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November 2008
Rightly
Dividing the Word of Truth
(2
Timothy 2:15)
This is
good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who
desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. 1Timothy 2:3-4
Romans by the Book Lesson 48
No
two Believers are at the same place in their Spiritual walk; that’s a given.
Those
who are newly baptized into the Body of Christ are not expected to know
everything there is to know about the faith.
They’re going to be asking questions for a while or at least they should
be seeking answers. Although we will all
arrive at the same destination, our journey with the Lord is a personal one.
The
Apostle Paul mentions two “immeasurable journeys” and one of these is in the
book of Philippians, chapter 1.
Philippians 1
25: Convinced of
this, I know that I will remain and continue with you all for your progress
and joy in the faith.
Paul
was concerned for the individual Believer after they had trusted in Christ
Jesus.
He
was concerned about their “progress and
joy in the faith.” Another word for
this is their sanctification. It’s an internal journey of gradual
growth into Christlikeness.
This
internal journey is the personal struggle of every Believer with the
world, their flesh, and Satan. But note
the word, “progress.” You are to be making progress. My
boot camp instructor used to shout at as us recruits, “If you’re not moving
forward, you’re lagging behind!” The
same principle applies to the Believer in Christ Jesus. Don’t
get comfortable with where you are; God didn’t intend for you to languish
there…move forward…progress.
How
do I do this? Get into the Word. Purchase a Bible, or visit Crosswalk.com - there you’ll find many Bible translations
plus other Bible tools and on site help.
Then find a comfortable place where you can be by yourself and spend time with it. Learn to study!
One
of the reasons I teach is to try to help people to study the Bible on their
own…so that they can understand what it
says, why it says it, and to whom it says it.
We
are certainly living in an age of “scoffers”
and those who are willingly ignorant.
Now
I didn’t say stupid. There’s a
difference between ignorance and stupidity.
I
personally do not like the word stupid and I don’t use it. It’s an insulting word used to “tear down” an
individual and nothing more. I’m talking
about willful ignorance.
These are people
who have no desire to know the details, the facts, or the Truth.
Permit
me to illustrate. I worked with a very
close friend for years who was an electrical contractor and he offered to teach
me more than just the basics when I helped him on some big jobs. I turned him down because at that time I was
attending school full-time and holding down a full-time job. My life was not my own…
But
if my response had been, “No thanks, I’m just not interested.” This would have made me willingly ignorant. But as
it is I’m simply “ignorant” because I’ve not been exposed to the technical side
of electricity. There’s the difference.
People
who are willingly ignorant do not want
to know the details or the Truth!
Let’s
look at an example from Scripture.
2 Peter 3
5a: For this they
(the
scoffers) are ignorant of…,
(KJV)
What
were they willingly ignorant of in this instance? The
Flood!
Peter
wrote this around 68 AD and the situation hasn’t changed. The majority of people, despite all the
scientific proof which exists, still deny the Flood occurred.
There
isn’t a college or high school text book that maintains the fact of Noah’s
Flood.
But
the majority still denies the existence of God, the deity of Christ, and the validity of the Bible. Nothing
new – scoffers have existed throughout the ages (Matthew 7:13-14).
They
are willingly ignorant.
The
overall issue is faith; which is nothing more than taking God at His Word.
Some
people have it; some people have a little, and some haven’t any – like Cain.
Please
open your Bible to Romans, chapter 8 at verse 1.
We’re
not through “mining this rich vein” just yet.
We’re still digging deeper…
There
are two more noteworthy “nuggets of truth” I want to bring to your attention before
we move on to other treasures in this chapter.
The
Apostle Paul uses the phrase “in Christ,”
(in various forms) 165 times in 13 of his letters to the churches (it is absent
in his letter to Titus), so it would be helpful to understand what this phrase means.
Sometimes
Paul writes: in the Christ, in Christ
Jesus, in Christ Jesus our Lord, in God, or in the Lord. Paul uses the phrase “in Christ Jesus” the
most often.
It’s
good to know that these phrases fill the place of an adjective or an adverb
which the linguistic process had not yet developed. Consequently, these phrases characterize all
sorts of Believer’s conduct and attitudes such as: Speech:
2 Corinthians 2:17, 12:19; Exhortation:
Philippians 2:1; Boldness: Philemon
8; Brotherly Love: 1 Corinthians
16:24; or just notate the Believer:
Romans 16:7, Philemon 16.
Theologians agree to translate these phrases in this
way and leave it at that would over simplify them causing them to lose the
depth of their meaning. Put another way,
it would be an inadequate translation when Paul expected the phrase to express
so much more.
Paul’s
use of the phrase, “in Christ
Jesus,” in Romans 8:1, is referencing both the Believer and their Eternal Security. I’m going to use the law of First Mention to
prove this point. Please turn to
Genesis, chapter 6.
Be
careful. Scripture is clear that we are
to use the entire book, “for our learning”
but we do not get our doctrine from the book of Genesis or the Old
Testament for that matter.
In
Genesis “the book of beginnings” we have the foundational truths.
Noah’s ark was a
foreshadow
(a picture) of our New Testament
Salvation.
I’m
not going to take the time to go through the entire Genesis account of the
flood most of you are familiar with it. I
am going to point out those items that pertain to our N.T. salvation experience
as God revealed them to us in this Old Testament depiction.
Genesis 6
13: Then God said
to Noah, “The end of all flesh has come before Me; for the earth is filled with
violence because of them; and behold, I am about to destroy them with the
earth.
