Submission To The Lordship Of Jesus Christ

Now I praise you, brethren, that ye remember

 me in all things, and keep the ordinances, 

as I delivered them to you. But I would have 

you know, that the head of every man is Christ; 

and the head of the woman is the man, 

and the head of Christ is God.

1Corinthians 11:2-3

     Yesterday's blog reminded us that just because a person calls themselves Christian does not mean that this is true. This is said because anyone can see that Christian morality is not necessarily produced by many today because of their practice of Christian faith. Something is wrong! And as mentioned it is due largely to a lack or faulty understanding of what God requires of His children in terms of practical Christian living. 

     The Bible teaches us that we are to be holy and even perfect as God Himself is perfect. This is not some isolated instruction, it is a demand, even by the apostles as seen in the opening Scripture that demand strict adherence to what the Bible teaches about Christian morality and behavior. Am I saying, as does the Bethel Church and School of the Supernatural does, that a person can be without sin and perfect in this world? No! The Pelagian heresy taught that it was possible for the regenerate in this life to keep perfectly God's precepts. This cannot be true according to Scripture, but a person can exercise his/her will to do what the God has commanded even if not to perfection causing a person to come to God and repent. No one from the beginning of creation of man lived a life without sin or attained some sort of perfection so as not to sin. Is it possible for man in this life to sin? Yes! But is it probable? NO! We have no examples of any man being that perfect in life. I say this not to give any credence to the Pelagian heresy as it might be possible, it is possible under the grace of God, yet, this is not what we are taught and we must understand that just because a thing is possible does not make it probable. What the Pelagian heresy taught was that man could fulfill the law of God by his own strength and ability and even more by the means of the grace of God. This is heretical: "Without Me ye can do nothing" (John 15:5). What a grievance this must be to Jesus Christ to say that man can do that which is impossible without the means given to him be Jesus Christ as it is Jesus working through a person that is can save, that can change a person's life, not by any person themselves. Show me one person who has not sinned after receiving salvation. You cannot! We are human and are still fallen in our nature and can only do the will of God when we do what God has commanded us to do: Keep His commandments. 

     Did Jesus Christ die in vain? No! We must embrace the finished work of Jesus Christ on our behalf and of our unreservedly devotion of ourselves to God. This is what is the image represented in baptism: we die to the old way of living and rise to a new way of life. We are called to be sworn enemies of sin and to wage war against it and strive to give it no opportunity in our lives. Having made a commitment to Jesus Christ, we are to deny ourselves without reserve to the service of our Lord and King, Jesus Christ. We are not our own for we have been bought with a price, therefore we belong to the buyer: Jesus Christ. We are not His instruments, set apart, all for the honor and glory of God. This is the ruling principle of an Authentic Christian. We are to be submitted to our Savior, our King, our Lord, Jesus Christ. 

     With that conviction to guide us then we will be able to be used by God and have the virtue of God sown in our hearts. This seed of virtue will grow, deeply grow in our hearts and will bring forth fruit. This is the source of Christian morality. This a Standard of Christian behavior. This is the standard of an Authentic Christian and Authentic Christian Faith. Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the Second Person of the Godhead, the Trinity who has the divine essence of God and that Jesus has the essence of God, the Father, the Godhead then Jesus is God only that He is the Son of God, the Wisdom of God. We must remember that God is from eternity, that is God has not time, does not live in time and possesses the Divine Essence from eternity. God is from no one and the Divine Essence is from no one and the Son is from the Father who has the Divine Essence from the Father therefore the word "God" signifies that Jesus Christ has the true Divine Essence and is God, not the Father, not the Holy Spirit but the Second Person of the Trinity that is the Godhead. What is predicated of the Divine Essence is predicated of the Son, although Second in the Trinity the Son has a mode of action fulfilling the will of God, the Godhead. We should not have any other design about Jesus Christ and we should not have any other exercise of our faith except that which was handed down by the apostles the inspired writers of the Bible. When we follow the commands of God, His precepts, and live in the image of Jesus Christ then we have, not perfection in this life but the ability to live a life whereby we do not willingly sin. We do not receive the Divine Essence, we receive salvation when Jesus Christ comes for His bride and we are now in the presence of God we will have immutable lives, perfection will have been achieved. Until then: We live the commands of God, we deny ourselves so that we can live and apply those commands in our lives and if need be, and it will, we repent when we fail.

That he who blesseth himself in the earth

    shall bless himself in the God of truth;

and he that sweareth in the earth shall 

    swear by the God of truth; because 

the former troubles are forgotten, and

   because they are hid from mine eyes.

