KILLING COWS

I find it both obvious and scriptural that Christians are not immune to nor exempt from the adversities of life, be it physical, financial, relational, or emotional. Trouble, difficulty, hardship and affliction are as prevalent among the saints as among non-Christian populations. Saints have no entitlement to escape what is clearly part of the curse from the fall of mankind – God’s judgment on mankind for disobedience -- any more than we can escape death, the curse’s ultimate penalty. Now it is true under Old Testament Law God’s covenant people, the Jews, were exempt from much of life’s adversity as long as they remained obedient to the Law. But this entitlement is covenant and people specific and was done away with by the Cross of Christ.

Adversity knows everyone’s address as Jesus clearly stated: “Narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life.” The Greek word translated “difficult” here is likewise translated trouble, adversity, affliction, hardship and other “Bad” words. Yes, our way home to eternal life will be fraught with difficulties.

Many saints believe God wants believers to have their best life now – health and wealth -- and that He is no respecter of persons, implying an entitlement. When adversity strikes and things don’t work out they use cobbled up half-truths about the role of faith and sin to protect their sacred cow “beliefs.” Well... It’s time to kill some cows: The seven passages describing God as “no respecter of persons” deal, contextually, with Salvation, Judgment, and Rewards: It is in these and only these areas that God is no respecter of persons. And our “best life now” is the life that brings about our greatest degree of transformation -- conformation into the likeness of Christ -- regardless of the circumstances.  This transformation is the rich and glorious mystery of the New Covenant, “Which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” 

IT’S ALL ABOUT TRANSFORMATION

                                          

A FAVORITE PASSAGE OF SCRIPTURE FROM THE AMPLIFIED BIBLE: PHILIPPIANS 3:7-15

But whatever former things I had that might have been gains to me, I have come to consider as one combined loss for Christ’s sake. Yes, furthermore, I count everything as loss compared to the possession of the priceless privilege, the overwhelming preciousness, the surpassing worth, and supreme advantage of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord and of progressively becoming more deeply and intimately acquainted with Him -- of perceiving and recognizing and understanding Him more fully and clearly. For His sake I have lost everything and consider it all to be mere rubbish, refuse and dregs, in order that I may win (gain) Christ The Anointed One.

And that I may actually be found and known as in Him, not having any self-achieved righteousness that can be called my own based on my obedience to the Law’s demands -- ritualistic uprightness and supposed right standing with God thus acquired -- but possessing that genuine righteousness which comes through faith in Christ The Anointed One, the truly right standing with God which comes from God by saving faith.

For my determined purpose is that I may know Him, that I may progressively become more deeply and intimately acquainted with Him, perceiving and recognizing and understanding the wonders of His Person more strongly and more clearly, and that I may in that same way come to know the power outflowing from His resurrection, which it exerts over believers, and that I may so share His sufferings as to be continually transformed in spirit into His likeness even to His death. In the hope that if possible I may attain to the spiritual and moral resurrection that lifts me out from among the dead even while in the body.

Not that I have now attained this ideal, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to lay hold of (grasp) and make my own, that for which Christ Jesus The Messiah has laid hold of me and made me His own. I do not consider, brethren, that I have captured and made it my own yet; but one thing I do, it is my one aspiration: Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the supreme and heavenly prize to which God in Christ Jesus is calling us upward.

So let those of us who are spiritually mature and full-grown have this mind and hold these convictions; and if in any respect you have a different attitude of mind, God will make that clear to you also.

The Apostle Paul is describing the cost and rewards of deep intimate relationship with Christ, a relationship based on the priceless privilege of the indwelling Christ-Life. We must be found and known as in Him, and determined to really know Him. In intimate relationship we come to perceive, recognize and understand the wonders of His person, and come to know and experience the power outflowing from His resurrection. It is likewise in intimate relationship that we learn to share Christ’s sufferings -- submitting to His Lordship over our life and crucifying Self – that in submission and death we might be continually transformed into His likeness… His nature. Recognizing our imperfection we press on to lay hold of and make our own that for which Christ has laid hold of us and made us His own. Saints, we all must forget what lies behind and press on toward the goal, the supreme and heavenly prize into which God has called us… Christlikeness! This is really an astonishing passage give it was written by the Apostle Paul thirty plus years into his ministry while captive in a Roman prison.

