CHAPTERS 1 -2 - 3

CHAPTER 1

PERFORMANCE

We all are performance oriented from birth.  We are taught that if we do not perform we would be given a low grade and not come up to “expected” standards of our society.  When most get into Christianity they carry this performance orientation with them.  It’s not only carried by the average pew filler but taught from the pulpit that we are expected to perform or suffer the consequences of hell.  That soon registers in our minds and to change it is next to impossible; the reason being we “think” this is from God, this order to performance, and not from men.  Fear of God in this light takes on a bad affect and blocks many from entering into His loving embrace.

As this book will bring out, the above idea of performance is contrary to what the Scripture message is desperately attempting to get all to see; to the contrary, it is our NOT performing that leads us to the answer.  It is not as some well meaning individual had thought, “ God helps those that help themselves.”  This isn’t’ the case!  It should have been said this way, “God helps those WHO CAN NOT help themselves.”   Our attempts at performance to gain God’s favor will never be accepted by God.  As we will find out, it is HIS actions and His alone that saves us. 

I can hear the question, “Then why do good?”  The only answer is, out of GRADITUDE for what He has done, saving us UNCONDITIONALLY.  The chapters that follow in this book will develop the matter of His unconditional offer of His mercy and His grace.

CHAPTER 2

THOUGH HE WAS A SON

“Though He was a Son, yet learned He obedience by the things which He suffered.” Heb. 5:8

This is a very well known verse, yet as I reflected on this verse today I saw it in light of what I will be shared in this book.  Though we are now Sons, we will learn obedience by the things we will suffer.  To imply that we need to come to obedience is understandable; yet in this text it says that the Son of God had to learn obedience by the things he would suffer.  The only reason for this learning was because He stood in the place of that Adam which had fallen.  Christ came into this life “liken” unto sinful flesh; was tempted as we are tempted, yet never fell as the first Adam had.

Another verse of scripture says, “If we suffer, we shall also reign with Him; if we deny Him, He also will deny us. If we believe not, yet He abideth faithful; He cannot deny Himself.”  II Tim.2-12-13.

Though He was the Obedient Son of God, at His incarnation, He was placed in a position where He could have become disobedient.  In the wilderness temptation He passed the test; later in the garden once again He passed the test.  He was obedient unto death.  What He accomplished remains faithful in those moments we fail…..”if we believe not, (doubt, sway under temptation and don’t believe that God’s love is truly unconditional) yet He abides faithful; He cannot deny Himself.”  Notice the phrase, “He cannot deny Himself;” reflect on this in light of Heb.  6:13  “For when God made promise to Abraham, because He could swear by no greater, He swear BY HIMSELF.”  In other words, God had made promises to Abraham (note, the use of the Name Abraham not Abram…thus this promise was not only to the Jewish people but to the whole world)….God makes a promise to Abraham that He, God alone, would save all of humanity from the fall of the first Adam.   And because there was no one higher to swear this to, He, God, Swore unto Himself that if He break this promise He would destroy Himself.  You can now see why Jesus could not deny Himself even when we deny Him.  Yet if you deny Him and this unconditional love He is offering, He has to deny you because you have thrown out the promise God had made to Abraham and the only thing that can save humanity.  If you deny what God had accomplished through His Son, you trod underfoot the FREE UNCONDITIONAL LOVE OF GOD, thus there remains no other sacrifice you could ever offer.  God won’t break His part of this contract, and yet anything others might think to ADD to this, changes it to “works” to gain God’s favor.  You see the warning in Heb. 3:12 of doing just this, “Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the Living God.” (and His unconditional promise to Abraham).  Read along with this Gal. 3:17 “And this I say, that the covenant (God’s promise to Abraham), that was confirmed before of God in Christ, the law, which was four hundred and thirty years after, CANNOT disannul, that it should make the promise of none effect.  For if the inheritance be of the law, it is no more of promise; but God gave it to Abraham by promise.” So think; if the 10 Commandments and all the laws you can pull up out of the Bible, CAN’T DISANNUL God’s promise, what ever made you think you can or anyone else can come up with some idea of a law that would shoot down God’s UNCONDITIONAL PROMISE.  To point to a Biblical text and say that this text places a condition on God accepting you, means in some way you have either misunderstood the text, twisted it, or totally misunderstand the law of this text and its END INTENT.  Paul clearly said that there never was a law given whereby we could be saved.  He then goes on to say that they had missed the true intend of God’s use and introduction of laws, which was to expose and reveal our helpless condition and need of a deliverer, hoping it would drive us back to the promise which God demonstrated to Abraham of UNCONDITIONAL LOVE.

Clearly you see so far, in what we have said, that your swaying and having doubt of your salvation based on your performance has no ground in God’s promise.  His promise is UNCONDITIONAL being fulfilled through what One Man, Jesus Christ, accomplished and not you.  If you don’t believe this, the suffering part for you will be the conflicts you suffer in you doubtful mind and opinions of those around you who reject that God accomplished all this through His Son.  There will be those who will seek to add to this covenant, contract, promise of God, and in doing so cancel the FREE gift this contract offers.  This contract of unconditional love still stands, yet if we think to add to it or take away from it, for you it is annulled, canceled and you are left with coming up with a better deal.   No matter what you or others may think or feel, Christ remains faithful to knowing that your salvation isn’t based on what you or others may think or feel, but is based in the Unconditional Love of God for us foreordained before the foundation of this world.  Before there ever was a fall of Adam & Eve, before the problem and condition of humanity, there already was the solution, Christ slain before the foundation of the world.  God knew the problem; He and He alone addressed the problem, thus solved it, and got about the business of the ages upon ages to come.  Only our being seated in heavenly places with Christ Jesus can we see this.  I ask, do you see this?