                              Isaiah 65:16

Allow God to be the source of your life

Richard L. Crumb

     

The Standards Of Christian Behavior

For if I by grace be a partaker, why am I evil spoken

 of for that which I give thanks? Whether therefore

 ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the

 glory of God. Give none offence, neither to the Jews,

 nor to the Gentiles, nor to the church of God: 

even as I please all men in all things, not seeking 

mine own profit, but the profit of many, that they 

may be saved. Be ye followers of me, even as

 I also am of Christ.

1Corinthians 10:30-33; 11:1 

     A fact that cannot be denied is that all persons develop in their personality, their exercise of life, by means of influences in their lives. This is especially true about one's religious belief as all things that are learned, those events in a person's life develop character and by that character their behavior. It would seem that a person who has come to understand of Jesus, even if inadequate and about the work of the cross and thinks that acceptance with God is based on performance, or a kind of religious experience would develop a great strictness to follow the teachings of the Bible to be generated. One would think so! But the opposite is true. Here is a difference between liberal, or cultural Christianity and Authentic Christianity. Authentic Christians are those who hold to Biblical doctrines of the work of Jesus Christ to be the basis of acceptance by God and are those who take the Bible's instruction concerning righteous living more seriously. Liberal, or cultural Christians are those who have developed a system of their own and tend to water down what God requires for the practice of their faith. Liberal, or cultural Christians tend to create standards of behavior that fit their own lifestyles. These developed by cultural or liberal Christians do so because they know that they can meet these standards without the aid of God, even though they may speak that it is of God. This cannot be true if what they are exercising as faith has no Scriptural warrant, it only gives to them a way of life that is characterized by ignorance and conceit. 

     A problem, not a new one, is that too often if a person says that they are a Christian, even if they do not know what it means, what that really means, and if they are not guilty of gross violation of the accepted cultural morality, then they are not questions as to whether or not that person is indeed a Christian. What has come to be is that all a the word "Christian" implies then is that it is a general assent to Christianity and some degree of morality in life. This is no different than we can see in the religiosity of Hinduism, Muslim, or Buddhist, or Mormons, or Jehovah Witnesses, or other forms of religion. 

     A sad report is that this cultural Christianity is the state of much of the Christian world. Here is a question for thought: If Christianity were proven not to be true would a cultural or liberal Christian change their way of life, their behavior, or thinking? Would these persons still attend Church as a sort of social responsibility? Would this knowledge that the Bible was not true still cause them to seek counsel the way as before, or remodel their behavior seeking a new sense of meaning or purpose? 

      Those questions are really not needed as we can see that we have many examples of unbelievers whose lives are morally superior to those that call themselves Christian. Here is a fact: Authentic Christianity has and is the most superior moral system in existence. Yet we do not live by it, so then what good is it? Let us compare religions that are not Christian. Let us see this that where ever Christianity has flourished society has flourished and developed in sciences, socially, educationally, medically, and in all areas of life life is better. Let us look at Hinduism where it is easily seen that they live be a caste system and until recent times whereby companies from Christian nations added them or gave to them jobs their lives where horrible. In fact they are still horrible in many ways: i.e., the buying and selling of children, prostitution, murder, etc., and look at the Muslim countries, not just Saudi Arabia, Iran, or Iraq, look at Thailand, or Laos, or Viet Nam and until modern companies gave to them jobs and some meaning their religions have hurt people in many ways, and in fact are still hurting people today. The contrast is night and day!

     Here is a thought for all of us: we say that Jesus is our Savior, do we not? Yes! Yet we forget that He also said that He was our example and that we are to deny ourselves and follow Him. We are be His arms, legs, mouth to spread the Gospel, His commandments and requirements. We are to believe in Him, yes, but we are to follow Him. Did not the followers in the early days after the death of Jesus Christ do that? Yes! These followers changed the world, the world took notice, why? Because they lived as Jesus commanded them, us, to live: "Then said Jesus unto His disciples, if any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me" (Matthew 16:24). 

     An interesting fact is that while people will deny the doctrines of the Bible still see that the morality of Christianity has and is raising the standard and strive to not just recognize this, but to strive to achieve this standard. What is being done is to give little significance to the practice of faith and its foundations that to practice Authentic Christian Faith based on the foundations of the Bible give to the unbeliever, or liberal, or cultural Christian cause to say that that that foundation is irrelevant to practical living. This is tragic to the high cost of God to send His Son, Jesus Christ to die and to die in vain. What is more tragic in some sense, other than the tragedy about the death of Jesus Christ is that in Christendom there is a practice of faith that produces no greater morality that is being practiced by unbelievers. In fact: go to a Church and see if you can see any real difference between the parishioners and the world, by dress, by attitude, by a lack of urgency to bring to the world the Gospel, ethics are pushed aside, respect is pushed aside and given are excuses as to be reasons that the Church is not holding high the standards of God, to influence to the better the standards of this world. The Church has lowered the bar to meet the low standards of this world. This is cultural, or liberal Christianity at work in the Church. 

