THIS MESSAGE MAY NOT BE FOR YOU!
It is for the Christian out there who is struggling with sin – could be fornication, adultery, unforgiveness or any ‘very’ bad habit that seems to hold the Christian in its web.
First...you must know this truth!
You are still the righteousness of God. God is not more righteous than you. What I mean is that the basis for assessing God’s righteousness is not by righteous acts or works. It had never been so.
No one could have obtained God’s righteousness through good behavior. However, when you believed Christ, the Holy Spirit instantly gave you the spirit of Christ, which has God’s righteousness. That same spirit that Jesus Christ lived with and shed on the cross for you is in you now. That is your new spirit.
Every one of us that believed the message received that spirit. It is the gift of God and is the basis for our claim to God’s righteousness. This is the grace on which we all stand by faith. It is Christ (this new spirit) that supports all of us and no one Christian is better than the other person in terms of God’s righteousness.
Second...you must grasp this knowledge!
The reason you are struggling is that you have not fully grasped the gospel of Christ. Another way to put it is that your mind has not fully received the light of this glorious truth about righteousness.
You are not the person you used to be. Before now, there was another spirit in you. That spirit was dead and was inherited from Adam. It neither could see nor fellowship with God nor pleased God. In fact it was hostile to God and his ways.
We all had this spirit at one point and were all cut off from the life and righteousness of God. Having lost our head (spirit) to death, we (souls) turned to our bodies for direction and leadership. In our sorrow, we invented new ways to please and satisfy the body which had become our new master. We tried to fill the void in us with all kinds of pleasures like food, sex, drugs, drink, ‘love’, ‘man’, ‘woman’, music, spiritualism, and charitable works but never got rid of the unending emptiness.
But now that God has provided a new (replacement) spirit for us, we are no longer debtors to our bodies to satisfy all its desires. Rather we are debtors to the new spirit which is the lord, Christ. The more you realize this truth; the more your soul is filled with peace.
You are no longer to be anxious (fearful), that is, to worry whether you are pleasing to God or not. You know for sure that God is pleased with you and is not ashamed of you. In fact, you know now that he made your body his residence and is not planning to leave. Not only that, you are to be filled with unspeakable joy. This joy is so full of glory that no one needs to tell you to come out of any sinful habit.
You are to be so joyful that in appreciation of the newfound peace and joy, you drop every other thing that you had previously trusted as a source of happiness and peace.
As you lift your soul to understand this new spirit that you received, the Holy Spirit communicates the riches of the glorious inheritance through revelation or unveiling of scriptures and of the person of Christ. It is this constant communication and fellowship with the Holy Spirit that cleanses your soul.
Put another way, the Holy Spirit washes your soul with the water of the word and gradually builds the character of Christ in you. He unveils to you the implications of this new life and tells you how the father loves you. He expounds the scripture so that you understand how God wisely hid the plan for your redemption in the scriptures. You eventually come to realize that all the while God was at work in order to win you back from the devil. Then you observe that your life is changing from one level of glory to another.
Unlike Adam (first Adam), if you sin, you do not loose the spirit of Christ, your righteousness. NO! Christ forfeited his life for you so that you can live his life. He did not sin, yet he died, so that anyone that believes would inherit his spirit and therefore his life – just like we inherited Adam’s spirit and his death.
No one can lay a charge of sin against anyone that belongs to Christ. He paid for all the sins that human beings committed and could ever commit. He does not take away the spirit from you because he is being generous and kind towards you in the hope that in time you would realize that he is the new husband to your soul. If after he rescued you, you continue to devote yourself to pleasing the body, you would be provoking him to jealousy so to speak.
Before, when you had a dead spirit, you devoted yourself to pleasing the body. The body became your new husband. But now, a new and a living spirit has paid the dowry and provided a covering for you. Should you not devote yourself to the spirit? What great rewards did you receive for all the devotion you gave the body? Is it not diseases, drunkenness, unhappiness, death and hell etc. in exchange for few moments of pleasure?
Have you forgotten that Christ is the basis for your righteousness and your peace and your joy? He is the reason why you have the hope of immortality for your body.
Do you not realize that if you continue to devote yourself to the body, he may destroy your body out of jealousy? Have you forgotten that even though God has given rest to your soul, your body (mortal) is yet to enter into that rest (immortality)? Since there remains a rest promised to the people of God, do you not know that if you continue an unproductive life until your physical death, the chance remains that Christ may take back his spirit from you?
