You Are Dead

Colossians 3:1-4

The title for today seems kind of morbid, doesn’t it? “You are dead” is not a very encouraging way to start your day I’ll admit, but within context of the scripture, it is quite encouraging. The “old you” is gone, with all of its sins and transgressions, and the “new you” is alive through the life of Jesus Christ. When someone meets you that hasn’t seen you since your conversion, they may very well say, “You have changed. You aren’t the same person that you used to be”, take it as a compliment; for you are dead!

Just because your old man is dead does not mean that you never fail, but it does mean that when God looks at you, He sees nothing but your new man. This is why Paul emphasized that your life “is hid with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3). It is not your old man that is hid; remember it is dead, but it is your new life that is hidden. Inside of the sacrifice of Christ is the new you, for Christ is living through you to the glory of the Father.

I have heard it said that Jesus is walking next to the believer, defending them from harm. Actually, Jesus is living through the believer so that they are more than a conqueror. You never need fear that you will go somewhere that Jesus will abandon you or leave you alone. You cannot run Him off or run Him out, for He has purchased you with a price. When God views you, He cannot help but see Jesus, for it is the blood of the Lamb that marks the house of your heart.
Paul continues with, “When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory” (Colossians 3:4). Christ is not a part of our life, He IS our life! My life is non-existent without Christ, for the old me is dead. Without Jesus, there is nothing to define me, and that is a wonderful thing to cherish. We are all just a fading shadow without Christ; but with Him as our Comforter and guide, we are the living, breathing, righteousness of God.

Since we know that we are a new creation, and that Jesus is living through us, we should set all of our attentions on showing forth Christ in our daily lives. While we live a life of abundance and favor, we are to keep our desires toward heaven; with glorifying the Father in the forefront of our hearts and minds. The Christian life is not about doing the right and shunning the wrong; it is about a relationship with the Father. Once we know who we are in Jesus, there should be a daily desire to show His love and grace to the world around us. As long as we are consumed with getting new things and being someone on this earth, we are thinking very little about presenting Christ to a world in desperate need of salvation.

May you relax today in the knowledge that the old man has passed away and that your new man is hidden with Christ in God. Now, take that knowledge and do something great with it! You have a chance to set your affection on Godly things, with the finished work of Christ in your sights. Will you squander another day looking for your own pleasures, or will you share of His love with a hurting world?

No Place for the Devil

Ephesians 4:26, 27

These two verses in Ephesians offer a prime example of the writing style of the Apostle Paul. He introduces a topic, in this case “Be ye angry, and sin not” (Ephesians 4:26), and then he proceeds to explain that topic with the usage of a colon. The colon is followed by “let not the sun go down on your wrath” which ends with another colon, meaning the thought is being furthered. The thought is completed in the next verse with “Neither give place to the devil” (Ephesians 4:27). Each thought leads to the next, with each following statement giving fuller definition to the one that preceded it.

In this case, we have three distinct statements, each furthering the topic. We find that anger is okay, as long as it does not lead to sin. How can it lead to sin? If the sun goes down on our wrath, then our anger has set in without us dealing with the source of it, thus the seed of sin has begun. These two lead to the terrible third statement, that we have now given place to the devil. Note the progression: we are angry and rather than resolve it, we let it fester inside of us which gives the devil an advantage in our life.

Of larger concern than how to overcome anger is the fact that this text shows us that believers can “give place to the devil”. If place can be given, it denotes that Satan currently occupies no place in our life, and that any place that he has must have been given to him by the believer. Remember that Satan is a defeated foe, and he has been defeated at the cross. If he is operating in different areas of our life, it is not because he is all-powerful; it is because he has been given all-access by you and me.

When we allow resentment and unforgiveness; or any other problem for that matter, to stir inside of our hearts, we are giving the enemy a place to stand in our life. Jesus told the church that we have the power to bind and to release. Whatever we bind on this earth is also bound in heaven (Matthew 16:19), which means that if we are bound by anger or jealousy or whatever, then heaven is bound from moving with authority in our lives.