    The problem seems to be with a faulty understanding of what God requires of us in terms of practical Christian living. 

Mine eyes shall be upon the faithful

    of the land, that they may dwell

with Me: he that walketh in a perfect

    way, he shall serve me, he that worketh

deceit shall not dwell within My house: He

    that telleth lies shall not tarry in My sight.

                              Psalm 101:6-7

Change from the inside/out to the better

Richard L. Crumb

Cultural Christianity vs Authentic Christianity

Let no man deceive himself, If any man among

 you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him 

become a fool, that he may be wise. For the 

wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. 

For it is written, He taketh the wise in their own 

craftiness: "He taketh the wise in their own craftiness: 

and the counsel of the froward is carried headlong" 

(Job 5:13). And again, The Lord knoweth the

 thoughts of wise, tht they are vain. Therefore

 let no man glory in men. For all things are yours; 

whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, 

or life, or death, or things present, or things to come;

 all are yours; and ye are Christ's: and Christ is God's.

1Corinthians 3:18-22 

     Cultural Christians have become more like the world than like Christians and have allowed the wisdom of man to become the wisdom of God. A result of this is that many have become simple-hearted and are hindered in understanding of the things that are seductive, seductive ambition, and the approval of the world with all its pleasures. There is a simple-heart that is not of this world and it is that which does not consider themselves wise according to this world and are of those who are more able to respond to Jesus Christ, and this, with humility, penitence, and sincerity. Oh! These simple-hearted are not simple-minded as the world would accuse them to be but are those who, even though not always able to give lofty discourses about the Gospel, about emotions, are still those who can feel love for their families, friends and country. 

     The thought of many Christians is that while they understand something about the death of Jesus Christ and the workings of the Holy Spirit that they are the basic articles of Authentic Christian Faith, the are still so far removed from their comprehension that they can easily fall prey to those men/women that promote themselves, their understanding of Scripture, or simply false teaching. This leads a person to simply refer to the practical and moral precepts of the Gospel using an argument that it is these practical matters by which we can know and on which we should focus our attention. This is simple a reduction of the Gospel to a system of morality and discount the importance of the mysteries of the Bible, they have as Milton wrote: "Vain Wisdom all, and false philosophy" (John Milton, Paradise Lost, bk, 2, line 565). 

     This attempt to reduce faith to a system of ethics we must respond with the words of Jesus Christ: "The work of God is this: to believe in the One He has sent" (John 6:29). To often these cultural Christians, those who follow after a man, no matter who, Calvin, Arminius, Ellen G. White, Bill Johnson, Jonathan Edwards, etc., have very flimsy arguments against Authentic Christian Faith and we find it perplexing that anyone could hold to such teachings. We are not to just focus on more heavenly thins that have no application to real life. That is not Authentic Christianity. This was not the thinking of the apostles as they focus on the doctrines of Authentic Christian Faith and this they exhorted their audience to follow. What we can notice is that the pattern of practical matters of ethics and behavior are often connected to these doctrines as the expected outcome of Authentic Christian Faith. If Authentic Christian Faith is not practiced the conclusion is that many practice an unscriptural religion. 

     We must apply to our lives Authentic Christian Faith and cast ourselves completely on the grace of God and the work of Jesus Christ. It is Jesus Christ that is the surety of our hope and source of life. We must grow in affection and this by growth in sanctification an deepen our love for Him. We must repent of sin(s) and allow ourselves to be filled with joy and peace and hope, and this through the work of the Holy Spirit. We are to study the Bible so that we become rooted and rational. We must meditate on the passion (the cross) of Jesus Christ and as we worship Him in prayer and praise, we should attempt to practice the presence of Jesus continually. 

    Let us consider this: it makes no sense to take the name of Christian and not cling to Jesus Christ. Jesus is not some magic charm that whatever we ask He must do, or that by having some sort of icon, picture that we dwell on in some form of worship will bring us good luck, as do the Roman Catholics who have little images on their dashboards, or around their neck as though they will bring protection and good luck. 

     Jesus Christ is God, is our Lord and Savior and His name should be written on our hearts in such a way, a powerful way that it will create in us to have such a profound experience of His peach and a heart that is fill with His praise. This is Authentic Christianity, and Authentic Christian Faith. Nothing else!

Should we again break Thy commandments, 

    and join in affinity with the people of these

abominations? Wouldest not Thou be angry 

    with us, so that there should be no 

remnant nor escaping? 

                       Ezra 9:14

Seek Truth, not anything else

Richard L. Crumb

Harsh But Loving Words Of Jesus Christ: A Warning!

Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, 

shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he 

that doeth the will of My Father which is in heaven. 

Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, 

have we not prophesied in thy name? And in Thy 

name have cast out devils? and in Thy name done 

many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto 

them, I never knew you: depart from Me, ye 

that work iniquity.

Matthew 7:21-23 

     Before I begin I was off yesterday going to my doctor appointment in regards to my cancer surgery, so far no sign of metastasis (guess I have to wait for heaven). Had a great weekend before that with my children, my daughter's birthday and my sisters. Good time was had. 

       The opening verses should cause you to shudder as the Greek word "never" is in the perfect tense meaning, I never knew you, not now, not before, and will not in the future. What seems to be a fault in Christianity is that so many have succumbed to liberalism, socialism, and even have accepted evolution has a possibility if not fact. This has led to cultural Christianity. Some have reverted to an old heresy that they can be a force for the supernatural, even speaking of prophesying, healing, and work oriented as though this is actual Christianity. It is not! Doing the will of God is Authentic Christianity. Not what man says the Bible says about works, for it does not give warrant for the many beliefs that are promoted as truth. Yes, God does see your heart. This ought to give rise to fear! If your heart is not in line with God's will according to Scripture then your heart is misleading you. Authentic Christians understand that they are the bride of Christ and that Jesus Christ is the bridegroom and they must become the friend of the Bridegroom. All this running around attempting to be little gods by works is to attract to themselves attention and goodness and purity never should do this for our attraction is to be drawn to Jesus Christ. To maintain this friendship we must be very careful of our moral and vital relationship to Jesus Christ than any other thing, even of obedience. We must see that nothing interferes with our relationship to Jesus Christ. What happens is that if we do not care for this relationship we become amateur providences, and my work against Jesus Christ will we use His weapons.

     What is purity? It is not innocence, it is much more. Purity is the outcome of sustained spiritual sympathy with God. We grow in purity. Yes, we are pure in God's sight through Jesus Christ, but we must grow in this life into purity. We must be brought into perfect accord with Jesus Christ and this means there are things we must scorn to do or to think, and some legitimate things we must scorn to touch. 

     All this requires a change in our character, a change from the inside/out and a habit that has developed changing your character to be in line with the will of God. Our boast should not be in ourselves, what we are doing, no matter how good it may be, our boast is: "May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ" (Galatians 6:14). Authentic Faith will always be recognized, evidenced by, changed lives. This is what Jesus is referring when He said "I never knew you," and this is because Jesus will not recognize those who will not recognize Him. 

     The truth is: we must understand that what is required of Authentic Christians is total dependence on the atonement of Jesus Christ. It is by this we are empowered to live a life that is pleasing to Him and this is possible by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is given to you so that when you allow the Holy Spirit to lead you will be led in the right direction and live a life of obedience to the commandments of God. 

     WHAT IS THE TRUE STATE OF YOUR HEART?

Then answered the LORD unto Job

    out of the whirlwind, and said,

 Gird up they loins now like a man,

    I will demand of thee, and declare

thou unto Me. Wilt thou also disannul

    my judgment? Wilt thou condemn Me,

that thou mayest be righteous.

                      Job 40:6-8

Again: What is the true state of your heart?

Richard L. Crumb

Faulty Thinking About God's Requirements

But God commendeth His love toward us, in that,

 while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. 

Much more then, being now justified by His blood,

we shall be saved from wrath through Him. For if, 

when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God 

by the death of His Son, much more, being reconciled

 we shall be saved by His life. And not only so, 

but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 

by whom we have now received the atonement.

Romans 5:8-11 

     The root problem lies at the foot of faulty thinking about what is required for a person to be an Authentic Christian, to have a relationship with God, with Jesus Christ that is acceptable with God. Nominal, or cultural Christians often speak about God and justification and when listened to carefully it will be found that they hold a very superficial and dangerous notions about Christianity. This seems so out of place as the Bible is very clear, as the opening verses so clearly and plainly point out that Jesus Christ paid for our sins. Yet, some still think of God's mercy as some general principle, or that works, even though they will not admit that what they are doing is "works," that they seem to think that they weigh against our bad life, our bad habits, and that they are somehow adequate ground for fallen humanity to be able to stand before God. 

     You do not have to be a Christian, even and Authentic Christian to be a good person, or, that you have done no crime against society. Is this enough? No! God commands us to live a certain way, to not violate those commands. You might say: "I was tricked." Maybe you were, but that means that once you know what was done to you and how you responded that it was against God and His commands, you repent, that is you do not return to such things. If a person thinks that their good works are enough, and if the self-evaluate they will come out on the positive side. It is not that these persons deny the existence of Jesus Christ, they even pray in His name, and even attempt to demonstrate some measure of conformity, a conformity that they believe to be Christian behavior. What is wrong is that they do not seem to have an understanding as to the meaning of what redemption in Jesus Christ actually entails. 

