How To Do Good (part three)

Now that we know that there is no way to please God but to receive Christ, one would think that all of our troubles are over, right? Not exactly. The ideal way to live is to simply know that there is nothing that we can do to please God, but have Christ. If have Christ, then we have what it takes within our hearts to be pleasing to God. We are NOT saying that because you have Christ in your heart, that we are able to keep the Ten Commandments PERFECTLY as a result! We a s human beings will live in a body that was born in a sinful nature all of our lives, but sin should not dominate our lives. This means that occasionally, we will mess up, but all that we have to offer God is Christ, so we have nothing to worry about in this respect.

What happens when we receive Christ, is that we then receive God's Spirit which we did not have before, which is why it was utterly impossible for us to please God. Now that we are saved, The Holy Spirit begins to go to work in our lives and work on bringing our outward man up to the position of our inward man. hmmm, let me back up a second and explain that part. When we are born into this world, we leave our mother's womb and we're born physically alive, but spiritually dead. This means that we are alive in our fleshly body, but our spiritual man is not alive. Before Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden, they were alive physically and spiritually. Their fleshly body was sinless, AND they had God's Spirit, which made them totally and completely ONE with God. But...since they sinned, their spiritual man is the one that died, while their fleshly bodies remained alive for another 900+ years. So the reason that people say that we need to be born AGAIN is because they mean to say that our inward man (the spiritual man that died in the Garden of Eden) is not alive, but needs to be. When we receive Christ, our inward man (spiritual man) is born again or made alive again. Some religions teach that someone can be born again, then later born again again. This is incorrect. One can only be born again once. Then after we are born again, the Holy Spirit begins to bring out physical man in alignment with what God has done on the inside of us.

The other character that is rarely mentioned, only usually in passing, is the older brother. When the younger brother comes home and they kill the fatted calf, the father throws a party to celebrate the younger son's return. The older son doesn't join the party because he is jealous that the father has thrown a party for his younger brother, who left and lived sinfully, while he has never left and has always worked for his father. This older son is seldom spoken of, but is a KEY in learning to live for Christ effectively. The reason why we say this is because the older son thinks that he has to work hard to gain his father's approval. The father's response is "Son, you are with me, and all i have is yours," which what the father is saying is that he has never had to earn anything from his father. When we have our kids, and they live under our roof, we don't expect our kids to support themselves while living in our home. Why, because it is our job to provide for our children while they are in our care. The same is even truer for our Heavenly Father. God does NOT expect us to earn our salvation or work to keep our salvation. What He has given us is freely given to us, and there is nothing that we can take away from Christ's Finished Work, nor add to it. Everything that we will ever need exists in Christ paying the price for sin for us. If we are poor, sick, sad, sinful, hopeless, struggling, forsaken, and abandoned....those things are results of the fall of man due to sin. Christ paid the price for sin...so in effect, if we are poor....because we have Christ in our hearts, we then have the power to get wealth. If we have sickness in our physical body, because we have Christ in our lives, then by His stripes we are healed. These problems are not a result of our personal sins per say, but because we live in bodies that have been exposed to sin. Christ can heal us of all of our afflictions. Some of these happen miraculously and at once, others take years before they happen in our lives. But the fact is, Christ died to give it all to us.

Please, if you have received Christ in your heart, don't spend a lifetime like the oldest son working with boney fingers to earn what Christ came to give you for free. And if you are a wayward son, don't live in the pig pen when you could have a mansion in Christ. God loves you and is happy just being one with you. Won't you come to Him and Rest?