Are we repenting for us or are we repenting for God? Are we repenting out of love for ourselves or out of love for God?
What does repenting mean? When we repent, we are sorrowful of our sin(s) and turn from our acts of sin that come from our selfish nature and at the same time turn to God in total obedience to eradicate those sins by the power of His Spirit.
There is mainly two ways in which we repent. One is out of a selfish fear and the other is out of the love we have for our Father in heaven. Almost all people come to God initially out of frustration and fear for themselves. They come to a breaking point where they realize their sins and have no way of healing themselves. They also come to believe that if they continue in these sins, they will go to hell instead of heaven. When God calls these people, most people come to God out of desperation. This desperation is motivated out of a fear of God and a fear for themselves. Fear is a big motivator and even though fear is not from the Lord, but from our own selfishness, God will use it to fulfill His purposes.
Proverbs 1:7 - The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge
So how do we repent in a way most pleasing to God? This is where most people run into trouble. Most of this message will concentrate on repenting in a way that is most pleasing to God. We must remember when it comes to righteousness, there is only one way to do things, and that is God’s way.
What is the right way to repent after our initial coming to the Lord? To find out let’s dig a little deeper. Sin can only come from selfishness and pride and cannot come out of love. Every time we sin, we are acting out of our own selfishness or pride and we cannot be loving God or others. Jesus came to conquer all sin in believers. What was the main weapon He sent through the Holy Spirit to do this? Love - pure love. When we are born again, God gives us a new heart. God does this by removing the sinful selfish nature and replacing it with His love. Since sin cannot come out of a heart filled with love, the sinful nature is eradicated with the over powering love of God.
So, should we repent because we want to be saved or continue in our salvation state, or do we repent because we love God? There is a big difference and what way is acceptable to God after our justification experience. To help us understand, I want to look at the parable of the prodigal son in the Bible.
When the prodigal son came to himself and started the journey back to his fathers land, this represented the initial turning back to his father out of fear for himself. He had run out of his inheritance money and was hungry. He knew there was plenty of food back at his father’s home. (This was the motivating fear for self preservation). But he also wanted to return to be under his fathers love and protection again. (This was the wanting to be saved from his worldly life). This fear of self preservation and wanting to be saved from himself drove him to be humbled and willing to be one of his father’s servants. This initial repentance was all about the prodigal son benefit and not about the father. This repentance was still all generated out of love and fear for himself.
After the son returned to his father and the father loved him and accepted him fully back into the family. Do you think that son continued repenting out of fear for himself, or out of love for his father? After we come to our Father through Jesus Christ and realize the love He showed and shows us, do we continue in our repenting and try to be obedient to God commandments so He won’t throw us back from where we came, or do we repent and be obedient to His will because we want to please Him alone in everything we do. We might initially repent from fear, but our repenting should not continue out of fear, it should continue out of love for our Father.
When our reason for repenting is to hopefully be good enough to stay saved, we are trying to turn from our sin out of our own selfishness. When we repent in this way, we are still trying to save ourselves.
Mark 8:35 - For whoever wants to save his life will lose it
When we repent because we think we might not have eternal life if we don’t, we are still only repenting out of our own selfishness and fear. Since this kind of repenting is self centered, you are actually sinning while you are trying to repent. Also, unless you repent in a way pleasing to God, which is out of love for the Father, the turning from the sin will not usually take hold and you will find yourself repenting over and over for the same sins.
So what does repenting out of love look like? Remember repenting is turning away from the sin and turning to God. When we repent out of selfishness in order to try to save ourselves, we are trying to abstain from sin, but not turning to God. We must turn to God at the same time or else it won’t work.
What does turning to God mean? It is all about growing in love with God.
James 4:8 - Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.
When we are self centered we only love ourselves. You know, just like the devil loved only himself. This is maybe how we start out with God, but it can’t be how we stay in relationship with God. After justification we start being sanctified if we let God’s Spirit work in our lives. Sanctification is a process of becoming holy as God is holy. Almost all of us have to go through this process. The key to understanding sanctification is that it is not really a process of getting rid of our sins; it is a process in which we are transferring our love from ourselves to loving God only. In doing this we end up giving our whole life over to him.
