Okay, Four
"It's not a pleasant thought, John, but I have this terrible feeling from time to time that we all might just be human."
Sherlock Holmes
"The Lying Detective"
To go on to the weapons of the Spirit, we need to understand something else and I now think it needs to be before we talk about those weapons because we are, after all, in a fight and we need to know the one most powerful weapons Satan has in his arsenal and the way he uses them.
We know we are born into sin and we have failed and all that. We know we aren't worthy, but the one egotistical thing we haven't touched on this whole time is the quizzical little weapon that swells to become an atomic bomb in the war, the very personal war this Fallen Flesh cannot effectively fight: guilt.
There is another weapon as deadly: fear. But we'll come back to that.
Guilt looks largest in my mind because it works to seem as if it were God's weapon and not Satan's.
John 16:7 But what I am saying is true: my going is for your good: for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.
8 And he, when he comes, will make the world conscious of sin, and of righteousness, and of being judged:
9 Of sin, because they have not faith in me;
10 Of righteousness, because I go to the Father and you will see me no more;
11 Of being judged, because the ruler of this world has been judged.
(BBE)
The Spirit is supposed to make us guilty, right? He will "convict the world in respect of sin" (ASV). But we kind of shuffle 9 off to the side. Of sin, because they have not faith in me. We become saved and then that gets transformed in the war.
The proper way to deal with it appears here:
WE start to judge others, unsaved others, for sin. I get that way about our current US President. (Oh, please, let's not pretend he's saved. Please don't do that to yourself and the church. I don't know he isn't but I haven't seen any evidence to (to borrow the word) convict him in court. It still isn't my place to do anything but call him out in his behavior as a leader of the country and that may also not be my place. Still I'm sure there is a Nathan out there yelling out skillfully in the spirit at the President. ) We seem to think we are the Spirit because it lives in us. We're to witness in HIS power and HE convinces others. Now we mentioned before He is God in that form, right? and when we take control of God's mission in our own way, who are we resembling then? Yeah, the rebellious one.
We take the righteousness in us and use it to beat others over the head and then we are using it as a weapon for Satan. Others say, "Why would I want to be like that?" Don't forget that the Spirit can very well go ahead and wipe out anyone God says. Don't forget He is like Jesus and could go ahead and wipe out who He wants to as well. But He is God in that person and would never betray the trust given Him anymore than Jesus would.
We assume that the Holy Spirit is never tempted, but we need to add, "as we are" and then realize that, yes, since he lived in Jesus, He faced temptations but on another plane. He had to feel a twinge of an urge to reduce Satan to dust during the temptations of Jesus. He had to gnaw at the leash as Jesus hung there on the cross. Do you think He wanted a third of Himself to be separated that day by sin any more than God did? But He understood He had to let it happen to glorify the Father and so the Son. The Spirit stayed in the background and acted openly only when He had to. Jesus did the miracles, but the Spirit powered them all, agreed to do them all. Just as Jesus agreed with Him in doing them.
So when we start guilting the smoker or the liar or the adulterer, please recall we are doing a job not our own.
But we go further than that. Hugh Jackman who played Valjean in Les Miz quoted in the last post, also played a Spanish conquistador in a reincarnation movie The Fountain which was pure New Age belief and mentioned here for two reasons, 1) We talk about the fallacies in The Failure of Myth and that serves as good prep for our end times discussion ahead and 2) there is a scene when he is scourging himself for his desires of the flesh. We turn the weapon of guilt on ourselves.
Our sin infested ego makes us think we have sinned so deep it needs MORE than Jesus forgiveness and we find ways to scourge ourselves. Not just with whips. We lose sleep. We pace the floor. We say we aren't good enough for this job or that one. We betray our spouses in our minds and we keep it to ourselves certain they could never forgive us. Or we tell them and demand they pray with us for forgiveness, that they forgive us without a single consultation of the Spirit. We start to think in Muslim and Mormon fashion. We deny ourselves this food or that, fast and "share" the fact with others in our guilt and the seem proud of it to them. Or go on a Bible approved diet, forgetting Paul tells us someone who gives us a special diet has their own agenda, never thinking our own agenda may be as specially warped by our flesh. We spend hours on our knees in prayer and not to spend time with the Father who loves us, but to beat our chests like Tarzan and cry out mumbled phrases and grunts, or to speak in tongues we don't understand as a sign of our deep holiness, even though the Holy Spirit told Paul to tell us NOT to do that.
