Saturday, October 16, 2010

Unequally Yoked

2 Corinthians 6:14

Much power has been sapped from this passage because it is most often relegated to marriage between a Christian and a non-believer. People use it to say that a union between a Christian and a sinner will lead to failure because you are yoked together with someone who does not share your passions or your dreams; much less your God.

First, marriage is not a yoke, it is a covenant relationship. You are not to view your relationship with your spouse like two oxen yoked together to bring about an end result. Who wants to marry so that you can “work together”? While many people say, “Marriage is work”, this is most often said to those who are in trouble as they are being encouraged to “hang in there”. No one gets down on one knee and asks for their partners hand in marriage so they can work alongside them.

Second, “Marriage is honorable in all” (Hebrews 13:4), even in sinners or in mixed couples where one is saved and the other is not. Marriage is honorable because it is of God, meaning that even sinners are in a covenant relationship that is blessed by God when they enter into union with one another. This is another reason that there is such joy and euphoria on one’s wedding day because there is a touch of God on that moment; the only touch that some feel their entire lives.

Satan fights marriage in saints and sinners alike because it belongs to God, and he wishes to do harm to anything that God has sanctioned.

This verse is a collection of Old Testament statements that Paul bunches together to make a point. This phrase is from Deuteronomy 7, where God instructed Israel not to yoke an ox and a donkey together. The next quote is found in verse 16 and it is taken from Leviticus 26:11, 12; the next is in verse 17, pulled from Isaiah 52:11 and finally, verse 18 contains a quote from Jeremiah 31:9. Notice there are 4 different Old Testament passages being pulled from to preach one sermon and that sermon comes to a conclusion in verse one of chapter 7:

“Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God”.

The promises of chapter 6 are not commands to be done on the part of the believer; they are promises that are fulfilled in Christ. Notice that we already have these promises. How did we get them? All promises of God are in Christ (1:20), meaning that when Jesus died at Calvary, He gave us all of God’s promises. Jesus has already done all that chapter 6 says, and the knowledge of it will cause us to cleanse ourselves from filthiness of flesh and spirit, showing forth God’s perfect holiness in our lifestyle.

Don’t shy away from “come out from among them and be ye separate” (2 Cor. 6:17) from fear that you haven’t done enough to separate yourself. Jesus was the one who was separate from sinners so that He could save a multitude of them. He has done the work, now you get the results.

With that definition, it makes it easier to understand why yoking together with unbelievers for a common cause is dangerous. You are not like them, and you have been saved out of the very things that define their existence. The quicker you recognize the price paid for you at Calvary, the easier that it becomes to rest in and walk in that promise.

Friday, October 15, 2010

One Bread, One Body

1 Corinthians 10:16:17

This verse by Paul to the Corinthian church is a lead-in to the instructions on communion to be found in the next chapter. Here, we see that Paul calls the taking of the body and the blood of Jesus “communion”, which by its very definition denotes a deep communication between the giver of the bread and the eater.

By partaking of the cup and the bread, we are communing with what Christ did for us upon the cross. We drink of the wine which is the blood, shed for the remission of our sins. This blood provides our redemption from sin; our justification in God’s eyes; our sanctification for the service of the Lord and it protects our heart from the curses of this world, much like the blood on the houses of the Israelites protected them from the angel of death.

When we break the bread, we are symbolically showing the brokenness of Jesus on the cross, where His body was torn apart so that ours could be whole. He suffered all cancers and tumors and diseases in Him so that we would never have to suffer them in us. We eat the bread, not partaking of death, but eating His wholeness; His health and His perfect body.

Paul is also using the idea of communion to portray an important fact about the church of Jesus Christ. He says, “For we being many are one bread, one body” (1 Corinthians 10:17). The word used for “bread” implies a “loaf”, meaning that we are one entire piece, not fragmented segments of bread. One particular offering of the Old Testament had the priest bring a loaf of bread before the Lord, mingled with leaven, meaning that the loaf was to rise. This loaf was a type of the church, mingled together and unified.

At Pentecost, this “loaf” was mobilized. Born at Calvary, the church took her shape on the Day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit was poured out on those assembled at Jerusalem. From that day forward, the fragmented, individual lives of those present were molded into one cohesive unit called the church. Though we are not all the same, we share one common passion and that is to be a part of the body of Christ. Each ingredient brings a unique perspective to the loaf, none more important than the other.

The great unifier of the church; that which jumps across denominational and cultural boundaries is that we are all partakers of “that one bread” (1 Corinthians 10:17). Our constant consumption of the finished work of Christ is what makes the church a true body. When we major on minors and put our focus on the inessentials we take the beautiful taste out of the loaf. As long as our hearts “look unto Jesus”, we remain the unbreakable body of Christ.