Mark 8:35 - For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it.
John 14:24 - He who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.
The key to repenting is repenting out of love for God and His glory; it has nothing to do with us. It is all about Him. When we repent out of love for our Father in Heaven, we want to repent of all our sins because we want to truly please Him, not us. This is totally opposite to repenting for us. When we repent for us, we don’t want to repent, but we do it because we think we need to. When we repent out of love, it is like my son being obedient to me because he loves me, not because he fears me. When my son is obedient out of love, he is obedient because he wants to be obedient. If my son is being obedient out of fear, he is not being obedient because he wants to; he is being obedient because of the consequences he might receive if he isn’t obedient. If the obedience is out of fear, he will quit being obedient as soon as he is away from me.
John 14:15 - If you love Me, keep My commandments.
So start loving God by getting to know Him through His word and Spirit. If you are trying to save yourself, STOP IT. Repent out of love for our Father in heaven and for His Glory.
God Bless,
Mike Reid
Showing posts with label sinful acts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sinful acts. Show all posts
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Romans 7 – So misunderstood
I was not planning on writing a message on the interpretation of Romans 7 until I realized that the misunderstanding of this passage was deceiving many away from God's truth. This scripture is so misunderstood by most churches.
There is an epidemic of misunderstanding of what a true Christian is and everybody with this misunderstanding seems to keep pointing to Romans 7 for their justification for this misunderstanding.
The misunderstanding originates from Romans 7:14-20.
We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do — this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
Most have misunderstood this verse because Apostle Paul seems to be writing this about himself. Since Paul is a born again Christian at the time he wrote this, people assume this is what a Christian is like.
If people fully understand the rest of the New Testament, they would quickly see these verses could not even be remotely considered to be representing what a true Christian is. To say a born again Christian is still controlled by his sinful nature is an oxy-moron. The phrases “born again Christian” and “controlled by sinful nature” cannot exist in the same person. Either you are still controlled in part or in full by your sinful nature or you are a born again Christian where the sinful nature has no control over you.
To start understanding this scripture we must understand whether this person Paul is talking about is born again or not. One of the key verses that indicates this is not a Christian is in Romans 7:14.
We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin..
When we are a Christian we are filled with God’s Spirit which has transformed our heart into a heart of love. Romans 7:14-20 is indicating a person’s life without the Holy Spirit in it. Without the Spirit in us, we have no hope of conquering sin on our own and we are still a slave to sin.
Apostle Paul is actually talking theoretically about any person, including himself, and how we are powerless with just our own human capabilities to get rid of sin. We learned throughout the Old Testament that we cannot obey God’s commandments on our own without the Holy Spirit’s power in us. This is what Paul is stressing in his letter. He is helping them understand what all of Israel already new before Christ came to die on the cross for us. The Jews knew the law was good but they were not capable of fulfilling the law.
Ever since the time when Adam ate the fruit of the forbidden tree, we have had the knowledge of good and evil in us. Remember it was the knowledge of good and evil, not just evil. The big problem ever since the original sin is not that we can’t know what is good, it is that we could not do any of the good we had knowledge of without the power of God in us. This is what Paul is talking about in Romans 7:15-16.
I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good.
Paul goes on to say that it is the sin, or evil, living in this person doing the sin since this person is still under the law. It is evident that this person does not have the Holy Spirit living in him. Paul concludes in Romans 7:17-18 that the only thing living in this person is the sinful nature.
As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature.
Now to keep this passage in context, let’s go back to the passages before Romans 7:14-20 to Romans 7:1.
Do you not know, brothers — for I am speaking to men who know the law — that the law has authority over a man only as long as he lives?
We see here that Paul is addressing people that know the Jewish law and emphasize that all men are under the control of the law until they die. Another words, we have to die to be free from the law. To illustrate his point Paul uses marriage as an example in Romans 7:2-3.
For example, by law a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of marriage. So then, if she marries another man while her husband is still alive, she is called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is released from that law and is not an adulteress, even though she marries another man.
So what Paul is emphasizing here is that we have to die to the law before we can be bound to another, which is Jesus Christ. We die to the law by believing in the perfect body of Jesus Christ dieing on the cross for us. In Romans 7:4-6 Paul explains this for us.