Then guilt deters us from the mission.
"I am so guilty, God could never use me."
Or we use it on another we don't really want to succeed. Been done to me when I wasn't following as I should. Stopped me for a time, too. I suspect that is when it can truly cripple a ministry for a time or forever. That is when Satan has been given power, when we really sin and can't let it go, when we can't ask for forgiveness, when we can't find a way to forgive.
And that is the true power of guilt. That we get sucked into being God-like toward ourselves or others instead of being Godly and acting as He would, with love and forgiveness for ourselves and others and then getting on with the Mission, with evangelizing the world.
And then there's the fear in the guilt. Fear that someone will know, fear that this is that unforgivable sin, that the ones you love won't forgive you, that God won't forgive you, and, if he doesn't forgive that, then you are lost for eternity. The institutional Church has a lot to answer to for that one. Over the centuries men running the institution called the Church have used that fear to keep people in line, to stop the translation of the Bible, to keep science quelled when it disagreed, not with the Bible but with what the Church said the Bible said, for Crusades that went wildly off base, for using God's Word to build a power base for themselves. For having all manner of penances created in Catholic AND Protestant movements, making it easy for a usually liberal Catholic base to be drawn into a merger with conservative Protestant and Charismatic movements based on anti abortion sentiment alone and very little theological agreement.
Because punishment is always the fear in the guilt. Take Excommunication. The Catholic Church taught that the institution was the body of Christ and that throwing one out of the Church on Earth was taken that way in heaven as well. I assume it still does. That fear was the only power of that act was demonstrated by Pope Martin V who dug up the corpse of John Wycliffe, the English translator of the Bible, and had the bones burned and excommunicated him after death. This could have been done solely to terrify others since John was long since in Heaven if their standard was upheld. Worse, it shows the intolerable ego of men, thinking we can take someone out of heaven who is already there. How we so resemble Satan sometimes.
As guilt shows we somehow think we may act to take ourselves away from God. We cling to our notions of our own power and engage in self-deceit.
Making the need for the confessional state in the Church more precious.
Then those last two come circling in:
10 Of righteousness, because I go to the Father and you will see me no more;
11 Of being judged, because the ruler of this world has been judged.
He convicts us of righteousness, so our Flesh and Satan whisper we should be guilty for not being righteous enough. The Mormon thinking of diet and proper manners and two year missions when our LIFE is to be the Mission. Greater truth from an Angel of light.
2Co 11:10 As the true word of Christ is in me, I will let no man take from me this my cause of pride in the country of Achaia.
11 Why? because I have no love for you? let God be judge.
12 But what I do, that I will go on doing, so that I may give no chance to those who are looking for one; so that, in the cause of their pride, they may be seen to be the same as we are.
13 For such men are false Apostles, workers of deceit, making themselves seem like Apostles of Christ.
14 And it is no wonder; for even Satan himself is able to take the form of an angel of light.
15 So it is no great thing if his servants make themselves seem to be servants of righteousness; whose end will be the reward of their works.
(BBE)
You see? We seek righteousness so Satan deceives us into thinking other men are as righteous as Paul and then they teach Gnostic or legalistic beliefs and draw others from true righteousness, i.e., living in and by the Spirit. Some teaching talking in tongues over living in love. Others teaching NOT talking in tongues over living in love.
And that thing about judgement and punishment. See that last verse,
11 Of being judged, because the ruler of this world has been judged.
Recall what I told you in earlier posts Satan can't create. He can only misuse what is here for his purposes. He is guilty. He is doom. We are guilty. The Spirit convicts us. We will be judged, We know that. We are NOT righteous, and sometimes it seems my every waking hour is spent realizing that. And the demon whom seduced humanity into the lost state works to keep it there.
But...
BUT...
BUT...WE ARE FORGIVEN.
This is why Paul spends so much time on the Law in Romans and other places. Again Romans 7:
Romans 7:17 So it is no longer I who do it, but the sin living in me.
18 For I am conscious that in me, that is, in my flesh, there is nothing good: I have the mind but not the power to do what is right.
