Walking And Living In The Freedom Of Jesus Christ

But, as he who was born according

to the flesh then persecuted him

who was born according to the Spirit,

even so it is now.

Nevertheless what does the Scripture say?

"Cast out the bondwoman and her son,

for the son of the bondwoman shall not be

the heir with the son of the freewoman."

So then, brethren, we are not children

of the bondwoman of the free.

Galatians 4: 29 -- 31

            A belated happy Thanksgiving!  I trust that the turkey was not the only thing stuffed.  But you had a good time with family and friends, and even a phone, you were thankful for the one most important thing: Jesus Christ came and died to give you eternal life and that can never be taken away from you, therefore, be thankful.

            Paul has given us this allegory in regards to Sarah and Hagar, most things in regards to be Mount Sinai in the deserts that were bordering Arabia, and tell us how the Jews were persecuted him for his stand on Christianity.  From Mount Sinai the law was given to the Hebrew people as well as a covenant relating to it and its ratification.  How do they ratify this law?  By agreeing and keeping the law given to Moses and all the laws in regards to life: "Then the LORD heard the voice of your words when you spoke to me, and the LORD said to me: ‘I have heard the voice of the words of this people which they have spoken to you.  They are right in all that they have spoken.  Oh, that they had such a heart in them that they would fear Me and always keep all My commandments, that it might be well with them and with her children for ever" (Deuteronomy 5: 28 -- 29)!  God would have the Israelite people to consider what was written and that those who desire to be under the law should hear what the law says to them, and teach them to flee from the law and to the Gospel.

The two sons of Abraham, Ishmael, the son of the bondwoman, and Isaac the son of the free woman, one born after the flesh, that is why the ordinary course of nature, and the other by promise especially when there was no reason to expect due to her aid that Sarah could have a child.  Paul and using these events and people were done so by allegory, yes there was a natural course of events in history, a little happening, but more than that in this allegory of a sense of the word, the Spirit of God then would signify something further to us.  God uses a natural things to reveal himself and his will to us: therefore, why are people running about seeking the supernatural when it is not there to be found.  If God wishes to be found He will reveal Himself and furthermore he has revealed Himself in Scripture.  Hagar and Sarah contained within their events of life to be an emblem to perfect the two different dispensation of the covenant.  Mount Sinai, from which the law had been given, corresponds to Jerusalem and its inhabitants, as outward worshipers of God, and in the first it was the ordinances performed at the temple.  As long as they remained under this law is Sinai covenant, when they had rejected Jesus Christ and the Gospel, they were enslaved and influenced by the spirit of bondage and did not act as children of God.  One cannot be under a legal system, legalism, influenced by those who would demand works for some sort of outward display to show your righteousness and say that you are acting as a child of God.  Sarah represents the heavenly Jerusalem, the true Church, and is represented by the fact that Sarah was a free woman and her children are free, children of promise.  As we have explained this history we can see that the children of Isaac are the children of promise.  Christians to accept Christ, rely on Him, and look for justification and salvation by Him alone.  Christians become the spiritual, though not the natural seed of Abraham.  Christians are entitled to the promise given to Abraham, that is the promised inheritance, and are to be interested in its blessings.  When we are not following after Jesus Christ and are following another type of Gospel outside of Scripture that we are not submitting to the commands and precepts laid out for us in Scripture as revealed by God through the inspiration to the writers of the Bible.  In some sense nothing more is being done in persecution to Jesus Christ for after having been born by the Holy Spirit you are expected to act like you are born by the Holy Spirit and setting should be something far removed from your life.  The Judaizers hated Christians and persecute them yet in the end Judaism would think, and be cast out of the church, and true Christianity would flourish and last forever.  If you as a Christian P. Pan for your justification on some sort of work, baptism, or any personal obedience, or creed, however scriptural and as I said before being members of a particular church are really only citizens of the earthly Jerusalem and are under condemnation.  But if not then you are born of the Spirit and the three children under the promise of God to Abraham, and no matter whether these carnal Ishmael mock and persecute you, as it has been in the past, and so will it be now and in the future until Jesus Christ comes to take His church home, then let us be in cheerful obedience, especially at this time to be thankful for what Jesus Christ has done for us.  We are free!  We are children of God!  We will walk at liberty, and our conversations and treasures are indeed laid up in heaven.  You have so much to be thankful for, therefore, live for God, and live your life.

Therefore you shall be careful

            to do as the LORD your God

has commanded you; you shall not turn aside

            to the right hand or to the left.

You shall walk in all the ways which the LORD your God

            has commanded you, that you may live and that it may

be well with you, and that you may prolong your deities

            in the land which you shall possess.

