Grace in Galatia

Consider Abraham:  He believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.  Understand, then, that those who believe are children of Abraham.      Galatians 3:6,7

It is not easy to keep the books fo the Bible apart and be able to say how Ephesians is different from Colossians, and Philippians from Thessalonians.  There are, however, little memory devices that can help us somewhat in doing this, and one is to associate the word grace with Galatians.

The Galatians are the people whom Paul scolded for going back to the Old Testament traditions of having special days and feasts, and what not.  This is the book in which he reports the he rebuked the apostle Peter for refusing to eat with non-Jewish people.  Galatians is the book which tells us that Abraham was saved by grace, and that the law, which came four hundred years afterward, could not change the covenant which God made with him and all believers ever afterward.

There are Bible teachers who try to tell us that there are various methods of salvation, so that people in the Old Testament were saved by keeping the law, and we are saved by Christ.  This, of course, is all wrong, for there has been only one way of salvation from the time that Adam first sinned, and that one way is by grace.  But there is something far more serious than believing that salvation could once be earned by works, and that is trying to earn salvation that way today!  All of us would like to attempt it.  We are so independent by nature that we would like to work out our own salvation without God’s help whatsoever.  When the Ten Commandments are read to us, we forget that they are taught us in order to show us our sinfulness, and we think that if we only keep the Golden Rule or live a Christian life, we will thereby earn eternal life.  Nothing, absolutely nothing in ourselves, can save us, whether it is prayer, church going, Bible reading, or doing good deeds.  Salvation is of God and His grace.

Book of Beginnings

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.      Genesis 1:1

There are many facts about the Bible that are not at all necessary or even helpful to know, such as the number of chapters that are in it.  Other facts, however, are useful to know, and one of these is that Genesis can be divided into four equal quarters.  The first fourth of the book tells about the beginning of the universe, the human race, sin, salvation, human government, and world destruction.  This is the section that tells us about Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Enoch, Methuselah, Noah, the flood, and the tower of Babel.

The second quarter of Genesis is the story of Abraham, the “father of believers,” with whom God formally established what we call the covenant of grace.  Here is where we learn the wonderful fact that God includes children in His Church (Genesis 17), while the story of Isaac and Ishmael, Abrahams’ two sons, tells us that merely being born into a believing home does not save a person’s soul.

The third section of Genesis is about Jacob, Isaac’s son, who becomes the father of the Jewish nation, God’s Old Testament people.  Here we learn that salvation is purely of grace, for Jacob was not the oldest boy of the family, and he had many faults that made him less likable than his twin brother Esau.

The last quarter of the book tells the story of Joseph, Jacob’s son, who became the prime minister of Egypt and thus was God’s means of taking care of his twelve brothers and their families, from whom came the twelve tribes of Israel.

Genesis includes some of the most familiar and beloved stories of the world, and they are truth that is stranger than fiction.  In them we see a great God beginning to work out a great salvation for a great creation.

Be a Joshua

Make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed.         Hebrews 12:13

The name Joshua is actually an Old Testament, Hebrew form of Jesus, and it was Joshua who led the second generation of Israel into the Promised Land.  There is a lesson here for those who enjoy the fullness of salvation and who sometimes become impatient with those who claim to be saved but who seem to be merely “half saved”.

After once surveying the Promised Land, Joshua and his fellow spy Caleb learned that, even though they were personally qualified to enter Canaan, the people of Israel were not yet ready.  God said they would have to wait for another generation to mature in faith before they could lead Israel into the Promised Land.  So they wandered in the desert with the rest of the Israelites for forty years (see Numbers 14).

Now compare Joshua with Moses who, though he had faith, disobeyed God under pressure put on by the Israelites.  Because of his impatience, Moses never set foot in the Promised Land.  He was allowed to see it, however, from Mount Pisgah before he died (see Numbers 20:1-12 and Deuteronomy 34:1-5).

Do you understand?  Any Spirit-filled person who becomes annoyed with others for not claiming their inheritance (enjoying their salvation) must be patient and caring, lest he dishonor God who gives it.

