Oh! There has been the full unfolding of God's love, and the answer to it in the saints here below in their nature, and in the ways that manifest the new nature. Thus there were dark shadows, and lowering clouds. We are made partakers of the divine nature, or course, in a modified sense, but still in a true sense. I. "He that loveth his wife loveth himself; . There you are, now youll all dressed up and ready for anything! The maiden's life was given gently by a touch; but in the young man's case it must be done, not by the touching of him, but by the touching of the bier. Man." Is it so with us? And in the morning if it is wet and the ground is dry, then I will know that it is you." HOMER: I do know you would. He wanted to be like the Most High God ( Isaiah 14:14 ). A really awakened soul may still have a great many unsettled questions in agitation within him. It was not confined to those that had their hope founded on Christ while the nation refused Him. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 6:21-23 NIV). God has made our conscience quick as the apple of the eye; he has made our soul as sensitive as a raw wound, so that the very shadow of sin falling on the believer's heart will cause him great pain; and, if he does go into the actual sin, then, like David, he talks about his bones being broken, and it is not too strong a figure of the sorrow that comes upon the believing heart when sin has been committed, and God has been grieved. And so Gideon took the 300. He to whom I look up, by and in whom alone I can know God and the Father, is God Himself Let the notion of time come into the conception given of Godhead and of the persons Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and all would be falsehood and confusion. That is one result of spiritual life. It is a divine spark, a light from the great central Sun of light, the great Father of Lights. There are merchants whose names stand high and fair. And as to his wife, he instantly understands, though he had been in a deep sleep while she was being formed. You have got to take the leap of faith into the second story and hope that you land on something.You have got to just hope that you can have some kind of satisfying experience of truth. You might not like it so well; it would not look well in print. It was brought in either to convict the Corinthians of their utter departure through the spirit of the world, the flesh taking that shape, or it was brought in triumphantly on their restoration. To the Gentile life was not worth living; to the Jew it was the way to greater life. Kings on their coronation were anointed; and thus Christos ( G5547) , the literal Greek translation of the Hebrew Messiah ( H4886) , came to mean the Anointed One of God, the expected King whom God would send into the world to vindicate his own and to bring in the golden age. That they do not appear in the original Greek text in this place. Is it so, beloved? And therefore only an act of free forgiveness of the grace of God can put us back into the right relationship with him. He thinks of every church as the part of a great building and of every Christian as a stone built into the Church. And it is just a joy and a pleasant delight, to gather with God's people and to just experience God's love and the love within the family of God. It is just the answer to the grace of God in Christ. It cannot be otherwise. All the building that is going on is being fitted together in him, and it will go on growing until it becomes a holy temple in the Lord, a temple into which you too are built as part, that you may become the dwelling place of God, through the work of the Spirit. All the building that is going on is being fitted together in him, and it will go on growing until it becomes a holy temple in the Lord, a temple into which you too are built as part, that you may become the dwelling-place of God, through the work of the Spirit. Each circle hitherto was getting larger and larger. The conflict is against Satan and his hosts. So I was once dead because of the trespasses and sins, but through Jesus Christ God has provided the forgiveness of my trespasses and sins. More than this; for "no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church." Man by his very nature cannot bring perfection to God; and so, if ever man is to win his way to God, it must always be God who gives and man who takes. P: Even though it is summertime, our lives are crowded and rushed. Change). Could I just be me? The re:Worship survey on pandemic worship practices has been completed. Our present position is this, first, that we are raised from the dead. Trespass, is taking the wrong road when we could take the right one; it is missing the truth that we should have known. We lived in the actual commission of all those sins to which corrupt nature inclined us. The Christian message had rekindled the ideal. It is not that our good works put God in our debt; rather that God's love lays on us the obligation to try throughout all life to be worthy of it. For we are his workmanship.". He commands his companions, who by bad example are bearing him on his bier to his grave, to stop, and then there is a partial reformation for awhile, and after that there comes the strong out-spoken voice "Young man, I say unto thee, arise!" And you hath he quickened This chapter should not