19 For the good which I have a mind to do, I do not: but the evil which I have no mind to do, that I do.
20 But if I do what I have no mind to do, it is no longer I who do it, but the sin living in me.
21 So I see a law that, though I have a mind to do good, evil is present in me.
22 In my heart I take pleasure in the law of God,
23 But I see another law in my body, working against the law of my mind, and making me the servant of the law of sin which is in my flesh.
24 How unhappy am I! who will make me free from the body of this death?
25 I give praise to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So with my mind I am a servant to the law of God, but with my flesh to the law of sin.
(BBE)
Though forgiven our Fallen Flesh allies with Satan and had even Paul himself dealing with guilt and yet, he said something in Romans 6. BEFORE this that has the key to dealing with it. he is merely expounding on how he himself faced the same pressures as others. The Key:
Romans 6:1 What may we say, then? are we to go on in sin so that there may be more grace?
2 In no way. How may we, who are dead to sin, be living in it any longer?
3 Or are you without the knowledge that all we who had baptism into Christ Jesus, had baptism into his death?
4 We have been placed with him among the dead through baptism into death: so that as Christ came again from the dead by the glory of the Father, we, in the same way, might be living in new life.
5 For, if we have been made like him in his death, we will, in the same way, be like him in his coming to life again;
6 Being conscious that our old man was put to death on the cross with him, so that the body of sin might be put away, and we might no longer be servants to sin.
7 Because he who is dead is free from sin.
8 But if we are dead with Christ, we have faith that we will be living with him;
9 Having knowledge that because Christ has come back from the dead, he will never again go down to the dead; death has no more power over him.
10 For his death was a death to sin, but his life now is a life which he is living to God.
11 Even so see yourselves as dead to sin, but living to God in Christ Jesus.
12 For this cause do not let sin be ruling in your body which is under the power of death, so that you give way to its desires;
13 And do not give your bodies to sin as the instruments of wrongdoing, but give yourselves to God, as those who are living from the dead, and your bodies as instruments of righteousness to God.
14 For sin may not have rule over you: because you are not under law, but under grace.
15 What then? are we to go on in sin because we are not under law but under grace? Let it not be so.
16 Are you not conscious that you are the servants of him to whom you give yourselves to do his desire? if to sin, the end being death, or if to do the desire of God, the end being righteousness.
17 But praise be to God that though you were the servants of sin, you have now given yourselves freely to that form of teaching under which you were placed;
18 And being made free from sin you have been made the servants of righteousness.
19 I am using words in the way of men, because your flesh is feeble: as you gave your bodies as servants to what is unclean, and to evil to do evil, so now give them as servants to righteousness to do what is holy.
20 When you were servants of sin you were free from righteousness.
21 What fruit had you at that time in the things which are now a shame to you? for the end of such things is death.
22 But now, being free from sin, and having been made servants to God, you have your fruit in that which is holy, and the end is eternal life.
23 For the reward of sin is death; but what God freely gives is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord.
(BBE)
We are free because we are forgiven. We are not bound to sin or the eternal repercussions of sin. We can CHOOSE not to sin. We have that power. We can choose to accept Jesus death as the cleansing of that sin and any sin thereafter. We can walk away. No church in this world has a hope of putting you or I in Hell though they may cast us out and ignore us. This they should do if we persist in sin.
But perhaps the best way to view the handling of sin on a daily basis lies in the foot washing story:
John 13:3 Jesus, being conscious that the Father had put everything into his hands, and that he came from God and was going to God,
4 Got up from table, put off his robe and took a cloth and put it round him.
5 Then he put water into a basin and was washing the feet of the disciples and drying them with the cloth which was round him.
6 So he came to Simon Peter. Peter said, Lord, are my feet to be washed by you?
7 And Jesus, answering, said to him, What I do is not clear to you now, but it will be clear to you in time to come.
8 Peter said, I will never let my feet be washed by you, never. Jesus said in answer, If I do not make you clean you have no part with me.
9 Simon Peter said to him, Lord, not my feet only, but my hands and my head.
10 Jesus said to him, He who is bathed has need only to have his feet washed and then he is clean all over: and you, my disciples, are clean, but not all of you.
11 (He had knowledge who was false to him; that is why he said, You are not all clean.)