So, my brothers, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God. For when we were controlled by the sinful nature, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies, so that we bore fruit for death. But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.
If we believe Jesus Christ died for us, then we believe through the cross we also died and are no longer bound to the law and are now under God’s grace and no longer under the control of the sinful nature. We are given a new heart from God which does not have any selfishness or sin in it, but only love for God and love for all of God’s creation. True love cannot contain any selfishness or sin of any kind. Because this new heart that is from God has only love, it cannot willfully sin. Through this new heart we now have control of the body instead of the sinful nature in the body controlling us. Only God can do this and everything is possible with God.
Matthew 19:26 - Jesus looked at them and said, "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
Today Romans 7 is falsely preached from many pulpits with the idea that Christians can’t keep from sinning. This has been another deception from the devil that a lot of people have believed because it supports people believing they are born again when they truly haven’t had a total heart transformation yet. Don’t let yourself be fooled by this lie of the devil. The truth is, when your born again you can, through God’s Spirit’s power in you, conquer all the sins that His word or His Spirit convicts you of.
Remember God’s grace is His Spirit working in and through you – Michael Reid
There is an epidemic of misunderstanding of what a true Christian is and everybody with this misunderstanding seems to keep pointing to Romans 7 for their justification for this misunderstanding.
The misunderstanding originates from Romans 7:14-20.
We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do — this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
Most have misunderstood this verse because Apostle Paul seems to be writing this about himself. Since Paul is a born again Christian at the time he wrote this, people assume this is what a Christian is like.
If people fully understand the rest of the New Testament, they would quickly see these verses could not even be remotely considered to be representing what a true Christian is. To say a born again Christian is still controlled by his sinful nature is an oxy-moron. The phrases “born again Christian” and “controlled by sinful nature” cannot exist in the same person. Either you are still controlled in part or in full by your sinful nature or you are a born again Christian where the sinful nature has no control over you.
To start understanding this scripture we must understand whether this person Paul is talking about is born again or not. One of the key verses that indicates this is not a Christian is in Romans 7:14.
We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin..
When we are a Christian we are filled with God’s Spirit which has transformed our heart into a heart of love. Romans 7:14-20 is indicating a person’s life without the Holy Spirit in it. Without the Spirit in us, we have no hope of conquering sin on our own and we are still a slave to sin.
Apostle Paul is actually talking theoretically about any person, including himself, and how we are powerless with just our own human capabilities to get rid of sin. We learned throughout the Old Testament that we cannot obey God’s commandments on our own without the Holy Spirit’s power in us. This is what Paul is stressing in his letter. He is helping them understand what all of Israel already new before Christ came to die on the cross for us. The Jews knew the law was good but they were not capable of fulfilling the law.
Ever since the time when Adam ate the fruit of the forbidden tree, we have had the knowledge of good and evil in us. Remember it was the knowledge of good and evil, not just evil. The big problem ever since the original sin is not that we can’t know what is good, it is that we could not do any of the good we had knowledge of without the power of God in us. This is what Paul is talking about in Romans 7:15-16.
I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good.
Paul goes on to say that it is the sin, or evil, living in this person doing the sin since this person is still under the law. It is evident that this person does not have the Holy Spirit living in him. Paul concludes in Romans 7:17-18 that the only thing living in this person is the sinful nature.
As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature.
Now to keep this passage in context, let’s go back to the passages before Romans 7:14-20 to Romans 7:1.
Do you not know, brothers — for I am speaking to men who know the law — that the law has authority over a man only as long as he lives?
We see here that Paul is addressing people that know the Jewish law and emphasize that all men are under the control of the law until they die. Another words, we have to die to be free from the law. To illustrate his point Paul uses marriage as an example in Romans 7:2-3.
For example, by law a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of marriage. So then, if she marries another man while her husband is still alive, she is called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is released from that law and is not an adulteress, even though she marries another man.
So what Paul is emphasizing here is that we have to die to the law before we can be bound to another, which is Jesus Christ. We die to the law by believing in the perfect body of Jesus Christ dieing on the cross for us. In Romans 7:4-6 Paul explains this for us.
