FROM YOUR PASTOR’S DESK:
July 27
THE GOSPEL OF CHRISTIANITY’S CHRIST VS THE ‘GOSPEL’ OF ROME’S ANTICHRIST – (Part 7)
“Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood [not spirit], He also Himself likewise took part of the same [flesh and blood].”
Heb. 2: 14.
“Wherefore in ALL THINGS it behoved [Gr. ‘under obligation’] Him to be made LIKE UNTO His brethren [you and me]. . . .In that He himself hath SUFFERED BEING TEMPTED, He is able to SUCCOR THEM THAT ARE TEMPTED.” verses 17, 18, KJV. Temptation is no temptation unless there is no possibility of yielding.
Paul definitively states what kind of human flesh and nature God Creator incarnated into. Mark! “For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in THE LIKENESS OF SINFUL FLESH, and for sin, CONDEMNED [not condoned!]
SIN IN THE FLESH [For what purpose?]. That the righteousness of the LAW might be fulfilled IN us, WHO walk NOT after the flesh but after the [Holy] Spirit.” Rom. 8: 3,4. Read the rest of chapter.
Apostle Paul relates to the Christian his experience before being fully converted in Christ and his convoluted and terribly frustrating experience in chapter 7, then, after his genuine conversion he triumphantly declares the condemnation he suffered prior was because of his yet-carnal mind that was attempting to achieve spiritual success and victory. All he ended up with was wretchedness of spirit!
Too many Christians distort the truth by misquoting or “picking-and-choosing” only what they want to read in the Bible because it appears to sustain them in their worldly course of life. Such haphazard, careless, and even irreverent reading of the Holy Bible, God in His Word can never stand the closest scrutiny of the Scriptures, bring us up to a higher spiritual sphere and abiding relationship of branch-to-Vine with “the High and holy One who inhabits the eternity.”
‘But any serious searcher of truth will allow himself to be blessed by the WHOLE truth, the WHOLE gospel, the WHOLE law, the WHOLE armor of God, by faith and obedience which is based on “loving God with ALL the heart, ALL the mind, ALL the soul, and ALL the strength.” Jesus said, “This is the FIRST and great commandment.”
“ALL following verse is one of my all-time favorites so that it is already imprinted in my memory bank. Notice:
“Though He were a Son [of God] yet learned He OBEDIENCE by the things which He suffered; and being made perfect, He became the Author of eternal salvation unto all them that OBEY Him.” Heb. 5: 8, 9.
Here Paul specifically says that Jesus, “Ben ami,” Son of suffering like Benjamin was, not yet “Ben David,” Son of King, “had to learn the obedience of a man, as our Example by suffering—-not caused by physical affliction or infliction but by temptation.
Any striving Christian know to a certain extent of personal experience how PAINFUL it is to say NO in both heart, mind, and decision to deny oneself his favorite food, entertainment, and secret vices, if any.
That was the experience of Paul until he found the answer and the “way of escape.” Jesus was “tempted IN ALL POINTS” as all mankind is tempted “yet without sin;” not once did He yield, not even in thought, to any and all of Satan’s personal temptations and provocations or through his agencies, primarily the religious leaders who prided themselves as the “spiritual guardians of the chosen people and nation.”
In His adopted flesh-and-blood human nature that was never exempt from the natural power of heredity transmitted through His forbears four thousand years after the fall (thats why the gospel of Matthew opens up with a genealogy of Jesus, etc.) with all its passions (else He could not feel and relate to the lot of fallen man): but He did not have the sinful pollutions (for not once did He yield to temptation, not even in thought hence, He “was holy and undefined” as the Lamb of God “without blemish, the only sinless Man who “was made in the likeness of sinful flesh” and thus “walked as a Man among fallen men.”
The opposite of “likeness” is unlikeness. So we get it right. That’s also why it was prophesied that His body “would see no corruption” neither would a bone in His body be “broken.” It is sin that debases the moral character, defiles the conscience and brings on decay and corruption at death. If you have ever smelled “the stench of death” it should be a severely unpleasant reminder of what the results of sin is so that we will learn to detest the cause not just the effect.
(To be continued) Bless all, NMF