 

 

Looking to Jesus

Let us run … the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus.     Hebrews 12:1, 2

“How to” books are extremely popular, even in dealing with religion.  When a person begins to understand how great salvation in Christ is, he or she naturally desires that salvation and wonders how to obtain it.

First, one must sincerely want the fullness of God’s salvation.  Many people do not want any more of the Christian faith than they think is necessary for getting them to heaven.

Second, one must ask for it.  God is more willing to give of Himself than we are to receive Him.  And, interestingly, those who pray for the fullness of salvation find that their prayer answers itself; before one asks for salvation, God has already granted it.

Third, if one really wants salvation and asks for it sincerely, he will make room for it; he will put away the old self and put on the new.  Paul says that if any one is in Christ, “he is a new creation; the old has passed away” (2 Corinthians 5:17).

Finally, if one sincerely seeks salvation, he or she will look where it is most likely to be found.  He will search the Scriptures to find Jesus, and he will learn more about the Bible and Jesus through the church.  With eyes focused steadily on Christ, then, he or she will experience the fullness of salvation.

We Are Saints

He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.      Hebrews 10:14

It is impossible to make progress in the Christian race unless a person realizes that he or she is a saint in Christ.  Can you imagine cheerleaders encouraging a team yelling, “Let’s go, losers”?

Possibly we get the wrong impression of ourselves because many of the songs we sing in worship services emphasize human sin.  For many of us, worship can become a time of telling God how good He is and how bad we are.  Hebrews 10:14 however, tells us that Christians have been made holy.  In 1 Corinthians 6, Paul lists many types of sinners and then says: “Such were some of you.  But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God” (v. 11). We must be careful not to overlook Gods work of grace by calling attention to our sins all of the time.

Failing to recognize God’s complete salvation may also cause Christians to offend and confuse prospective converts.  What appeal does becoming a Christian have if a person doesn’t change or show any joy?

Perhaps we should address each other as “saints.”  Then, however, people would say we were being presumptuous and proud.  On the other hand, we must not take pride in humility.  Let us never call unclean what the Lord our God has hallowed.

The Man of Mystery

He is without father or mother or genealogy….but resembling the Son of God.    Hebrews 7:3

One of the most intriguing characters in Scripture is Melchizedek.  He entered Abraham’s life for a brief moment and then disappeared (Genesis 14:18-20).  Hebrews says that he had no parents or genealogy.  In this respect, Melchizedek was a type of Christ.  Christ had a genealogy, but He could stand apart from it because His birth was miraculous.

The first thing we should learn from the story of Melchizedek is that salvation in the Old Testament included more than a few favored Israelites.  Melchizedek was not an Israelite.

This is not to say that there is more than one way of salvation than through Jesus Christ.  But who are we to tell God how he has to save any of us through the Savior? Hebrews insists that Jesus is king of the universe, not just king of the Jews.  Everyone who is saved is saved by Him; anyone who refuses light from the Light of the World is lost.

The story of Melchizedek reminds us that salvation does not depend on one’s background or genealogy.  We cannot inherit salvation.  As it has been said: “God has no grandchildren.”  Each of us is called to personal faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.  In Jesus, we can become prophets, priests, and kings who serve God no matter what our background may be.

God is Talking to You

He has spoken to us by a Son.             Hebrews 1:2

In some ways it is good the we do not know the author or authors of Hebrews.  Often we may be tempted to say of some parts of Scripture, “Well, those are just Paul’s ideas,” or, “That was written only for the Corinthians.”  The namelessness of the author of Hebrews emphasizes that God is really its primary author.

What is more, Hebrews is addressed to each one of us.  That we have this special message addressed to each of us personally is extremely encouraging because each of us needs a special message from God.  As we follow Christ, each of us is at a certain stage in his or her spiritual development.  And each of us is required to advance in his or her spiritual life.

It is true, of course, that everyone who has been saved in Christ is saved completely; no one is merely “half saved.”  Every child of God is filled with the Holy Spirit, who is “given without measure.”  Still, we must grow in the Spirit to achieve full awareness of our salvation.  Many Christians have only a vague idea about what being saved means, and they do not consciously enjoy their salvation.

We must increase our fullness daily.  God speaks to us personally through the book of Hebrews so that we can lean more about His perfect salvation.

