Life Matters - September 4, 2024
God is Love. Not only does He love, but He IS Love. God is also Holy. And Perfect. Perfect Holiness and perfect Love. Love encapsulated in His Holiness. Love expressed and being expressed to us by His Son, Jesus Christ. He is the Word who spoke the world into existence. (John chapter 1) He is the One who redeemed us from our sins by His sinless sacrifice on the tree. (the cross) (1 Peter 2:24) He is the sinless One who shed His blood that we might live. (1 Peter 3:18) The One who makes His abode in us and by Whom there is now no condemnation. The One who quickens us by His Spirit that dwells in us. (Romans 8:11) If indeed we have been quickened. ‘’That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit.’’ (Romans 8:4)
The chapter before Romans 8 is clear about what happens when trying to attain to righteousness in our own strength without the indwelling Christ. In struggling to attain righteousness, the natural man not only cannot but the holiness of God actually would seem to repel and leave him to do the things he ‘’would not.” For holiness repels sin and can have no affinity with it. Thus repentance is wrought and sin washed away by the blood of Jesus.
The struggling soul in Romans chapter 7 discovers something. Something so deeply ingrained in his being that, though he applies his mind to do what is right, yet his flesh gives in to the law of sin that wars in his members. ‘’O wretched man,’’ he cries in his distress, ‘’who shall deliver me from the body of this death?’’ Then his distress turns to thankfulness at the revelation of Jesus Christ to his soul, upon which he exclaims, ‘’I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.’’ He also has learned a fixed principle about himself and concludes, ‘’So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh, the law of sin.’’ (Romans 7:24-25)
The key words in this last verse of Romans 7 being: ‘’I myself,” the struggling soul has discovered that his mind, even his best intentions, cannot overcome the sin warring in his members. But repentance has gone deep and he has found The Answer to all his struggles, as Jesus Christ brings forgiveness with peaceful rest to his quieted soul and he discovers that nothing outside of himself can now separate him ‘’from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.’’ (Romans 8:38-39) Repentance and salvation have gone deep in his soul.
When we encounter, as we will, the problem of evil, may we not stop and stagnate with discouragement, nor attempt gaining courage by ‘’moving forward’’ for motions sake as ‘’moving forward’’ can be all downhill, nor turn to the pleasures of sin for courage, which are ‘’but for a season,” but, look ‘’unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.’’ (Hebrews 12:2) Our salvation is His joy as He intercedes for us. (Hebrews 7:25)
Our salvation is God’s joy and desire when He allows the devil to bring calamities upon this poor world, even into our own personal lives. He allows them for our good, our eternal welfare, which is always in His heart and on His mind. (Hebrews 12:10-11) The devil’s agenda is destruction. The question is; whom will we serve? (Deuteronomy 30:19, Joshua 24:15, 1 Kings 18:21)
Though Job was an upright man who eschewed evil, Job did have a problem; did he not? For Job fell to justifying himself when being accused. Job was an upright man, but Job, when his integrity was called into question, fell to defending himself, claiming his own integrity.
Job defended himself until his friend Elihu brought his attention back to God before whom there is no defense. And then Job saw that he was not depending upon God, he was depending upon himself. Then he turned to God and away from himself. Away from his own mind to God’s mind. ‘’I have heard of thee,” he said, ‘’with the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee. Wherefore I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes.’’ (Job 42:5-6) With renewed vigor and deepened faith, with God by his side, Job’s latter life became more spiritually, and even materially, prosperous than the former. May we learn the patience of Job as we learn from his calamities and our own hard things we go through.
Do we always understand the hard? Do we always understand why God has allowed us to choose between good and evil? No. But this much we do understand from God’s Word: that creation and choice have everything to do with the war between good and evil being fought in the spirit realm of this present world. And though that war continues here for this time, the war in the throne room of heaven has been won. By the death, burial, resurrection and ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ. (Revelation chapter 12) The problem of evil is remedied. In Jesus Christ. And He in us. (John 14:20)
As in Jeremiah chapter 18; the Master Potter will mold clay yielded to His hands into vessels of honor.
Life Matters!