      Some people go further in their thinking that they have some sense that what Jesus Christ has done to make us acceptable to God. Here is a problem, this thinking stops at this point because their ideas do not involve any personal commitment or responsibility. Those who do little, if anything above going to Church, to some meetings, etc., see that what Jesus Christ did on the cross makes God to be more liberal in His treatment of sin. We see this where some Churches all homosexuality to exist, to even hold positions in the Church, or allow abortions, to allow adultery, divorce, etc., and this is nothing more than what the world around them are doing, they are cultural Christians. Somehow they think that being "Loving," "accepting," "allowing," "doing," and that if they do not sin too much and live a reasonably good life; they will get to heaven. 

     I do not speak of what goes on in the heart of a person, I cannot know that, I only can judge by their lives and if they are in conformity to Scripture or the world. We judge not by our thinking, but by Scripture and its teachings and anything else is not Scriptural. Yes, this is hard at times for cultural Christians often uses the right language, yet, they do not rely on the redemptive work of Jesus Christ, or God's grace as their focus is on their own accomplishments, not on Jesus Christ and His sacrifice. 

     If we, or you, think this way it is almost impossible that you can come to understand, to grips with the inadequacy of you own efforts or the impossibility to apply fully the obligation's of God's word. What is so often done is to create an illusion, and it is this allusion that keeps a person from acknowledging their own guilt and helplessness. We all must come to terms with our inability before God. We all must, that is if we have repented of our sins and have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, change from the inside/out, to meet the commands of God. The problem is: All this faulty thinking is the result of holding mistaken conceptions of the basic principles of Christianity.

For the leaders of this people cause 

    them to err; and they that are led

of them are destroyed. Therefore the 

    Lord shall have no joy in their young

men, neither shall have mercy on their

   fatherless and widows: for every one

is an hypocrite and an evildoer, and 

   every mouth speaketh folly. For all 

this His anger is not turned away, but 

   His hand is stretched out still.

                    Isaiah 9:16-17

God has not given up, His hand is stretching out

Richard L. Crumb

Faulty Views Of Our Acceptance With God

And behold, I send the promise of My Father upon you:

 but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, unto ye 

be endued (ye be clothed with) power from on high.

Luke 24:49

And I will pray the Father, and He shall give 

you another Comforter, that He may abide

 with you for ever. But the Comforter, which 

is the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send 

in My name, He shall teach you all things, 

and bring all things to your remembrance, 

whatsoever I have said unto you.

John 14:16, 26

And being assembled together with them, 

commanded them that they should not 

depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise

 of the Father, which saith He, 

ye have heard of me.

Acts 1:4 

     Many Christians have little understanding of the Holy Spirit or how He works in our lives. Many Christians have developed a theology about the Holy Spirit by creating a safe religiosity that they can manage, that is, they can do things as say that it is of the Holy Spirit, a development by means of their own abilities. This is not Authentic Christian Faith! This is not what the Scriptures teach us about the Holy Spirit. How can it be that so many professing Christians have such a small understanding of the Holy Spirit? This can be attributed that cultural Christians are a product of false Biblical truth. It is a product of religiosity, a system created by and for nominal Christians. Jesus gave this as a warning and truth: "Apart from Me you can do nothing" (John 15:5). Yes, it is true that we can much apart from Jesus but what we do has little to do with the realites of the kingdom of God. 

     What does a life of spiritual reality require? The enabling influence of the Holy Spirit. The opening Scriptures give us this fact that by the Holy Spirit we can become enlightened as to our understanding, a purifying of our minds, and work in our lives to aid us to understand our needs. The Holy Spirit brings us to that point whereby we repent and this by our believing for the Holy Spirit gives us the ability to turn to Jesus Christ and repent. The Holy Spirit does not take away our personality, rather the Holy Spirit enters into us with His presence in order that Jesus Christ might dwell in us. All that the Father has decreed is accomplished in you by our experience of what the Son of God accomplished on the cross. It is impossible to have Authentic Christian Faith apart from the operations of the Holy Spirit: "If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ" (Romans 8:9). 

     Scripture is so clear, so plain on these things that it would seem impossible to call oneself a Christian and then deny these truths, to develop a theology on the Holy Spirit apart from those truths. When a theology is built upon a man's theology we can simply see how this has worked out in history and we can plainly see that this is not true spirituality. 

