very small irritations, the agonies, the pains, the horrors are all a part of the life we live and we must seek Jesus' joy!  We need to ask ourselves when the weight of the world is tearing us down, if we are living for Jesus' joy. When we cry out our pain may we cry out for Jesus' joy. Jesus' joy is FUTURE HOPE, OTHERWORLDLY HOPE. Jesus' joy is KNOWING our joy is in the promises we have yet to see and not lamenting having realized promises now because we know that sin will rule this world until our Savior returns. 

God help us to make Jesus' Joy real in our everyday existence.  All through our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ! Now and forever! May God's will be done!

Mat 11:28  Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 

Mat 11:29  Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. 

Mat 11:30  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. 

Christ's Yoke- Selflessness.

 Mat 11:28  Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 

Mat 11:29  Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. 

Mat 11:30  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. 

Take up Christ's service. Are you in the service of Christ? What does it mean to be in Christ's service? How can all people be in Christ's service? Doesn't it take a special calling? It can't take a special calling unique only to few. Everyone must be able to enlist in the service of Christ. 

To be in the service of Christ is to be selfless. It is only when we get caught up in self that the yoke becomes incredibly heavy, and is no longer the yoke, no longer the service of Christ. We are like quick change artists who in a blink of an eye throw off one yoke of service and put on another. Satan would have us believe that we continue to wear Christ's yoke and that Christ's yoke is too burdensome to bear. Satan doesn't want us to realize that we have fashioned a yoke that pleases him, and not God. Satan wants us to believe we have to take the weight of the world upon us, but we don't. Christ bore that weight to the cross because it was a weight we couldn't and still cannot bear. 

Christ instructs us to take His service, His yoke upon ourselves and in doing so we are LEARNING of Him. He wants us to comprehend His meekness and lowliness in heart.  

His meekness, His lowliness in heart….what do we know of these things?

Not too long ago I read something that explained that meekness isn't shy humbleness it is rather- not seeking self. Christ did not walk around in the shadows hiding Himself. Christ didn't deflect in a demure manner. Christ did not appear cowardly in any way at all. We use the word meek in this manner but it's not the manner associated with Christ's meekness at all. Christ NEVER put Himself first, never. His Father's will was always first on His mind. He lived for the will of the Father because His will was one and the same, He desired the Father's will. Do we?  Do we desire Christ's will over our own? 

Daily we have numerous instances that will cause us to have to choose the will we wish to follow. We have choices- we can choose to follow Satan's will or Christ's. And our will aligns with one or the other at any given moment. Some choices are pointed and we realize right away the path we are on isn't or is, the path of Christ's. Whenever we find ourselves in the middle of a situation where we know we need to choose, let us choose Christ! 

As we wake up daily we need to commit our lives to Him for that entire day.  Then as we go about our day we need to live it with the awareness we are living for Christ, in Christ's selfless service!  It is shocking how often we find ourselves caught up in self-serving. We write it off so often as being justified-- self-justified because life just keeps dishing out one agony after another. We endure mental, emotional and physical pain and cry out it's unfair! We want peace! We want a painless existence! We long for such a life, but we have to comprehend that for now we need to endure the agonies of life as Christ endured them, selflessly. We need to embrace the agonies knowing this world only promises agonies, it is the world to come that promises peace.

More tomorrow by the GRACE of GOD, through the will of our LORD and SAVIOR, JESUS CHRIST, now and forever!

We Are Weary.

Weariness.  This is something we are all too familiar with, isn't it? Being weary. We are feeling the weight of this world upon us. We live in such a time that the burdens of society are all around us. I can't help but comprehend though, that through most of mankind's existence there has been an element of weariness in one form or another. NEVER since the peace in the Garden of Eden before sin's introduction to mankind has there not been a weariness to living for us in one form or another. Each generation has its share of burdens. Always there have been problems- the need to eke out of life a way to stay alive. So many have such an awful time doing that, finding ways to live. As we struggle through our lives, no matter the circumstance, life gives us a weariness that makes living tiresome in so many ways. 