(BBE)
We get all manner of comments about Jesus lowering himself and this being about cleaning us daily of sin but there's something else that needs to be emphasized here. Foot washing had to do with washing off the filth of the world outside. Mostly it had to do with the fact people went to the bathroom pretty much when it was convenient. It was largely excrement that had to be removed and it relates to the idea that what we are eliminating is the stuff we have no use for poisons to our flesh. Sin is the poison in our flesh. But there's something else, too.
Any man who has ever gone to the bathroom in shorts of sandals knows that there is spatter. While they got the filth of the world on themselves, they also got THEIR filth on themselves. If excrement can be seen to represent sin, then we can see the need to have the sin of the world and OUR sin both washed away daily And see that it is Jesus alone who can do it, that we can't wash our own feet suitably. Not enough prayer hours, not enough good deeds, not enough missionary trips nor even the blessing of righteous people to wash even a single speck of the sin spatter on us. Even the process of our flesh in eliminating plays into the analogy here. We get it on ourselves and likely in places we don't immediately notice. Taking our filthy feet to him who has the water to clean them of the power of our false flesh. Something we need every day, even as they needed their feet washed every evening.
But keep in mind one thing more: we are to think of others before ourselves and exhort those who are sinning with encouragement and kindness, knowing we are as weak and liable to fall. Finding ways to help others stands as one of the best ways to keep ourselves from sinning. And staying to the mission to deliver others from death by living a Godly example.
This primes us to move on to a discussion of the weapons of the Spirit, some of them called gifts.
"It's not a pleasant thought, John, but I have this terrible feeling from time to time that we all might just be human."
Sherlock Holmes
"The Lying Detective"
To go on to the weapons of the Spirit, we need to understand something else and I now think it needs to be before we talk about those weapons because we are, after all, in a fight and we need to know the one most powerful weapons Satan has in his arsenal and the way he uses them.
We know we are born into sin and we have failed and all that. We know we aren't worthy, but the one egotistical thing we haven't touched on this whole time is the quizzical little weapon that swells to become an atomic bomb in the war, the very personal war this Fallen Flesh cannot effectively fight: guilt.
There is another weapon as deadly: fear. But we'll come back to that.
Guilt looks largest in my mind because it works to seem as if it were God's weapon and not Satan's.
John 16:7 But what I am saying is true: my going is for your good: for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.
8 And he, when he comes, will make the world conscious of sin, and of righteousness, and of being judged:
9 Of sin, because they have not faith in me;
10 Of righteousness, because I go to the Father and you will see me no more;
11 Of being judged, because the ruler of this world has been judged.
(BBE)
The Spirit is supposed to make us guilty, right? He will "convict the world in respect of sin" (ASV). But we kind of shuffle 9 off to the side. Of sin, because they have not faith in me. We become saved and then that gets transformed in the war.
The proper way to deal with it appears here:
When we accepted Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, we experienced the wonderful cleansing power of His blood, which was shed on the cross for us over 2,000 years ago. We had an overwhelming feeling of freedom and release from the bondage of sin and death when we first repented from our old lives and turned to Christ. Then, the following dilemma began to occur as the weeks and months went by – we found ourselves tempted to return to sinful patterns of thinking and acting. It became difficult to accept that we would still continue to sin because we are children of the King: righteous, new creations in Christ, called to be holy as He is holy.
But the truth is, we are still sinners and will always battle with sin in our lives because we are inwardly bent towards sin. That is the reason God says in His Word that we need to confess our sins and rely on His promise to cleanse us:
"Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, 'I will confess my transgressions to the LORD' – and you forgave the guilt of my sin.” (Psalm 32:5)
“Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.” (James 5:16)
“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9)
"There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." (Romans 8:1)
These verses remind us that:
As Christians we will still sin.
Though we are commanded not to sin, there is forgiveness through Jesus Christ.
When we sin, there is a way to restore fellowship with God:
Confess that sin to God and to others.
Repent from the sin, asking God to change the direction of our lives.
Pray for each other; ask someone to pray for us.
Trust that God's promises are true: He has forgiven us and no longer condemns us.
But that forgiveness sometimes leads us to judgmental attitudes toward others because we don't see them acting as we think they should.