     The Church in so many cases accepted a faulty thinking about the acceptance with God, about salvation. Many so-called, nominal Christians, cultural Christians have little understanding as to what the Bible teaches about the workings of the Holy Spirit and the wonderful gift that a person receives of what Jesus Christ has done and it this knowledge about Him that is our first hint about us, about our fallen nature, and we are convicted of sin. This is a rare thing as many will never listen to the voice of the calling of the Holy Spirit to repent. Men who will reject Christ, or will associate themselves with a "Christian" Church because it makes them feel good about themselves, or pious are seeking something other than true repentance. Jesus Christ has told us that when the Holy Spirit comes that the Holy Spirit would convict a person of sin and when aroused by the Holy Spirit they are brought to a place where their conscience is roused to the point to accept God, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit and enters into the presence of God. Man so often will not leave the presence of others for this is a bother to them, to their desires and leads them to not want a relationship with God. This is sin against a Holy God: "O Lord, to us belongeth confusion of face, to our kings, to our princes, and to our fathers, because we have sinned against thee" (Daniel 9:8). Jesus added these words: "And whoever speaketh a word against the Son of Man,it shall be forgiven him: but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come" (Matthew 12:32). A person must come to a conviction of their sin(s), not just caught in sin, but has sinned against a Holy God. Forgiveness and holiness are two sides of the same coin and are seen to be authentic when a person who has been forgiven proves he/she is forgiven by being the opposite to what he was and this by the grace of God. 

    Cultural Christians have a very superficial and a very dangerous understanding about the Holy Spirit. It is though they are putting the proverbial horse before the cart. A person must repent, must believe and this seems to have taken second place among the cultural Christian, among the Pentecostal Christians, and among the Charismatic Christians as they have placed in importance works rather than repentance. This is true of other Christian Churches. This seems so incomprehensible to consider what Jesus paid on the cross for our sin, that some will think that some general principle of mercy, or that our deeds will outweigh our sins are adequate for a person to stand in a right relationship with God. 

    The entrance into the kingdom of god is through repentance destroying a person' respectable goodness. Until that is done the Holy Spirit cannot form you into the image of the Son of God. You cannot, nor will not repent by means of yourself: it requires God as it is the gift of God. God hands to you this gift and you must take it, but you did not earn the right to have God extend to you this gift. The love of God, His mercy, His justice, is extended to you, for the world, and to reject this gift is to reject God. It is free! Yes, it is true that to receive this gift, to change your life to be in accordance with God's commands may, or might, bring trials and persecution rejoice you are doing what God desires for you to do and those rejecting you are only rejecting God. God has already placed your name in the Book of Life and eternal life is already yours. 

    So then, the first step is to repent. Examine yourself and see if you have repented according to that which is acceptable to God. Are you adding something other than what Scriptures informs us? If so, STOP!

For thus saith the high and lofty One

    that inhabiteth eternity, whose name

is Holy; I dwell in the high and lofty place,

    with him also that is of a contrite and 

humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the 

   humble, and to revive the heart of the 

contrite ones.

                     Isaiah 57:15

Repent: Believe: Add nothing

Richard L. Crumb 

The Destruction Of Self

For if I build again the things which I destroyed, 

I make myself a transgressor. For I through the law 

am dead to the law, that I might live unto God.

 I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live;

yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life 

which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of 

the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself 

for me. I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law,

 then Christ is dead in vain.

Galatians 3:18-21

     Authentic Christians are those who have crucified themselves with Jesus Christ, they have signed their death warrant of the disposition of sin, that is to turn all emotional and impressions, furthermore, intellectual beliefs into a verdict of morality and this verdict of morality stands against the disposition of sin. Authentic Christians do not claim any right to themselves. The opening Scriptures from the apostle Paul makes it clear that Authentic Christians do not become determined to imitate Jesus Christ, no, they endeavour to follow Jesus Christ. Authentic Christians become identified with Jesus Christ, identified with the death of Jesus Christ. A person does not become sinless in this life except that God the Father sees a believer through the Son, Jesus Christ. We all know that we will, and often do, come to a place where we must make a moral decision and to act upon that decision and it is then that the cross of Jesus Christ, if it is, is then wrought in you, and me, so then, we are free to commit ourselves to God allowing the Holy Spirit to be able to impart the holiness of Jesus Christ. You are not changed into a new individual in this life for you are still human so that your individuality remains but is radically altered. To hold on to your individuality outside the realm of Authentic Christianity is satanic and must be destroyed. 

     The life a person lives in this life, the life of the flesh should not be the life a person longs to live. Men can see your actions and how you exercise your faith so that if there is not destruction of satanic right to yourself leading a person to be more cultural than an Authentic Christian is to destroy what God desires to do through you. Many will turn away from anything that "smacks" of God, of Jesus Christ, of Christianity. Our faith is in Jesus Christ, not in faith so that our faith is not faith in faith but in the Son of God and Authentic Christian Faith overlaps, even overleaps all conscious bounds so that you have become identical to Jesus Christ. 

