Tuesday, October 7, 2014

Convicted or Condemned

My Utmost For His Highest
 
‘Sin is a fundamental relationship— it is not wrong doing, but wrong being— it is deliberate and determined independence from God. The Christian faith bases everything on the extreme, self-confident nature of sin. Other faiths deal with sins— the Bible alone deals with sin. The first thing Jesus Christ confronted in people was the heredity of sin, and it is because we have ignored this in our presentation of the gospel that the message of the gospel has lost its sting and its explosive power.
 
The revealed truth of the Bible is not that Jesus Christ took on Himself our fleshly sins, but that He took on Himself the heredity of sin that no man can even touch. God made His own Son “to be sin” that He might make the sinner into a saint. […] “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us. . .” and by so doing He placed salvation for the entire human race solely on the basis of redemption. Jesus Christ reconciled the human race, putting it [the human race] back to where God designed it to be.’ CHAMBERS
 
Jesus is called the second Adam.  Where the first Adam failed, the second Adam was victorious.  1 Corinthians 15:45-49 ‘If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. So it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last [or second] Adam, a life-giving spirit.  The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual.  The first man was of the dust of the earth; the second man is of heaven.  As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the heavenly man, so also are those who are of heaven.  And just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so shall we bear the image of the heavenly man.’
 
 
Through Him we have new life.  We are no longer slaves to sin, but we still sin.  We no longer belong to the god of this world, we belong to the God of heaven.  We still struggle with sins because God has not taken our free-will away from us. So we choose poorly.  We hate the fact that we have this struggle, but don’t you think God knows that we will struggle?  There must be a divine purpose in that allowing.  Not that God takes pleasure in our disobedience, but He allows it.  Why? I think, because He desires our obedience … it is a demonstration of our love for Him.  Before Jesus, we did not have the capacity to do anything that would please God … Jesus gave us that capacity .. ability … by redeeming us … and then by giving us the power to live in a way the glorifies God and points others to Jesus.
 
The simple difference between conviction and condemnation is motive.  The words can actually be the same.  When you read the Word or perhaps these devotions, you may feel the weight of your wrong choosing.  We all struggle with wrong choices ( that is a softer way of saying ‘sin’).  The Spirit brings conviction with the motive of encouraging us to choose a better way, reminding us of our new life.  The world condemns with the motive of tearing us down, demoralizing us, discouraging us, reminding us of our old life.  Be encouraged. ELGIN
 
Bondye Beni Ou (God Bless You)

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