Instead if teaching on what we should be doing for God;
Let us teach on what God in Christ has already done for us.
Instead of majoring on our works for God, let us focus on what He has and is now doing on our behalf.
Not on how much we need to love and serve God;
But that He first loved us and desires to serve and bless us; for that is His very character and nature!
Not that there is anything that God needs from us, or that He is deficient in any thing, or in any way, that we would presume to think that our good works would somehow impress Him to elevate us in some way!
What does He need, that He hasn't already got.
“Hear ye now what the Lord saith; Arise, contend thou before the mountains, and let the hills hear thy voice. Hear ye, O mountains, the Lord's controversy, and ye strong foundations of the earth: for the Lord hath a controversy with his people, and he will plead with Israel. O my people, what have I done unto thee? and wherein have I wearied thee? testify against me. For I brought thee up out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed thee out of the house of servants; and I sent before thee Moses, Aaron, and Miriam. O my people, remember now what Balak king of Moab consulted, and what Balaam the son of Beor answered him from Shittim unto Gilgal; that ye may know the righteousness of the Lord. Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the high God? shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?”
Micah 6:1-8 KJV
“Do not err, my beloved brethren. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures. Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath: For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God. Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls. But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed. If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man's religion is vain. Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.”
James 1:16-27 KJV
James says here, that the person that looks into the mirror of the word of God, even though he beholds himself, he does not truly discern the real him.
For he goes away and forgets who he is.
James says that this person is deceiving themselves and cannot do the things that he should; for he not only does not see, but spiritually does not hear, or discern who he is in Christ!
His mind is telling his heart a different story to that which his head or mind is telling him.
He is that double minded man in the beginning of the chapter, who cannot see afar off, and has forgotten that he was purged from his old sins.
If we take what was said earlier on; we see that this man is unstable in all his ways, for he is two-minded.
With his mind, he tries to serve the letter of the law, but with his heart the inward promptings and desires of his brand new spirit, perfectly created in the image of His Creator God, being at one with Him; one spirit with the living God.
BEHOLD, in both vs 23 and 24, comes from the Greek word, Katanoeo, which interpreted means -:
a strengthened form of , Noeo, to perceive, (Kata, intensive), denotes “the action of the mind in apprehending certain facts about a thing”; hence, “to consider”; “behold,” Acts 7:31-32; Jas. 1:23-24. See CONSIDER, DISCOVER, PERCEIVE.
To LOOK INTO, in verse 25, is the Greek word, Parakupto, which means -:
lit. and primarily, “to stoop sideways” ,
Para, aside, Kupto, to bend forward”), denotes “to stoop to look into,” Luke 24:12,
“stooping and looking in” (KJV, “stooping down”), John 20:5, 11; metaphorically in Jas. 1:25, of “looking” into the perfect law of liberty; in 1 Pet. 1:12 of things which the angels desire “to look into.
We either casually look upon the surface image of ourselves in the mirror of God's Word; or we look into and gaze intentionally at the essence and substance of who we really are in Christ!
We cannot as believers serve two masters; for we will hate one and love the other.
We cannot walk in the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, in true liberty, while we allow our own hearts to be deceived to serve the letter of the law of sin and death.
No comments:
Post a Comment