                                    Deuteronomy 5: 32 -- 33

Place the commands of God in your heart

Richard L. Crumb

Living Faith: Living As A Child Of Promise

For it is written:

"Rejoice, O barren,

You who do not bear!

Break forth and shout,

You who are not in labor!

For the desolate as many

more children

Than she has a

husband"

(Isaiah 54: 1).

Now we, brethren, as Isaac was,

are children of promise.

Galatians 4:27 -- 28

            Paul has explained that if the Jewish people continued under the Sinai covenant, and now due to the fact that they had rejected Jesus Christ and the Gospel, the influence was that they have been influenced by this slavish spirit of bondage, and were not acting as children of God.  Bondage comes in many forms and not just by being handcuffed, or tied to a rack, or been forced into some sort of work-related slavery.  No, one comes under bondage by the things that they have lust, most things that take up their time and frivolous pursuits.  Many people are in bondage do to certain doctrinal positions of the denominations that they attend.  Certain doctrinal positions may seem godly, as the Jews felt that about their Sinai covenant, that by it they could maintain their position as a child of God, when in fact the new covenant superseded the old covenant.  The old Jerusalem no longer was the center for the worship of God, for the heavenly Jerusalem, the true Church is from above, as Paul states was represented by Sarah, and is in a state of freedom, and is the mother of all believers, who are born of the Spirit.  Something interesting to remember is: Isaiah 51: 1; as the Scripture long before declared that the church would be made up mainly of Gentile converts, not only just Jews, but believers, those who are born of the Spirit and are under the covenant given to Abraham: "Listen to Me, you who follow after righteousness, you who seek the LORD: look to the rock from which you work you, and to the whole of the pit from which you were dug."  (Isaiah 51: 1).  Paul and writing to the Roman Church explain this further: "What shall we say then?  That Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, who did not pursue righteousness, have attained to righteousness, even the righteousness of faith; but Israel, pursuing the law of righteousness, as in not attaining to the law of righteousness.  Why?  Because they did not seek it by faith, but as it were, by the works of the law.  For they stumbled at the stumbling stone" (Romans 9: 30 -- 31).  Are you getting the point?  Can you see what Scripture teaches us about righteousness?  It is not by any works for faith is a free gift from God and you cannot earn it by anything you say or do: "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast" (Ephesians 2: 8 -- 9).  Does this mean we do nothing?  No!  God gave you a brain, use it!  But don't be misled, not by any works you do, not by any amount of some sort of gibberish revelatory speaking and so often not even done with an interpreter, or many people doing this in public together and not singularly, it is not running around trying to heal people by some sort of prayer, it is not anything that you are doing by which you have received your righteousness other than you must accept it and live by the commands of God.  We have work to do as ambassadors for Jesus Christ and we do this out of our conversion to Him and our love for Him for what He has done for us by giving us this free gift of faith and as applied His righteousness to us.  Yes, we have secular work that we must do as well, but in our doing our secular work we show and manifest to the world our faith in our Lord Jesus Christ by what we do and say.  This is the Gospel being manifested in our lives and as often as we have the opportunity we are to be prepared to defend our faith.  Don't fall under bondage!  You are free in the Lord Jesus Christ!  You're not free to send, you are free to live for Him.  There is no excuse and we will not be able to give one when we stand before the judgment seat.  We are not to depend in any degree for our justification on works.  The Judaizers were still depending upon circumcision, and for some even today whereby they believe in baptismal regeneration by which they believe they are declared righteous, which is not scriptural, even your personal obedience does not give you faith from the Lord Jesus Christ although it does show that you are exercising that faith.  We are not to hold fast to creeds, however scriptural, or be some member of any particular church, especially those who would place you under slavery and becoming bondslave to works.  True faith alone that is received from Jesus Christ is to be the interested of the believer to become one with Jesus Christ.  This is the living and justifying faith as distinguished from dead faith, and this is manifested by working for Him and this is your active principle.  This shows your heart and your love for Jesus Christ and His people.  This working by love should be everything in your Christianity.  Maybe we found on the number of those who, through the Spirit, wait for the hope of righteousness by faith.  But without faith working by love all else is worthless, and compared with it other things are of small value.

I thank You and praise You,

            O God of my fathers;

You have given me wisdom and might,

            and have now made known to me

what we ask of You.  For you have made

            known to us the king’s demand.

                        Daniel 2: 23

God is revealed to you by Jesus Christ

Richard L. Crumb

Being Formed In The Image Of Jesus Christ

My little children, for whom I labor

in birth again until Christ is formed in you.

I would like to be present with you now

and to change my tone;

for I have doubts about you.