Go in the grace and favor of the head of the church. You are His body; thus you are His hands and feet; His mouth and His voice. Say what He would say, and spread His love to those around you.

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Wages and Gifts

Romans 6:23

There is a payment that is attached to a life of sin, but there is no payment attached to salvation. Sin works you, exhausts you and then leaves you empty. When the “work-week” of sin is finished, your paycheck is death. Salvation never pays you; for there is no work of your own that brings salvation or keeps it. For those in the church that wish to work for all they have, Paul said that their reward is not of grace but of debt (Romans 4:4).

To believe that you work for your blessings or work for your goodness is to think that God owes you for your lifestyle. This makes the Creator of heaven and earth a debtor; to you! This cannot be, for God owes none of us anything, especially considering the price that He paid for our redemption on the cross.

The paycheck of a life of sin (notice the text says “sin”, not “sins”) is spiritual death. Physical death is not our payment for sin, for even believers die a physical death, but separation from God for eternity is the doom of sin’s end. To live a life without Christ will tax and burden you and ultimately end with your demise. This fulfills the thief’s desire to “steal, kill and to destroy” (John 10:10).

For the saint, there is a gift attached to salvation that can never be earned; the gift of eternal life. If someone gives you a gift, it is yours with no strings attached. You are not expected to get your checkbook out and pay them back for the gift, for this takes away the beauty of it being a gift. How insulting would it be for you to give someone a gift at Christmas only to have them follow you around the rest of the day begging you to let them pay you back? You would take it as a personal affront to the spirit of your gift. Imagine the heart of God upon seeing so many Christians trying to pay God back for the wonderful gift of salvation.

How do we know if we are guilty of such actions? One easy way is to look at how you view the cross of Christ. When you see Jesus suffering and dying in your mind’s eye, do you think, “Oh my, He did all of that for me, the least that I could do is live for Him”? If this is your view, then there is a hint of payback in your Christianity. If you view the cross as “God did this to Jesus so He will never do it to me!” then you understand that salvation is a gift, never to be paid back.

God’s gifts are without repentance (Romans 11:29) meaning that God never takes a gift back once He gives it. If God has gifted you in life in a particular area, that gift will not be taken back because you don’t use it properly. He wants glory for your gift, but whether He receives it or not has nothing to do with your ability to use it. His gifts are given to never be returned. Open the gift, it is yours!

Righteousness is a gift, given by God so that we are viewed as holy in spite of our imperfections (Romans 5:17-19). If righteousness is a gift of God, and God cannot take His gifts back, are you made unrighteous by an unrighteous deed? Impossible! You are the righteousness of God in Christ. Waking up to this knowledge will kill sin in your life (1 Corinthians 15:34).

Don’t look for payment for your goodness today; for that means you receive payment for the bad as well. Instead, open the gift of righteousness and eternal life, knowing that you neither earn it nor deserve it. It makes the gift even better when it is so awesome that you could never have gone out and bought it for yourself.

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Servants to Righteousness and Holiness

Romans 6:18-22

When a person becomes a believer in Christ, having given Him their heart and accepting His love and forgiveness, they are instantly made free from sin and its dominion. Grace takes over where law had led them and they are free from the yoke of sin that had been on their life. If this be the case, why do we sin again after we have come to know Christ?

Paul uses “the manner of men” (Romans 6:19) to help describe what is happening in us after we are saved. This phrase means that he is using a fleshly example so that we can understand heavenly words. These would be “words of man’s wisdom”. Paul doesn’t down the use of wisdom words to prove a point, in fact he welcomes them. He does, however, oppose using the words of man’s wisdom in order to offer man salvation and freedom. This he says, will render the cross “of no effect” (1 Corinthians 1:17).

The wisdom words that he offer are given “because of the infirmity of your flesh” (Romans 6:19). The word “flesh” is the Greek word “sarx” meaning ‘body’. By this, we see that Paul is not talking about our nature to sin or our carnal side, but rather he is speaking of our literal body. The “infirmity” must be something more than sickness, for Paul was a firm believer that Jesus had borne our infirmities in His body on the cross.

The infirmity of our flesh is the habit of sin in us. Sin is easy for us to do because we have a lifetime of doing it. We can sin as easy as falling off a log; for sin has been in us from the moment that we were born. We don’t have to think about how to sin or find a good reason to sin, we simply live our lives and sinful actions or words or deeds find their way out of us. This phenomenon occurs because sin had become a habit for us, while we were sinners.