If we continue not to recognize him, is this not equivalent to nullifying the faith that we first had in the gospel of Christ? Therefore let us not take for granted his goodness and kindness in not taking his spirit from us.
Do you not realize that after he arose from the dead he went to those souls in the grave that believed in him and gave them this new spirit? And upon receipt of this new spirit, the dead spirit that had held their souls down in the grave released them? Listen to what he said, “I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die”. Therefore when he rose, those that were dead that believed in him received life (new spirit) and left the grave. Likewise, we who are alive and believe in him will never die. This is because while we are alive (natural lives), the Holy Spirit removed the dead spirit in us and replaced it with the spirit of Christ (spiritual birth). Therefore at death rather than go to the place reserved for those that have the dead spirit, we will go wherever Christ is - sitting at God’s right hand in heaven.
Notice that he says ‘believes’ or ‘believeth’. It means we have to keep believing till the end. Since you received this spirit and righteousness by faith, you need to continue to believe and show forth your faith by producing fruit for righteousness, your new husband, in order not to shipwreck your faith.
Third...you must hold tenaciously unto this!
If we sin, just like in any relationship, there is a broken fellowship (communion) between us and the Holy Spirit. But if we understand this glorious truth then we would realize that we no longer need to be filled with shame or feel unworthy or feel inferior. The tendency to feel that way is there because that was how it used to be.
But just like all the righteous acts we did in the past did not result in obtaining God’s righteousness, likewise the unrighteous acts committed now do not result in removal of the righteousness of God in us, which we inherited from Christ. You should rather promptly acknowledge your sin and ask God to forgive you so that the fellowship of the Holy Spirit is restored.
It is through the fellowship with the Holy Spirit that you gain more insight (knowledge) of this new inheritance, more peace and more joy. The Holy Spirit communicates this to you in a tangible way. You actually know it and feel it and are excited about this.
This joy is your strength. It provides the energy (motivation) for you to overcome temptation, break habits, and forgive people as well as do all the wonderful acts of righteousness. The world does not have this joy or this peace or this righteousness.
Imagine that you were $400,000 in debt and someone wrote a check, paid it off and then gave you a blank check booklet to use at your discretion. Would you not be so happy and energized to do things you could not do before? Therefore how could you spend one second away from the fellowship of the Holy Spirit? Confess (apologize for) your sins quickly and allow the Holy Spirit to continue communication of the joy to live victoriously.
PRACTICAL THINGS YOU COULD DO
If you have tried so hard to overcome or break a sinful habit without success, you may need help from a stronger and more mature Christian or pastor or Christian couple. Keep in mind that all of us are prone to weakness so the emphasis is a more mature Christian or Christian couple rather than a gifted, charismatic evangelist or pastor, many of whom may be struggling with the same sin and in need of ministration themselves.
The mature Christian should play the role of Christ. They should comfort you and assure you of God’s love and forgiveness. Yes, we have power to forgive sins in this world, in God’s place. As they minister to you, the objective is to communicate in a tangible way, God’s affection so that you may be overwhelmed with peace, love and joy. It is this joy of the lord, which is your strength that would give you the energy (motivation) for a fresh start until you regain confidence and until communication with the Holy Spirit is flowing again.
The difficulty you had was somehow after the fellowship with the Holy Spirit broke down, you continued in your way and alienated yourself. It does not mean that you lost your righteousness or that Christ left you. But now, you must endeavor to devote yourself more to Christ (spirit), more to fellowship with the word, more to prayer, more to fellowshipping with other believers, more to fellowshipping with the Holy Spirit. As you do this, you give Christ the opportunity to win your love and affection indeed and wean you from old habits or behavior, which pleasured the body and hitherto dominated your soul.
If you allow the fellowship to deteriorate by not confessing quickly, not devoting yourself to understand the scriptures, fellowshipping with other believers or seeking help etc., how else do you expect to live victoriously? It means you may return to the previous cycle of trying to please God through your efforts with your own strength. This may ultimately cripple your Christian walk.
Don’t even be weighed down by the sins you are not aware of or anything you did in the past. There is a ‘program’ in the Holy Ghost that automatically cleanses you from all of them. You obtained righteousness by faith. Therefore you are to produce the fruits of righteousness by faith through the strength (peace and joy etc.) communicated by the Holy Spirit.
Fourth...as you win through Him!
As you win with joy one battle after the other and with the unshakable confidence of God’s righteousness in you, you will grow and mature into a beautiful tree of righteousness, planted by God, which produces its fruits (acts of righteousness) in season and out of season. Shalom!