Galatians 4:19 -- 20

            When you read those words of Paul you can feel the pain in his heart for the Galatians who were slipping away into error after learning the truth.  The writer of Hebrews wrote these very serious words; "For if we sin willfully after we received the knowledge of the truth, they're no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and fiery indignation which will devour the adversaries" (Hebrews 10: 26 -- 27).  This is not the first and only verse: "Now where there is remission of these, there is no longer an offering for sin" (Hebrews 10: 18).  Peter expounded on this fact: "For if, after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the latter in his worst for them than the beginning.  For it would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, then having known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered to them" (2 Peter 2:20 -- 21).  As with the Galatian churches and other churches, as we read and have read in regard to those letters by the apostles and others, that they had turned into another form of gospel and Paul certainly is presenting his sadness over this fact.  The Galatian churches seem to be ready to call the apostle Paul their enemy, but he assures them that he was their friend, and had the feeling of a parent toward them.  Paul even calls them his children, noting a great tenderness and affection for them, and even in their present behavior who had turned by the arts and insinuations of others to another gospel, Paul expresses earnest desire for their welfare and for their soul’s prosperity.  How many people today have turned to the arts and insinuations of those men and women who seem to speak so eloquently intimating that they have some sort of special revealed truth.  This so-called truth that came to them and either some sort of vision or dream, but all they need is the scripture for everything that we need is revealed in the Bible.  Many people fall after such men and women, honest women and men, looking for the truth, only to become ensnarled in falsehood.  Paul was desirous that Jesus Christ would be formed in them, and this is my desire for myself and for you that you would change from the inside/out and return to Authentic Christianity and shun these false teachings that are so prevalent, and leading honest people away from the truth.  Paul's prayer, and mine, is that you become more established in the faith of the Gospel and not fall prey to the many false teachers in the world today.  A faithful minister is one who is earnest, and earnestly longs for those people who were under his care.  These ministers do not want to gain so much that they may have great affection for them, no, that they may make a renewed life in the spirit of their minds, and be brought into the image of Jesus Christ, more fully settled and confirmed in the Christian life and faith.  How unreasonable it is for people to act and have to suffer themselves so that they must be prevailed upon to return and even in the case where they have much dislike for their ministers.  This shows that Christ is not fully formed in them, and until they are brought from trusting in your own righteousness and may to rely only upon Jesus Christ and His righteousness than you have not become formed into Jesus Christ as commanded.  The apostle Paul longed to be with them so that he could bring forth change among them, and change from his words a reproof to those of encouragement and commendation.  These were words that could not be adequately put down in a letter and had to be brought forth in person, therefore, he desired to be with them.  Nothing is so sure a proof a sinner has passed into a state of justification, as Christ form in them by the renewal of the Holy Spirit; but this cannot be done for men who depend upon the law, or works, for the acceptance with God.  Paul adds: "Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not hear the law?  For it is written that Abraham had two sons: but won by a bondwoman, the other by a freewoman.  But he who was of the bondwoman was born according to the flesh, and he of the freewoman through promise, which things are symbolic.  For these are the two covenants: the one from Mount Sinai which gives birth to bonding, which is Hagar -- for this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and corresponds to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children -- but the Jerusalem above is free, which is the mother of us all" (Galatians 4: 21 -- 26).  Paul had just know it cleared the difference between believers who rested in Christ only, and the Judaizers who trusted in the law, and this he did by comparison from the history of Isaac and Ishmael.  Those who desire to be under the law should then hear what the law has to say to them; and this realization should teach them to flee from it to the grace of the Gospel.  The Jerusalem above, it is free!  No one any longer has to be in bondage to those who would cause people to return to some sort of gospel that the man's works as a sign of their righteousness.  Who fall under the sway of these false teachings is to place a person under bondage and they are no longer free but a slave, being tossed to and fro by the whims and will of those who want to use them for their own benefit.  As the Christians were commanded: flee Jerusalem for destruction is coming.  There is a new Jerusalem, and that Jerusalem is heavenly, and is free, and anyone who flees to this are you fleeing is free indeed.  The question is: to which Jerusalem are you fleeing?

My beloved spoke, and said to me;

            "Rise up, my love, my fair one,

and come away."

                        Song of Solomon 2:10

Softly and Tenderly Jesus is calling

Richard L. Crumb

The True Doctrine Of Christianity: The Gospel

They zealously court you, but for no good;

yes, they want to exclude you,

that you may be zealous for them.

But it is good to be zealous

in a good thing always, and not only

when I am present with you.

