What is Christianity and why do we live?
Many of God’s people are numb, burnt out, complacent, and asleep. Others feel they are diligently following Him, some even on fire for Him, but if they are, is what they accomplish all that God wants?
Is Christianity today – or just our local assembly or even our individual lives – in the center of God’s will?
Is the true Gospel of Jesus Christ in your sphere on the rise, or decline? Is light pushing back darkness by a faith that once “turned the world upside down?” (Acts 17:6)
Put more plainly: is what we experience the best God can do? If the Bible is true, too often the answer is no.
Many Paths?
There are too many sheep without a shepherd. And, too many sheep trying beyond their gifting and calling to presume to build God’s assembly. But what does God want?
This is a core question, because the Word of God says Jesus is Lord, and as Lord, He is the Boss, the Chief, the Head and our responsibility as children is to discern His will and do it.
Unless the Lord builds the house,
They labor in vain who build it;
Unless the Lord guards the city,
The watchman stays awake in vain.
– Ps 127:1
As individuals, we are called to die to self, carry our own cross, and know to keep our lamps full of oil.
But how many among those who name the name of Christ do more than give lip service to this? And – as the dull and dishonest have sidestepped these and other stark biblical commands meant to give no wiggle room – how many have redefined what these terms mean so as to put their conscience to sleep and satisfy themselves they are on the right side of God?
Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. – Gal. 6:7
Many have heard these things, but the proof is in the results.
For My people have committed two evils:
They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters,
And hewn themselves cisterns—broken cisterns that can hold no water.
-Jeremiah 2:13
Are people who name Christ truly dead to themselves, and living as alive from the dead (Rom 6:4) in the Spirit unto the Almighty God?
Are the assemblies that have been formed in Christ’s name following the model of the apostles who did follow the Lord, or have houses which turn a blind eye to compromise been erected instead?
Are the lives we live so immersed in God so as to give off a strong fragrance of Jesus the Lord wafting through the air as we walk? (2 Cor. 2:14,15)
Being a hearer of the word, and not a doer is to fall into a trap all too common with humans who are dull of comprehension, who come to God with their fleshly minds presuming they are being spiritual, and who lack true spiritual hearing.
Does this sound too harsh? It may not be harsh enough! You see, the Word of God declares the same Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead abides in the true sheep. This is the Spirit who created all things, who led the children of Israel out of Egypt, through the Red Sea, and who gave Jesus and the first Christians their power.
But do the sheep today really believe that? Do they believe in the integrity of the good God who loves them?
They say so, but their lives prove to what degree they believe and obey – for to suggest otherwise is to suggest God is not able to keep His part of the covenant.
Yes, at root behind feeble lives is an unspoken confession that the alleged disciple believes in a weak God, or one who does not keep His promises, or one who cannot come through. It is a direct insult against the goodness of the God they say they serve!
Another question is “who really wants all of God?” Again, this is not what a person says, but is proven by the results, the fruit of one’s life.
God’s Word says from the day someone is born of water and the Spirit (Jn. 3), they are “complete in Him,” (Col 2:10) and “have all things that pertain to life and godliness” (2 Pet 1:3).
That means they are spiritually equipped to succeed and be all God would have them to be in Christ, and to thus please God, which is the mission of their lives (2 Cor. 5:9).
God’s actual sheep are not waiting to be equipped. God’s Word declares they are equipped. And He is ever with them. Those who “seek” Him – and we are commanded to seek Him – are actually only pressing in to shake free from their wrong state of mind inherited from Satan’s kingdom. The being-renewed mind that declares it trusts the Father of Jesus the Lord must also trust His grace to let it abandon what it was. What was it? What is it still? It is self-focused, loves self more than God, and things more than God, and holds to all sorts of false conceptions and values that are supposed to have been abandoned at the cross.
Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain. 25 He who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 26 If anyone serves Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also. If anyone serves Me, him My Father will honor. – Matt. 12:24-26
God declared Christians are dead to that old self (Rom. 6), and as those who entered a covenant with the Creator of All, they shall give account on whether they trusted and obeyed.
Yes there is grace, absolutely, and the God who loves us is longsuffering and kind, but what is grace if not also power to believe and obey in God?
But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain; but I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me. – 1 Cor 15:10
However, if you wish to play games with God, He will answer you according to your idol, or iniquity.
‘Therefore speak to them, and say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord God: “Everyone of the house of Israel who sets up his idols in his heart, and puts before him what causes him to stumble into iniquity, and then comes to the prophet, I the Lord will answer him who comes, according to the multitude of his idols, 5 that I may seize the house of Israel by their heart, because they are all estranged from Me by their idols.’ – Ezekiel 14:4,5
Or He will let you walk in a wilderness. The soles of your sandals may not wear out, and you may receive manna, but you will never taste the living bread. Or, you could die. Only God knows.
For who, having heard, rebelled? Indeed, was it not all who came out of Egypt, led by Moses? 17 Now with whom was He angry forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose corpses fell in the wilderness? 18 And to whom did He swear that they would not enter His rest, but to those who did not obey? 19 So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief. – Heb. 3:16-19
And again: What you believe is shown by what you do, and what happens, not what you claim. Let God be true, and every man a liar.
In short, He has removed every excuse, and on the judgment day every mouth will be stopped who ever supposed God was not able to supply all their needs according to His riches in glory. We are called to live by faith, true faith that though it is as small as a grain of mustard seed can move a mountain.
The purpose was to bring all glory back to the rightful owner – the One who made us, and to whom we owe all allegiance. The promises of the New Covenant are so great.
And if we can really believe and obey, and give and receive true love – not one of the candy coated substitutes of Satan’s “love” that seems like agape but denies kingdom authority or other balancing principles – God’s people could save many more lives.
The proof that Jesus lives was supposed to be that His people showed forth a testimony that was beyond them to ever produce in themselves. (Jn 13:35, 17:20-23)
The New Covenant was not supposed to be about words only, but power (1 Cor. 4:20), but since Luther and even before, words have been given the preeminence but God said we are to be living epistles.
2 Cor. 3
Do we begin again to commend ourselves? Or do we need, as some others, epistles of commendation to you or letters of commendation from you? 2 You are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read by all men; 3 clearly you are an epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of flesh, that is, of the heart.
4 And we have such trust through Christ toward God. 5 Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God, 6 who also made us sufficient as ministers of the new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit;[a] for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
7 But if the ministry of death, written and engraved on stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of the glory of his countenance, which glory was passing away, 8 how will the ministry of the Spirit not be more glorious? 9 For if the ministry of condemnation had glory, the ministry of righteousness exceeds much more in glory. 10 For even what was made glorious had no glory in this respect, because of the glory that excels. 11 For if what is passing away was glorious, what remains is much more glorious.
12 Therefore, since we have such hope, we use great boldness of speech— 13 unlike Moses, who put a veil over his face so that the children of Israel could not look steadily at the end of what was passing away. 14 But their minds were blinded. For until this day the same veil remains unlifted in the reading of the Old Testament, because the veil is taken away in Christ. 15 But even to this day, when Moses is read, a veil lies on their heart. 16 Nevertheless when one turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. 17 Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. 18 But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.
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Simple question: Is this what you see? Really? Or are you wearing the emperor’s new clothes?
If so, repent! Repent of declaring God weak and unfaithful. Repent of loving things other than Him. Repent of straddling the fence. Repent as the Lord leads.