 

Now is the Day of Salvation

Experts tell us that Paul wrote 4 letters to the Corinthians of which we have two.  In the fifth chapter of II Corinthians he is talking about the reasonable expectation that we can look for new bodies immediately upon death.  I think that sometimes we think we are in kind of a Jehovah Witness state of coma waiting for our bodies, but I think that Paul indicates otherwise in II Corinthians 5.  In the seventeenth verse he says that “If anyone is in Christ he is a new creature, the old has passed away, behold the new has come.”  Paul goes on to say, keep in mind that he didn’t have chapters and verses when he wrote this, in Chapter 6 verse 2, “Now is the day of salvation.”

I suppose most of you think that this will be an evangelistic post.  And that text, “Now is the day of salvation” has often been used for that purpose.  Although I doubt it, I may have used that verse myself in that context, to call people to repentance.  But that is not what Paul is saying here. He doesn’t say, “This is the day of repentance, this is the day to become converted, this is the day to make your peace with God.”  No, he says, “this is the day of salvation” which is something else.  He is writing to Christians.  In fact, the whole Bible is written to Christians. We are to be living epistles who bring people to conversion and then they read the scriptures to be food for their souls.

Like many Christians, the Christians in Corinth were “half-saved” if I may use that expression.  They were carnal, which doesn’t mean that some of them were bad, although some of them likely were or did bad things.  They weren’t wicked; he calls them “saints”. But they were fleshly.  And if that doesn’t make much sense, they were kids, immature, half-grown Christians.  That’s what a child is after all, very fleshly.  It sleeps, eats, does things that we wouldn’t tolerate in a grown up.  And it is perfectly natural in child, but we as Christians need to get beyond that childhood level.  I’m not scolding or trying to wall anybody out, but it is a simple fact that the majority of Christians are carnal.  Now if you think that that is a little strong, keep in mind that what makes a child a child is that he doesn’t know who he is.  Doesn’t know whether he is a boy or a girl, his name, who is parents are or if he is an American.  He or she doesn’t know who they are.  And that characterizes most of Christians.  They don’t know who they are.  Now that sounds strong, but I hope to demonstrate the truth of that in the course of this post.

We talk about being filled with the Spirit and the Bible tells us to be filled with the Spirit, but are you aware that you are?  If we are born again, we are.  But many people don’t realize it, call upon that Spirit of God within them, make use of it, enjoy it.  And that, fellow pilgrims, brothers and sisters, is why many denominations are not growing.  We are not happy, we don’t have assurance.  The perseverance of the saints is one of the 5 points of Calvinism, but our subculture [the church] is often characterized by more depression and self-guilt, fear and phobia than the national average, because we don’t know who we are.

And we don’t have a gospel.  Jesus said “that if I am lifted up I will draw all men unto myself.”  Jesus says, “I want you to have life, and more abundant life,” and “I want your joy and that your joy should be full.” “I want you to have peace, and it should be my peace, my confidence, my serenity.”  Jesus was never shook up, he was never worried. He didn’t have false guilt.  I realize that he was perfect, but my point is is that we are too, in Him.  My big point is that NOW is the day of salvation.  We should enjoy it, use it today, enter into our inheritance.  You may have heard of people that carry so much life insurance that they deprive themselves of food or don’t go on trips or deprive their kids of inheritance.  They are always looking towards the day when their IRA comes due, they have great annuities.  Even if they lived to enjoy that, which a lot of them do not, what a way to mortgage the present in favor of an unknown, uncertain future.  And that describes the Christianity of a lot of us.  It’s “pie in the sky when you die, by and by.”  That is their salvation.

If I were to ask what it means to be saved, many would say, “To have your sins forgiven.”  That’s what people say when they make profession of faith, and you can forgive young people that answer because they are young; that is my point.  They have some growing to do.  But it is all wrong when we as adults say that what it means to be a Christian is that we “go to heaven.”  What did Jesus do to save you?  “Died on the cross.” That’s about it.  That’s the whole sum and substance of our faith, “He died on the cross.”  But that is just the beginning.  Communion too just commemorates his death rather than ingest His life!  And commemorates His death in me, that I died with Him.  The Lord’s Supper shouldn’t be a wake, a funeral meal. It’s a homecoming, a Thanksgiving Dinner, a wedding feast.  You wouldn’t think so by the songs that we sometimes sing at it, but that is what it is.  What does it mean to be saved?  That Christ lives in you, not that he died for you.

