5615	Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Romans and the Flesh Monster.	on: February 03, 2009, 01:31:18 PM
I agree that we must receive the Spirit of God in order to understand spiritual things. The Spirit always enlightens the understanding first because our minds are what we decide we are going to do before we engage our wills. The way we do it is by understanding the object that we are pleased with the most. When we are regenerated we are given a new divine light or knowledge of who Christ is. It is not an intellectual knowledge but it is an experiential knowledge. We now know by tasting , sensing, looking, feeling and touching.All of these attributes are our new spiritual senses that interrelate in the knowledge of Jesus. Instead of just knowing something about Jesus , we love Him as the object of our affection. So we say that it is necessary for us to have the nature of the object that we choose to love. We have the nature of Christ, we choose according to the nature of Christ, and we do according to the nature of Christ. Any other goodness is not of the Spirit in a saving way. So when we look at the biblical definition of knowledge then, we want more and more since we have new longings for spiritual things. We long for Christ and we find Him, we long for goodness and we find it, we long for grace and we get it, we long for forgiveness and we experience it, we long to long and we get more longing. This is the process of being transformed by the renewing of the mind. The more we know God by His Spirit and word the more we will be changed into the image of Christ. The more we know God the deeper our longings will be for Him. The more we long for Him the more we will find Him. If we have found God then there is nothing else that matters in this life. Every thing else will fall into its place. For man is restless until He finds God. Or man has things in his understanding that go round and round and round so that he lays on his bed and is always anxious. Christ comes and says do not be anxious about anything. Well then we long to not be anxious so that we will not be anxious. Now we have a number of problems here. First we find that just because we have the Spirit of God we are not going to have any opposition. We will not have an inward turmoil. I guess that we must know the Spirit, the way He works, His nature by which we are changed into, and the promises we have received as a divine communication to our inner man. Now the reason we store up the promises, that is we implant Gods word so that we will not sin against Him is that we will have a resource of divine initiatives that are there as an obligation to squelch the fleshly desires that remind us of our utter powerlessness. God gives us the strength , the means to overcome, the protection against temptation, and the well of these paradigms that pertain to His glory. So that we will have such a deep understanding of His nature that our desires will be illumined in a fortress of keeping us focused on Christ by the sheer pleasure of knowing Him by this deep understanding. In a way we are shielded from the former ways of living in sorrow.
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5616	Forums / Theology Forum / Re: predestination	on: February 03, 2009, 12:54:19 PM
When we are  talking about election we must go to Rom. 9 And the discussion in the prior chapts is leading up to Rom 9. The whole world is guilty before God so that there is no one who seeks after God. All men either blue , black, green, yellow, purple , white or even the mixture of these colors do not understand so that they do not know God. Now if that is the case then how can man be saved? He is saved by grace. Grace can be defined as mans in the state of inability made able by Gods power and will. For He works in us to will and do of His good pleasure. We work because He works. We are empty and He fills us. We come with our blindness and sin, and He comes with lite and forgiveness. We come with our backs turned away, He comes to us and stops us in our tracks. We come with darkness He comes with light. We come with selfishness, He comes with His own goodness. In all of life then our willing is expressed in His graciousness to make us able. He does every thing and we do every thing.  Whoever comes to Him in any other way ,comes to Him with a reason that will prevent them from entering. For surely there is in every man something that he cherishes more than Christ. And if Christ prevents Him from coming in that way then the man heartily agrees. Man expresses his free will by remaining in darkness and blindness. He loves himself too much to come with nothing. Thats why salvation is by the will of God. Salvation is in God alone, or it is strictly a work of God. It will always be in God alone, it will always be initiated by God and it will always receive the praise of God alone. The reason that salvation is a choice of God is because the covenant of grace was introduced before the giving of the ten commandments. So that whatever God required of man , then God enabled, sustained and rewarded as it pertains to the work of Christ. God chose the nation of Israel as a covenant nation to be circumsized in the flesh, but He only had a relationship with a small group of people within that nation. The purpose of God cannot not be thwarted. Not even by His own chosen nation. Since the nation of Israel was subject to the judgment of God since they were not part of the remnant, they were vessels of His wrath. But the remnant we always vessels of mercy. Not by a process but by Gods choice to make them vessels of mercy at the point of salvation. The rest of the nation of Israel were objects of Gods wrath and always under His judgment since they loved their gods. For God says, I will have mercy on whom i will have mercy , and i will harden whom i will harden. Paul says just because you are of Israel does not mean that you are Israel. 