For Christ did not
send me to baptize,
but to preach the
gospel, not with wisdom
of words, lest the
cross of Christ should be
made of no
effect. For the message of the cross
is foolishness to
those who are perishing,
but to us who are
being saved it is
the power of God.
1 Corinthians 1: 17
-- 18
Before I
move on in our discussion of Paul's writing to the Corinthian church it is good
to step back from the moment and remember that we are called to preach the
gospel. Paul is stating to us at the
very beginning of his letters that his call was to preach the gospel and what
Paul means by the gospel is the reality of retention in our Lord Jesus
Christ. Paul did not muddy up the
waters of the gospel for he kept it to the thing that the gospel is all about,
and that is the cross upon which Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior died to
redeem the children of God. How often
we are so ready to make sanctification as the end of all for preaching. Many Christians go about doing things that
seem to be so pious as that this is what Jesus commissioned us to do. It is not!
Nowhere are we commissioned to preach salvation or sanctification; what
we are commissioned to do is to lift a Jesus Christ and how do we do this by
preaching Jesus Christ: "And I, if I
am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to Myself" (John 12:
32). Jesus Christ did not suffer on
the cross, a difficult and exhausting act nor did he just exert his mental or
physical powers under this difficulty a difficulty that led to the very point
of exhaustion that ended in the redemption just to make us a saint. What Jesus Christ did in his travail in redemption is to redeem the whole world and that redemption paid the price of justice God demanded for the whole world and applies to His children and then to place it unimpaired and
rehabilitated before the throne of God.
How do we know that we have been redeemed by the travail of Jesus
Christ upon the cross and this can be known by experience that the power of the
reality of Reagan can while being an illustration of this power this experience
is not the end of redemption. How we
must query God towards our constant requests we make for ourselves we, and for
our sanctification. We must tax him in
some way due to the things that we wish and want for ourselves most things that
for us are to be delivered from. It is
at this point we must reach to the very bedrock of the reality of the gospel
of God and if we do so we shall never bother God any further with little
personal plaints. Paul was telling us
this that it was his passion in life to proclaim the gospel of God, and it
should be our passion also for the reason is only one, it was our, as it was with Paul, passion
towards our Savior and Lord Jesus Christ that will keep us in a unmoved
devotion to the gospel of God.
The first
chapter of the first book of Corinthians ends this way: "But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom
from God -- and righteousness and sanctification and redemption" (1
Corinthians 1: 30). There is a
mystery of sanctification for it is in the perfection of Jesus Christ that it
is imparted to us, not gradually, but instantly when by faith we enter into the
realization that Jesus Christ is made unto us sanctification. What is the meaning of sanctification? It means nothing less than that the holiness
of Jesus is being made ours manifestly.
Now don't conclude that this manifestation is simply and worked as, or
things that we do, no, it is this: the marvelous secret of a holy life not in
imitating Jesus, rather than letting the perfection of Jesus become manifested
in our carnal and mortal flesh. How
many are running to and fro, gathering names, or carrying pieces of paper with
boxes to be checked off as they go about trying to impress people with their
Christianity. Some go about praying for
people who are not even close to being ready to be prayed for in this sense
they do not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ so what they need is not some
prayer or some special healing, rather what they need is the gospel of our
Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It is not
that we don't pray that our ambassadorship of the Lord Jesus Christ would have
an effect upon people but it is not an experience that the people need for it
is the Lord Jesus Christ and He is redemption and sanctification that they
need. You see sanctification means the
importation of the holy qualities of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. What is needed is His patience, His love,
His Holiness, His faith, His purity, His godliness, and this is what is to be
manifested in and through every sanctified soul. Sanctification is not drawing some power from our Lord and Savior
Jesus Christ the power to be wholly; no, we draw from Jesus is the holiness
that was manifested in Him and that is to be manifested in and through us as
Christians. It must be remembered,
sanctification is imparted to us and it is not some imitation of our Savior
Jesus Christ, it is through Jesus Christ where we find the perfection of
everything and the mystery of sanctification and it must be remembered as well
that all the perfection of Jesus are at my disposal. This is to say that we can raise the dead, or heal people, some
charismatic and other Pentecostal type people who believe in such power, no, it
means that we begin to live a life that is ordered by the will of God to live
with sanity and holiness.
Paul is
pointing out to us from the very beginning of his letters that when we
overreach what it means to be a Christian and add to our Christianity things
that are in many ways blasphemous to God, then we are not being By the power of
God. We are keeping ourselves with our
power, with our wisdom, and this wisdom is so often infected by the culture and
wisdom of this world that we are not in line with the will of God. We are to be changing ourselves from the
inside out and then life is change from the inside out and living according to the
precept, principles, and commands of God we are manifesting our Savior Jesus
Christ to the world. This is our work
that has been assigned to us. The
question is will we join this work or will we simply sit aside waiting for the
return of the Lord Jesus Christ as though that is all there is: I pray and hope
not that we will tacitly and apathetically set aside the life that Jesus died
and redeemed and sanctified.
As for me, I will call upon God,
and the
LORD shall save me.
Evening and morning and at noon
I will
pray, and cried aloud,
and He shall hear my voice.
He has
redeemed my
soul in peace
from the battle that was against me,
for there
were many against me.
Psalm
55: 16 -- 18
Put your trust in God
No comments:
Post a Comment