CHAPTERS 4 - 5 - 6

CHAPTER 4

GRACE ABOUNDS

The question put to Paul…”What do we do, sin that grace may abound?”
In one sense the question is right. We do sin and grace does abound. Yet, it can’t be something you know and act upon. In other words it’s not done deliberate. We don’t go off and deliberately sin that grace will abound; you will sin and grace will abound. This is different in that it is not the abuse of grace. It is just knowing that grace is there.. You come to the place of understanding what Paul meant in the expression expressed, “it is no longer I that do these things.”

There is a side to us and a nature in us that has been given to us by God through salvation to which we know what we truly desire, another option if you may; as we also know there is another side to us that seeks to counter-act what we truly desire, attempting to get us hung up in guilt.  You see Paul going on after this encounter with his guilt, saying, “Who will deliver me from this embodiment of death?  He comes to experience grace and thanks God for it seeing that it is no longer he that desires to do that evil, only a nature he acquired through natural birth from his father Adam.  Any condemnation that would follow him after falling into acts done independent from hearing from God (sin), was just the nature of the beast. Yet was being worked out to the death of that nature and the victory of what he termed the New Man.  He discovered it to be a daily matter and believed we don’t arrive to where we will not battle with it.  If any one thought other wise, God would show them differently.
This experience we are going through will bring falling and rising. As in the Movie, “Batman, The Beginning,” young Bruce Wayne’s father pulls him out the well to which Bruce had fallen and says to him, “Why do we fall Bruce, so that we might learn to stand again.” We learn how to walk in God’s grace. We don’t go about establishing our own righteousness, thus forfeiting the righteousness given to us by God’s grace. Other words, we don’t frustrate God’s grace by going off and saying, “Look God, I’m going to get better. I’m going to improve and whip this thing of the flesh and become a good guy or gal.” Paul replies, “God forbid!” You don’t understand. He goes on in his reply to the church in Galatia, “I ask you one question, if righteousness comes by the keeping of the law, why did Christ die?” To what end or purpose did he die? If you could, apart from God and what He accomplished through His Son, ….if you could accomplish this in yourself efforts (flesh), ….having begun with the Spirit, are you now brought to maturity by the flesh (self efforts at keeping the laws)?

It’s not human efforts, thank God. Though I don’t have to go off and try not to sin, I just sin every day.   I do something stupid every day.   I act independent from God everyday in some way shape or form.   The devil tries to beat me over the head with this.   I mean, sometimes it seems I go off and do things deliberately.   I feel just pre-programmed.   Not till after the fact do I realize that what I did was stupid and dumb. Then the guilt tries to set in.  At those moments I just thank God that I’ve come to understand that it truly isn’t I that desire to do these things.   There is always this part in me that will desire to act independent from God.   There are times I fight with it and win, yet found that I lost more than won. That was when what Christ said came into play. “Don’t resist evil.” It’s resisting evil that increases it.   Paul expressed it in this way, “The strength of sin is the law.” It was then that he discovered the true end intent of the law.   Its end intent was to EXPOSE a condition, nature in us that will always seek to act apart from God.
Apart from what I have come to see I’d walk in guilt all my life. I’d get so depressed that I would want to go off and blow my brains out.   That would be evil’s end intent.   As long as we are in this life’s experience you are going to have the weakness of the flesh.

Think of the Apostle Paul. Right up to the latter part of his life he screwed up royal, just before his departure. You might think, My God, you would think he would have learned something by then.   Oh, he learned something, where sin abounds God’s grace super-abounds.  He understood that and knew there was laid up for him a crown of righteousness and that righteousness wasn’t his own righteousness.   That righteousness was the crowning of Christ, God’s anointing.   That’s when the tears are wiped away and all memory of this is forgotten.   Then the end intent of why we came into this experience is fulfilled.   We came to be known as we were known.  We will remember at that moment clearer than ever.   Now we know in part, but then, face to face, we will be known as we were known.