By Dr Ndibe Uzodinma, an internet evangelist.
It is for the Christian out there who is struggling with sin – could be fornication, adultery, unforgiveness or any ‘very’ bad habit that seems to hold the Christian in its web.
First...you must know this truth!
You are still the righteousness of God. God is not more righteous than you. What I mean is that the basis for assessing God’s righteousness is not by righteous acts or works. It had never been so.
No one could have obtained God’s righteousness through good behavior. However, when you believed Christ, the Holy Spirit instantly gave you the spirit of Christ, which has God’s righteousness. That same spirit that Jesus Christ lived with and shed on the cross for you is in you now. That is your new spirit.
Every one of us that believed the message received that spirit. It is the gift of God and is the basis for our claim to God’s righteousness. This is the grace on which we all stand by faith. It is Christ (this new spirit) that supports all of us and no one Christian is better than the other person in terms of God’s righteousness.
Second...you must grasp this knowledge!
 |
| A Sistine Chapel fresco depicts the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the garden of Eden for their sin of eating from the fruit of the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil. (source: Wikipedia) |
You are not the person you used to be. Before now, there was another spirit in you. That spirit was dead and was inherited from Adam. It neither could see nor fellowship with God nor pleased God. In fact it was hostile to God and his ways.
We all had this spirit at one point and were all cut off from the life and righteousness of God. Having lost our head (spirit) to death, we (souls) turned to our bodies for direction and leadership. In our sorrow, we invented new ways to please and satisfy the body which had become our new master. We tried to fill the void in us with all kinds of pleasures like food, sex, drugs, drink, ‘love’, ‘man’, ‘woman’, music, spiritualism, and charitable works but never got rid of the unending emptiness.
But now that God has provided a new (replacement) spirit for us, we are no longer debtors to our bodies to satisfy all its desires. Rather we are debtors to the new spirit which is the lord, Christ. The more you realize this truth; the more your soul is filled with peace.
You are no longer to be anxious (fearful), that is, to worry whether you are pleasing to God or not. You know for sure that God is pleased with you and is not ashamed of you. In fact, you know now that he made your body his residence and is not planning to leave. Not only that, you are to be filled with unspeakable joy. This joy is so full of glory that no one needs to tell you to come out of any sinful habit.
You are to be so joyful that in appreciation of the newfound peace and joy, you drop every other thing that you had previously trusted as a source of happiness and peace.
As you lift your soul to understand this new spirit that you received, the Holy Spirit communicates the riches of the glorious inheritance through revelation or unveiling of scriptures and of the person of Christ. It is this constant communication and fellowship with the Holy Spirit that cleanses your soul.
Put another way, the Holy Spirit washes your soul with the water of the word and gradually builds the character of Christ in you. He unveils to you the implications of this new life and tells you how the father loves you. He expounds the scripture so that you understand how God wisely hid the plan for your redemption in the scriptures. You eventually come to realize that all the while God was at work in order to win you back from the devil. Then you observe that your life is changing from one level of glory to another.
Unlike Adam (first Adam), if you sin, you do not loose the spirit of Christ, your righteousness. NO! Christ forfeited his life for you so that you can live his life. He did not sin, yet he died, so that anyone that believes would inherit his spirit and therefore his life – just like we inherited Adam’s spirit and his death.
No one can lay a charge of sin against anyone that belongs to Christ. He paid for all the sins that human beings committed and could ever commit. He does not take away the spirit from you because he is being generous and kind towards you in the hope that in time you would realize that he is the new husband to your soul. If after he rescued you, you continue to devote yourself to pleasing the body, you would be provoking him to jealousy so to speak.
Before, when you had a dead spirit, you devoted yourself to pleasing the body. The body became your new husband. But now, a new and a living spirit has paid the dowry and provided a covering for you. Should you not devote yourself to the spirit? What great rewards did you receive for all the devotion you gave the body? Is it not diseases, drunkenness, unhappiness, death and hell etc. in exchange for few moments of pleasure?
Have you forgotten that Christ is the basis for your righteousness and your peace and your joy? He is the reason why you have the hope of immortality for your body.
Do you not realize that if you continue to devote yourself to the body, he may destroy your body out of jealousy? Have you forgotten that even though God has given rest to your soul, your body (mortal) is yet to enter into that rest (immortality)? Since there remains a rest promised to the people of God, do you not know that if you continue an unproductive life until your physical death, the chance remains that Christ may take back his spirit from you?
If we continue not to recognize him, is this not equivalent to nullifying the faith that we first had in the gospel of Christ? Therefore let us not take for granted his goodness and kindness in not taking his spirit from us.
