Slow of Heart

 Post 229

Today these Simonized Christians fill our pulpits, seminaries, and religious TV channels with all manner of iniquity *1 (Matthew 7:23), and the produce of such leadership is a Simonized congregation where the condition of Simon is normal (Acts 8).

But it’s worse than that.

At least Simon quickly saw his iniquity when Peter showed it to him and in fear he cried out to Peter to pray for him so that the evils declared on him did not happen (Acts 8:24). My message, among other faithful ministers, is decrying the same evils of an entire nation for the same general reason; bondage to iniquity (Acts 8:23). While earnest repentance is the only means of salvation, our lack of repentance leads to our perishing (Acts 8:20). But instead of repentance, Simonized American Christians look to the economy and jobs and Health Care and confused national leaders to determine if we are doing OK or not; “I don’t care if he’s for abortion or is an adulterer, his personal values are unimportant, all I care is if he can get our economy back on track”.

The problem is; I can’t find in scripture that this is God’s sentiment so what part of Christianity is that vote by what has been determined in poles to be a large Christian majority?

By the evidence of unscrupulous and immoral men seated in elected office, we as general Christians have failed to follow God’s values of importance beyond meaningless lip service “For which things’ sake the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience:”… Colossians 3:6+.

Today our Churches are filled with these Simonized Christians who have been carefully and methodically inoculated from the fear of God. They line up at the churches of “Christian Clinics” to get their weekly one hour dose of spiritual inoculations and walk out all Simonized and happy in their placebo dose of defense against the wrath of God (Romans 1:18).

They go to church faithfully, teach Sunday school, attend seminary, share the gospel and go on missions, they do all that Simon did and are very active practitioners of Christianity, but to repent in the fear of the LORD? “Why would I need to do that? Jesus forgave my sins back when I was saved” or; “I’m OK, I repent of my sins every day!” but that sort of misses the whole point of “repent” doesn’t it?

And here we are now, in the age of confusion when in earnest religion the best of us are a people who have no idea what it means to be a Christian. Even in most the pulpits of our better churches we hear ministers preach the truth from the word of God, but they preach it from behind; meaning they themselves cannot live what they are preaching because in compromised lives they have not found the power of the risen Savior (Romans 1:32-2:1). Their Christian lives are lived as if Jesus did not rise from the dead. And if Jesus did not rise, then all he preached was nothing more than good but impractical philosophy just as is preached from our pulpits.

But Jesus DID rise from the dead. For real. In the flesh. Indeed! And this miraculous resurrection is the power of witness he gives to us by his Spirit to live successfully in the flesh after dying to ourselves;

“If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God” Colossians 3:1.

But what is the one thing that must be true if you have been risen with Christ? You must have previously died with Christ.

But how is this possible? What does that actually mean beyond the safety of a vague metaphor?

This question must be answered before we can go on in the passage to the state of rising with Christ in our temporal lives; You simply cannot rise from the dead if you never died (I Corinthians 15:31,36, John 12:24). Yet dying to these iniquities is what most professing Christians cannot do except by metaphor, and so remain very much alive to them as they wrestle themselves to exhaustion crying out to God for help that does not come.

“Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord” Romans 6:11.

…“Mortify (3499) therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry:”…

Colossians 3:1-6.

“For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify (2289) the deeds of the body, ye shall live”

Romans 8:13.

Mortify:

3499 Nedroo; from 3498; to deaden, i.e. (figuratively) to subdue:- be dead, mortify.

2289 thanatoo; from 2288; to kill (literally or figuratively):- become dead, (cause to be) put to death, kill, mortify.

This mortification of our earthly notions (members) in conflict with God’s nature is indeed a death of those perspectives and values we once lived by. Paul is clear that we are the ones that must swing the executioners ax on our own parts and deeds, yet the churches are filled with weeping Christians begging God to do this for them and eventually concluding that for some reason he won’t or can’t. And so in disillusionment they live as defeated men in powerless compromise, subconsciously blaming God for failing to raise them, even proudly in self-righteous strength of endurance they patiently “wait” on God to eventually do the work “in his time” as if they are more righteous than God for the waiting!