Did you know that the Bible talks more about the present than the future?   Even the book of Revelation.  It talks more about money than “the hereafter”.  Whenever you read in the Bible “the Kingdom of Heaven” you can pretty much understand that to be something here on earth.  Jesus says “the Kingdom is within you.”  We are citizens of the kingdom here and now.  Ephesians says that we are “reigning with Christ!”  Eternal life begins the moment one is converted.  And that means we don’t have to die, this thing that we fear.  All our lifetimes, says Hebrews, we are subject to bondage of the fear of death.  All of our phobias are reducible to the fear of death.   Whether it is lack of a job, sickness, accident, they are all reducible to the fear of death, which is why we are subject to bondage.  And now Jesus has rescued us from that basic fear.  We never have to die.  Oh, we call it death, from our side, just like a person who has fallen asleep.  We can talk to them (while they are sleeping) and they don’t hear us, they are “dead to the world.”  But they are very much alive.  So by that same token, someone who is lying in a casket we call dead but they didn’t die.  If they were to come back and we’d ask, “How did it feel?”, they’d  say, “How did what feel?” Death is a painless thing, like walking through a door.  Jesus said, “Whoever believes in me shall never die.”

If we were honest, most of us would have to admit that we read Bible out of sense of duty, that’s our requirement as Christians, our quiet time.  And by that we mean  we have to find out “the will of God for our lives.”  Well that word “will” is a beautiful word.  It is a synonym for legacy, or testament.  And if a will was probated and you found out that you were in it, you would probably look over it carefully, with all its latin words and legalisms.  And that’s the way we should read the Bible, because it is God’s will for you.  His promises, what He has for you, not what he is telling you to do.

So, how do you realize all this, that you could live a perfect life, if you wanted to?  It is just our will.  People will to be about just as happy as they want to be and as wicked as they want to be.  Just remember that you are in Christ. 150 times it says in the Bible that we are in Christ and Christ is in us.  The old person that your mother birthed, that is not you, not truly you.  The Bible has lots of illustrations of this…vine and branches, etc.  But the best one is husband and wife, how a woman takes on her husbands last name.  She is no longer whatever her maiden name was, she is a new person, a new legal entity.  And she “forsakes” her father and her mother to set up a home of her own.  She “leaves and cleaves.”  She is identified with him.  And so, we become new creatures in Christ. He is, as the Bible say, “our husband.”  We have to be who we are, know who we are.  “For me to live is Christ.”   Then you’ll have peace.  You’ll have that security that we are always talking about now days.  We seek it in all forms, be it in marriage, money, job or citizenship, country.  That will give you that “peace which passes all understanding.”  It will give us evangelism, it will give us a gospel.  We beat our brains for new methods and suggestions, we try this and we try that.  But if we knew who we are, the world would take knowledge of us that we were in Jesus.  “I am the way, without me there is no going.  I am the truth, without me there is no knowing.”  By being Christians we can have the very mind of Christ.  This is life, union life, the more abundant life.  “To know him more clearly, to love him more dearly, to be him more nearly.”

Christ Has Been Reconciled; Now We!

A lot of us have a hard time forgiving.  A good summary of this first, basic point is found in II Corinthians 5 where Paul says, “God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, not counting men’s sins against them.”  Isn’t that a pretty expression?  And we act as ambassadors,  on behalf of Christ; God entreating through us and we being reconciled to God.  Do you get it?  That’s the definition of forgiveness.  Objective-Subjective.  God is reconciled to us, you be reconciled to God.

