¹² So then, brethren, we are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh— ¹³ for if you are living according to the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live. ¹⁴ For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. Rom. 8:12–14, NASB

I worked for a short period of time in the late 1980s in PC marketing. I’m really not cut out for sales, but most of the other sales people I worked with were in their natural element. Most of my “customers” were just normal people coming into the store looking for a computer. Others were businessmen looking for a solution for their office environment. For example, I sold computers to oilmen who bought high end PCs with a lot of RAM and very large monitors with very expensive graphics cards to handle the software they used. All of that I looked at as God’s sending me clients so I could earn a commission as part of his providing my daily bread (Matthew 6:11). The most heartrending experiences I had during that time though were people who would come in to the store and they would be passed to me for some reason. They would come to my little cubicle and we would talk. It was there that they would see my Bible on my desk or the little plaque my wife gave me with Isaiah 40:31 on it, and then they would say they were Christians too and then they would look for a “deal.” I could tell, as I am sure most of you could too, that most of these people were seeking to manipulate the fact that I was a Christian so they could “profit.” When I refused to be manipulated that way some became ugly and spiteful and some even threatened to call the management and tell all sorts of things about me if I didn’t give them what they wanted. That was always terrible, but I think it was also quite surprising to them when I told them to go ahead. The really sad thing was that most of those professing Christians I worked with probably would have done everything under the sun to “make a sale” even if it did mean doing things that no genuine Christian should ever do to his or her employer. View article →

⁶ I marvel that you are so quickly being turned from the one who called you in the grace of Christ to a different gospel; ⁷ which is not another; except there are some troubling you and are desiring to pervert the gospel of Christ. ⁸ But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel to you besides that which we preached to you, let him be a curse. Gal. 1:6–8, Possessing the Treasure New Testament v1

John Bunyan compared the life of faith to a pilgrimage in his masterpiece, Pilgrim’s Progress. On the other hand, the Apostle Paul often compares our life of faith with a race. In my younger days I was a long distance runner. I competed into my late 40’s in the Corporate Challenge and prior to that I was a member of the Oklahoma City Running Club and ran in who knows how many 5k, 10k, 5-mile and even 10-mile races in and around the OKC area. I knew all about what it took to be a good runner on race day. If I didn’t prepare right then I couldn’t race well. If I didn’t put in the miles in training to run in a 10 mile race then I certainly couldn’t run in that race on race day without problems. Our life of faith can be compared in many ways to a race. Paul used it figuratively that way in Galatians 2:2, Romans 9:16, and 1 Corinthians 9:24. View article →

³⁰ As He spoke these things, many came to believe in Him. ³¹ So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, “If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; ³² and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” John 8:30–32, NASB

Those who like to portray our Lord Jesus Christ as just a bundle of love who would never do or say anything to any that could possible cause offense obviously have never studied what he actually said in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. In our Lord’s parable of the soils (Matthew 13:1-23; Mark 4:1-20; Luke 8:4-15) he gives us a contrast between genuine believers and those who only appear to be and others who obviously are not. I posted on this several years ago here. The point is that just are there are very religious people who have done religious works and may even appear to be “christian” to some, our Lord says that the criterion to be one of his is not by one’s own choice, but by first being chosen by God, prepared by God, then having the Good News sown into the soil of the heart by him. As our Lord said in John 8:30-32 (above), those who are truly his are those who not only hear his Word, but continue in it. They are truly his disciples and they will know the truth and the truth will make them free. View article →

¹ I am telling the truth in Christ, I am not lying, my conscience testifies with me in the Holy Spirit, ² that I have great sorrow and unceasing grief in my heart. ³ For I could wish that I myself were accursed, separated from Christ for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh, ⁴ who are Israelites, to whom belongs the adoption as sons, and the glory and the covenants and the giving of the Law and the temple service and the promises, ⁵ whose are the fathers, and from whom is the Christ according to the flesh, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen. ⁶ But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For they are not all Israel who are descended from Israel; ⁷ nor are they all children because they are Abraham’s descendants, but: “THROUGH ISAAC YOUR DESCENDANTS WILL BE NAMED.” ⁸ That is, it is not the children of the flesh who are children of God, but the children of the promise are regarded as descendants. Rom. 9:1–8, NASB

I just spent the last several days traveling from Kansas City to the Washington D.C. area and back. While it was merciful to get away from this dreadful heat wave and drought that has persisted since May 29^th, I looked very hard for God’s people in the D.C. area, in Baltimore and Annapolis. I saw lots of church buildings, but I’m not sure I came across a lot of Christians. We ate in a restaurant in Georgetown on Saturday night and there were three men and a woman at the table next to us in a very long and serious discussion. They looked very distinguished. In between the serving of the courses they went over a very formal document in which they attempted to define what the terms “Born-Again” and “Evangelical” meant and how it would be handled by whatever “organization” that document defined. My wife and I discussed it later and she succinctly stated that I could have settled all of their confusion very quickly with some direct preaching from the Word. View article →

³ So also we, when we were children, we had been enslaved under the fundamental principles of the world. ⁴ But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under law ⁵ that he might redeem the ones born under law that we might receive adoption as sons. Gal. 4:3-5, Possessing the Treasure New Testament v1

As I shared in our last post, Only One Gospel Part 8, my own pilgrimage or sojourn from my justification to this stage of my sanctification has not been a smooth upward line on a chart. No, in fact, one of the reasons I think I have such a clear understanding of Romans 7 is that I have lived it especially during those dark periods of those fiery trials that seemed to last forever during the 1990’s right up to through 2009 when my seizure disorder, which had been dormant since 1976 reappeared. However, the main element that comes through all of these “elemental principles of the world” is that even though those of us who are in Christ are indeed saved by grace and are new creations all according to the will of God all by his work, we are still in this temporal state in these bodies of flesh in this lost and dying world that neither knows our Lord nor what true joy is. However, even in the midst of a our tests and trials, we can rejoice in our Lord and be full of the joy of the Lord for we know that God is 100% in control and our time to meet him face to face is fixed and our time in our Lord’s presence will be for eternity. View article →