So, my brothers, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God. For when we were controlled by the sinful nature, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies, so that we bore fruit for death. But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.
If we believe Jesus Christ died for us, then we believe through the cross we also died and are no longer bound to the law and are now under God’s grace and no longer under the control of the sinful nature. We are given a new heart from God which does not have any selfishness or sin in it, but only love for God and love for all of God’s creation. True love cannot contain any selfishness or sin of any kind. Because this new heart that is from God has only love, it cannot willfully sin. Through this new heart we now have control of the body instead of the sinful nature in the body controlling us. Only God can do this and everything is possible with God.
Matthew 19:26 - Jesus looked at them and said, "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
Today Romans 7 is falsely preached from many pulpits with the idea that Christians can’t keep from sinning. This has been another deception from the devil that a lot of people have believed because it supports people believing they are born again when they truly haven’t had a total heart transformation yet. Don’t let yourself be fooled by this lie of the devil. The truth is, when your born again you can, through God’s Spirit’s power in you, conquer all the sins that His word or His Spirit convicts you of.
Remember God’s grace is His Spirit working in and through you – Michael Reid
Our goal is to be Christ like
The Bible says we need to become Christ like.
Rom 8:29 NIV - For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son.
How can we become Christ like in every thing we do if we are all sinners. I will try to show you by God’s Word how this is possible through God’s grace filling up and working in your life. With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.
We can never be Christ because there is only one Christ. We will never be God, with all the infinite knowledge, wisdom, majestic power that God possesses, but from His Spirit we receive everything we need to live a perfected righteous life before God. We don’t need to be Christ to live a perfect Christian life. God sends just the right amount of grace we need to live the life God expects us to live. (This part of grace is the Holy Spirit working in and through us)
When someone has come to the point of being Christ like, it’s because God has filled that person with an extra filling of the His Spirit. It is this extra filling of the Sprit that enables them to ward off any temptation of sinning. This enables the Christian to live a sinless life before God and his fellow man as long as that person stays living by the Sprit. This perfection of our heart has been called “Entire Sanctification”, “Christian Perfection”, and “Victorious Living” depending on the denominational belief.
But, how can we still call ourselves sinners and live a life without sin? It’s because we realize we still live in this fleshly body which will continue to tempt us with selfish and prideful thoughts, but with the Holy Spirit’s empowerment in us we can stop any temptation before it manifests into a sin. You can think of this empowerment as the armor of God.
Eph 6:11 NIV - Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes.
Living our life without sinning is not of man’s nature but only of God’s nature in us. Think about this hypothetical example: lets take a man living a sinless life by the power of the Spirit and then if God would decide to take His Spirit away from this righteous man, temptation would easily overtake him and that man would be totally lost and a slave to sin as much as any unbeliever. This is why we have to live by the Spirit and only by the Spirit.
Rom 8:6 NIV - The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace.
Our fleshly physical body will always be corrupted with the nature of sin and this corrupted body must end in physical death, but the body is only a temporary housing for our spiritual soul. If our spirit and soul has been totally cleansed and sanctified by God’s Spirit, we will have the power to take control over the body even though the body is spiritually dead in Christ.
Rom 8:10 NIV - But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness.
What enables a person to live a life without sin is a full filling of His Spirit and living continually by the Spirit to persevere to the end. To be truly born again and receive this extra filling of the Holy Spirit, a person must become a true Christian by dedicating all of themselves to God. This extra filling of the Spirit is not the Spirit that comes upon an individual when they first believe (justification); where God’s seed is planted and with the Spirit’s help it grows to a mature plant. This extra filling of the Spirit happens after a person has let God’s Spirit sanctify them into a mature holy plant ready to produce Godly fruit. (I will talk more about this in another message, which is “Becoming a true Christian is a process”.) The Bible says that a person that is still struggling with sin has not yet come to the point of being a total living sacrifice for God. Where that person is not yet willing to spill his/her blood for His Glory.
Heb 12:4-5 NIV - In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.
1 Peter 4:1-2 NIV - Therefore, since Christ suffered in his body, arm yourselves also with the same attitude, because he who has suffered in his body is done with sin.