CHAPTER 3

THE UNKNOWN COST OF BECOMING A CHRISTIAN

Romans 6:6 “This we know, that the old self is nailed to the cross with Him, in order that our sinful nature might be deprived of its power.  So that we no longer be the slave of sin; for he that has paid the penalty of death stands absolved from his sin.”

What is the unknown cost of becoming a Christian?  Our sinful nature has been deprived of its power.  When we came to know Christ, we had natural strength, natural abilities and natural defenses to go about our everyday life.  Usually, because these dwindle, falter, fail through the course of our lives, it is then we usually turn to God.  In truth this is a blessing.  Why?  Because it goes on to say, “so that we be no longer slaves to sin;” in this case, our thinking we could control our lives, gain God’s favor by our natural strengths and abilities.

Now we have to look at sin as “living independent from God.”  Before we came to know Christ, we were living by the natural strength that we had; be it education, our rearing by our parents, circumstances that went in our favor.  But later in life all these fail us in some degree or another.  The strength of youth slips away and then we are thrown back on to inward strength which we many times failed to develop.  We are given warning after warning throughout scriptures of such a day, yet in our strength of youth can not see it.

Many times, when an individual comes to Christ, he or she unaware, can not realize at that moment what must be undone to accomplish the will of God for their lives.  This undoing is a blessing beyond our comprehension.  We find our self fighting it and seeking to hold on to what we have perceived to be strength and purpose of life.  “For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.” (Matt. 16:25)  “For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel’s, the same shall save it. (Mark 8:35)  “Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it.” (Luke 17:33) 

Matt. 10:39 “He that FINDS his life shall lose it; and he that loses his life for my sake shall find it.”

Mark 9:24 “For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it.”

Now note how John drives this point home and to what appears to be the extreme:

John 12: 25 “He that LOVES his life shall LOSE IT; and he that HATES his life in this world shall keep it into life eternal.”

Note how he clarifies it with the words…”In this world.”   At some point in our spiritual development, we FIND OUT about this life we developed independent of God.  We slowly see something different in what we read in scriptures, which repeatedly reveals that this life is only temporal and that the real meaning of our lives reach beyond anything we could have imagined.  Things that once mattered so much to us slowly grow dim.  Then light shines in this dark place and we grow willing to lose it.  As time progresses and we grow into a deepening understanding of who we are and God is and what He has prepared for us, we see that the suffering of this life can not be compared to the glory that will one day be ours.  Still as time progresses we even go to the extreme of hating this life and loving that one to come.  Why?  Know this, you were once to the other extreme, loving this life and hating that life; it requires the opposite of extremes to free you.  At the end of this experience the extreme isn’t needed, and you mellow out and see that, IT WAS JUST AN EXPERIENCE…one that slowly begins to make some sense.  They say that hindsight is 20/20.  It’s only then that you can rejoice in tribulations (Rom. 5) you see their purpose and understand what Paul meant in Romans 5 and also in Acts 14: 22…”we must go through much tribulation to enter into the kingdom of God.”  Most of this tribulation is our fighting all that I have just said; our hanging on to our present point of view, this temporal life.

In closing this article let me restate the text in Romans then give you my paraphrase of this text in light of what I have said:  Romans 6:6 “This we know, that the old self is nailed to the cross with Him, in order that our sinful nature might be deprived of its power.  So that we no longer be the slave of sin; for he that has paid the penalty of death stands absolved from his sin.”

My Paraphrase:

By now we should know, from experience, that what we had once thought, that we knew it all and had life by the neck, that now it just doesn’t work out that way any more.  Where you once thought you knew it all, now you understand just how little you knew.  Where you once thought you had things under control, you find out how little control you really had.  In truth we were slaves to the flow of the crowd and their expectations.  Now that we know this, we can thank God for the frustration of our human efforts; “whom the Lord loves, He frustrates.”  We now know it’s His strength not ours that sustained us.  Not by might, nor by power, but by MY Spirit says the Lord.  That’s what He had always intended, His power through us, and not that of our selves.  We finally died to self efforts and the illusions of playing god.  He said, “if I set you free, you will be free indeed.”  We are free of the expectations of our selves and those of others.  We now expect that He will do what He had always promised, thus we are resolved from our sin (acting independent of God).  We now can boast with the Apostle Paul in our weaknesses; for in our weakness we find our strength. 

I have had individuals come up to me once they began to discover some of what I had shared here, saying that they wished they never became a Christian because before receiving Christ into their lives they thought they had life under control and now it was out of their control.  Then they really get mad when I share this Romans 6:6 text and their eyes are open to realizing that this lost of “natural” abilities, they once had, was caused by their coming to Christ.  At first they see it as God being cruel and undermining there ability to perform.  Yet later on, once they come to understand and experience that this was in truth an act of God’s love; a love that was offering new lamps for old.  What they were losing was in truth real weakness, and what they were gaining, was the POWER of God, which far surpassed any performance they had ever demonstrated or ever could.  Imagine the caterpillar; what it might be going through in the cocoon; it can’t begin to imagine, that one day it would be a butterfly able to FLY!

So, I end this once again repeating the Romans 6:6 text…(Deeply reflect on this)  You will see this text show up again later in other chapters of this book; it reveals such depths that just one chapter can not express it all.

Romans 6:6 “This we know, that the old self is nailed to the cross with Him, in order that our sinful nature might be deprived of its power.  So that we no longer be the slave of sin; for he that has paid the penalty of death stands absolved from his sin”.

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