have been separated from the preceding, with which it is most intimately connected. Paul uses the word paroikos ( G3941) for sojourner. The Jews who believe are taken out of their former place, as much as the Gentiles, who had no place. They come to us, and ask, "What is this? The King James Version has it that they were without Christ. In Sophocles we find some of the loveliest and the saddest lines in all history. It was entirely unconnected with the world. Ephesians 1:7; Ephesians 2:5) and sins (acts of missing the mark) describe deliberate offenses against God. Our work bears fruit that makes a difference. The foreigner was always regarded with suspicion and dislike. For "if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ." Israel was supremely the covenant people. What a mystic union there is between the believer and his Lord! And they began to be merry (Luke 15:21-24 NASB). Consequently here it is not an energy already put forth, but he pleads that Christ might dwell by faith in their hearts. This leads toEphesians 3:1-21; Ephesians 3:1-21, in which the apostle unfolds things parenthetically. No, it will go on, to your utter ruin. (118) Il expose et esclarcit ce quil avoit dit ci-dessus. He explains and illustrates what he had formerly said.. Accordingly we hear inGenesis 2:1-25; Genesis 2:1-25 how he gave names to all that was put under him. He does so by conscience, the voice of the Holy Spirit speaking within us; he does so by giving to men the wisdom and the commandments of his book; he does so through the advice of good and godly men. What a sad and tragic picture of man apart from Jesus Christ.It is interesting to me how that so often people fear the will of God. If you haven't previously submitted something but would like to, you can find my email address by clicking on my name in the "About Me" section below. "I should break down," says one. As Christ fills the whole body of Christian believers with his fulness, (Ephesians 1:23,) so had he dealt with the converted Ephesians, who before were dead in trespasses, and dead in sins. ", This problem of the barriers is by no means confined to the ancient world. Sin does something to a man; it kills innocence; and innocence, once lost, can never be recovered. They believed that it went on for three thousand years; then came a conflagration in which the whole universe was consumed in flames; then the whole process began all over again, and the same events and the same people exactly repeated themselves. We were living in the sphere of rebellion against God (cf. Down among the foundations there may be a Saxon crypt; on some of the doorways or the windows there may be a Norman arch; one part may be Early English and another Decorated and another Gothic; some may have been added in our own day. He wished to sing of Cadmus; but his harp resounded love alone; and so the harp of Paul resounds with Christ alone, Christ alone. So with the sinner in regard to the spiritual and eternal world. III. It is revealed to us here. He is a man that is far gone. Revealed to all the apostles and prophets of the New Testament, to one as much as another, it never seems to have taken such a hold of the others as of Paul. Had He brought the Gentiles into the place that Israel once occupied? This does not yet appear; for there is nothing to indicate to mankind what He purposes to do. (LogOut/ But it gets up again, and so it learns to walk. But there was no real purpose to your life. He uses therefore the highest terms in order to express it. We know how he would bend down and be as it were a; Gentile to one without law, and a Jew to one under law, to do good to souls. "You hath HE quickened." . Ah, the last stage of death, the last stage of corruption, oh, how hideous; but the last stage of sin, hideous far more! Remember that at that time you had no hope of a Messiah; you were aliens from the society of Israel, and strangers from the covenants on which the promises were based; you had no hope; you were in the world without God. In body and mind they are under the control of Satan, and consequently are rebellious against God (2:1-3). Sin brings forth death, and death brings forth corruption. The earth is their sphere; it is there that Israel looks to be blessed, and the Gentiles somewhat farther off, but all in the ordered blessing of the Most High God. They were dead in sins, but now alive in Christ. The paroikos ( G3941) was one step further on. For instance, the Jewish Rabbinic writers tell how a Gentile woman came to Rabbi Eliezer. I am certain that no ungodly man has any conception of the joy which often fills the believer's spirit. This, then, was the way in which the new life, spiritual life, came into us. But I now relate back to Jesus Christ, my Father after the Spirit. ib;. Judging what I am, I confess that all my blessing is in the Saviour, who did not merely come to bless me as a living man in the world, but died and is risen again; and 1, confessing Him who is thus dead and risen, have part in His death. Men may put up their barriers; churches may keep their Communion tables for their own members. Alas! Since we are dependent upon God for our eternal life and since our sin destroys our relationship with God, we are dead, cut off, alienated from the source of eternal life. Dear God we are sorry for not loving people like you do. Jesus came to tell men that they cannot earn God's approbation by a keeping of the ceremonial law but must accept the forgiveness and fellowship which God in mercy freely offers them. Impossible that the Head should not be there as well as the body; and the apostle speaks as to Christ yet more than as to the assembly. Here are some indexes that might be helpful. Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath: neither give place to the devil. Now it is possible to make atonement for a broken law, but it is impossible to make atonement for a broken heart; and sin is not so much breaking God's law as it is breaking God's heart. Of the whole Church the corner stone is Christ; and the corner stone is what holds everything together. 13. The young man, as soon as Christ spoke to him, "sat up and began to speak;" but Lazarus, in his grave-clothes, lying in the niche of the tomb, could do no more than just shuffle himself out from the hole that was cut in the wall, and then stand leaning against it. There is a certain spiritual competence supposed, a due preparation not only of heart, but also of knowledge; or, as the apostle said, "we speak wisdom among them that are perfect," Here no lengthy exposition would be wanted about it, because they were not so infantine as to suppose that the truth of God depends on the number of times that a thing is asserted. He then describes the blessings that believers receive as a result of being reconciled to God through Christ (vv. If you haven't previously submitted something but would like to, you can find my email address by clicking on my name in the "About Me" section below. It is a time of asking, a time of enquiring. You were really not going anywhere, you were just existing. Righteousness supposes a claim in the first place, however met; even though it may be God's righteousness, still it is God acting in consistency with Himself and His own claims. Ephesians 4: 1-16 Call to Worship: The unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (Ephesians 4:1-6) Here with these people you are called into a calling. So, and you who were dead because of your trespasses and sins; Wherein times past you walked according to the course of this world ( Ephesians 2:2 ). How is it that I find some who say they are people of God; but yet are rather fond of wearing their grave-clothes? 12. A break-down sermon, that breaks the preacher down, might break the people down, too. The young man was the son of a widow. The moral order of this is exceedingly beautiful. It is God in His proper nature, and in His relationship to Jesus. But just as before, in the walk which shuts out hatred, and anger, and so on, we were warned against grieving the Spirit of God; so the power of the Holy Ghost asserts itself here. Thou hast the dew of thy youth, O child of God; and thou shalt have yet more of it, and be like thy Lord, when he shall take thee away from every trace of death, and the corrupt atmosphere of this poor world, and thou shalt dwell with the living God in the land of the living, for ever and for ever! How solemn to learn what the old man is in its most detestable forms, against all which the Christian is warned! Such is not the character of God's dwelling now. We have already seen how the Jew hated and despised the Gentile. Not the law, but Christ. Gideon's answer was: "I will not rule over you, and my son will not rule over you; the Lord shall rule over you" ( Judges 8:23). conceived before the foundation of the universe. As spiritual death is nothing else than the alienation of the soul from God, we are all born as dead men, and we live as dead men, until we are made partakers of the life of Christ, agreeably to the words of our Lord, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live. (John 5:25). For by grace are you saved through faith; and that not of yourselves ( Ephesians 2:8 ): What not of yourselves? It was "but now" a little while ago; now he has another "now." Twenty-two thousand of them turned on their heal and left. Well, then, we have a new life. God does for sinners what they cannot do themselves. He says that those who were far off have been brought near. I must not attempt to describe it; words would fail me, and you would be too much shocked. But when Christ makes the new creation, they will say no more that God made the heaven and the earth, but they will say in higher strains, "He made these new-born men and women. This clearly is of the deepest possible interest to the saints. No doubt it is a giving up of self, and therefore the fruit of divine grace. "Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit; speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.". The priest told them gently that he was bound to ask if their comrade had been a baptized adherent of the Roman Catholic Church. Matthew 12:35; Matthew 15:18-19), and not because of sins of other (Ezekiel 18:20). No God? There is some perplexity in the language; but, if we attend carefully to what the apostle says about those two parts, the meaning is clear. Think of a great cathedral. You that now commune with God at the mercy-seat, you that are now his favoured children, and have received power to become the sons of God, you were once heirs of wrath: "By nature the children of wrath, even as others." 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