Most people have been taught and believe that living a life without sinning is not a possibility in this life. I want to crush that deception and have people’s faith become full so everyone will not be hindered anymore by this lie of the devil. If anyone continues to believe this lie, they might not ever mature to the point of true and total faith in God. Faith in God’s truth is what unlocks the Spirit’s power. When a person does not have enough faith to believe in this “Entire Sanctification” concept, they are really saying they don’t believe in God’s Word or the power of God. The Bible says when a person is truly born again, that person will not sin.
1 John 5:4 NIV - For everyone born of God overcomes the world.
1 John 5:18 NKJV - We know that whoever is born of God does not sin.
1 John 3:9 NKJV - Whoever has been born of God does not sin, for His seed remains in him; and he cannot sin, because he has been born of God.
When we are truly born again believers, we will not sin because we no longer will have the desire to sin. The Holy Spirit changes our desires of our heart so our desires are no longer selfish and of worldly intensions, but only desires to love God and others exist in our heart. Selfishness is gone. When the only thing that exists in our heart is God’s love, there is no room left for wanting anything sinful. Because of this total change of desires from evil to good, we are then no longer controlled or slaves to sin, but have become slaves to loving God and others.
Rom 8:9 NIV - You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ.
Rom 6:18 NIV - You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.
Because we are no longer slaves to sin, but slaves to righteousness, we now have no choice but to live righteous lives. Just as before we were born again, we were slaves to sin, now after being born again we can’t help our selves but to do God’s good work he calls us to.
Rom 6:14 NIV - For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace.
Luke 6:43 NIV - No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit.
When we are true Christians or born again, we are no longer bound to the old self/sinful nature. We are set free from the power of sin. This is the great news of the gospel. We are finally able to be free from the bondage of sin. By our willingness to be totally devoted in obedience to God by the power of His Spirit, He is then able to nail our old sinful nature to the cross.
John 8:36 NIV - So if the Son sets you free , you will be free indeed.
Rom 6:6-7 NIV - For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin - because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.
Rom 6:11 NIV - In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
There are many, many more scriptures encouraging us that living a perfected life is possible in Christ. This life we are currently living on earth is the place God has setup for us to make the choice to follow Him and be sanctified to the point of Christian perfection that He requires to be worthy of His eternal kingdom.
Matt 10:38 NIV - anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.
1 Thess 2:11-12 NIV - For you know that we dealt with each of you as a father deals with his own children, encouraging, comforting and urging you to live lives worthy of God, who calls you into his kingdom and glory.
May God’s grace be with you – Michael Reid
Rom 8:29 NIV - For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son.
How can we become Christ like in every thing we do if we are all sinners. I will try to show you by God’s Word how this is possible through God’s grace filling up and working in your life. With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.
We can never be Christ because there is only one Christ. We will never be God, with all the infinite knowledge, wisdom, majestic power that God possesses, but from His Spirit we receive everything we need to live a perfected righteous life before God. We don’t need to be Christ to live a perfect Christian life. God sends just the right amount of grace we need to live the life God expects us to live. (This part of grace is the Holy Spirit working in and through us)
When someone has come to the point of being Christ like, it’s because God has filled that person with an extra filling of the His Spirit. It is this extra filling of the Sprit that enables them to ward off any temptation of sinning. This enables the Christian to live a sinless life before God and his fellow man as long as that person stays living by the Sprit. This perfection of our heart has been called “Entire Sanctification”, “Christian Perfection”, and “Victorious Living” depending on the denominational belief.
But, how can we still call ourselves sinners and live a life without sin? It’s because we realize we still live in this fleshly body which will continue to tempt us with selfish and prideful thoughts, but with the Holy Spirit’s empowerment in us we can stop any temptation before it manifests into a sin. You can think of this empowerment as the armor of God.
Eph 6:11 NIV - Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes.
Living our life without sinning is not of man’s nature but only of God’s nature in us. Think about this hypothetical example: lets take a man living a sinless life by the power of the Spirit and then if God would decide to take His Spirit away from this righteous man, temptation would easily overtake him and that man would be totally lost and a slave to sin as much as any unbeliever. This is why we have to live by the Spirit and only by the Spirit.
Rom 8:6 NIV - The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace.