Galatians 4: 17 -- 18

Zealousness and about $2.50 will get you a cup of coffee at most coffee shops.  Yes, it is good to be zealous, not overzealous for that would lead a person into some sort of harmful activity, rather, it is good to be zealous when it is in control and is for a good thing.  An example: the Muslim people are very zealous, so zealous that they will strap bombs to themselves and whomever without much care about as to whom they kill. They are zealous for their religious/political agenda.  And we find zealousness that has not gone to that extreme and yet it is extreme. In the past an example would be the Woodstock concert were by hippies were shouting and screaming and wearing next to nothing and drinking and smoking marijuana.  They felt good from what I felt zealous at least for something, to belong to something.  These are just examples of zealousness but let me give you a better example: Paul.  Paul zealous for the truth and was willing to do what every, is necessary to bring the truth to the people from whom he preached.  No, he didn't use some sort of armor, or militant tactic.  He used his efforts going about talking with people, and doing some sort of work to pay the bills, but in everything to be speaking the Gospel without fear of death, or persecution.  Paul, and we also should be zealous for the truth and the truth is God came to earth, the Second Person of the Trinity, the Only Begotten Son of God incarnate to die upon the cross to pay the debt owed to Him.  Unfortunately we often find that people are more interested in some sort of enthusiastic zealousness by a church leader whereby they cling to that person as though this person is speaking the truth when often they are simply acting out a part in for ill-gotten gain.  Paul had to face this type of person in the different cultic and heretic teachings by the Gnostics and by the Judaizers, by the Nicolaitans, the Nestorians, and other forms of heresy. Let's take a moment and understand that within the apostles who were associated personally with Jesus Christ, and even Paul who had an encounter with Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus that their teaching was in unity with each other.  A lot of the denominations hang closely and tightly to their doctrines of their denomination and others want to avoid doctrine altogether, but is this scriptural truth?  Let's take a look at this:

Christianity is primarily, not merely doctrine.  Christianity is life, a new moral creation, and has the facts of salvation for sinners, and is personally embodied in Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word, the god man, to spread from Him and to embrace gradually the whole body of Christianity, and bring it into saving the Fellowship with God.  This is also true of Christianity as it exists subjectively in a single individuals.  What does that mean?  Christianity begins not with religious views and notions simply although it includes these, at least in the germ.  Christianity becomes a new life in regeneration, conversion, and sanctification.  This creative fact of an experience takes up the whole man with all of his faculties in capacities, releasing him from the guilt and the power of sin, and reconciling him with God.  Christians are to mirror the life of Jesus Christ and they do this by rising gradually through the use of the means of grace and the continued exercise of faith, and love, to his maturity in the resurrection. This is the experience for a Christian.  Yes this new life necessarily contains the element of doctrine, or knowledge of the truth.  This element of doctrine does appear in the New Testament, not in the form of an abstract theory, nor a product of speculation, nor is it a scientific system of ideas subject to logical and mathematical demonstration.  There were those men in the past who attempted to do this to enjoying of nature with God to form some sort of sentences to explain the existence of God.  This is done by those who will not simply read Scripture for what Scripture has to say about itself so that they might understand that the doctrine, is the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  This doctrine of Jesus Christ, this Gospel, is a simple fresh, and immediate utterance of the supernatural, this divine life, and is a life-giving power, it is equally practical and theoretical, coming with divine authority to the heart, the will, and the conscience, as well as to the mind, and irresistibly growing people to itself.  We must never confound truth with dogma.  Truth is a divine substance, doctrine or dogma is a human apprehensions and statement of it; truth is a living and life-giving power, dogma is a logical formula; truth is infinite, unchanging, and eternal; dogma is finite, changeable, and perfectible.  The Bible therefore, is not only, nor principally a book for the learned, but a book of life for every one, and epistle written by the Holy Spirit to mankind.  No number of systems of Christian faith and morals, therefore, indispensable as they are to the scientific purposes of the Church and of theology, can ever fill the place of the Bible, whose words are spirit and life.  When we say the New Testament is the logically arranged system of doctrines and precepts, we are far from meaning that it has no eternal order and consistency.  On the contrary, it exhibits the most beautiful harmony, like the external creation, and like a true work of art.  The substance of all the apostolic teaching is the witness of Christ, the Gospel.  The Gospel is the free message of that divine love and salvation, which appeared in the person of Christ, was secured to mankind by His work, and is gradually realized in the Kingdom of God on earth, and will be completed with the second coming of Jesus Christ in glory.

Read Scripture carefully and examine all things, especially those who are overzealous and are not teaching the truth of the Gospel rather their own speculations and ideologies as though they have the truth or that God has somehow supernaturally implanted this new truth in their minds.  Do you want to truth? read the Bible and pray that God by means of the Holy Spirit will lead you into the truth as found in Scripture and not in man's mind.