This in no way puts works back into our righteousness, for we are righteous whether we are bound or not! This does, however, place a responsibility on the believer to allow grace to work in every area of their life if they are going to experience freedom and power. When we feed our anger or resentments, we are keeping ourselves bound to others and we are binding them from freedom as well. Jesus gave us the power to free people from their guilt or to set them free, and that includes ourselves:

“Whosoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whosoever sins ye retain, they are retained” (John 20:23).

Let’s not let Satan have an advantage over us, for we are not ignorant of the way he works (2 Corinthians 2:11).

Shut Up to the Faith

Galatians 3:23, 24

There is a difference between having faith in something or someone and having THE faith that brings salvation. Paul said that before faith came, “we were kept under the law” (Galatians 3:23). He doesn’t mean that men had no faith, but that they had no object in which to place their faith so that they could receive salvation. He further says that they were “shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed” (Galatians 3:23).

When Christ died on Calvary for the sins and sickness of all mankind, the faith for salvation was revealed. Man was now able to pursue salvation based upon Christ’s merit instead of their own works. It is for this cause that Paul said that “the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ” (Galatians 3:24), meaning that the law was over us as a taskmaster, and we were under it as a slave. No man can ever live up to the standard of God’s perfect law, so when we try we find ourselves burdened down with guilt and condemnation.

The King James Version of this text says that the law was our schoolmaster “to bring us” to Christ, but the words “to bring us” are italicized, meaning that they are not in the original Greek. With those words removed, the meaning changes immensely. With the words there, it appears that the law drives us to Christ, but with them gone, it becomes apparent that the law was simply meant to stand “until Christ”:

“Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith” (Galatians 3:24).

Now that we have Christ, we have no more need for the law. Why should we? Jesus fulfilled every demand of the law (Matthew 5:17) because He knew that we could never fulfill its demands. We receive of His benefits because He has lived this life to perfection. With the law fulfilled, we are now justified by faith in His finished work. This is THE faith that we were shut out from knowing as long as we trusted in the law for our salvation.

To go back to dependency on works and the law is to treat the cross as if it never happened. This is why Paul says that it is impossible to have salvation if you put Christ and His cross to an open shame (Hebrews 6:6). When a Christian resorts to the works of the law to achieve righteousness, they are saying with their actions that Jesus’ price at Calvary was not enough and that they think their salvation should come by their ability instead of Jesus’ ability. How dare us!

Take Paul’s next statement with you as you face your day:

“But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster” (Galatians 3:25). You are not under the law, so live above it through the grace of Jesus Christ.

The Ministry of Reconciliation

2 Corinthians 5:17-19

Based upon the writings of the Apostle Paul, he believed that the full purpose of ministry was to teach the world that God had reconciled the world back to Himself through the finished work of Jesus on the cross. No sin could separate man from God and no curse could be sent from God, for all had been accomplished in the body of Christ at Calvary.

The accomplishment of reconciliation was viewed as the single most important thing that God had done regarding man since our fall in the Garden of Eden. Paul wrote to the church at Rome, “For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life” (Romans 5:10). He speaks of reconciliation as a “done deal” so to speak, with salvation coming to us through the resurrected life of Jesus Christ.

Each Christian has had committed to them, the word of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:19). That “word” is the composite message of Jesus Christ’s finished work, with one component being of supreme importance. Paul states this key point in the middle of verse 19; see if you can locate it:
“To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation” (2 Corinthians 5:19).

Notice the important breakdown of the verse: God was in Christ, meaning that Jesus and the Father are one and the same and have been one and the same from the beginning (John 1:1); Christ’s death brought the world back to God, where sin had separated all of us from Him; God no longer counts man’s sins against him; you and I are to preach this good news.