WE start to judge others, unsaved others, for sin. I get that way about our current US President. (Oh, please, let's not pretend he's saved. Please don't do that to yourself and the church. I don't know he isn't but I haven't seen any evidence to (to borrow the word) convict him in court. It still isn't my place to do anything but call him out in his behavior as a leader of the country and that may also not be my place. Still I'm sure there is a Nathan out there yelling out skillfully in the spirit at the President. ) We seem to think we are the Spirit because it lives in us. We're to witness in HIS power and HE convinces others. Now we mentioned before He is God in that form, right? and when we take control of God's mission in our own way, who are we resembling then? Yeah, the rebellious one.
We take the righteousness in us and use it to beat others over the head and then we are using it as a weapon for Satan. Others say, "Why would I want to be like that?" Don't forget that the Spirit can very well go ahead and wipe out anyone God says. Don't forget He is like Jesus and could go ahead and wipe out who He wants to as well. But He is God in that person and would never betray the trust given Him anymore than Jesus would.
We assume that the Holy Spirit is never tempted, but we need to add, "as we are" and then realize that, yes, since he lived in Jesus, He faced temptations but on another plane. He had to feel a twinge of an urge to reduce Satan to dust during the temptations of Jesus. He had to gnaw at the leash as Jesus hung there on the cross. Do you think He wanted a third of Himself to be separated that day by sin any more than God did? But He understood He had to let it happen to glorify the Father and so the Son. The Spirit stayed in the background and acted openly only when He had to. Jesus did the miracles, but the Spirit powered them all, agreed to do them all. Just as Jesus agreed with Him in doing them.
So when we start guilting the smoker or the liar or the adulterer, please recall we are doing a job not our own.
But we go further than that. Hugh Jackman who played Valjean in Les Miz quoted in the last post, also played a Spanish conquistador in a reincarnation movie The Fountain which was pure New Age belief and mentioned here for two reasons, 1) We talk about the fallacies in The Failure of Myth and that serves as good prep for our end times discussion ahead and 2) there is a scene when he is scourging himself for his desires of the flesh. We turn the weapon of guilt on ourselves.
Our sin infested ego makes us think we have sinned so deep it needs MORE than Jesus forgiveness and we find ways to scourge ourselves. Not just with whips. We lose sleep. We pace the floor. We say we aren't good enough for this job or that one. We betray our spouses in our minds and we keep it to ourselves certain they could never forgive us. Or we tell them and demand they pray with us for forgiveness, that they forgive us without a single consultation of the Spirit. We start to think in Muslim and Mormon fashion. We deny ourselves this food or that, fast and "share" the fact with others in our guilt and the seem proud of it to them. Or go on a Bible approved diet, forgetting Paul tells us someone who gives us a special diet has their own agenda, never thinking our own agenda may be as specially warped by our flesh. We spend hours on our knees in prayer and not to spend time with the Father who loves us, but to beat our chests like Tarzan and cry out mumbled phrases and grunts, or to speak in tongues we don't understand as a sign of our deep holiness, even though the Holy Spirit told Paul to tell us NOT to do that.
Then guilt deters us from the mission.
"I am so guilty, God could never use me."
Or we use it on another we don't really want to succeed. Been done to me when I wasn't following as I should. Stopped me for a time, too. I suspect that is when it can truly cripple a ministry for a time or forever. That is when Satan has been given power, when we really sin and can't let it go, when we can't ask for forgiveness, when we can't find a way to forgive.
And that is the true power of guilt. That we get sucked into being God-like toward ourselves or others instead of being Godly and acting as He would, with love and forgiveness for ourselves and others and then getting on with the Mission, with evangelizing the world.
And then there's the fear in the guilt. Fear that someone will know, fear that this is that unforgivable sin, that the ones you love won't forgive you, that God won't forgive you, and, if he doesn't forgive that, then you are lost for eternity. The institutional Church has a lot to answer to for that one. Over the centuries men running the institution called the Church have used that fear to keep people in line, to stop the translation of the Bible, to keep science quelled when it disagreed, not with the Bible but with what the Church said the Bible said, for Crusades that went wildly off base, for using God's Word to build a power base for themselves. For having all manner of penances created in Catholic AND Protestant movements, making it easy for a usually liberal Catholic base to be drawn into a merger with conservative Protestant and Charismatic movements based on anti abortion sentiment alone and very little theological agreement.