Blessed are the undefiled in the way,

            who walk in the law of the LORD!

Blessed are those who keep His testimonies,

            who seek Him with a whole heart!

                                    Psalm 119:1 -- 2

Establish, Make Sure, Your Election

Richard L. Crumb

Standing Firm For The Truth Of God

Brethren, I urge you to become

like me, for I became like you.

You have not injured me and all.

You know that because of the physical infirmity

I preached the gospel to you at the first.

In my trial which was in my flesh

 you did not despise or reject,

but you receive me as an angel of God,

even as Christ Jesus.  What then was the

blessing you enjoyed? for I bear you witness

 that, if possible, you would have plucked out

your own eyes and given them to me.

Have I therefore become your enemy

because I tell you the truth?

Galatians 4: 12 -- 16

            What did Paul mean what he urged the Galatians to become like him?  Let us take a moment and look back in Galatians to see if we can find an answer; and yes we do: "I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me" (Galatians 2: 20).  What does it mean to be crucified with Christ?  It is to sign your death warrant of the disposition of sin, to turn all in emotional impressions and intellectual beliefs into a moral verdict against the disposition of sin; furthermore, you are to remove yourself any claim to yourself.  Do not Jesus Christ tell us that we must deny ourselves?  All is not saying anything different!  What this means for each of us is that we must endeavor to follow Jesus Christ, and Paul does not tell us that we must be determined to imitate Jesus Christ.  Paul tells us that we must be identified with Jesus Christ in His death.  A person may run around doing all kinds of antics, speaking in some sort of unknown gibberish sounds coming out of their mouths, and I'm not speaking about hearing a person speak a language you do not know and must be interpreted by another person who speaks that language.  No, you must come to a moral decision and act upon it and when you do that everything Christ has wrought for you on the cross will be wrought in you.  A person's responsibility for their salvation is first to know that God is the only one who saves a person by the death of Jesus Christ on the cross.  A person's responsibility is to give to God your free committal of yourself to God and to the Holy Spirit and then you have given God the opportunity to impart to you the holiness of Jesus Christ.  You are living in this life, albeit, temporarily, for death is still reigning until the return of Jesus Christ, nevertheless you must live and that life is to be living for Jesus Christ.  Your individuality remains, God does not take that away from you, but your mainspring, the ruling disposition, is radically altered.  Yes you remain in the same human body, but that old Satanic right to yourself is destroyed.  The life you now live the life you live in the flesh, not the life which you long to live in pray to live, but the life you are now presently living in your mortal flesh, the life which men can see, and what they should see is your faith in the Son of God.  You no longer have faith in the face, but faith which has leaped over all bounds of conscious thoughts, and you have come to the identical faith of the Son of God.

            How often do we look at the outward appearance of a person and determined much about them whether we know to be true or not?  Apparently whatever physical ailment that Paul had it cause some sort of similarity to what we often do when we see someone in poor clothes, or in poor health, we speak poorly of them.  But Paul was not injured by their rebuke or detesting whatever it was that Paul had as infirmity.  There were some that did not allow this infirmity to reject Paul.  Some Paul had become their enemy, not just because they were Judaizers, or Gnostics, or some other form of heretic, but because Paul spoke the truth and often the truth is hard to swallow.  Can you think back to when you accepted Jesus Christ as your Savior how happy you were in receiving the gospel? Have you then in time come to reason otherwise? Often the person we think is our enemy is in actuality our best friend, and this so happens when one steps aside from the truth of Jesus Christ and in some sense declaring Him to be an enemy when in fact He is your best friend.  As the old song goes: "What a friend we have in Jesus."  False teachers were drawing the Galatians from the truth of the Gospel as given to them by Paul.  These were designing men, who under suspicious pretenses consulted their own interest.  We see this all the time was pastors thinking more about their pocketbooks than helping people to come to the truth of God's Word and live the truth?  How often do those types of leaders pretend affection for you, but they are not sincere and upright in their professions?  It's good to be zealous if that zealousness is in truth and sincerity. Zeal should be exercised only upon what is good; it is good to be zealous always in a good thing; not for a time only, or now and then, but constantly.  How happy would it be for the Church of Christ, if this rule was better observed among Christians? nothing is more sure is a proof for a sender in that he has passed into a state of justification, as Christ formed in him by the renewal of the Holy Spirit; but this cannot be hoped for while men depend on the law for the acceptance with God.  Pray that your zeal has all the marks of the truth of God as revealed in His word.

Who can to the mighty acts of the LORD?

            Who can declare all His praise?

Blessed are those who keep justice,

            and he who does

righteousness at all times!