We see another text fulfilled in this…”We are no more sin conscious.”  The more conscious we are of sin, the greater strength we give to sin.   Because it says also, as I’ve already mentioned, “The strength of sin is the law.”   When you establish a law, “I will not do that” you establish that law’s strength and its end intent.   It will win and accomplish its purpose to expose you.   Resisting its purpose strengthens it.   We must learn to “agree” with its purpose, and then thank God for his Grace that fulfilled it leading us to, as Paul saw, “Now Christ is the end intent of the law for righteousness (or our coming to discover the original intent of this experience given to us by God.).  As strange as this may sound, learn to say, “I would do that, it is part of my fallen nature to do that; yet with God’s Spirit and assistance, I will not do that; yet if I given and do it, it is no longer I that do this.  I confess this at this moment, and I am now cleansed of this fallen moment.”
One final thought. How do you reckon something dead?  The answer…ignore it!.   You see people do this in the flesh. They reckon someone dead. Thus they no longer talk to them, call them or see them. To them they say, “To me you are dead!”  To the flesh, we say, “To me, you are dead.” Yet, we may think, “How can something be dead that appears to be so alive in my experience at the moment?”
   There is a word for this that I will share with you. It is Necrophilia.  Its simple definition is, “Those who are living while yet dead.” This experience has become so real to us, that any thing contrary to it is unreal.   That is why it is hard to get past our guilt.   Any thing apart from God’s accomplishing this via His grace would be the burning of the conscious as with a hot iron and eliminating the law’s intent to bring us to God’s Grace. Our reckoning ourselves dead to sin is not this burning of the conscious.   But rather, is the facing of it and allowing God’s grace to come to us, and giving us the very nature of Christ in us.   It is this New nature that reckons us dead to sin and exposes the nature we were born with for what it is….dead.

I end with a few of Paul’s expressions: “Wherefore he saith, Awake you that sleep and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light. And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, has he made alive together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us; which was contrary to us, and took out of the way, nailing it to his cross.”

CHAPTER 5

THE EXPERIENCE OF MERCY AND GRACE

This chapter isn’t just another theological explanation of Grace and Mercy; its purpose is to let us know what it takes for any of us to come to “EXPERIENCE” these words.  In order for us to experience God’s grace we would have to come to the place in our life’s experience to where we see we do not deserve anything from God and that in place of our not deserving anything from Him would come His UNCONDITIONAL LOVE and mercy, meaning His withholding what we do deserve, His rejection, and in its place, giving us His unconditional love.  Can you imagine what it would take for God to get this point across; what circumstances would have to come into play, where we would know in an experiential way the truth of these words, Mercy and Grace?  The Apostle Paul in his letters is not giving us just theology, he is speaking from experience.  We may have turned it into just theology, thus are only parroting, mimicking what he knew in experience.

