WBS.047
FUNDAMENTALS
OF DISCIPLESHIP
A KINGDOM HEART – XVII
Kingdom heart: a heart that offers no resistance to the
performance of the will of IAUE.
Romans 12:1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of
Elohim, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto
Elohim, which is your reasonable service.
2 And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of Elohim.
2 And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of Elohim.
Last week,
we
concluded with this comment: “Once we have offered up our bodies to IAUE as a living sacrifice, His
first instruction to us as stewards of our body is to renew our minds so we are
capable of knowing and understanding His will. Our knowing his will is a
necessity for IAUE to be able to make any profitable use of our bodies. Our
participation with the performance of His will as the steward of the body we
have offered to Him, is the beginning of our experience with salvation. This is the moment when we begin to realize
why man was created by IAUE in the first place; and the moment when we begin to
experience the joy of fulfilling the purpose of our design.”
[This blog is focused on the
fundamentals of discipleship. I must
admit that I spend considerable time tearing down the structures that have been
erected upon a false foundation in order to be able to build a true
building. Not everyone, however, has
been programmed with wrong religious thinking.
I apologize to those readers who have not initially responded to the
false gospel of contemporary Christianity.
Please bear with me as we deal with this significant need in the lives
of the majority of believers, today.]
I noticed repeatedly this past week, both in Christian TV
broadcasts and in Christian music lyrics the refrain, “We are saved by grace.” In
every single instance, you could replace the word, “grace” with “mercy” and you
would still retain the meaning and implication of the one speaking. The traditional idea of being saved by grace is
alien to what the Scripture means when it states this truth. The Scripture does not suggest nor imply that
we are saved as an act of mercy, or of unmerited favor being extended to us. No, it informs us that a divine strategy was
executed to perfection, in order to place us in a position to receive and
experience the power IAUE gives that enables us to be obedient to His
will. This isn’t unmerited favor. It is
the calculated response of IAUE extended to those who are trusting in the work
of His son, Yahushua, to be removed from conformity to this world and to be
restored into a state of obedience to Him.
Salvation is not the offering of a free gift to mankind;
such that all man has to do is believe in the availability of the gift and
express a willingness to receive the gift; and that will result in a condition
of a blissful life forever in the presence of IAUE. Nowhere in the Scripture is an invitation
given to accept such a free gift. Throughout
the book of Acts, the GOSPEL is preached:
“Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” This is a command, not an invitation. Disobeying this command has eternal consequences. Throughout the Epistles we find
repeated instruction on obeying the will of IAUE, explaining the divine
expectation upon a life that is extended grace from IAUE; and demonstrating the
discipline that is due to the disobedient. We are also provided numerous
insights into the glorious liberty that has been brought to us through Messiah
Yahushua as the fruit of our repentance; but the indisputable fact remains, the
Epistles are about doing the will of IAUE.
The Scripture defines salvation as being rescued out of the
hands of all our enemies that have hindered us from being able to obey the will
of IAUE, thereby being freed to do His will now and forever (Luke 1:68-75).
The focus is clearly the performance of the will of IAUE. This is not the focus of the “free gift”
mentality. In previous postings, I have
defined this “free gift” mentality as the product of an “epistle-based”
gospel. It is not THE gospel; but it is
what passes as the Christian gospel message, today; thus imprisoning the masses
in a belief system of selfish living and disobedience to the will of IAUE. Look at the problem James had to address with
believers in his own generation.
James
4:1 From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not
hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?
2
Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot
obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not.
3 Ye
ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon
your lusts.
4 Ye
adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is
enmity with IAUE? whosoever therefore will be a friend of
the world is the enemy of IAUE.
James (Yaqob) was the brother of Yahushua and the first
pastor of the church in Jerusalem. He
presided over a virtually exclusively Jewish population of early
disciples. These early Jewish believers
grew up believing that obeying the Law of Moses was the preeminent expectation
of IAUE for their lives. They had great difficulty relinquishing this mindset;
and it worked in them the very same results as the “epistle-based” gospel does
in believers, today. As long as they
took care of what was culturally expected of them, they were free to be and to
do as they pleased. After all, what
would have been the consequence? Make
them not a Jew? That wasn’t a possible
outcome. So, being Jews, they believed
they were not able to be separated from the benefits of the Covenant. Today, one who accepts the “invitation” of
the “free gift” believes he has been locked in to the rewards of the New
Covenant. This frees him to pursue
worldly pleasures without concern for eternal consequences. James refers to this as “lusts that war in your members,”
which is referring to the physical body…the very thing that we were supposed to
be offering to IAUE as living sacrifices.
