Saturday, October 24, 2009

The Balanced Word

I read an article that made the point that we can speak so much about the Christian-life and Christian-living that the gospel message often can get lost. God’s plan of salvation in this lost and dying world must be balanced with how we live out our faith and grow. Without “Christ outside of me, dying for me” first, I never get to “Christ inside me, improving me”. It is essential to hear the announcement of Christ’s work on our behalf on the Cross. To realize that we have all sinned against our just & holy God, are lost because we owe a debt for our sins that we can not pay, but our merciful God, out of pure grace, sent Jesus as the God-man who met the Law’s demands for us, shed His blood and died on the Cross for the penalty of our sin, freely justifying us before God, forgave our sin and gave us eternal life. That we were dying and Hell-bound, but in accepting Jesus as Savior and Lord, we are now liberated from the bondage of sin, living and Heaven-bound, which is a gift that we neither earn nor deserved. We all need to see that, in our sinful condition, we are truly lost, first, so we may seek to be found and saved by Jesus. We all have an eternal home; the joy is in our Lord and our salvation! Praise be to God!

1 Corinthians 15:40-50There are heavenly bodies and there are earthly bodies; but the splendor of the heavenly bodies is one kind, and the splendor of the earthly bodies is another. The sun has one kind of splendor, the moon another and the stars another; and star differs from star in splendor. So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. So it is written: "The first man Adam became a living being"; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven. As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the man from heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven. I declare to you, brothers and sisters, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.

For those beyond the age of accountability, salvation unto eternal life begins the moment we first believe and profess Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, but the journey began the day that God created us and we were conceived. As life starts at the beginning, the pilgrimage to Heaven begins before the Christian walk. I look back and see this in my life. Paths that progressively revealed reality & truth through seeds planted by God in the people, places and events that led us to clearly see our true selves, this world (both earthly & godly sides), and the race set before us that we are all running that led us to the foot of the Cross and the right to become children of God (John 1:12). Profession of faith is the first & foremost goal of our God-designed journey on earth, and once saved by “new birth” in Christ, is taking the route to eternal life, in new life on the road to Heaven, defined by God and guided by the indwelling Holy Spirit with Jesus in our new heart.

John 6:63 Jesus said, “The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life.”

In Christ, Brian

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