     We have feelings, emotions and can have a knowing of Jesus Christ who has provided our profound feelings and can have help to aid us to maintain our diligence in our pursuit of Authentic Christian Faith. Christians, have something that this world does not have, even those who claim to be Christian, and that is the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. This resource is so great, more than just a verification of our senses for the Holy Spirit lives in us to make our Christian walk and our experience as truly a person who has become the image of Jesus Christ. We become, and should be, humble to think that God loves us so much that He came to live in all who have put their faith and belief in the Son of God who is Him in the flesh to give us what we need now in this life, and life eternal. We become dependent on the grace of God which is working in us. 

     Cultural Christians have a view of the Holy Spirit that is askew from Scripture rightly interpreted. Cultural Christians have an understanding of the Holy Spirit that is not Scriptural and can be seen in how they exercise their faith. This cultural Christianity in its exercise of faith is more about experience and have a false sense of security that they are being empowered by God's Spirit. This is a lack of knowledge, not intellectually unknown. There is reality in the empowerment of the Holy Spirit but not a cultural understanding of this empowerment. We are not to take advantage of this empowerment of the Holy Spirit to somehow reach authenticity in our faith. This is not the faith of Scripture. Our faith is not in experience, not in some working(s) and was not the life of the early Christians who were being enticed by the Judaizers to go back to what they have left behind, the law. Well, you may not have left the Mosaic Law, but you have as an Authentic Christian left the law of this culture. Do not return to it! You and I are to live the life of Authentic Christian Faith. We are to have right view of the Holy Spirit and this will be the theme of the next blog. 

Except the LORD build the house,

     they labor in vain that build it:

except the LORD keep the city, the

    watchman waketh but in vain.

                     Psalm 127:1

Are you laboring only for God?

Richard L. Crumb

Rightful Stimulation: Rightful Emotions

When I was a child, I spake as a child, 

I understood as a child, I thought as a child:

 but when I became a man, I put away childish 

things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; 

but then face to face: now I know in part; 

but then shall I know even as also I am known. 

And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; 

but the greatest of these is charity.

1Chorinthians 13:11-13

    Human growth is from the beginning as a one cell organism and continues to grow unto maturity. Knowledge begins at conception and continues unto maturity, from little understanding unto a greater understanding. This is life and cannot be denied and the only understanding we have of this universe, life itself, is incomplete, we see things darkly, as looking through a murky window. We grow in knowledge but we do not come to a complete understanding. This is true of Christians: they begin as a babe and see things through the eyes of a babe that has yet to have enough information to give an honest and better complete understanding. This is where study comes to the forefront: we study to gain not just knowledge but understanding and this takes research, examination, and a desire to know the truth. Life is a journey and we do not know all the consequences of our life and far too often those consequences quench the desire to go further in our journey. To give aid to us in this journey we need to come to understand the alternatives, and how to resolve conflicting statements, effects, consequences so that a person can complete successfully their journey. You might at times feel the need to quit, and yet to quit is to invite dangers into the equation and the finish line loses its focus and the vision we might have had or have, loses is power to tap into unused potential.

     Spiritual life and its dynamics with all its flaws and weaknesses are part of Christian life and our Christian journey. We are reminded of the danger of neglecting this task, this journey, this adventure, an adventure of supreme importance. Yes, we need knowledge, but more than knowledge, we need motivation and that motivation comes from emotional influence so that we do what needs doing. A sane person will acknowledge that they do not always do what we know needs doing, in fact we often do not do those things we need to do. We will do what we are adequately motivated to do, therefore, emotions supply the extra impetus to move us into action. 

     This is a fact: our knowledge of Jesus Christ who is the Son of God, the Second Person of the Trinity alone is adequate to cause us to live holy lives. We know that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world. We know that His suffering on the cross was enough to pay this debt owed to God and to be the propitiation for our sins. Question: Is the suffering of Jesus Christ for our sins to cause us to rid ourselves of anything that hinders our wholehearted devotion to Him? Apparently not! We must admit even with all this knowledge we still sin. Have you been brought to the point where you have experienced Authentic Christian Faith for Jesus. Has the knowledge of the death of Jesus Christ on the cross penetrated your mind and has made its way to your heart? Do you have genuine gratitude towards Jesus Christ and have developed Authentic Christian Faith? If so then you have a new set or resources that can motivate. These resources motivate us to obey and to trust Jesus and are not these responses reasonable? What would be unreasonable is to have no feelings whatsoever about God's love and mercy and grace. 