Just as you can tie your shoe and think of 15 other things at the same time, never once thinking about the loop that you are making or crossing the laces the correct way, you can sin without forethought. How are you so adept at tying that shoe while not even thinking about it? It is something that you have practiced for years, and you now do it by habit.

It is not your sin nature rising up inside of you that causes you to sin now that you are a believer. That sin nature was crucified with Christ at the cross when you were baptized into His death at conversion. Remember, Jesus “died unto sin once” (Romans 6:10), and you should “likewise consider yourself to be dead indeed unto sin” (Romans 6:11). Now that you are saved, you yield your body to “righteousness and holiness” because that is where your fruit leads you (Romans 6:19, 22).

As a sinner, you literally yielded your body over to doing whatever sin that made you happy. You did not fight sin, you just committed it. Now that you are a believer, you yield your spirit man over to the things of God which lead you to live out your righteousness and holiness. If your chief influences are things of this world, it becomes easier for the habits of sin to return, for you are hanging out near your former master. The old habit of sin dies out the more that you realize who you are in Christ, for you are yielding yourself over to Him. This brings “obedience” into a new light for the Christian. We do not obey to “stay saved” or “please God”, but so that we may shine as a light with His righteousness shining through us. We are “free from sin” (Romans 6:22), so let us walk like it!

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Under Grace

Romans 6:14

This verse contains an iron-clad, blessed promise for those who are under the grace of God, “Sin shall not have dominion over you” (Romans 6:14). Let us shout this from the housetops; God’s grace destroys sin’s control over the believer. Only the grace of God can render sin’s power ineffective to dominate and destroy the saint.

The promise comes at the front of the verse, with the reason for the promise coming at the end. The reason that sin cannot dominate the believer is that we do not live underneath the power of the law anymore. Notice that we are not “under the law, but under grace”. This shows that the position of the saint is beneath one or the other; either beneath the load of the law or beneath the power of grace.

Law was given to bring our sins to light (Romans 5:20), and it provides the strength for sin (1 Corinthians 15:56). When set loose in someone’s life, the law will bring forth a revival of sin (Romans 7:9) and cause them to walk in anger (Romans 4:15). In short, the law will minister condemnation and death to all that fall beneath it (2 Corinthians 3:7, 9). It is a cruel taskmaster, literally keeping its adherents from walking in faith (Galatians 3:12, 23) and from having a loving relationship with God (Galatians 4:1-5).

Grace is neither a doctrine nor a substance; grace is a person, and His name is Jesus. The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth (notice which side truth falls on?) came by Jesus Christ (John 1:17). Law is written and engraved in stone (2 Corinthians 3:7), but grace appears to us and teaches us how to live right (Titus 2:11, 12). Grace is a gift to be received in super-abundance for all that wish to reign in life by Jesus Christ (Romans 5:17), and grace is at its best where sin is abounding (Romans 5:20).

To be under the law is to have the law above you, hearkening for you to come up higher. The law is like Jacob seeing the ladder in the wilderness with God standing at the top (Genesis 28:12, 13); no matter how good you live, you can never climb up that ladder, for if you fail in one point of the law, the weight of the whole thing falls upon you (James 2:10).

To be under grace is to have the never-ending blessings of favor flowing down on you from the finished work of grace. Grace is like Jesus saying to Nathanael, “Ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man” (John 1:51). Though Jacob lived prior to the giving of the law, the illustration still stands as his incident was before Christ. So, under law, God is at the top; with Nathanael, under grace, Jesus comes to you. Grace always comes to you!

If you know someone who is living a lifestyle of sin, and they are justifying it by saying that they are living under grace, share Romans 6:14 with them. It is impossible to live a life dominated by sin if you are truly living under grace. Only when you are living under the guilt and condemnation of the law will sin have dominion over you. This verse is NOT progressive, where someday sin will not have dominion over you, it is a present promise! Sin cannot and will not dominate the believer who trusts completely in God’s grace for their life.

For this cause we have no reason to fear the message of grace. It will never produce Christians that sin like crazy and live sloppy lives. On the contrary, true grace will produce radical saints who are intensely in love with a God that loves them more than words can say. Rejoice; sin no longer dominates you!

Monday, October 11, 2010

Dead to Sin; Alive to God

Romans 6:11, 12

Due to Christ’s death on the cross, every sinner, who places their faith in His finished work, is made dead to the old nature, and alive to God. Since Jesus is dead to sin, and we are in Jesus, we too are dead to sin. Thank God that upon salvation, we are no longer controlled by who we used to be!

Since we are made dead to sin through the death of Jesus, then we should reckon that death to be a completely finished work. The word for “reckon” is also translated “count” or “consider”. We must consider ourselves dead to sin, even if we do not feel dead to it. The Apostle is not telling the believer to go with what they feel, but rather to walk in what the Word says about them.

