Someone Cares

The goodness of God has been given to people ever since we were created in the Garden. Through history the Lord has tenderly watched over His people. For example; The LORD said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey. Ex 3:7,8 After Abraham’s family moved down into Egypt, it was not long until all his grandchildren were born into slavery. Everyone today is born into another kind of slavery. Our slavery sometimes causes believers to feel that God is unconcerned about their life. We must never allow this idea to become real in us. The entire Old Testament is about God’s promise to send the Savior from heaven to become flesh and blood. He did this for us when Jesus was born in Bethlehem. God’s only Son will now spend eternity as the God-man because He is concerned about us.

All slaves have in their future is grinding labor and death. Having a savior rescue them is something they can only dream about. When a savior delivers people from slavery it is a two-part mission. The first part of the mission requires force that can break the chains of bondage. The second is complicated but the saving power must teach the former slaves how to live a righteous life in their new freedom. (Note: A life that is not righteous always leads back into slavery) The Almighty did not kill all the Egyptians but instead He caused them to give the chosen people their freedom. God also did not kill the Devil but instead has a plan to force him to allow believers their freedom. Freedom always costs something as shown in the following story; So the commander went over and asked Paul, “Tell me, are you a Roman citizen?” “Yes, I certainly am,” Paul replied. “I am, too,” the commander muttered, “and it cost me plenty!” Acts 22:27-28 (NLT) God loved us enough to give us freedom from sin and to send His Son from Heaven to pay the price.

In His justice, the Lord did not arbitrarily free humans from their sin against our Creator. God allowed his Son to come to earth and give up His life on a cruel cross as our sacrifice. Now we can even be free from the Law and be given power to serve God every day. The Bible tells us about this great gift; Now you do those things that lead to holiness and result in eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 6:22-23 (NLT) Jesus Christ paid the price by being our substitute. This enables the righteous and honorable God to manifest wrath against sin but to turn His wrath away from people who avail themselves of the Savior. Some people do not seem to realize they have a need for salvation. Others have corrupted themselves to the place where they have lost all desire to be righteous. We know that God’s wonderful plan allows any human to repent if they the desire to be reconciled with their Creator. God loves us so much that we only need simple obedient faith to avail ourselves of God’s “Substitute” for human sin.

Let’s look back at the atonement (to make amends) ceremony given to Moses for the people. ^…Then he is to cast lots for the two goats… Aaron shall bring the goat whose lot falls to the LORD and sacrifice (shed its blood) it for a sin offering.  But the goat chosen by lot as the scapegoat shall be presented alive before the LORD to be used for making atonement by sending it into the desert as a scapegoat. Lev 16:7-10 The animal that was killed represented the breaking of our chains of sin. The other animal was given its freedom in order to represent our new ability to live a righteous life (a life free from sin). When we are baptized, the preacher lowers us into the water while saying we are to die with Christ but then raises us up saying we must live a new (righteous) life. This shows us the two-part mission of Jesus on this earth.

What Christ accomplished satisfies both the negative and the positive sides of God’s law. To fail the law requires a payment but to succeed in the law we must have divine help. The blood of our Savior makes the payment and the resurrection of our Savior gives us a new life free from sin. We can also see this in the communion service. The wine represents the death of Jesus and the bread represents our new righteous life. Let us pray that both parts of the mission of Jesus Christ will become our life.

Yielding the Volition

The truth is that a human may chose to follow any decision they want to make. This privilege was gained when the first two humans ate of the tree of knowledge. Along with the knowledge of good and evil came our privilege of choosing which one we wanted to follow. Of course, we normally choose whichever suits our circumstances and is convenient at the time. The problem is that every choice we make without God’s approval is evil because it is disobedience to God. Most of us have learned that Jesus came to earth in order to save us from our bad decisions. The obvious question is “How does this happen?” The decision behind our choice is called our volition. The way Jesus saves us is to gain control of our volition after we yield our spirit to Him.

We have been taught for years that one decision is all we need for salvation. This is not fully explained to most people. The “one” choice of Salvation is to yield all our decisions. Paul says that you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness. Rom 6:16 Who will control our choices as we walk through this life? When we originally received the right to make our choices; we did not receive the power to make all our choices good ones. This leaves us with only one choice that can save us from ourselves. We must yield our volition to someone who can always make the right decisions for us. That is the Spirit of Jesus Christ living in us.

No one wants to be a slave on earth. Unhappily, we have all been born a slave because, oddly enough, it is the price for our free choices. As seen in the verse above, our eternal obedience is a necessary choice if we want a life which leads to righteousness. This is very frustrating to many people. They want to chose a life of fun and parties because a godly life seems to dull to them. However, the righteous life is necessary if we want to live with God. Paul also said that we must; know that our old self was crucified with Him. Rom6:6  It is necessary to accept this fact and then apply it to our life. It is a strange thing to say but we must live every day doing our best to make our own death to this world a reality.

Some church-goers like to say, “We believe, therefore we will live with God”.  But many of these same people do not want to say, “We believe, therefore we must die to this world”. One of these statements is just as true as the other. The scripture says it this way, “Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him”. Rom 6:8 Here we see that these two beliefs do not stand alone; they are part of each other. We must accept them both or the Spirit cannot lead in our new life. Our baptism was actually a public statement of these two things; We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that…we too may live a new life. Rom 6:4 Christians must accept this truth into their life.

The fact that we are dead to sin only applies when we are living in Christ. When we fail to yield our decisions to the Spirit and make our own choices, we are no longer dead to sin. The remedy is to immediately confess our sin and Jesus will forgive us because we are repentant. Remember that the old life is nothing like the new life. Making our own choices leads to being buried in the old life but yielding to the choices of the Spirit leads to being resurrected into a new life. We must learn to say “no” to people around us. Do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Rom 6:12 There will always be temptations but we can beat them by asking the Spirit to show us the righteous way to go.

So many believers are struggling to live for God. The truth is that when we are doing it correctly it is very easy. The Scripture tells us that; It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Gal 5:1 For several reasons, the Church will place burdens upon a believer. Some have said that it is necessary to give work to people in order to keep them from wandering back into the world. This is actually a lack of faith because we should trust the Holy Spirit. We should be teaching people to rely on the Spirit rather than the Church. The Spirit will remind Christians when they wander from the truth and they must respond to Him properly. Jesus said that his burden is light. When the Spirit is motivating a person to fulfill a task, it can be done with joy and gratitude which makes the job light.

Trusting God is the secret to a successful Christian life. Faith is what makes this verse true; All things work together for good to those who love God. Rom 8:28 This verse does not apply to people who only claim to love God. It does apply to those that are walking in the light by yielding their volition to the Spirit. We could say that people who give their life to the Savior have placed all their eggs in one basket. Our goal is to make only the decisions that Jesus gives for our direction. Our Lord does not want us to have a “back-up plan”. Give everything in your life over to Him, no matter how much it hurts to do it. The sooner we get started trusting Jesus with our entire life; the sooner we will enjoy God’s rest.