WHO IS A REAL CHRISTIAN? God has given us a Book, the Bible. If we want to know who God is, then read the Bible. (I mean the 66 books of the canon; not the corrupt Roman Catholic Bible which includes the Apocrypha.) Read the book of Genesis. God created man and put him in a wonderful garden. He gave him a lovely wife. God told them not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good & evil. He said, If you eat of that tree, you will SURELY die. Gen 2.17. But Eve was tempted by the serpent (Satan), who blatantly lied: You shall not surely die. Gen 3.4 When Adam and Eve ate of the fruit, they died - spiritually. Their spirits were cut off from God. Their conscience was awakened. They hid in guilt and shame when God came into the garden. Yet God was merciful towards them. He put a curse on the serpent; He promised a Messiah to Adam & Eve (Gen 3.15b) and He went further in grace - He clothed the nakedness and shame of the first couple with the skins of an innocent animal, Gen 3.21. Through the sacrifice of that animal, Adam and Eve were clothed. Similarly, through the sacrifice of the Lamb of God slain from the foundation of the world, we are clothed with the righteousness of God & Christ. To understand God and Christ, you must be aware of the nature of sin. Sin is rebellion against God. It begins with independence. Adam and Eve did not want to depend on God; they wanted to be independent of God - to go by their own reason, their own judgment, their own wisdom, their own SELF. Their spirits cut off from God, they lived by their soul. (The soul life is the life that depends on ones own thinking, ones own feeling, ones own willing. It is the natural life of man: he thinks, he feels, he desires, he wills - all on his own, from his own SELF.) When a person accepts the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ on his behalf (John 3.16, 1 John 2.2, Acts 16.31), the blood of Jesus Christ purges his conscience, removing the guilt. The spirit becomes alive; the person becomes aware of God. Once again a relationship with God is established. The Spirit of God comes and dwells in the renewed spirit of man. That Spirit, the Holy Spirit, is the Spirit of Christ. We know that we are Gods children (true Christians) when we are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, Rom 8.9b. Now, as born again children of God, we learn to live by the Spirit - not by the soul. We wait on the Lord, we read His Word, we are led and guided by Him in all things. We are no longer led by the flesh (our corrupt human nature), nor by the soul (our human thinking, feeling, willing), nor by our self. In all things we glorify God, 1 Cor 10.31. Christ becomes our life. He is our wisdom, our strength, our redemption; read 1 Cor 1.30. The problem is that those who say they are born again and have become children of God are not living by the Spirit (Gal 5.25). They have not allowed the Cross to work deeply in their life. They live according to the flesh and according to the soul. Theirs is a soulish life. They are not spiritual. (To make things worse, the Pentecostals and Charismatics have distorted the meaning of the Holy Spirit!). So, in todays world, we have fleshly christians, soulish christians, worldly christians, uncrucified christians, and very few real Christians. That is the problem. JK
Posted on: Thu, 10 Jul 2014 03:34:24 +0000
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