What are the bases for this forgiveness?  There are at least two and the first of them is God’s love.  What a rock-bottom basis that is.  That’s where it all started.  The most familiar verse in the Bible is John 3:16, “God so loved the world…”  The question is often asked, “Why did God make the world?”  Well, for the reason that it is His very nature.  A father can’t be a father without production or reproduction.  So if God is going to be a father he has to make the world. Then why did He save the world after it spit in His face and rebuffed Him?  Again, because of His very nature, God is Love.  That is the definition of God, it is His essence.  And when we say that “God so loved the world” we have to remember that that is the triune God.  We so often think of the Father as vengeful and mean, just and righteous, cantankerous, has to have his “pound of flesh” in Sherlockian fashion, and then Jesus is the loving second person of the trinity who pleads and implores, mediates and intercedes, and then the Father grudgingly and tolerantly forgives.  The triune God loved so much that Jesus was born.  Dick Walters used to put it picturesquely in his typical fashion by saying, “The Father thought it, the Son bought it and the Holy Spirit wrought it.”  As far as we are concerned, by grace we sought it.

The second basis for this forgiveness and salvation is that God gave his Son, that is the means, the expression of His love, the tool that He used.  The Bible is so full of that point that it is not necessary to site scripture.  “Behold the lamb of God,” said John.  But it bears reminder here that we are not forgiven simply because of God’s love, the way an indulgent mother or tolerant grandfather or an easy-going judge would say, “I forgive you.” There is more than one basis.  It’s not just easy-going love, that God felt sorry and in sentimental fashion he suspended the sentence, or commuted or probated it.  We have all these fancy terms for modern “justice”.  The reason or basis for our forgiveness is that Christ became identified with us, in a mysterious, miraculous way. He became one with us.  The Old Testament is full of pictures to that effect like that of the scapegoat which on the day of atonement the priest would put his hands on a given goat and pronounce it as a representative of the people and would list the sins of the nation and condemnation and then the goat would be led so far away that it could not find its way back to camp and another goat on that same day would be killed to indicate that death is the result of sin.  And that is the basis for God’s patience with us and the unbeliever.  Peter says that the unbeliever is always saying, “You Christians are always talking about the second coming.  There is no evidence of a second coming.”  And Peter ruefully replies, “It is because of your unbelief that God is postponing, deferring His return.”  “God is not willing that any should parish but that all should come to the knowledge of the truth.”  That is why the unbeliever may have 50, 60 or 80 or more years of life.  God will often prolong their life so that they have a chance to be saved.

So it is nothing of ourselves, let’s be sure of that.  The basis of salvation is not in ourselves.  Some are nicer or more church-going than others, or more penitent, but it is all of God, from beginning to end.  But that brings us to the fact that there is a condition.  That’s not the same as a cause, that is two different things.  We sometimes confuse the two;  we say there was a drizzle yesterday so there were a lot of fender-benders and the police were busy running around because of the accidents.  The rain caused the accidents.  No, the rain was the occasion for the accidents.  The accidents may have been due to careless driving, that is what is on the citation or ticket.  Going too fast for the conditions was the cause.  Looking at it another way,  the lights that illuminate a room is due to electricity generated who-knows-where. But all the electricity in the world would be of no value if it were not for bulbs, wires, transformers and so on.  One last illustration:  If I cover up my plants in the winter to protect them from frost but neglect to remove it in the springtime, all the rain that falls won’t result in any growth if it doesn’t reach that plant.  One is the cause and the other is the condition or requirement.  So, to get back to the subject at hand, God forgives everybody, objectively, pardons them.  Christ suffered enough so that every last man, woman, child, fetus and embryo could be saved, everyone.  So why aren’t they?  Because they don’t meet the conditions.  We put it in different ways;  we say one is not penitent, they are not sorry for their sins, they don’t ask forgiveness.  But how often are those people that do still not forgiven?  “Lord, like the publican I stand” is sung in our churches meaninglessly.  Why aren’t such people forgiven?  Let’s put it this way, how does one prove that he/she is sincere?  By being forgiving.  There, that is the condition.  We all know the story in the Bible of the two debtors.  One man was forgiven an ocean of debt and then turned right around and grabbed a debtor by the throat and said, “Pay me that dollar you owe me.”  Now the man who had the large debt didn’t ultimately get forgiven although he was penitent and sorry (that’s in the story) and why wasn’t he?  Because he wasn’t forgiving.  Jesus had hardly opened his eyes after teaching the disciples the Lord’s Prayer when he said, “If you do not forgive men their trespasses neither will your heavenly Father forgive you.”  He didn’t say, “Don’t pray for your daily bread if you are going to waste it.”  He could have, should have.  He didn’t say, “Don’t pray ‘do not lead us into temptation’ if you are just going to go out to the bar or wherever it is.”   But he did take pains to say, “Don’t ask for forgiveness if you are not going to be forgiving.”  If you are not forgiving, you prove, you demonstrate that you have not been forgiven, because a forgiven person is a new person.  He just radiates this forgiveness.  A new spirit is within him, that is what Hebrews tells us.  It’s the lamb of God.  God loved him so much that He loves everybody else.  God doesn’t say, “Now, you didn’t forgive, so I am not going to forgive you.”  No!  It’s “because you don’t show forgiveness, you show you haven’t been forgiven.”  That’s the way it is.  That’s the condition.

