FUNDAMENTALS OF DISCIPLESHIP
Galatians 5:24 And
they that are Messiah's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.
Last week’s post ended with this comment:
We
do not accept Yahushua into our
hearts
and lives; he accepts us into his.
The difference this makes in the mind of the believer is
life changing. If we think of our having
accepted Messiah, then we bring him into our lives, and we endeavor to accommodate
him somewhat, while expecting him to bless us in every aspect of the life that
our flesh wants to live. If we perceive
of him having accepted us into his life; then we can bring no rules or
regulations or even personal preferences into that relationship. He is in total control of our life and
destiny. He has welcomed us into his
life, and it is our job to “get with the program,” and learn how to live the
way he instructs us to live.
Imagine for a moment that you live in far north Alaska…or
maybe the frozen tundra of Siberia. The landscape
is bleak, and everything out there, the wolves, the bears, the tigers, the
leopards, and the weather will kill you at the first opportunity. Everything you see for miles and miles is
snow-covered. What you must do in order
to survive is constantly on your mind.
In the midst of this intolerably harsh environment you
come upon a man who tells you to follow him.
He leads you in this remote wilderness to a large log cabin lodge. He invites
you to come inside. As the front door
closes behind you, your gaze is filled with groups of people sitting in
separate areas all across the main floor, smiles on their faces, hot chocolate
in their hands, and cheerful conversation taking place. Clearly, they are enjoying themselves without
a single thought of the harsh wintry abyss outside the walls of the lodge. A
central fireplace keeps the entire building warm and cozy.
The man introduces you to his father, who says:
“Hello, and welcome to the lodge. I am the master of the
lodge. We have a room reserved for
you. In it are all the basic
necessities. We have breakfast at 7:00
AM, lunch at noon, and supper at 6:00 PM.
You will be expected to attend all mealtimes. We have two simple rules, here. Rule #1 – Everyone shares in the upkeep of
the lodge, from dusting, to vacuuming, to doing the laundry, to helping in the kitchen. Everyone rotates through each of these
chores, and the duty roster is posted on the bulletin board in the
hallway. Rule #2 – I am the Master of
the Lodge, and it is my responsibility to maintain order and control of the
lodge; therefore, you must do whatever I ask you to do at any time. These two rules are inviolate. If at any time you decide you cannot abide by
these rules, you are always welcome to leave the lodge. If you persist in violating these rules,
seeking your own interests rather than the interests of the lodge, you may be
put out of the lodge. Do you understand?”
Your first reaction to this introduction is, “No problem,
man. Do you know what it is like out
there??” For the next week or two, you
give yourself wholly to the lodge. You
meet new friends. The food is excellent;
and the chores are not a burden. Also,
the things the Master of the Lodge has asked of you have not been
unreasonable. It does not take long,
however, before you realize there are days when you would like to sleep in and
miss the 7:00 AM breakfast. You also
never liked dusting when you were growing up doing chores as a child at home;
and you still don’t like it. You hate
doing laundry; and there are a couple of people in the lodge who are so
exceedingly happy and cheerful all the time that they drive you insane.
You begin to consider, on the outside of the lodge at
least I could decide when I would wake up, when I would eat; and I only did
whatever chores were absolutely necessary.
You remember what it was like having control over your own life. It seems, as you recall, that it was a good
thing; and though life is a bit harsh on the outside, at least you could live
it how you wanted; so, you gather your supplies and slip outside.
Ahh, the freedom you feel being your own master again…being
able to make your own choices, doing whatever you want to do, when you want to
do it. The problem is, every choice you
make for yourself proves to be the wrong choice; and everything out there still
wants to kill you at the first opportunity. Once again, you constantly are having
to think about how to stay alive.
This is a picture of the choice between walking in the
Spirit versus walking in the flesh.
Walking in the Spirit, though representing a complete loss of control
over your life, is a life where all of your needs are provided and your life is
cared for not only by the Master of the lodge; but by the others who are
residing there. You give no thought to
the need to survive. Every action, every
decision and every task in the lodge has only your best interests at
heart. Walking in the flesh represents
maintaining total control of your own life; but your every decision is
self-destructive; and everything in your environment wants you dead.
Hebrew 2:14 Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood,
he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might
destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil;
15 And deliver them who through fear of death were all their
lifetime subject to bondage.