James called them adulterers and adulteresses; people who
have been unfaithful to their marriage vows.
What was their crime? They loved
the world; and such love made them the enemy of IAUE.
16 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.
How can one be the enemy of IAUE and believe he is enjoying
Scriptural salvation? It is quite easy
if your belief system is founded upon a lie.
Paul instructs us to “examine yourselves to see if you are in the faith”
(2 Cor 13:5). True
faith is focused on relationship with IAUE and with the Master Yahushua. It is not simply a belief in true
things. Where that relationship is not
foremost in our thinking and where it does not serve as the very purpose of our
existence, true faith cannot be found.
Remember, we are saved BY grace THROUGH
faith. You cannot stand in the river of
the flow of IAUE’s grace where there is not true faith to place us in that
river.
As an ardent student of the Scriptures for decades, Romans
12 was one of my favorite passages of Scriptures; and I taught from it and
wrote upon it often; but it was not until recent years that I was able to
understand it from the perspective of the preeminence of doing the will of
IAUE. I, like most of the people reading
this blog, originally came to Messiah by accepting an invitation rather than by
obeying a command. This beginning, from
an epistle-based gospel, forms a barrier against a correct understanding of
many passages of Scripture because it is the wrong foundation upon which to
study and understand the Scripture. Most
Christians view the will of IAUE as something that would be good to know in
order to evaluate whether or not it is something that they are willing to
do. The will of IAUE is not viewed as an
imperative placed upon their lives. If
it suits them, they will do it. If it
does not suit them…they believe that not doing it won’t have any impact on
their eternal destiny.
We studied last week that in response to the mercy of IAUE
to include the Gentiles in covenant relationship with Him; and recognizing that
it took the death of His own son on our behalf to make that possible; the very
least we could do in return as our reasonable service of worship to Him would
be to offer our bodies to Him as living sacrifices. The purpose of this action would be so He
could use our lives in whatever manner pleased Him. The Apostle Paul explained in the very next
verse what the first action of a living sacrifice would be.
Romans 12:2 And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed
by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and
acceptable, and perfect, will of Elohim.
A person who has offered up his body as a living sacrifice to
IAUE recognizes the absolute need of being separated from the very natural
process of being conformed to the way this world thinks, acts and speaks. It is called “being in the world but not of
the world.” If the friendship of the
world is the enemy of IAUE, we can no longer be its friend. If we think like the world thinks, we will
have great difficulty hearing and understanding the will of IAUE, for it will
be alien to us. We must have our minds
renewed to think, speak and act the way the Master thinks, speaks and
acts. After all, we ARE his disciples;
and that is what disciples do.
Functionally, this is the dilemma. When IAUE reveals His will to us, we are the
one who makes the decision to obey or disobey.
The way we think about His will in every given circumstance will impact
our decision. Let’s look at some basic
illustrations of this.
Example: IAUE speaks to me and reveals His
will to me. He has picked out what shirt
He wants me to wear this morning. My
mind perceives His wish and rejects it because I want to wear a different
shirt. My thinking was wrong. I did not already have programmed in my mind
the readiness to obey my Creator. I still
allowed worldly factors to form the basis for the decision I made. Perhaps, I know that the person I will be
meeting, today, has expressed an appreciation for the traditional white
business shirt, and I want to impress them.
However, IAUE has selected a dark colored shirt. What IAUE knows that I don’t is---five
minutes before my meeting, I am going to spill some coffee on my shirt. It won’t show on the dark colored shirt, but
will look an absolute mess if I am wearing a white shirt.
Example:
IAUE reveals to me that He wants me leave for work thirty minutes
earlier than normal this morning. I
stayed up late last night and I want to squeeze out every last minute of sleep
I can get before going to work; so I leave at my normal time. Five minutes down the road, I find myself in
a traffic jam due to an accident that happened 20 minutes ago; and I will be
late for work and will incur all the consequences of my tardiness. Had I left when IAUE instructed, I would have
arrived at work a bit earlier, but I would have missed the accident
altogether. My thinking was wrong. I did not respect the will of IAUE; nor did I
consider it my life’s sole objective as a living sacrifice.
If we forsake our love of the world (and our love of self)
and allow Him to transform our thinking so that we may think with His thoughts
and evaluate with His value system, we will recognize His will when it is
revealed to us; and we will understand that it is good, and acceptable and
perfect for our lives.
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