Finally, let’s talk about the insufficiency of forgiveness.  It’s complete, but there has to be something more for salvation.  You know our reluctance to say that Christ died for all.  It’s because we limit our own salvation to that.  We ask a person when they make their confession of faith, “What does it mean to be a Christian?”  And the response is often, “Jesus died for my sins.”  Period. “I’m forgiven.”  No wonder we have problems if we believe in limited atonement when we start saying that about the unbeliever, if we say that Christ died for his sins and He is the savior of all men.  What’s the difference then?  We don’t think of ourselves as having anything more than just forgiveness, that is the trouble.  Well, we all know that a non-Christian is dead in sin.  So what good would it do to wash a corpse?  All the washing in the world doesn’t do a bit of good.  Similarly, the washing away of your sins doesn’t make you alive!  You are still dead, you’ll keep on committing sins, it doesn’t make you a new person.  Forgiveness only puts a person back into the position that Adam was before the fall.  Why would God allow man to fall if He was just going to forgive him to put him back like he was before the fall?  There is much more than Adam was.  Adam had continuous life, but he didn’t have Eternal life.  He was in paradise but he wasn’t in heaven.  In other words, if forgiveness could keep a person out of hell the most godless man could come up to gates of hell and say to whoever keeps the gate “Let me out.  My sins have been forgiven, Jesus died on the cross.  The Bible says that the Lamb of God takes away the sin of the world.”  But on the Day of Judgement Matthew 25 tells us plainly that the redeemed are not told by Jesus, “Call me Blessed. Walk into heaven because your sins are forgiven.”  You don’t find that there at all.  But rather, “[sic] You did this and you did that or the other thing, you lived like Christ, Christ lived in you.”  And so the mere forgiveness of sins is not enough.  It is a new man in Christ Jesus.  Salvation does not give us continued existence, which the unbeliever enjoys, but it is the life of God – immortal, eternal, divine.

So Great A Salvation (Part I)

There’s a danger in studying small bits of scripture the way we do from week to week in that we fail to see the forest on account of the trees. So I thought it well that our theme should kind of summarize it all, look at the whole of it, under the theme of our Great Salvation, which is a quote from Hebrews 2:3, which says that “How shall we escape if we neglect a so great salvation?”  And I thought for years that if we don’t repent and become Christians, we would go to hell.  But Hebrews is talking about static Christians, carnal Christians, who don’t press on.  A bicycle or an airplane have to move forward or they are going to fall.  And so Paul says, “How will we escape the inevitable consequences of not moving ahead?”  Of just being comfortable in the status quo.  How should we escape if we neglect all the dimensions and the great proportions and the stupendous beauty of our salvation.  In other words, God is not happy when we are scarcely saved, when we scrape in to heaven so to speak, by the skin of our teeth.  Jesus says, “I want your joy to be full!”  And he says, “I came to give you life, and that you may have it more abundantly….full life.”  That’s the way it ought to be.  And the Bible says in I Peter 4:18 that “the righteous are scarcely saved.”  Isn’t that a damning inditement?