                        Psalm 106: 2 -- 3

Give your utmost for His highest

Richard L. Cromb

Adopted Sons Of God

Now I say that the heir, as long as he is a child come

does not differ at all from a slave, although he is master of all,

but is under guardians and stewards until the time appointed by the father.

Even so we come when we were children, we were in bondage

under the elements of the world.  But when the

fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son,

 born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem

those who were under the law, that we might receive

the adoption as sons.  And because you are sons,

and God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son

into your hearts, crying out, "Abba, Father!"

Therefore you are no longer a slave but a son,

and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.

Galatians 4: 1 -- 7

            Did you read those scriptures carefully?  Paul plainly wrote that due to the fact God the Father sent His Only Begotten Son into the world you can be come one of His sons.  God adopts you into His family and you no longer are a slave, rather, you are an heir, and will receive all the promises of God for His children. If you will catch on to this and inculcate that into your very being your life will change for the better no matter what ever the circumstances may be, you are a son of God.  There is no need to return to any form of legal observances to find some sort of justification.  Remember, justification comes by faith, and not by works.  As children, guarded, protected, and stewarded, by your Father, and that Father is God Himself.  This change in your life is a happy change and this change comes about by your conversion, and that conversion means that you remove yourself from anything that is an idol.  An idol can even be a false teacher whom you hold in high esteem, it could be your car, your home, your job, or any other thing that is being put in place to hold a higher priority than for you to live for God who adopted you and is your Father.  The apostle Paul dealt plainly with those who urged these Christians, especially new Christians, who were returning to the Law of Moses not to return and you can return from any law that separates you from Jesus, that law, with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  When you converted to the Lord Jesus Christ your life changed and that change came about by your effort to follow the Gospel and yet so often you have been misled by those who are teaching a false doctrine, and Paul says it is not the gospel at all.  Paul makes this clear: "But then, indeed, when you did not know God, you served those which by nature are not gods.  But now after you have known God, or rather are known by God, how is it that you turn again to the weak and beggarly elements, to which you desire and begin to be in bondage?  You observe days and months and seasons in years.  I am afraid for you, lest I have labored for you in vain" (Galatians 4:8 -- 11).  Too many Christians are seeking for happiness and some sort of validity to their acceptance of Jesus Christ by placing themselves under bondage and that bondage is a requirement of works and those works that are often manifested are not works commanded by the Bible.  The tutors that these early Christians found themselves in tutorage was and is even this day false teachers who were attempting to bring  Christians and that means you if you're not careful, into a dispensation of darkness.  These observances, can be called the elements of the world.  Yes many have been taught the first principles of religious knowledge, but the sacrifices, festivals, and rights, when their typical meaning was neglected, in many respects agreed with the gross apprehensions of the world at large.  What did I just say? you heard the word of God, the Gospel, and came to know that you were a sinner and in need of a Savior so that when you heard this Gospel, the true word of God being preached to you that faith that God has given to you as a free gift caused you to convert to Him.  You were a child and in need of nourishment so that you can grow in the knowledge of God.  Unfortunately, there are those who will take advantage of your situation as a child and teach you what they believe is a better way for Christians to act and practice.  You believe them, so you follow them, and often you will have closed ears when the truth of God's word presented to you.  You become indoctrinated!  You have a feeling of happiness in some sort of bliss, but this happiness is simply an external happiness even though you may think that you feel it within yourself, but this is not the happiness comes to an Authentic Christian.  The happiness that comes to an Authentic Christian is when that person comes under the Gospel as taught in the Bible without any addition.  it is simply because by the will of God that God sent forth His Son, His Only Begotten Son, to come to this earth to die for the debt owed to Him which was sin and could only be paid by a just act and that just act was a sinless man was to die for a man who brought sin into the world.  It was the sin by the first man that brought upon all mankind sin, and that only pays one reward: death!  By the death of a sinless man the reward is: life!  Don't be adding anything to the Gospel for this is wrong in every way and misleads people who believe they are doing God's will when in fact they are not for they are pleasing themselves and focusing upon the works and not upon the one who gives them life, Jesus Christ.  They may say they are, but an examination it will be found that doing the works as a higher priority than living a virtuous and moral life no matter the cost.  They may say they are virtuous, they may even say they are moral, and this may be true, at least in their minds, but when we see many of them we find that the girls wear dresses just covering their thighs, men wearing hair that looks like some rock star hippy, tattoos all over the place, and much of this has occurred after they say they have accepted Jesus Christ.  There is no way to reason this to be a good thing for that person(s) is living a dichotomous life.  Brothers and sisters you may have been a time in which you were tattooed, or dressed in ways that were unchristian, but you are a son of God and this brings a responsibility to act as a son of God.  My prayer is this will happen in your life!