When you see the verse broke down in that manner, it becomes obvious what the message of reconciliation is all about. Man no longer has his sins counted against him, for Jesus has paid for every breach of God’s law that man could ever commit. Some might argue that the death of Jesus only covered your past sins, but that makes no sense, since all of your sins were in Jesus’ future when He paid for them! What you did, what you are doing, and what you might do have all been placed within the body of Jesus Christ, and man is reconciled to God in this purity.

Think about it for a moment: if sin separated man from God, and God was reconciled to man at the cross only for the things that had already happened, wouldn’t God be forced to abandon us the very moment that we sinned? Since the ministry of reconciliation is an ongoing ministry, we should be proclaiming to people that their sins are not what are sending them to hell; it is their rejection of the sacrifice. Remember, Jesus never said that a man went to hell for sinning, but rather, men go to hell because “light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil” (John 3:19).

Minister the message of reconciliation to someone in your life today and watch the light shine gloriously into their darkness. You can do it because someone did it for you. Thank God!

The Big Head

1 Corinthians 8:1-13

I have had many people say to me “I would compliment you, but I don’t want to give you the big head”. They mean that they wish to say good things about you but they fear that you can’t handle it without getting a bit too full of yourself. In most cases, they are just being humorous, but underlying that statement is the mentality that we should police one another as it regards pride and humility.

I encourage people to uplift and edify those around them. You should be known as someone who compliments and blesses, for this marks you as someone who cares. If the people around you seem to be “getting the big head”, don’t worry about it; and certainly don’t stop complimenting. God is able to pop the big head so to speak. He can take care of their issues without your help!

Paul saw the propensity for a swelled sense of self-confidence when he wrote the church at Corinth. Regarding the various dietary laws that many Jews were still hanging on to, Paul was preaching freedom through the finished work of Jesus Christ, and was allowing the newly saved to eat whatever they wanted. However, this message was not easily received among the Jews, many of whom were saved, but could still not eat pig for instance, without a guilty conscience.

Paul said that “Knowledge puffeth up” (1 Corinthians 8:1), meaning that if we are not careful, our knowledge of grace and liberty can make us think that we are mentally superior to those around us who seem to be trapped in various forms of law. The better approach is to love them, for “charity edifieth” (1 Corinthians 8:1). Notice that Paul was concerned with the edification of those who were living under law more than he was with the correction. This is a good lesson for us to learn when we encounter those in our lives who are walking under the burden of the law. Rather than spend all of our time trying to “educate” them, let us love them and show them just how loved that they are by their heavenly Father.

There will always be saints who are weak in conscience and who are strong in conscience (8:7). If you feel that something is wrong for you to do, whether you have biblical basis for that feeling or not, it remains wrong for you to do it, for you cannot do it with faith. Paul said that, “He that doubteth is damned if he eat, because he eateth not of faith: for whatsoever is not of faith is sin” (Romans 14:23). It was not what he was eating that was wrong; it was HOW he was eating it. With limited knowledge as to how free that he is, the saint can live under a weak conscience which will always condemn him.

If you know that an activity that you are involved in will cause another brother or sister to stumble, distance yourself from that activity while in their presence. This is not hypocrisy, it is wisdom, as Paul said, “Wherefore, if meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend” (1 Corinthians 8:13). It is far more important that we be without offense to our family in Christ that that we boast of our liberties in the Lord. Be free, but be encouraging!

Giving Glory to God

Romans 4:18-22

Abraham may not have been a highly moral man, but he was a man with strong faith. His faith is what caused God to view him as righteous (Romans 4:3, 22), and this faith was honored even when his actions were weak.

Faith is best characterized as a measure of what you really think of God. If you think that God is angry and distant then you will be less likely to ask for things, or to believe that He desires to do good in your life. Your faith will be weakened by a view of a distant God. On the other hand, if you think that Jesus’ sacrificial work was done for you and that you are a beneficiary of all that Jesus paid for, then you have a view of God as loving, appeased and helpful. This causes you to ask and believe because you see nothing separating you from God’s mercy and grace.