Now, how do you square that with the fact that the Bible also says that everybody is fully saved?  Even little babies, who we trust possess the Holy Spirit.  We all possess the Holy Spirit.  This isn’t an elite group, the disciples and apostles, who happened to be Spirit filled.  We are all Spirit filled.  But like air in balloons, some are little tiny balloons and some are larger, but we are all supposed to be filled with the Spirit.   Charismatic, pentecostal.  This isn’t new, it is in our creeds and catechisms, where it says when Jesus was buried, we were buried with him too, so that our old nature is dead and gone.  But the problem is that we don’t enjoy it.  It may all be theoretically true, you may say, “He was right, it was all in the Bible and in our creeds,” but it hasn’t dropped from our heads to our hearts.

So, a few thoughts, and the first is that salvation is far more than having our sins forgiven. (The other topics which will be further amplified or delineated is that baptism is far more than the washing away of our sins, and finally, that heaven is far more than “pie-in-the-sky-by-and-by-when-we-die.”  Heaven is something here and now, we should be citizens of the kingdom of heaven already now.  We have risen with Christ, we’re reigning with Christ.  And we shouldn’t be “under our circumstances” but looking down on them.  We shouldn’t be all the time looking up but should be looking down and getting the view point that Christ has.)

You ask the average Christian, “What did Jesus do for you?”  And the answer is, “Oh, he died for my sins.”  But that is just the tip of the iceberg.  The thrilling fact, as Paul put it in Galations 2:20, “I was crucified with Christ.”  If I may digress, we all learned John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that he  gave his own begotten son, that whosoever….”  Well I’m not “whosoever”.  I don’t know if that includes me or not.  I really don’t.  We can’t go on a verse like that that is so general.  But we can on the basis of Galations 2:20 which says, “When Christ died, I died, I was crucified with Christ.  Never the less, I live.  Yet not I live, but the life which I now live… in this earth suit…, I live by faith, the faith of the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.”  Now that is personal, that is individual.

We pay a lot of attention to Jesus and his work on earth.  But Paul says in II Corinthians 5, “I don’t know Christ after the flesh anymore.  I don’t know anybody, I don’t even know myself after the flesh.  I’m a new person, and I look at other Christians as though for whom Christ died.”  If you forget everything else, you just say to yourself, “I was crucified with Christ.”  Don’t say “Christ died for me,” but “I died with him.”  Someone has said that liberal Christians stress imitation.  There are bumper stickers and bracelets that have WWJD on them.  And so we are to ask ourselves, “What would Christ do if he was in this situation?”  I just don’t know what Christ would do in my situation, I just don’t.  He didn’t live in this century.  Imitation is the gospel of the liberal.  And the “fundies” as we speak despairingly of them when we are fundamentalists ourselves, speak of a gospel of substitution: “Christ died for me, he took my place.”  Their atonement can be so commercial, something that we don’t practice on earth at all.  When Mr. A has been sentenced to die that Mr. B can take his place.  This is contrary to human justice…mere substitution.  But the whole gospel is unification, identification.  When Christ died, we died.  That’s justice.  And when he rose, we rose.  And that’s love, that’s grace.

Paul is discussing in Romans 5 this precious doctrine and he says, “How can I make this plain?  Oh, I know.  We all know that we have descended from Adam.  That’s agreed upon.”  Anybody who has studied genetics knows that you get your traits from your folks, even the way you walk, what you look like, it’s in the genes. Well, now, when we’re children it seems preposterous that we can leave our family, our home of which we are an integral part, a genetic part, and take up with a perfect stranger, and that he or she becomes closer to us than our dad or our mother, the woman who bore us.  But it is fact, it’s true. That’s the way it works, that’s how a new family begins. The two become one…psychologically, emotionally, etc.  And the Bible says that that is the way it is with salvation.  He is our husband and we are his wife.  We can repudiate Adam and Eve and say technically, legally, “We have nothing to do with you anymore.  By the grace of God we got our bodies from you but that is as far as it goes.”  II Corinthians 5:17 “If anyone is in Christ he is a new creation…”  Just as Jesus was, a new creation.  “Old things are passed away,” done, gone and buried, “all things have become new.”  Do you know that if you look up the work “cross” is a concordance, the New Testament talks more about your and my crucifixion than that of Christ?  It does.  “If anyone would be my disciple let him take up his cross and follow me.”  That is what Jesus said.  And Paul said, “God forbid that I should glory except in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, whereby I am crucified unto the world and the world is crucified unto me.”