Our fleshly physical body will always be corrupted with the nature of sin and this corrupted body must end in physical death, but the body is only a temporary housing for our spiritual soul. If our spirit and soul has been totally cleansed and sanctified by God’s Spirit, we will have the power to take control over the body even though the body is spiritually dead in Christ.
Rom 8:10 NIV - But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness.
What enables a person to live a life without sin is a full filling of His Spirit and living continually by the Spirit to persevere to the end. To be truly born again and receive this extra filling of the Holy Spirit, a person must become a true Christian by dedicating all of themselves to God. This extra filling of the Spirit is not the Spirit that comes upon an individual when they first believe (justification); where God’s seed is planted and with the Spirit’s help it grows to a mature plant. This extra filling of the Spirit happens after a person has let God’s Spirit sanctify them into a mature holy plant ready to produce Godly fruit. (I will talk more about this in another message, which is “Becoming a true Christian is a process”.) The Bible says that a person that is still struggling with sin has not yet come to the point of being a total living sacrifice for God. Where that person is not yet willing to spill his/her blood for His Glory.
Heb 12:4-5 NIV - In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.
1 Peter 4:1-2 NIV - Therefore, since Christ suffered in his body, arm yourselves also with the same attitude, because he who has suffered in his body is done with sin.
Most people have been taught and believe that living a life without sinning is not a possibility in this life. I want to crush that deception and have people’s faith become full so everyone will not be hindered anymore by this lie of the devil. If anyone continues to believe this lie, they might not ever mature to the point of true and total faith in God. Faith in God’s truth is what unlocks the Spirit’s power. When a person does not have enough faith to believe in this “Entire Sanctification” concept, they are really saying they don’t believe in God’s Word or the power of God. The Bible says when a person is truly born again, that person will not sin.
1 John 5:4 NIV - For everyone born of God overcomes the world.
1 John 5:18 NKJV - We know that whoever is born of God does not sin.
1 John 3:9 NKJV - Whoever has been born of God does not sin, for His seed remains in him; and he cannot sin, because he has been born of God.
When we are truly born again believers, we will not sin because we no longer will have the desire to sin. The Holy Spirit changes our desires of our heart so our desires are no longer selfish and of worldly intensions, but only desires to love God and others exist in our heart. Selfishness is gone. When the only thing that exists in our heart is God’s love, there is no room left for wanting anything sinful. Because of this total change of desires from evil to good, we are then no longer controlled or slaves to sin, but have become slaves to loving God and others.
Rom 8:9 NIV - You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ.
Rom 6:18 NIV - You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.
Because we are no longer slaves to sin, but slaves to righteousness, we now have no choice but to live righteous lives. Just as before we were born again, we were slaves to sin, now after being born again we can’t help our selves but to do God’s good work he calls us to.
Rom 6:14 NIV - For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace.
Luke 6:43 NIV - No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit.
When we are true Christians or born again, we are no longer bound to the old self/sinful nature. We are set free from the power of sin. This is the great news of the gospel. We are finally able to be free from the bondage of sin. By our willingness to be totally devoted in obedience to God by the power of His Spirit, He is then able to nail our old sinful nature to the cross.
John 8:36 NIV - So if the Son sets you free , you will be free indeed.
Rom 6:6-7 NIV - For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin - because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.
Rom 6:11 NIV - In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
There are many, many more scriptures encouraging us that living a perfected life is possible in Christ. This life we are currently living on earth is the place God has setup for us to make the choice to follow Him and be sanctified to the point of Christian perfection that He requires to be worthy of His eternal kingdom.
Matt 10:38 NIV - anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.
1 Thess 2:11-12 NIV - For you know that we dealt with each of you as a father deals with his own children, encouraging, comforting and urging you to live lives worthy of God, who calls you into his kingdom and glory.
May God’s grace be with you – Michael Reid
Do We Have A Reason To Be Angry With A Sinner
When someone sins and it causes you pain or loss, do you think you have a reason to be angry with that sinner?
Do you expect anybody not to sin if they have not been born again?
How can a born again believer still love and show love to a sinner when that sinner’s sins are causing hurt and loss? It is through Jesus’ love only which is flowing through you.