CHURCH… AN ORGANIC BODY

Much of the twenty-first century church community is a man made mess, blind to its true reality, offering up Ishmael offerings to God as a form of Godliness. With more wrong than right the church is beyond the tipping point, and ill prepared for the great confrontations with the powers of darkness that lie ahead. We need to scrap the denominational protocols – man’s way of gathering together -- and search the New Covenant scriptures to learn how to become an organic body of believers living life as a real spiritual family here on planet earth. Church should be about:

*Equipping one another for the work of ministry… in the enemy’s camp, the world.

*Building the body of Christ… one stone at a time.

*Embracing the Lordship of Christ and the death of Self… releasing our Savior’s nature within.

*Embracing the suffering of our Lord… learning obedience God’s way.

*Learning corporate fellowship… Worship in Spirit and in truth.

*And, above all, loving one another.

These church elements are the mile-markers of every saint’s journey into Christlikeness, the number one thing on God’s heart. Having predestined us as His “sons” He must make us fit for “Sonship.” Scripture commands we “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ” – clothe our Self in Him – “and make no provisions for the flesh”:  To do so we must submit to His Lordship and will the death of Self. Our Savior’s heart, in lock-step with the Father’s will, is defined by Love, Obedience, Passion, Sacrifice and Humility. These should be the stand out virtues of our heart, the ever increasing experience of those who have allowed Christ to take up residence in them. The degree we are truly His is the degree we have submitted to His Lordship in all things, the degree we have put Self to death on His Cross, the degree we think, speak and act like Jesus… the degree we have allowed His life to flow through our life as our life. This is a great and glorious mystery, which is Christ in me, my only hope of eternal glory.

LIVING LIFE AS A REAL SPIRITUAL FAMILY

MILK VERSES SOLID FOOD

“For though by this time you ought to be teachers … you have come to need milk and not solid food … For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness … But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, that is, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.”

The unrenewed mind in conformance to the world’s ways evaluates “Good” and “Bad” using the world’s yardstick. But God is sovereign in all things, allowing in His wisdom what He could easily prevent in His power, engaging our will through adversity and affliction – the pot holes and detours of life -- ever moving us Godward down the narrow-gated difficult Way into Christlikeness. With God’s Kingdom yardstick all earthly “Bad” endured by His children is worked together into God’s purposeful “Good”, as the Holy Spirit wills and works in us in accordance with God’s good pleasure.  The truth of the matter: We are a stubborn and stiff necked pleasure seeking people who must willfully crucify our Self-Nature in submission to the Lordship of Christ if we are ever to walk in Christlikeness in this life. Becoming like Jesus, displaying His nature and attributes, is the mystery of Godliness: His life flowing forth from our life as our life, until we no longer live but Christ lives in and through us. “For we have become partakers of Christ … partakers of the divine nature”, having predestined us as His “sons” He must make us fit for “Sonship.”

God knows what it takes... individually, to move each of His chosen ones toward the cross of death, and He allows it for our own Good, that in our death to Self the implanted DNA of Christ’s nature might be resurrected in us... might sprout roots and blossom forth. It takes death of Self: “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me … God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” This is the rich and glorious mystery God willed to make known to us, “which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” Said literally: Christ in me, is my only hope of eternal glory (ditto everyone). Saints, we should “pray always that our God would count us worthy of this calling, and fulfill all the good pleasure of His goodness and the work of faith with power.” There’s a lot of solid food here for those who are “full of age” and weaned of milk.

“FOR EVERYONE WHO PARTAKES ONLY OF MILK

IS UNSKILLED IN THE WORD OF RIGHTEOUSNESS”

(Heb. 5:12-14; Rom. 8:28; Phil. 2:13; Eph. 1:5; 2 Thess. 1:11; Col. 1:27; Gal. 2:20, 6:14; Heb. 3:14; 2 Peter 1:4; Heb. 5:13)