We see many levels of living conditions, from what we consider extremely luxurious, to the extremely deprived, and all levels in between. Seldom is anyone in any of the groups without weariness. The weariness of a rich man may be much different than the weariness of a poor man, but the weight of existence rests up all of us and it's up to us to take that weariness to our Savior and find His rest.

Spiritual labor, spiritual burdens, Satan will load us down with spiritual weight desiring to crush us completely. He can, and will crush the spirit in us deadening us to the Spirit of God, make no mistake, Satan desires to bring us to the point of despair so that we make the eternally deadly decision to turn from Christ, not towards Him.

Jesus tell us - 

Mat 11:28  Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 

Mat 11:29  Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. 

Mat 11:30  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. 

Jesus is speaking to ALL of us, because there is not a single person who isn't laboring and heavy laden in this sin sick world. 

We have to go to Him to find the Spiritual rest that will keep us in Him.

More on this tomorrow by the GRACE and WILL of GOD! All through Jesus Christ our LORD and SAVIOR now and FOREVER!

Let Not Sin Reign

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Articles on Romans by E. J. Waggoner  Chapter 6

Instruments of Righteousness Romans 6:12-23

12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof. 

13 Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin; but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God. 

14 For sin shall not have dominion over you; for ye are not under the law, but under grace. 

15 What then? Shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid. 1

16 Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness? 17 But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you.

18 Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness. 

19 I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh; for as ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity; even so now yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness. 

20 For when ye were the servants of sin, ye were free from righteousness. 

21 What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. 

22 But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life. 

23 For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

The Reign of Sin. In the fifth chapter we learned that the reign of sin is the reign of death, because death comes by sin. But we also learned that the gift of life is offered to all, so that whoever has Christ has life. Instead of death reigning over such, they themselves "shall reign in life by One, Jesus Christ." The exhortation, "Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body," is therefore equal to an exhortation to abide in Christ, or to keep his life. We gained the life by faith, and so we are to keep it by faith.

Whose Servants Are We? That is very easy to answer. "To whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey." If we yield ourselves to sin, then we are the servants of sin, for "whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin." John 8:34. But if we yield ourselves to righteousness, then we are the servants of righteousness. "No man can serve two masters." Matthew 6:24. We can not serve both sin and righteousness at the same time. No man can at once be both a sinner2 and a righteous man. Either sin or righteousness must rule.

Instruments. We have in this chapter two terms to describe people, namely, servants and instruments. It takes both to illustrate our relation to sin and righteousness. Sin and righteousness are rulers. We are but instruments in their hands. The kind of work a given instrument will do depends entirely upon the one who uses it.

For instance, here is a good pen; what kind of work will it do? It will do good work if it is in the hands of a skillful penman, but in the hands of a bungler its work will be poor. Or, in the hands of a good man it will write only what is good; but in the hands of a bad man it will exhibit that which is evil. But man is not a mere tool. No, not by any means. There is this difference between men and ordinary instruments: the latter have no choice as to who shall use them, while the former have full choice as to whom they will serve. They must yield themselves, not once only, but all the time. If they yield to sin, they will commit sin. If they yield to God, to be instruments in his hands, they can do nothing else but good so long as they are yielded to him.

A Parallel. In the nineteenth verse we are exhorted to yield ourselves as servants of righteousness just as we have yielded ourselves servants to sin. This being done, we are assured in the following verses that just as surely as the fruit was sin and death when we were yielded to sin, so surely will the fruit be holiness when we yield ourselves servants to righteousness. Yea, even more sure; for "where sin abounded, grace did much more abound; that as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord." 

Righteousness is stronger than sin, even as God is stronger than Satan. God can pluck out of the hands of Satan the soul that cries out for deliverance; but none can pluck God's children out of his hand.