I hope, that after you read what I have to offer, you take a good look at you own personal life and can see the truth of this in your own experience.  I hope it is not just good theology to you, I pray now that God will bring you to the experience of it all.  Now understand what I have just prayed for; I have prayed for tribulations to enter your life.  You might think, “Now that is being mean.”  No, in truth it is the only way that you will ever experience mercy and grace.  Think of the many texts of scripture where it give us the truth that in us there dwells no good thing and that “apart” from Him we can do nothing.  Would you want the circumstances of your life to bring you to this place; a place of feeling helpless, hopeless and put down?  We all avoid this like a plague.  We all want to “feel” good about ourselves and contrive ways and means to accomplish this.  We use things like “comparing ourselves by ourselves which scriptures say isn’t being wise.”  In other words, as long as there is someone else worst off then I am, I can feel good about myself.  Yet, we don’t turn around from looking down on others, and turn around looking up at others who appear to be better off than we are.   The real truth of the matter is “there is none that does good, not one;” those up the ladder or those down the ladder of life.  We are all in the same boat and God has been trying to get us “ALL” to see this.  He is not being mean doing this; rather is expressing His love for humanity; we read it in scriptures, “Whom the Lord loves, He frustrates.”  Why would He do this?  The answer is that He knows the real condition of humanity; a condition that we aren’t willing to face.  We fight Him on this.  He moves to get us to see our situation, we in turn seek to prove Him wrong; thinking we aren’t in such a bad situation as His words says we are.  We recover for a time, than later on it occurs again.   We learn to blame people, places and things for our problems not knowing that many times it is only God trying to get us to look pass all these and see the real problem of us all.  God’s love is long suffering and He will constantly keep doing this in an effort to get us to see this truth, that in Him, we live and move and have our very being and this is all based on God’s mercy and grace; it is not something we have earned.  If we get to where we think we deserve something because of something we have done to gain it, God will frustrate this.  It’s in our frustrating His grace that His coming against us.  You get what you get purely because of the grace and mercy of God and not because you are better than others or perform better than others…do you understand!  I observed this in my life; in moments when I was wasn’t performing or felt I was unworthy, it was in these moments that I got what I didn’t feel I deserved.  I couldn’t say I earned it nor could I say I deserved it.  THESE MOMENTS ARE PURE MOMENTS OF GOD’S GRACE AND MERCY; any other time you can expect God to frustrate your life out of His desire to give you what you haven’t earned.  Read a text that says this, “For by GRACE are you save, not of works, less anyone boast.”   If it is you doing and earning the right to things, and you are boasting of your efforts and not God’s giving it to you, grace is out the window, it becomes works, and by the works of human efforts we couldn’t ever solve our real problem.  We cannot save ourselves in the every day cares and affairs, let alone our eternal salvation to gain excess to the eternals realm of God’s presence.  God will frustrate this and keep doing so to prove His love for us.  I have had people beg me to ask God to leave them alone…HE WON’T!  His promise is at stake; a promise He made, and in that He could swear by none higher, He swore by His OWN NAME, that if He ever stopped loving us, UNCONDITIONALLY, He would destroy Himself.  He NEVER WILL DO THAT!!  The proof that His promises are still in effect can be understood by asking yourself these questions; are you still here and is this planet still here along with the whole universe?  If this is the case, then He is still upholding His promises because, if He had failed to do so, He would have to destroyed Himself and the whole universe, this planet and we on it, thus we would be non-existent, because it is written “through Him all thing hold together and consist, and through Him we live and move and have our very being.”  It is also written, “Though we are unfaithful He remains faithful because He cannot deny Himself.”  This implies that He will remain faithful to His promises of unconditional love, mercy and grace, simply because He cannot, nor will He ever, deny Himself (annihilate Himself).  So, come to where the Apostle Paul came to and expressed in his letter to the Romans (Romans 5), how he REJOICED in tribulations, knowing that these tribulations worked into his life perseverance (stopped human efforts to save themselves in any matter) and that this perseverance brought about experience (of God’s mercy and grace),  and that this experience manifested HOPE unseen beyond the hopeless conditions we find ourselves at times which makes us feel ashamed, hopeless, unworthy,…yet we find in those moments that the UNCONDITIONAL LOVE of God is shed abroad through our lives expressing His Mercy and Grace.  On this we wait and do not go about in human efforts trying to solve our own problems, thus frustrating His grace and mercy.

Let me end this with a few songs that those in the church sing over and over and many times do not reflect on their words;

OH LOVE THAT WILL NOT LET ME GO

“Oh joy that sleekest me thru pain, I cannot close my heart to thee; I trace the rainbow thru the rain, and feel the PROMISE is not vain, that morn shall tearless be.”

MORE LOVE TO THEE

“Let sorrow do its work, send grief and pain, sweet are thy messengers, sweet their refrain, when they can sing with me, more love, O Christ to Thee, More love to Thee, More love to Thee.

And to think we sing these songs and haven’t a clue what we are asking for.

CHAPTER 6

WHAT DO I DO

I got up early this morning, grabbed a cup of coffee and was reflecting on some matters as I usually do and these beautiful thoughts came to me.  So I turned on the computer and started typing it out. 

I got Wuest’s expanded Greek translation of Philippians and these thoughts came alive.  Here is his translation of Phil. 2:1-5 “In view of the FACT that there is a certain ground of appeal in Christ which exhorts, since there is a certain tender persuasion which comes from divine love (unconditional love), in view of the FACT that there is a certain PARTNERSHIP on the part of the Spirit (in which the Spirit gives us aid in the living of our Christian life), since there are certain tenderheartedness’s and compassions, fill full my JOY by thinking the same thing, by having the same divine self-sacrificial love (unconditional), being in heart-agreement, thinking the one thing, doing nothing impelled by a spirit of factiousness, nothing motivated by empty pride, but in lowliness of mind consider one another as excelling themselves, this estimation resting, not upon feelings, nor sentiment but upon a due consideration of FACTS, not consulting each one his own interests only, but also each one the interests of others.  This mind be constantly having in you.”