An oracle within my heart concerning

the transgression of the wicked:

there is no fear of God before his eyes.

            Four he flatters himself in his own eyes,

when he finds out his iniquity and when he hates.

            The words of his mouth our wickedness and deceit;

he has ceased to be wise and to do good.

                                    Psalm 36: 1 -- 3

The loving kindness of God is precious

Richard L. Crumb

JUstification Is By Faith: Not By Any Ceremonial Work Or Law

But before the faith came from we were kept

under guard by the law, kept for faith

which would afterward be revealed.

Therefore law was our tutor

to bring us to Christ, that we

might be justified by faith.

But after faith has come,

we are no longer under a tutor.

For you are all sons of God

through faith in Christ Jesus.

Galatians 3: 23 -- 26

            Paul reiterates over, and over, that righteousness comes by faith and not by works that men might do or accomplish.  The law given to teach men what is sin, and furthermore, the wall would lead men to Jesus Christ and by becoming a son, of God, this was through faith in Jesus Christ.  The ceremonial law served a purpose for the Hebrew people in West to continue until the promised Messiah came, and that Messiah was Jesus Christ.  Then the ceremonial law abolished to promote the spirituality of the divine worship.  The ceremonial law was gross, carnal, and calculated for an infant, and was a sensitive work, especially for a sensitive church.  Think about this whole ceremonial law consisted in the rudiments, the circumcision of the flesh, the blood and smoke of sacrifices, the smell of incense, observation of days, even a distinction of meats, and corporal purification.  The law was clogged with some sort of rite to be particularly observed by the Jewish people.  This is what Judaizers were attempting to do with this infant and sensitive Christian church.  They were attempting to return them to the ceremonial law and especially the law of the circumcision of the flesh.  Often when you are performing various rituals or rights, even reciting the Lord's prayer, or one of the creeds of the Church, something done each Sabbath, there is a possibility and does happen that the ceremonial ritual becomes rote. Those ceremonial laws were to teach them about the glory of God but had become veiled under some sort of cloud, and the people no longer worshiped God or beheld God and His glory.  If the church had returned to the ceremonial law then they too will fall in under this veil.  When you fall under the legalistic practices of works to define your spirituality then in some sense you to have fallen under this cloud and you can no longer look at that which would fail by the death, resurrection, and ascension to heaven, by our Savior Jesus Christ.  Works should come out of a person's faith, and not for the works themselves, but to allow the Holy Spirit to lead whatever way He desires to lead.  Legalism in actuality this as defined in Scripture is in opposition to the Gospel, which is called Spirit.  Yes, the ceremonial law was ordained by God as it was part of his divine economy and dispensation, instituted by Him, albeit instituted by God the apostle Paul declares this no better than simple carnal ordinances: "But now we have been delivered from the law, having died to what we were held by, so that we should serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter" (Romans 7:6).  The Gospel is the ministration of the Spirit, and has special in its virtual efficacy on the minds of men.  Now when the Galatians who were degenerate, after having tasted of the pure strain of the Gospel, returning back to drink of law,  the apostle chided them for doing so, for that which had begun in the spirit would now be made perfect in the flesh.  The moral law, is in of itself its own nature spiritual, in regards to any abuse of its, that is, to be an expectation of justification by outward works, then it is called flesh.  The law had been written on paper, and by the incarnation of God, Jesus Christ the only begotten son of God, the law was now written upon the heart and that law no longer required the old ceremonial laws of works.  It is not that we must not do certain things or do certain things, that is, the moral law as recorded in the 10 Commandments that we are to follow and Paul and other writers explain how that law would be carried out in a person's life and there is no sense that any works a person because the only justification is by faith.  These legal ceremonies were never fit to bring the heart into its spiritual frame.  Yes, but by its spiritual intent, and this can be seen in the rock and the manna which prefigured to salvation and spiritual narration by Jesus Christ.  The sacrifices were to point them to the justice of God and the punishment of sin, furthermore, they were to point to the mercy of God in substituting them, for them, and the types of the Redeemer in the ransom by His blood.  This brings us to the circumcision which was being attempted that all people who became Christians must adhere to circumcision of the flesh. This veil over the people did not instruct them in the circumcision of the heart.  The law was a schoolmaster fitted for weak people, and simply an administration.  Year after year high priest gave a sacrifice for the sins of the people and now the high priest, Jesus Christ paid once and for all the final sacrifice for the payment of sins for all time.  This He did by sacrificing His human life on the cross.  Our faith is in that fact, and that fact is, a man Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ who is God in the flesh would come as a man, the Second Person of the Trinity, paying His a debt owed to Him, by Himself and by His mercy applies a sacrifice to the children of God.  Now, it is by faith in the actual work of Jesus Christ, the promises of God fulfilled, that we have a foundation for that faith, and by this we are justified.  Paul writes: "For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.  There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.  And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise" (Galatians 3: 27 -- 29).