     People often make statements to the fact that to have emotions for an invisible being, to have a relationship with an invisible being, not only makes no sense but are construed to have a mental defect. A difficulty does not make the reality impossible. Temporal emotions do not always respond according to some fixed set of criteria. Example: we often have more sadness and pity for the death of an individual than for the death of a mass of humanity, slaughtered as has been seen around the earth. That is not rational! Another example is that we often have emotions that are responding to a story, a story in a novel, that which is fiction, than when we see a scene, as in a news report, of a battle that is actually taking place where people are being killed, maimed, and are not move much or at all. What this teaches us is that emotions are unpredictable. There must be another way to stimulate our emotions in regard to Jesus Christ and His teachings, His commands. There is no way to touch, to have physical contact with Jesus Christ, to be in proximity to hear Him speak. Question: are sight and touch and hearing and any other instrument to be in contact with Jesus Christ the only resources to generate emotion, an emotion that motivates our spiritual life? NO! Authentic Christian Faith knows of an entirely different set of dynamics that makes it possible to experience the unseen. 

     Jesus Christ is not some abstract idea, and abstract construct or concept: HE IS A PERSON! Yes, Jesus is God, but He is also Man, the only God/Man, the incarnate God and He is not out somewhere in the great universe; He is present. We may not see Him but that does not change the fact that He is present, here in the present and we can know that He is present. How? Authentic Christian Faith has others ways of making contact. We can study His word, His revelation to us about Himself and we can by our study, come to know that He is Truth and that truth gives us the ability to see Him, to know He exists so that when He says that a day is coming that we will know fully we can believe: "Now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face; now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known" (1Corithians 13:12). Let me not pass this by: You will be known as you are known: this should give to you impetus to follow Jesus Christ and all that He said to do in the work that He has given to His children, to Authentic Christians. 

The thoughts of the wicked are an
    abomination to the LORD: but the
words of the pure are pleasant words.
                       Proverbs 15:26

Be stimulated by the truth

Richard L. Crumb 
    

Walking By Faith: Not By Sight

Therefore we are always confident, knowing that,

  whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent 

from the Lord: (For we walk by faith, not by sight:).

2Corinthians 5:6-7 

     Today I turn 75 years old: where did all the time go? My life, and maybe yours also, is like a wall street graph, lots of ups and downs, but the line is always moving upward, if it did not have an upward track, well, then things are bad. Learning is something everyone does throughout their lives, but it is not just learning that is important; it is first, learning what is right and what is wrong, and second, to exercise life in a positive manner. I am not just speaking of living a "positive life" as proposed by some so that a person feels good about themselves, it is living a positive life that is built upon learning about the Lord Jesus Christ and how we are to follow His commands. Learning to control ourselves, this is what is missing in many lives, lust rules, they must have the best of everything, even if they must go into debt to get it, or even if they have to do some cheating to get it (adultery is one such lust). Even Authentic Christians face life with a fallen nature and can be seen how a person is drawn away by desires that draw away a person from Jesus. What is found by many is that when something they consider significant, some object of desire, or some euphoric worship these object of desire they are found to be at the center of the heart. 

     Emotions can easily distract to the point whereby they become imperative and here is where Bible study, reading the Bible comes to play as this is were learning becomes a training tool so that our quest is for a godly life, one based upon Scripture and not some man(s) opinion. Emotions are like that wall street graph, lots of ups and downs and often the downs are so great that harm comes to a person. There are times when we are conscious of God's attention. Then, when we begin to work for God, to live a life that is God pleasing we become sad, pathetic and the trials of life, the difficulties of life begin to obscure the duty of an Authentic Christian and leads to living as a cultural Christian. What happens is that a person attempts to pull themselves out of this downward spin of emotion by associating with a "church" that offers supernatural worship, very worldly type of emotional services, making a person to feel godly, except, when alone the trials and difficulties come back to the forefront. When this happens a person tries to reintroduce what has been rare moments of inspiration. This is a true sign that God is not what is wanted: what is wanted is the thrill, the emotional high. Authentic Christians should never live for the rare moments, there should be no rare moments, there should only be living the life that God wants His children to live. God will not give a person inspiration if we are looking in all the wrong places. God will give inspiration to the truthful seeker and He will give inspiration when you are in danger of being led away by false inspiration. 

     Here is an important fact: We must never make our moments of inspiration our standard; our standard is our duty and our duty is to simply live for God, for Jesus Christ, to become formed in His image, and to take the Gospel wherever we go, and whatever we do. Put your focus on Jesus Christ, our God and our Savior, this and this alone is your anecdote against the disease of cultural Christianity, against the fiery darts of Satan. 

They that trust in the LORD shall be

    as mount Zion, which cannot be

removed, but abideth for ever. As the

   mountains are round about Jerusalem,

so the LORD is round about His people

   from henceforth even for ever.

                      Psalm 125:1-2

Put your trust in God: not man!

Richard L. Crumb