When we love others the way God loves us, we can love the person (soul) and hate the sinful act of the sinner. Most of the time we try to stop the sinful acts that a person does by condemning the person. We need to remember the root of the sins, which are of a spiritual nature and not so much a physical problem. We must except that a sinner is going to sin. So do we love the sinner anyway and overlook the sin so in the process of loving them we might bring them to Jesus Christ. What did Jesus do?
Rom 5:8 - But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Then are we not called to die for the sinners too? Yes we are, we die to our own selfish needs and desires for the welfare of others. When we forgive other people for their sins against us, we are also accepting the consequences of their sinful acts upon ourselves. We must be willing to take on and accept the hurt and/or loss to ourselves for the wrongful sinful acts of others. If we are going to truly love people, we must be involved with people. If we are involved with other people we will be hurt and suffer loss by those people.
We must be willing to suffer from the sinful acts of other people in order for us to truly show Jesus’ love to others. Looking past a sinner’s sin and truly loving them with God’s love is how we show God’s light to others. We must be willing to suffer physically and emotionally in order for others to see God’s love in the hopes that they can stop being sinners and be born again. We need to help heal the root of the problem of sin and not attack the sinner. It is a spiritual problem.
In living with the sins of this world we end up suffering and dying to self, this is God's refiner's fire, we are refined like gold. Once the gold is refined it has no impurities left, it is pure gold. Just like pure gold is totally refined, so are we refined in this life into God's pure love, which is when we are totally refined of our inequities. We all need to look forward to this for ourselves. When you are purified as gold, that is the point where you count everything joy, even if it seems everybody in this world is against you. God’s Word says we will be persecuted. Count it joy when others persecute you because of Jesus Name, because they are not really persecuting you but Jesus that is in you.
A sinner will sin, but a born again believer will not sin (at least any sin that the born again believer has knowledge of). So we need to look forward to the sinner no longer being a sinner, but a born again believer. In the mean time if we aren’t pure yet, let us count it joy when we suffer for others.
Your Brother In Christ,
Mike
Do you expect anybody not to sin if they have not been born again?
How can a born again believer still love and show love to a sinner when that sinner’s sins are causing hurt and loss? It is through Jesus’ love only which is flowing through you.
When we love others the way God loves us, we can love the person (soul) and hate the sinful act of the sinner. Most of the time we try to stop the sinful acts that a person does by condemning the person. We need to remember the root of the sins, which are of a spiritual nature and not so much a physical problem. We must except that a sinner is going to sin. So do we love the sinner anyway and overlook the sin so in the process of loving them we might bring them to Jesus Christ. What did Jesus do?
Rom 5:8 - But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Then are we not called to die for the sinners too? Yes we are, we die to our own selfish needs and desires for the welfare of others. When we forgive other people for their sins against us, we are also accepting the consequences of their sinful acts upon ourselves. We must be willing to take on and accept the hurt and/or loss to ourselves for the wrongful sinful acts of others. If we are going to truly love people, we must be involved with people. If we are involved with other people we will be hurt and suffer loss by those people.
We must be willing to suffer from the sinful acts of other people in order for us to truly show Jesus’ love to others. Looking past a sinner’s sin and truly loving them with God’s love is how we show God’s light to others. We must be willing to suffer physically and emotionally in order for others to see God’s love in the hopes that they can stop being sinners and be born again. We need to help heal the root of the problem of sin and not attack the sinner. It is a spiritual problem.
In living with the sins of this world we end up suffering and dying to self, this is God's refiner's fire, we are refined like gold. Once the gold is refined it has no impurities left, it is pure gold. Just like pure gold is totally refined, so are we refined in this life into God's pure love, which is when we are totally refined of our inequities. We all need to look forward to this for ourselves. When you are purified as gold, that is the point where you count everything joy, even if it seems everybody in this world is against you. God’s Word says we will be persecuted. Count it joy when others persecute you because of Jesus Name, because they are not really persecuting you but Jesus that is in you.
A sinner will sin, but a born again believer will not sin (at least any sin that the born again believer has knowledge of). So we need to look forward to the sinner no longer being a sinner, but a born again believer. In the mean time if we aren’t pure yet, let us count it joy when we suffer for others.
Your Brother In Christ,
Mike
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