For God is the King of all the earth;

            sing praises with understanding.

                        Psalm 47:7

Arise, your Redeemer lives

Richard L. Crumb

Learning To Live Our Freedom In Jesus Christ

For if the inheritance is of the law,

it is no longer of promise come

but God gave it to Abraham by promise.

What purpose in does the law served?

It was added because of transgressions,

till the Seed should come to whom

the promise was made; and it was

appointed through angels by the hand of a mediator.

Now a mediator in does not mediate for one only,

but God is one.

Is the law against the promises of God?

Certainly not!

For if there had been a law given which

could have given life, truly righteousness

would have been by the law.  But the Scripture

ask and find all under sin, that the promise by faith

in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.

Galatians 3: 18 -- 22

            When one takes time to investigate the promises of God, he or she will find other than those promises made for the future filled as promised.  God is a promise God.  This promise given to Abraham extended to the Hebrew people and to any, and all who would come into the covenant of the Jewish religion to Yahweh the God of the universe.  If anything should settle the question and increase your faith is that God keeps His promises.  As the old saying goes: "you can take that to the bank."  Paul has taken time to pursue this argument diligently for he foresaw in the spirit, that this mischief, speaking of the Judaizers, and other heathen people would enter into the church and attempt in every way to confound the word of God.  There are those who enter our present-day churches with the simple thought of confounding the word of God and lead people into false teaching making it sound as though what they teach is true, when in fact, it is false.  The promise if it is mingled with the wall would be utterly lost, for when the promises mingled with the law, it is made nothing else but law: and there is where the legalism has its foundation.  How to combat this?  Allow Jesus Christ to always be before you and is a sheer summary of all arguments for the defense of your faith, against the righteousness of the flesh, against the law, against works and merits.  To fall back into legalism, and joining God's promises with the law is to make null and void what Jesus cries spoke: "Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed" (John: 8 36).  If you have converted to the Lord Jesus Christ, you are free!  By being a free person there remains no remnant of individuality which breeds conceit.  Your personality simply absorbs, as this is the way that we are built, and that is we are built by God's design with a great capacity for Him.  We speak of legalism as though it is simply another form of Christianity, but it is not, it is keeping you from getting at God because it allows sin and your individuality to get in the way.  Through the Lord Jesus Christ God has delivered you from sin.  Now you have a responsibility: and that responsibility is that you must deliver yourself from your individuality, and this means to present your natural life to God and sacrifice until it is transformed into a spiritual life by obedience.  Don't sit around and wait for God to do it for you: HE WON'T!  God runs right across our natural life and we must come to see that we are to aid and abet God, not stand against Him.  God will chastise you: God will not discipline you!  You must discipline yourself!  God will not bring every thought and imagination into captivity: HE WON'T!  You and I must do it!  Don't sit back and say "O Lord, I suffer from wandering thoughts!"  Are you suffering from those kind of thoughts that are simply wandering thoughts? Stop to those thoughts for they are of the tyranny of your individuality, and get emancipated out into personality.  Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God has made you free.  Don't make the mistake: which is, substituting ‘Savior’ for ‘Son.’  You are set free from sin by means of the Savior in this freedom of being set free is by the Son.  Earlier we read this in Galatians: "I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith" (Galatians 2:20).  Christ died for you!  You have been crucified with Jesus Christ, therefore, break free from your natural individuality, and allowed your personality to be united with Jesus Christ, not merged, rather, united.  Don't insist on energy, instead be energized into identification with Jesus.  This argument set forth by Paul in regards to the promises made to Abraham and the other fathers, is of great efficacy for confirming the doctrine of justification by faith.  God promises eternal life for all of His children and that eternal life with Him has already begun.  You don't have to wait for it, you have to live this fact, and you show this by being obedient to the commands of God and be converted to the Lord Jesus Christ.  Nothing else will do, nothing less, nothing more, only yourself standing upon the promises in His word and applying the word "seed to that" to the Lord Jesus Christ.  Do not be fooled by those who come with legalism in an attempt to make you godly.  He godly, and do this by the truth of God's Word.  You are free, don't fall under legalism or any doctrine that requires works.  Live your freedom in Jesus Christ and live life.

A fool has no delight in understanding,

but in expressing his own heart.

Proverbs 18: 2

You are free in Jesus Christ!

Richard L. Crumb