Whether you reckon yourself dead to sin or not, YOU ARE! Considering yourself dead brings a freedom and a victory about in your actions and deeds, but you are no less dead to sin if you fail to realize it. This is not about considering yourself dead to sin so that you will eventually be dead to sin. NO! This is about considering yourself dead to sin because Jesus is dead to sin; and you are in Jesus. Line up the way you think with the way God thinks of you and you begin to walk in the more abundant life that Jesus promised was yours (John 10:10).

You are just as alive in Christ as you are dead to sin. Again, this is not contingent on you knowing it, but if you don’t know it, you won’t walk in it. Every believer is dead to sin and alive to God through Jesus. If they count themselves that way, they walk free from the devices of sin, and they live according to the identification of the Holy Spirit within their life. When we consider ourselves as equal to whatever symptoms that we are showing, then we walk beneath the standard of living that Jesus paid for us to have. For instance, if we fail and then consider ourselves failures or sinners because of our sin, then we are powerless to stop doing what we are doing.
Proof for this is found in the next verse, “Let not sin reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof” (Romans 6:12). Upon first glance, one might say, “See Pastor, it is my job to stop sin in my life”. Actually, within context, you counting yourself dead to sin but alive to God is the only thing that will stop sin from reigning in your mortal body. The word “therefore” is key to the understanding of this text, for it links the result of verse 12 with the action of verse 11. Realize that you are dead to sin, and sin becomes dead to you!

As long as you are trying to die out to sin on a day-to-day basis, you will find yourself in trouble. Consider the finished work of Jesus as a truly finished work, not left to be done on your part, but finished on His. Rest in the accomplishment of Christ on the cross, where He died to sin so that you will not be held under its grasp. Still struggling with an area of sin in your life? Don’t fret. Consider yourself dead to sin and then move on. With every failure, declare that you are the righteousness of God in Christ, consider His work finished in you and watch grace change you in miraculous ways. Under God’s grace, you will never get the credit for your changing, for you know you did nothing!

Remember, only grace can “build you up” (Acts 20:32). Let it!

Sunday, October 10, 2010

The Old Man is Dead

Romans 6:6-10

This is not the only time that Paul refers to our “old man”, meaning our old, corrupt nature of sin. He mentions it again in Ephesians 4:22, “That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts”. Again, he writes of the old nature in Colossians 3:9 “Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds”.

In both the Ephesians and the Colossians reference, Paul is encouraging the church to put off the old ways, while his statement in Romans 6:6 shows the position of the believer, independent of his or her works. We are being encouraged to make the position that we have in Christ become evident by the lifestyle that we lead. Romans is the standing; Ephesians and Colossians are the application.

When we realize that we are dead to the old man, we see a new freedom from sin. The old man was led by his lusts and passions, and sin come second nature to him. Being dead to that old man through the finished work of Christ, we are now free from serving sin blindly. Does this insinuate that the believer will never sin again? Of course not, but it does promise us that we are free from living under the power of that sin.

Our death to sin is in Christ and His death as our substitute on Calvary. Sinners become saints by identifying with His death and accepting Him as their payment for sin. The moment that we accept this by faith, we are baptized into the same death, meaning that God now sees us exactly as He sees Jesus. Since we are dead with Him, then we have His resurrection power in us to bring life every day. Our new lives as believers are now lived with Christ leading the way; not with us trying to please God and do the right thing.

We have knowledge that Christ “dieth no more” (Romans 6:9). If we are dead in Him, and He is not going to die anymore, then we need not die every single day. There is no “re-crucifying” that needs to happen in the believer, for this cannot happen to our Savior. Our daily picking up of the cross is the knowledge that every day we stand to lose our life for the sake of the gospel, not the need to lose our spirit man in waves; a bit more tomorrow that we did today. You are completely and totally saved the moment that you accept Christ. Stop viewing the finished work as finished on His part, but unfinished on yours.

Verse 10 promises us that when Jesus died, He died to sin. He had no sin of His own, so whose sin was He dying out to? It was our sins and iniquities! Jesus had our sins condemned in His body (Romans 8:3), so that we would never have them condemned in ours. If He died to your sins once, then you need to give Him your heart once, and let His work do the rest.

The glorious final promise of this portion of scripture is that now that we are saved, we are living “unto God” (Romans 6:10). Our lives are no longer about living according to our lusts and desires, but are lived according to His perfect plan and will. Only Christ living His life through us can possibly bring about this perfection and glory, which is why the resurrection of Jesus is so vital and so awesome.

He whom the Son sets free is free indeed!