5623  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Romans and the Flesh Monster. on: February 03, 2009, 10:44:17 AM Every sin demands a repayment. If sin did not have a consequence then there would be no value in its identity as sin. The repayment gives sin its importance or its weight. Pain is the consequence of sin. How can you inflict pain on a person and not define that as punishment? Instead of using the word punishment , i will us the word pain. If the law says tho shalt not murder or hate your brother then the law demands an enactment of pain in some form in order to show that it was violated. Now from our side we really believe that there are two laws. One for God and one for us. We lower the standard of the law so that we can excuse ourselves and blame others. In other words we redefine the law down by making loopholes in it. But God is eternal , He demands and eternal accounting. One violation of the law is an eternal affront to a holy God. We may think that there is a value of how we make our own laws in this society. But compared to how God looks at violations , our system of laws is a joke. In a sense this earthly system is like throwing red meat to a rebellious race. When Christ went to the cross He experienced an eternal enactment of pain so that He could pay for the sins. If the cross was simply God bringing about advocacy and not punishment then God could have bypassed the cross and declared Christ perfect life as being acceptable. But Christ had to suffer pain in order for the payment to be satisfactory. If Christ did not suffer the most extreme pain then there is still pain for sin to be suffered as a repayment. Every last drop of blood was required for sin. If i cannot look at my own pain and then look at the pain that Christ suffered , and have no hope , then there is nothing praiseworthy in substitution. If there is no level of this praiseworthiness in my understanding, then i might as well live for myself, live for the pleasure of this world, and party until i breath my last breath. Because non of this means a single thing to me of value. Sin has no remedy. But if i do not find all of my relief in substitution. That is not only my sin, but my weaknesses, my moodiness and the injustices in this world, then Christ is a big fluffy lover in the sky with no attributes of personality. He would be my Christmas card god. 5625  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Romans and the Flesh Monster. on: February 03, 2009, 06:00:28 AM God fully displayed His wrath on the cross against sin and some sinners. Gods wrath is satisfied in the Person of Jesus Christ. Its not satisfied in His good works.In other words Christ did not offer a good work for a bad one.Christ took on the punishment for sin in Himself, the full punishment. He did not become sin in order for God to punish that sin, but He was punished in order for God to be satisfied. This is not an i it paradigm. This is an i thou. We are all going to stand before Christ one at a time. His declaration is either going to be not guilty or guilty. The not guilty persons are going to spend eternity in the bliss of joy and love. The guilty persons are going to spend eternity in punishment that is full as that punishment put on Christ. That will never be satisfied. Its a very real and awful thing to think about. 5626  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Romans and the Flesh Monster. on: February 02, 2009, 12:57:55 PM There is a very simple formula for finding a church where people are going to fall into a pattern of living in spiritual unity. The principle is that when ever someone is struggling with sin the opposite of what we try to do is what we should do. And that is that we extend the message of grace and forgiveness to them. If they are having a hard time with an addiction then we must convince them that there is grace enough for the worse sinner. Any other message is an attempt to force them to do what you want them to do. The apostle was an apostle of grace. Every person learns to live as if there was more to do than for them than they are doing. In other words the natural reflex of guilt is self effort. The healing is grace. So that a person who continues to fall deeper and deeper into guilt and shame needs to have support from those who have learned to live in grace. Thats what the difference is between a gospel community and a community of religious fakes. We must never think that sin is dealt with in any other fashion. When people see this conviction put into practice then they begin to grow in the faith. Reply Quote Notify 5627  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Romans and the Flesh Monster. on: February 01, 2009, 01:11:23 PM Let me say something about this struggle with sins that we are being overcome by. Now we have already been reconciled to God. When we were called by Him we were declared righteous in the court of heaven, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son. Our relationship to God is set in order to be peaceful as being different than being reconciled on a daily basis. One is a completed action, the other is subject to our understanding of these different situations that we are confronted with and who is guilty, and whether we are under the obligation to practice this as the same rule as God reconciling us. We are obligated to confess all of our sins, but we do not confess all of our sins. But God has already forgiven all of our sins and all of are failure to confess our sins. We are not defined by our willing to do these things as a reason for being in a state of forgiveness. That trying to gain Gods fellowship and friendship my friend is heresy.  Look because we are in a state reconciliation then every act of our reconciling is preceded by Gods free act to give us the power to be reconciled. Our struggle with sin is in grace, not a means to obtain grace or a way to understand grace, or a reason to end our struggle with some sins. Grace and forgiveness are the means by which we are free. Freedom is the state we live in at all times. The captivity of sin is no longer absolute. Listen to me, the captivity of sin is no longer absolute. We are no longer under the law as a slave to the law. We are made alive by the Spirit. That means that the power to overcome our sin is from the cause of grace and forgiveness. We are cause to confess because we long to confess. Not the other way around. Pleasssssssssse, dont let those who would bring you  back under the law and lower Gods work done in Christ down to the level of mans power as the source. If we are under the weight of Gods hand we are standing on His hand as on a rock. Look i am not trying to be arrogant here. I ve just meditated on this christian living for longer than most of you have been alive.  Thats why all of this is out of grace and love. Pleassssssssssse!!!!!!!!!!!!