Because punishment is always the fear in the guilt. Take Excommunication. The Catholic Church taught that the institution was the body of Christ and that throwing one out of the Church on Earth was taken that way in heaven as well. I assume it still does. That fear was the only power of that act was demonstrated by Pope Martin V who dug up the corpse of John Wycliffe, the English translator of the Bible, and had the bones burned and excommunicated him after death. This could have been done solely to terrify others since John was long since in Heaven if their standard was upheld. Worse, it shows the intolerable ego of men, thinking we can take someone out of heaven who is already there. How we so resemble Satan sometimes.
As guilt shows we somehow think we may act to take ourselves away from God. We cling to our notions of our own power and engage in self-deceit.
Making the need for the confessional state in the Church more precious.
Then those last two come circling in:
10 Of righteousness, because I go to the Father and you will see me no more;
11 Of being judged, because the ruler of this world has been judged.
He convicts us of righteousness, so our Flesh and Satan whisper we should be guilty for not being righteous enough. The Mormon thinking of diet and proper manners and two year missions when our LIFE is to be the Mission. Greater truth from an Angel of light.
2Co 11:10 As the true word of Christ is in me, I will let no man take from me this my cause of pride in the country of Achaia.
11 Why? because I have no love for you? let God be judge.
12 But what I do, that I will go on doing, so that I may give no chance to those who are looking for one; so that, in the cause of their pride, they may be seen to be the same as we are.
13 For such men are false Apostles, workers of deceit, making themselves seem like Apostles of Christ.
14 And it is no wonder; for even Satan himself is able to take the form of an angel of light.
15 So it is no great thing if his servants make themselves seem to be servants of righteousness; whose end will be the reward of their works.
(BBE)
You see? We seek righteousness so Satan deceives us into thinking other men are as righteous as Paul and then they teach Gnostic or legalistic beliefs and draw others from true righteousness, i.e., living in and by the Spirit. Some teaching talking in tongues over living in love. Others teaching NOT talking in tongues over living in love.
And that thing about judgement and punishment. See that last verse,
11 Of being judged, because the ruler of this world has been judged.
Recall what I told you in earlier posts Satan can't create. He can only misuse what is here for his purposes. He is guilty. He is doom. We are guilty. The Spirit convicts us. We will be judged, We know that. We are NOT righteous, and sometimes it seems my every waking hour is spent realizing that. And the demon whom seduced humanity into the lost state works to keep it there.
But...
BUT...
BUT...WE ARE FORGIVEN.
This is why Paul spends so much time on the Law in Romans and other places. Again Romans 7:
Romans 7:17 So it is no longer I who do it, but the sin living in me.
18 For I am conscious that in me, that is, in my flesh, there is nothing good: I have the mind but not the power to do what is right.
19 For the good which I have a mind to do, I do not: but the evil which I have no mind to do, that I do.
20 But if I do what I have no mind to do, it is no longer I who do it, but the sin living in me.
21 So I see a law that, though I have a mind to do good, evil is present in me.
22 In my heart I take pleasure in the law of God,
23 But I see another law in my body, working against the law of my mind, and making me the servant of the law of sin which is in my flesh.
24 How unhappy am I! who will make me free from the body of this death?
25 I give praise to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So with my mind I am a servant to the law of God, but with my flesh to the law of sin.
(BBE)
Though forgiven our Fallen Flesh allies with Satan and had even Paul himself dealing with guilt and yet, he said something in Romans 6. BEFORE this that has the key to dealing with it. he is merely expounding on how he himself faced the same pressures as others. The Key:
Romans 6:1 What may we say, then? are we to go on in sin so that there may be more grace?
2 In no way. How may we, who are dead to sin, be living in it any longer?
3 Or are you without the knowledge that all we who had baptism into Christ Jesus, had baptism into his death?
4 We have been placed with him among the dead through baptism into death: so that as Christ came again from the dead by the glory of the Father, we, in the same way, might be living in new life.
5 For, if we have been made like him in his death, we will, in the same way, be like him in his coming to life again;
6 Being conscious that our old man was put to death on the cross with him, so that the body of sin might be put away, and we might no longer be servants to sin.