14: “Make for
yourself an ark of gopher wood; you shall make the ark with rooms, and shall
cover it inside and out with pitch…”
The Hebrew word Kopher (pronounced: ko’-fer)
is the same word “pitch” used in verse 14 and used in conjunction with
the ark. It is also the same word that’s
translated “atonement” (make reconciliation) at other places in the
Bible. The pitch “sealed” the ark of
safety against the waters of judgment protecting all those within. Without the pitch, the ark would have sunk
and all lives would have been lost.
The blood (atonement) of Jesus Christ
ensures our salvation today.
Noah and his family could not be saved
unless they were inside the ark.
Likewise, if a person is NOT “under the
blood,” (in Christ Jesus) they are not saved.
Colossians 3
3: For you (Believers) have
died and your life is hidden (concealed) with Christ in
God.
I want you to picture your salvation or
your eternal life as if it were a treasure, which it truly is, because that’s
what the language here implies. Now this
treasure is concealed in a place that is more secure than Ft. Knox. It’s not entrusted to our keeping – because
we are prone to lose things…or be defrauded of our wealth. Our eternal life is deposited with Jesus
Christ in heaven, where He is, and where God is.
Therefore, nothing can reach it or enter in and take it away! Our greatest treasure has been entrusted to the One who “is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him until that day.” (2 Timothy 1:12b)
God was in the ark when He invited Noah
and his family inside.
Genesis 7
1: Then the LORD said to
Noah, “Enter the ark, you and all your household, for you alone I have seen to be righteous
before Me in this time.
It was time for judgment to fall upon
the earth and its inhabitants.
But after Noah, his family, and all the creatures
were securely inside the ark, God left the door to the ark open another seven
days so that anyone else who chose to could come into that ark of safety; but
none came (Genesis 7:10).
Genesis 7
16: Those that entered, male and female of all flesh, entered as
God had commanded him; and the LORD closed it behind him.
Your
Bible says, "The LORD closed
it behind him."
The
word "LORD" in all capital letters in the Old Testament always refers
to "Jehovah." With maybe a few
exceptions, Jehovah is God the Son – Jesus Christ.
When
the LORD, Jehovah, God the Son, invited them into the ark, He became the
gyroscope that maintained the safety
of the ark throughout the flood experience, and when we examine the flood
closely, we'll see it was more than just waters rising calmly and a
thunderstorm. The devastation was
cataclysmic and instantaneous.
All
those outside the ark were destroyed in a flash!
The LORD closed the door! There was only one door in the ark, and in the
New Testament, we are told there is only "One Door," John 10:1-14
uses the analogy of the Sheepfold Door, at “ground level;” the only door to the
sheepfold is The Lord Jesus. Peter also
makes this plain in Acts 4:12.
Acts 4
12: “And there is salvation in no one
else; for there is no other name (Kingdom Gospel) under heaven that has been
given among men by which we must be saved.
The Apostle Paul uses this analogy in 1
Corinthians.
1 Corinthians 3
11: For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is
laid, which is Jesus Christ.
This is the reason there was only one
door going into the ark, and when that door was shut, there was no possible way
anyone else could enter. There was only
one window in the top of the roof, but it was inaccessible to anyone from the
outside. These things are pertinent to
our own Salvation experience. There's
only one door to Salvation, and when we enter that door, God seals it. There's not a human latch on that door - God
shuts us in!
We have established that God "shut
the door," and it was the pitch - the Atonement that sealed out those
waters of judgment for Noah and his family. It's the Blood of Christ that secures us from
any judgment. This is a tremendous
promise for us. Can God lie? Absolutely
not! If we believe the Bible is the
inspired Word of God, then if God said it that settles it! Then there's no controversy. Therefore there is now no condemnation for
those who are in Christ Jesus."
This verse doesn't cover the whole human
race. But for those members of the human
race that are "in Christ Jesus" the promise of God is
that we will never face condemnation.
I don't use the rest of the verse given
in the King James Version because almost every scholar agrees that the
last part of verse one was never in the original manuscripts.
It has only shown up in a few, and they
feel that somewhere along the line, someone who was not inspired added that
portion that reads "...who walk not after the flesh, but after the
Spirit." It comes up again
later on in the chapter where it is appropriate.
"There is therefore now no condemnation..." That
means exactly what it says!
There is nothing that God can bring
against us in condemnation if we are in Christ Jesus! Why?
For the same reason that once Noah and his family went into the ark, and
the door was shut by the LORD, and the ark was sealed against the waters of
judgment, no harm could come to them. Again,
this was more than just a storm. This
was the wrath of God being poured out onto God-haters.
All those who are in Christ Jesus are called sons and
daughters of God. We are family!
I want to show you another verse.
Romans 8
14: For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are
sons (and daughters) of God.
Not they "might be," or they
"may hope to be," but they are!
That's a present tense verb. Consider a modern
illustration, a husband and wife with two or three children has a son who becomes
a renegade. He is an embarrassment to
everything the family stands for. The
parents, at their wits end, finally say, "He
is such an embarrassment that we want to cut him off. He doesn’t get a dime of the inheritance. Furthermore, we’ll go to court and totally
disinherit him. Let's not even recognize
him as our son!" And this they do. But no matter where this child goes, whose
blood is flowing through his veins? His
parents!
It's no different here. Once we have entered into this kind of
a relationship, and we have become legitimate children of God by virtue
of all the acts of God, who can change that?
No one, it can't be done.
We may think that God should kick
someone out of His family, but the Scripture stands.
If that person has genuinely entered in,
he is in Christ Jesus permanently.
I am a firm believer in eternal security
only for those who have been genuinely saved.
For a genuinely saved person, there is now no
condemnation.
(To be continued)
© Copyright 2011
GJ Heitzman’s Ministry
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