The word “glory” is often misused by Christians as we read God’s word. The Greek word is “doxa” and it has two basic meanings. One definition deals with praising God and lifting up His name, and this is certainly an important thing to do. But, when you reference the word in Greek, this definition is the second most common definition, not the first. The first definition is, “to have a good opinion of”, and it is the most commonly used definition of “glory” in all of the New Testament. Insert that definition into Abraham’s life and see what a difference it makes:

“He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God;” (Romans 4:20).

Remember, insert “have a good opinion of” into the place of “glory” and you get that Abraham was strong in the faith, having a good opinion of God. What made him strong in faith was his good opinion of God. With a good opinion of God his faith was made stronger, while a poor opinion of God would keep our faith weak. Each one of us should evaluate our opinion of God to determine how strong our faith is.

Your faith comes to you as you hear of Jesus (Romans 10:17), but your faith is made stronger as your opinion of God lines up with Jesus’ finished work. If you view God as having anger against you, then your opinion of God is weak, though you may love Him very much. You have limited God due to a bad opinion of Him. By not honoring the finished work as a truly finished work, you have stated that Jesus did not pay it all and there is more left to be paid. This insults the finished work and it tramples on the blood of Jesus.

Let’s change our opinion of God to one of a loving Father who has paid a great price for us. When that opinion turns to a good opinion our ability to walk in faith increases. Abraham was strong in faith, not because he was closer to God than any of us, but because he believed God was a God of His Word. Do you?

The Holy Spirit's Cue

Acts 10:43, 44

Peter’s sermon to the house of Cornelius was not one born of excitement on Peter’s part. He had refused to take the gospel to the Gentiles, for fear that they were unclean and thus unworthy to receive the good news. When God finally got through to the Apostle, he was eager to share the faith with whoever would listen, and the great 10th chapter of Acts bears out this highly anticipated sermon.

The Holy Spirit fell upon the Gentiles in this chapter, just as He had fallen upon the 120 on the Day of Pentecost in Acts 2. Peter knew that they had received the same revelation of the Holy Spirit because he heard them speaking with other tongues and he knew that they must have received of the same Spirit (Acts 10:46). What brought this great revelation of the Spirit to the house? Of course it followed the message that was delivered by Peter, but at what point in the sermon did the Spirit enter? The answer to that question is key in understanding the role of Christ’s finished work in everything that the Holy Spirit does.

Peter’s sermon begins in Acts 10:34, and continues through verse 43; a relatively short span of scripture. In my Pentecostal background, of which I am very proud to claim, we would take portions of this sermon and hold them up as great ways to describe the Holy Spirit. For instance, I remember hearing verse 38 quoted many times as an example of the power of God. It reads:

“How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him” (Acts 10:38).

That is a power verse, pointing us to the awesome works of Jesus; how He did good things and healed people because of the Holy Ghost and power that rested on Him. However, if you will notice, there is no response on the part of the Holy Spirit when Peter says this. Instead, the sermon continues. Now notice that the scripture gives you the exact moment when the Spirit arrives in the room, “While Peter yet spake these words, the Holy Ghost fell…” (Acts 10:44). What words was Peter speaking when the Holy Ghost fell? Perhaps we should read verse 43:

“To him give all the prophets witness, that through his name whosoever believeth in him shall receive remission of sins” (Acts 10:43).

The moment that faith in Jesus and His finished work is mentioned, and the fact that this faith brings complete remission of sins, the Holy Spirit shows up. It is as if the Spirit has been waiting in the wings of the stage, listening for His cue so that He can rush in and save the day. His cue then, as well as now, is the finished work of Jesus being glorified. When Jesus is lifted up as the sacrifice for sins, the Spirit arrives with power to change lives. Jesus said that the role of the Spirit would be to glorify Him (John 16:14). As Jesus is lifted up, the Spirit manifests Himself to do the work. Peter learned that lesson in that moment; let’s not forget it now.