The young man who left the lodge to go out into the
frozen wilderness, to seek for you and bring you to the lodge was
Yahushua. He entered that realm that was
under the control of death, where the fear of death holds men in bondage. The only escape from the fear of death is
walking in the Spirit…abiding in the lodge.
Galatians 5:24 And
they that are Messiah's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.
I have met hundreds of believers over
the past forty years who were totally frustrated with this verse. Though
they have dedicated their lives to Yahushua, they have never found the kind of
freedom from the flesh that this verse suggests is expected of all who follow
Messiah. Two explanations for this immediately come to mind.
First, virtually every person I have ever known who
professed Yahushua as their Messiah came into relationship with Him through
what we have called an "epistle-based" gospel (which is not a gospel,
according to the apostle Paul). 20th-century evangelism has focused on
directing people to "accept Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and
Savior." This is a grave error in evangelism, as Yahushua Himself
commanded that REPENTANCE and remission of sins should be preached in His
name. As I stated above, accepting him into our lives does not require a
change of mastery in our lives. We
retain the control. The Gospel of the Kingdom, however, requires those who
would come to Messiah to lay down their lives, forsaking their sins their past
and their future to take up the life and mastery of Yahushua Messiah.
Secondly, it is important to understand this verse in the
context of Paul’s letter to the Galatians. Preceding this verse was a
demonstration of what we can expect from the flesh versus what we can expect
from the spirit. The works of the flesh itemized by Paul was a list of
deeds that are universally identified as unacceptable forms of behavior. Walking
in the Spirit was revealed to be the means of escape from the flesh and the
works the flesh produces. The list of
the “fruit of the Spirit” itemizes attributes that are borne of selfless
submission and obedience to the will of IAUE; but more importantly, in the
Spirit, we ARE crucified with Messiah; and our affections and lust are no
longer a part of the man we have become in Messiah. When Paul said that those belonging to
Messiah have crucified the flesh with
its affections and lusts, he was not saying that we have made the difficult
choice of abandoning our fleshly nature.
He was saying that in the Spirit, we are no longer that person. Fleshly lusts and affections are not a
function of the man we are when we are walking in the Spirit.
When a person’s life demonstrates a
mixture of the deeds of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit, it reveals that
he spends time both inside and outside of the lodge. Living and coping in
the world with its corruptible lusts requires a hardness of heart and
mind. To survive in the world, one must
be selfish because the fear of death is constantly looming overhead reinforcing
all the issues of self-preservation; and with that selfishness comes pride,
envy, jealousy, impurity, etc. These
attributes are in conflict with what the Spirit desires to produce in us and
maintains chaos in our lives and jeopardizes our eternity. The Master of the lodge, in our illustration
above, informed the new guest that persistent disobedience to the rules could
result in his being removed from the lodge.
Galatians 5:21 … of the which I tell you
before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things
shall not inherit the kingdom of IAUE.
Theologians have for centuries tried to bend and
twist the meaning and application of this verse; but the plain and simple truth
is, if we choose to live our lives in the frozen tundra of the flesh, we have
no place in the Kingdom of IAUE. It is
really quite simple. Life in the frozen
wilderness produces the wrong kind of heart in man. Life in the lodge produces the Master’s
objective, a kingdom heart.
Paul provided in one sentence, the key
to recognizing where we trip up most of the time.
Galatians 5:26 Let
us not be desirous of vain glory, provoking one another, envying one another.
Pride. Elohim resists the proud,
but He gives grace to the humble. We should recognize our natural
proclivity for "vain glory." The whole world is focused on
self-image and self-worth, because the very essence of the flesh is “self.” This verse serves as a warning for us,
letting us know what, more than anything else, draws us away from walking in
the spirit. In the moment we entertain a thought to say or to do
something in order to influence the way others will think about us, we are
standing outside on the front porch of the lodge. That is the moment in which we should go back
inside and slam the door shut to remain in the security of the Spirit. In that instance when we consider saying or
doing something we know the Master has forbidden, we are in a precarious place;
and we need to reaffirm who is our Master.
The fact we even consider the flesh lets us know that we have stepped
out of the Spirit; because when we are walking in the Spirit, our affections
and lusts ARE crucified.
Kingdom heart: a heart that offers no resistance to the performance
of the will of IAUE.
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