What did I see that came alive from this text?  Hear it, “Consider one another as excelling themselves…based on what Paul says three times, FACTS.  What facts we might ask?  The facts of what Christ accomplished and now we possess.  What is this possession?  A view of not only our self but of one another through what Christ accomplished. 

I saw something this morning I never really have ever seen in its depths.  My view of myself and my view of you, the reader of this book, and general view of all others around me; our CONSIDERING one another as EXCELLING themselves; yet as I sat there at my kitchen table I thought, “But what if I, and those around me, aren’t excelling; am I to flatter them just so that I can do as commanded in this text?”  I love the answer this text gives….”this estimation resting NOT UPON FEELINGS, nor sentiment”…so, no matter what I think of myself or others around me, I am called to see them as excelling.  Well, if I stopped there, the question would still remain, “how do I do this if they aren’t excelling?”  The text gives the answer, “but upon a DUE CONSIDERATION of FACTS…again, facts of what?  The fact that because of what Christ had accomplished,  that now, in the eyes of God the Father, you and I are seen as if we never ever committed a sin, never ever were separated from God.  The word “justified” comes into play.

 We also are considered fully grown mature spiritual beings.  No matter what we or others may think or feel.  You see it in this text expressed this way…”not considering each one his own interest only, (to be one-up, to appear better then others)…but doing what we are doing purely in the interest of the other, which would be to not put one another down, but place one another into the FACT of what Christ had accomplished for us all.  Our not doing this reveals our view of our self.  How do we see our self?  Do we only see what is in the reflective mirror?  Love your neighbor as you love yourself.  We must come to see our self as God the Father sees us.  How does He see us?  He only sees us through the Son.  The task of the Holy Spirit is to bring us to this image.  This task isn’t mine; it isn’t my task to CHANGE myself or you.  I have found myself judging those around me thinking to change them.  Only when I stopped judging them did the change come.  Only when I learned to see them as excelling what I may have thought of them, did they begin to excel my expectations and theirs.  How?  Though the facts of what scriptures say was accomplished through Christ and the PARTNERSHIP of the Holy Spirit being fulfilled and allowed to work…”That which you loose is loosed, that which you bind is bound,”  when we stopping judging ourselves and others, this whole thing works. 

Paul makes comment to what he calls his JOY…”fill full my JOY by thinking the same thing, by having the same divine self-sacrificial love (unconditional), being in heart-agreement, thinking the one thing, doing nothing impelled by a spirit of factiousness, nothing motivated by empty pride, but in lowliness of mind consider one another as excelling themselves

This same joy is what caused Jesus to ENDURE this experience.  We are called to this same joy, which without, we faint and thus will not endure.  What is the thing of joy?  Hebrews 12:2 ..”who instead of the joy then present with Him endured the Cross..” in the Greek text this joy is a pre-incarnated joy He had with the Father.  Paul comes to see and experience this same joy.  It is this thing that keeps him alive; this coming to be known as he was known; the way God the Father had always viewed him and us, before the foundation of this world and its view, Christ slain before the foundation of the world.  It’s not so much God and His judgment of us, but our judgment of one another.  It was this pre-knowledge view, this mind set of Christ that caused Jesus to endure the cross; that caused Paul the Apostle to say, “Though I have known men after the flesh (world view) I henceforth no longer know them in this manner.”  It was this “Knowing” that constituted Paul, Jesus and now our view, this thing of endurance. 

Next time you look at your self and others, SEE THROUGH IT ALL.  See what Christ saw and endured.  See yourself and others EXCELLING to God’s highest call, our being conformed to this image God the Father has of us through His Son, in whom He is well pleased.  Allow the PARTNERSHIP of the Holy Spirit to accomplish His task, doing that which we could not have done for our selves let alone one another.