Do you not realize that after he arose from the dead he went to those souls in the grave that believed in him and gave them this new spirit? And upon receipt of this new spirit, the dead spirit that had held their souls down in the grave released them? Listen to what he said, “I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die”. Therefore when he rose, those that were dead that believed in him received life (new spirit) and left the grave. Likewise, we who are alive and believe in him will never die. This is because while we are alive (natural lives), the Holy Spirit removed the dead spirit in us and replaced it with the spirit of Christ (spiritual birth). Therefore at death rather than go to the place reserved for those that have the dead spirit, we will go wherever Christ is - sitting at God’s right hand in heaven.
Notice that he says ‘believes’ or ‘believeth’. It means we have to keep believing till the end. Since you received this spirit and righteousness by faith, you need to continue to believe and show forth your faith by producing fruit for righteousness, your new husband, in order not to shipwreck your faith.
Third...you must hold tenaciously unto this!
If we sin, just like in any relationship, there is a broken fellowship (communion) between us and the Holy Spirit. But if we understand this glorious truth then we would realize that we no longer need to be filled with shame or feel unworthy or feel inferior. The tendency to feel that way is there because that was how it used to be.
But just like all the righteous acts we did in the past did not result in obtaining God’s righteousness, likewise the unrighteous acts committed now do not result in removal of the righteousness of God in us, which we inherited from Christ. You should rather promptly acknowledge your sin and ask God to forgive you so that the fellowship of the Holy Spirit is restored.
It is through the fellowship with the Holy Spirit that you gain more insight (knowledge) of this new inheritance, more peace and more joy. The Holy Spirit communicates this to you in a tangible way. You actually know it and feel it and are excited about this.
This joy is your strength. It provides the energy (motivation) for you to overcome temptation, break habits, and forgive people as well as do all the wonderful acts of righteousness. The world does not have this joy or this peace or this righteousness.
Imagine that you were $400,000 in debt and someone wrote a check, paid it off and then gave you a blank check booklet to use at your discretion. Would you not be so happy and energized to do things you could not do before? Therefore how could you spend one second away from the fellowship of the Holy Spirit? Confess (apologize for) your sins quickly and allow the Holy Spirit to continue communication of the joy to live victoriously.
PRACTICAL THINGS YOU COULD DO
If you have tried so hard to overcome or break a sinful habit without success, you may need help from a stronger and more mature Christian or pastor or Christian couple. Keep in mind that all of us are prone to weakness so the emphasis is a more mature Christian or Christian couple rather than a gifted, charismatic evangelist or pastor, many of whom may be struggling with the same sin and in need of ministration themselves.
The mature Christian should play the role of Christ. They should comfort you and assure you of God’s love and forgiveness. Yes, we have power to forgive sins in this world, in God’s place. As they minister to you, the objective is to communicate in a tangible way, God’s affection so that you may be overwhelmed with peace, love and joy. It is this joy of the lord, which is your strength that would give you the energy (motivation) for a fresh start until you regain confidence and until communication with the Holy Spirit is flowing again.
The difficulty you had was somehow after the fellowship with the Holy Spirit broke down, you continued in your way and alienated yourself. It does not mean that you lost your righteousness or that Christ left you. But now, you must endeavor to devote yourself more to Christ (spirit), more to fellowship with the word, more to prayer, more to fellowshipping with other believers, more to fellowshipping with the Holy Spirit. As you do this, you give Christ the opportunity to win your love and affection indeed and wean you from old habits or behavior, which pleasured the body and hitherto dominated your soul.
If you allow the fellowship to deteriorate by not confessing quickly, not devoting yourself to understand the scriptures, fellowshipping with other believers or seeking help etc., how else do you expect to live victoriously? It means you may return to the previous cycle of trying to please God through your efforts with your own strength. This may ultimately cripple your Christian walk.
Don’t even be weighed down by the sins you are not aware of or anything you did in the past. There is a ‘program’ in the Holy Ghost that automatically cleanses you from all of them. You obtained righteousness by faith. Therefore you are to produce the fruits of righteousness by faith through the strength (peace and joy etc.) communicated by the Holy Spirit.
Fourth...as you win through Him!
As you win with joy one battle after the other and with the unshakable confidence of God’s righteousness in you, you will grow and mature into a beautiful tree of righteousness, planted by God, which produces its fruits (acts of righteousness) in season and out of season. Shalom!
By Dr Ndibe Uzodinma, an internet evangelist.
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