GROWTH IN GODLINESS
Overcoming Deception: While Deceived
How can a deceived person understand that they have been deceived? Recently, I have come to feel as though I am beating a dead horse, so to speak. I have come to see things I have never seen as clearly as I do now, but they have been held in my heart for decades and never acted upon. The more I speak, the less people appreciate what I have to say, and I've been forced to ask, why? I find the answer in the depths of my soul because I have been unwilling to acknowledge these things as accurate until recently. Can I judge others for which I have been guilty for so long? No!
What makes me think I am Correct about my view of the Church as I have written about it for months? A couple of weeks ago, I decided to stop writing about the condition of the Church, go back to the gospels, and write about Jesus. Here's my problem. I can no longer read about how Jesus lived, how the disciples behaved, what the people closest to Jesus who saw Him, His miracles, heard His teachings, and then read as I read first thing this morning. "FEAR NOT, DAUGHTER OF ZION; BEHOLD, YOUR KING IS COMING, SEATED ON A DONKEY'S COLT." John 12:16, "These things His disciples did not understand at the first; but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things were written of Him, and that they had done these things to Him."
Overcoming Deception Is Contingent Upon 2 Elements
The believer has two invaluable characteristics: if they are to see. 1) Christ and not themselves must be glorified, and 2) the scriptures that prophesy of Christ must become a life-changing and not merely an intellect-changing reality.
For weeks now, I have gone through the scriptures to see Jesus and not the Church, to see the scriptures as uplifting, sweet, friendly, kind, forgiving, etc. However, Jesus always loves in the Gospels, responding to people where He finds them. Are they confrontational? He does not back off but gives them the exact answer they need. There is no avoiding this scriptural reality when reading the Gospels.
Furthermore, the book of Acts records a time of spiritual awakening that transformed these people into something so dynamic that it cannot be compared to what I will call times of average church life. Following spiritual revival and at the end of the Apostolic age, letters were written by the Apostles because they understood that church life was beginning to wane, sin, indifference, worldliness, and divisions were becoming the main staples of carnal living and no longer Christ.
Add to this Church condition being absorbed by Rome as it coerced Christian people to be part of Roman traditions for 1,200 years and then the revival that caused an awakening to the Gospel but never returned the Church to its original form, structure, and disposition of glorifying Christ and observing scripture in such a way that it changed how we live.
Overcoming Deception Is By Christ Alone Without Our Justifying Sin
Can we honestly and without making excuses because of our imperfections say that the church bar is as written in the New Testament?
Here's The Bar:
1). Ephesians 5:15, "But speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ,"
(Without church leaders banding together to usurp Christ's authority)
2). 1 Corinthians 1:10, "Now I exhort you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all agree and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be made complete in the same mind and in the same judgment.' (Where in God's Word is agree to disagree?)
3). Matthew 18:15-17, "If your brother sins , go and show him his fault in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother. "But if he does not listen [to you], take one or two more with you, so that BY THE MOUTH OF TWO OR THREE WITNESSES EVERY FACT MAY BE CONFIRMED. "If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector."
(A God-ordained Way of separating the World from the Church is unrepentant sin.)
4). Matthew 18:18, "Truly I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven."
(Matthew 18:18 only works when the Church is Spirit-filled.)
5). 1 Corinthians 5:11, "But actually, I wrote to you not to associate with any so-called brother if he is an immoral person, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or a swindler—not even to eat with such a one."
(A name is only as good as the behavior of the person named verifies it; Christian.)
6). "Titus 3:10-11, "Reject a factious man after a first and second warning, knowing that such a man is perverted and is sinning, being self-condemned."
"Factious" in Greek means Heretical, factious, and disposed to form sects, sectarian, to be divisive or to cause division. Are we kidding ourselves, or what?
(Considering the fractured contemporary "church world-wide," who should not be put out?)
7). 1 John 2:15, "Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him."
If we define the word "world" properly, we will understand it to mean, as verse 16 tells us, "For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world."
(The lust of the flesh is not Spirit-filled living, nor is the lust of the eyes, and certainly not the pride of life.)
8). Matthew 28:19, "Go therefore and make disciples..."
(If the following command only applies to church leaders who have a higher calling than all others regenerate, saved by the sufferings of Christ, then just about everyone is off the hook, and no wonder that practically no one is concerned about facing Christ at the Judgement Seat. Reality! The church, starting with its leaders, is facing the Judgment Seat of Christ.)
Overcoming deception is essential to walking in the light of God's Word.
Theology, in keeping with our personal bias, is not proof of salvation. Adhering to God's Word by denying self is proof of salvation.
Comentários