I am not ignoring the idea that these well meaning people WANT to be free from their godless natures, but they are ignorant by the inoculation of a false gospel regarding the part they must play. Christ’s blood by his sacrificial death fully pays for your sin so that you are no longer held accountable for it, but this does not mean, nor can it mean, that his blood covers our remaining iniquity.

It is the iniquity which we must mortify ourselves by repentance. But it is our iniquity which we never hear preached about, only our sin which is the natural byproduct of iniquity. The result is the similitude to the Catholic faith where we have no compunction against sinning all week because we plan on confessing it to the priest (Jesus) and getting forgiveness. This is the blasphemy of the blood of Christ in denial of the Power of his resurrection. Without the resurrection there is no enduring salvation, and so we must reckon ourselves dead unto sin but also reckon ourselves alive unto Christ as participants in his resurrection to life and not simply dead spectators.

Christ himself likened salvation to a new birth. But mistakenly, Americans fawn all over birthdays. We make a great deal about the event of our birth, we memorialize it and give gifts to the celebrated birthed presumably in a confused memorial of the wise men gifting the infant Christ as we incorrectly celebrate Christmas as Jesus birthday. But where in scripture do you find the date of Jesus birth? In fact the scriptures are significantly consistent in their neglect of glorifying births.

Why?

Because a man is not judged by being born, it has little to do with his effort and is simply an event that begins his existence by which he is judged. The scriptural celebration is at his death.

Why?

Because at your death the entire profile of your life can be evaluated; How did you live?

Yet Christians today place a huge and inordinate degree of attention on their salvation (spiritual birth) as if that is the end goal. But salvation is nothing more than your birth into life, which although extremely important to your future, has little importance after the event. How do you live that life: In mourning that you are not victorious in the faith? In perpetual crying to God about your inability to turn from your iniquity? In powerless compromise?

Beyond giving you spiritual birth into true life, salvation has little to do with what you do with that life. The power of God through the risen Lord who succeeded his life’s mission, has everything to do with it. So…

“If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God”… Colossians 3:1+

But how does that apply to my love for football, or relationships, or a comfortable home, or a good career? “These things are not sin and surely God doesn’t mind my preoccupation with them because this is where God put me.”

But the passage continues;

…“Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God”

Colossians 3:2-3.

It seems that in confused misapplication of such scripture, we convince ourselves that setting our affection on things here below is OK with God. And in that blindness we simply cannot see the connection between that poor choice and the resulting uncontrollable temptations to frustration, anger, lust, covetousness, and the like, which produces the works of the flesh in our hearts (Galatians 5:17-21), and not the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-26).

“This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh” Galatians 5:16.

You cannot walk in the Spirit if your affections are set on things here (Matthew 6:32-33). If the works of the flesh through its desires has you in bondage, you must conclude you have failed to walk in the Spirit. But Simon the Christian never received the Spirit in the first place because he did not comprehend his need to repent of his iniquity. And so we have identified two problems:

1)     A failure to die to self,

2)     and a failure to live unto Christ.

In both cases the solution is a preoccupation with Christ. Turn your full attention to him by the abandonment of your pet iniquities that lead you away.

“I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live: that thou mayest love the LORD thy God, and that thou mayset obey his voice, and that thou mayest cleave unto him: for this is thy life, and the length of thy days: that thou mayest dwell in the land which the LORD sware unto thy fathers…” Deuteronomy 30:19-20 and 4:26-28.

“For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision (legalism) availeth anything, nor uncircumcision (doctrine of grace); but faith which worketh by love (it is all about your love for him). Ye did run well; who did hinder you that ye should not obey the truth? This (wrong) persuasion cometh not of him that calleth you” Galatians 5:6-8.

“And we are his witnesses of these things; and so is also the Holy Ghost, whom God hath given to them that obey him”  Acts 5:32.

Are you lacking the evidential Power of the Holy Ghost? Its because you are not obeying him because you don’t love him.

“Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?” Romans 6:16.

“For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first began at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God?” I Peter 4:17.

Now read the short book of I John and ask yourself;

“What are the commandments of Christ?”

“And hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments. He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him”

I John 2:3-4.

Where then is the room for this all too common heretical doctrine of perpetual failure though we “try”? It is the conclusion from a life of powerless compromise.

Jesus called us to far more than that!

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*1 Iniquity 458 anomia; from 459; illegality, i.e. violation of law or (general) wickedness.

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