7 Because he who is dead is free from sin.
8 But if we are dead with Christ, we have faith that we will be living with him;
9 Having knowledge that because Christ has come back from the dead, he will never again go down to the dead; death has no more power over him.
10 For his death was a death to sin, but his life now is a life which he is living to God.
11 Even so see yourselves as dead to sin, but living to God in Christ Jesus.
12 For this cause do not let sin be ruling in your body which is under the power of death, so that you give way to its desires;
13 And do not give your bodies to sin as the instruments of wrongdoing, but give yourselves to God, as those who are living from the dead, and your bodies as instruments of righteousness to God.
14 For sin may not have rule over you: because you are not under law, but under grace.
15 What then? are we to go on in sin because we are not under law but under grace? Let it not be so.
16 Are you not conscious that you are the servants of him to whom you give yourselves to do his desire? if to sin, the end being death, or if to do the desire of God, the end being righteousness.
17 But praise be to God that though you were the servants of sin, you have now given yourselves freely to that form of teaching under which you were placed;
18 And being made free from sin you have been made the servants of righteousness.
19 I am using words in the way of men, because your flesh is feeble: as you gave your bodies as servants to what is unclean, and to evil to do evil, so now give them as servants to righteousness to do what is holy.
20 When you were servants of sin you were free from righteousness.
21 What fruit had you at that time in the things which are now a shame to you? for the end of such things is death.
22 But now, being free from sin, and having been made servants to God, you have your fruit in that which is holy, and the end is eternal life.
23 For the reward of sin is death; but what God freely gives is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord.
(BBE)
We are free because we are forgiven. We are not bound to sin or the eternal repercussions of sin. We can CHOOSE not to sin. We have that power. We can choose to accept Jesus death as the cleansing of that sin and any sin thereafter. We can walk away. No church in this world has a hope of putting you or I in Hell though they may cast us out and ignore us. This they should do if we persist in sin.
But perhaps the best way to view the handling of sin on a daily basis lies in the foot washing story:
John 13:3 Jesus, being conscious that the Father had put everything into his hands, and that he came from God and was going to God,
4 Got up from table, put off his robe and took a cloth and put it round him.
5 Then he put water into a basin and was washing the feet of the disciples and drying them with the cloth which was round him.
6 So he came to Simon Peter. Peter said, Lord, are my feet to be washed by you?
7 And Jesus, answering, said to him, What I do is not clear to you now, but it will be clear to you in time to come.
8 Peter said, I will never let my feet be washed by you, never. Jesus said in answer, If I do not make you clean you have no part with me.
9 Simon Peter said to him, Lord, not my feet only, but my hands and my head.
10 Jesus said to him, He who is bathed has need only to have his feet washed and then he is clean all over: and you, my disciples, are clean, but not all of you.
11 (He had knowledge who was false to him; that is why he said, You are not all clean.)
(BBE)
We get all manner of comments about Jesus lowering himself and this being about cleaning us daily of sin but there's something else that needs to be emphasized here. Foot washing had to do with washing off the filth of the world outside. Mostly it had to do with the fact people went to the bathroom pretty much when it was convenient. It was largely excrement that had to be removed and it relates to the idea that what we are eliminating is the stuff we have no use for poisons to our flesh. Sin is the poison in our flesh. But there's something else, too.
Any man who has ever gone to the bathroom in shorts of sandals knows that there is spatter. While they got the filth of the world on themselves, they also got THEIR filth on themselves. If excrement can be seen to represent sin, then we can see the need to have the sin of the world and OUR sin both washed away daily And see that it is Jesus alone who can do it, that we can't wash our own feet suitably. Not enough prayer hours, not enough good deeds, not enough missionary trips nor even the blessing of righteous people to wash even a single speck of the sin spatter on us. Even the process of our flesh in eliminating plays into the analogy here. We get it on ourselves and likely in places we don't immediately notice. Taking our filthy feet to him who has the water to clean them of the power of our false flesh. Something we need every day, even as they needed their feet washed every evening.
But keep in mind one thing more: we are to think of others before ourselves and exhort those who are sinning with encouragement and kindness, knowing we are as weak and liable to fall. Finding ways to help others stands as one of the best ways to keep ourselves from sinning. And staying to the mission to deliver others from death by living a Godly example.
This primes us to move on to a discussion of the weapons of the Spirit, some of them called gifts.
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