Ephesians– overview of 3:1-9; The Secret of the Ages, part 16 (Overcoming sin and suffering).

Thursday August 22, 2019

 

There are 21 amino acids that the body uses. When Darwin produced his theory on evolution, he did not know this. By the 1960’s MIT scientists were the first to understand the mathematical significance of a protein in a cell being the right one for the job. Yet still, biology being behind what it is today, even they did not have the whole picture. In the early 2000’s microbiologists started to understand the structures of proteins in a much more detailed way, and what they came to know was not only the chance of a protein turning out right, but how many ways a protein could go wrong, i.e. wrong sequences of amino acid. For a small protein of 150 amino acids the rarity of getting the right protein that would do what we know this little one to do is 1 in 10 to the 77^th power, (a trillion is 12 zeros, this is 77 zeros) and that is just one protein out of millions that are in the human body alone. We estimate that there is 10 to the 40^th power number of organisms on the planet, each of whom are filled with millions of proteins.

 

Add to this that in the 50’s Francis Crick, a code breaker in WWII discovered that DNA was composed of things that were more like digital letters that make up a code, an enormous code carrying information, and you have no other choice but to have an intelligent design. Coherent information can only come from an intelligent design.

 

This all proves a point - and not that I’m trying to prove to you the existence of God. My point is that all of this can be well known by the scientific community and they will still cling to Darwin and vehemently attack any who disagree. The popular press writes not one word about it.

 

Yet the same is done to the person of Christ and Christianity. The case for Christ is rejected by those who have heard it and not popularly published. Man is a curious creature.  

 

The odds of life on earth end up becoming no odds at all. Yet, life, the great gift that it is, can be used in terrible ways. God became a Man and came to earth to give us the life that can’t go wrong.

 

We are looking at repentance, the turning from the old way of the old man to the new way, the Christ-life of the new man.

 

We have noted many times that to repent one must surrender, submit, suffer, and die. The Son of God became a Man so that He could do what was impossible for us. Because He was able to submit, surrender, suffer, and die He was able to condemn sin to death and so kill what was in us that made it impossible for us to turn from sin and death.

 

Though we can still be foolish and sin, the part of us that was hopeless to turn away from sin has been condemned to death, crucified. Sin is no longer our master. Now Christ is our Master. Being what we are in Christ, those who live, not by the flesh, but by the Holy Spirit, we are empowered to turn from sin and death and walk in the newness of Christ’s life.

 

There are many reasons why Christians do not do this and they have many self-justifying reasons for it, but we will not concern ourselves with them.

 

If you are a Christian and you are overpowered by a form or sin and evil, it isn’t difficult to discover the reason from the word of God - foolishness, ignorance of and/or lack of faith in who you are in Christ.

 

But that assumes that you want to know the reason so that you will live the new life that has been given to you.

 

We started Rom 8 last time, which we will return to. We also saw in Gal 5 that we belong to Christ and the Holy Spirit is our leader. This is true of all Christians.

 

GAL 5:18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law.

 

ROM 8:9 says that we are “in the Spirit”.

 

GAL 5:24 Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

 

This is also in Rom 8. Christ crucified sin, condemning it in the flesh.

 

GAL 5:25 If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.

 

GAL 5:26 Let us not become boastful, challenging one another, envying one another.

 

It is a characteristic of all believers that they are alive, born-again, through the Holy Spirit’s baptism and that they now live by the Spirit of God.

 

The case God, your Father, presents to you is that you live now by the Spirit - walk by the Spirit. You actually belong to Christ, the Savior of the world promised before the creation of the world - don’t live any more in the flesh’s passions and desires.

 

Notice how Paul puts it in Eph 5.

 

EPH 5:1 Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children;

 

EPH 5:2 and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you, and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma.

 

EPH 5:3 But do not let immorality or any impurity or greed even be named among you, as is proper among saints;

 

EPH 5:4 and there must be no filthiness and silly talk, or coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks.

 

EPH 5:5 For this you know with certainty, that no immoral or impure person or covetous man, who is an idolater, has an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.

 

Some interpret this as Paul trying to scare us with the loss of inheritance, but that is not true. It is just as he has done in the letter to the Galatians.

 

EPH 5:5-6 refers to the unbeliever and his slavery.

GAL 5:21

I forewarn you just as I have forewarned you that those who practice (present participle - habitual, continual) such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.

 

The NT tells us plainly that every believer has inherited the kingdom of God.

 

EPH 5:6 Let no one deceive you with empty words [lies concerning our life in Christ], for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.

 

Paul uses the phrase “the sons of disobedience” for the spiritually dead.

 

EPH 2:1 And you were dead in your trespasses and sins,

 

EPH 2:2 in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.

 

ROM 8:5

For those who are according to the flesh (present participle = continually) set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit.

 

EPH 5:7 Therefore do not be partakers with them;

 

“partakers” - summetochos - partake together with (partake of their life - your old one)

 

EPH 5:8 for you were formerly darkness, but now you are light in the Lord; walk as children of light

 

EPH 5:9 (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness and righteousness and truth),

 

EPH 5:10 trying to learn [proving] what is pleasing to the Lord.

 

The same case is given in Gal 5 and Rom 8 - you are in the Spirit, you life by the Spirit, you are in Christ, you have been made alive in Him, you are children of light … these are characteristic facts of what you now are - so walk in them.

 

“And when you are determined to walk in them by your own self-determination, and not just because someone (even including Me, God) told you that you should, then I who indwell you will make it a living reality.”

 

You will fail, but that is a matter of your still existing sin nature and your still existing foolishness, but God will never abandon you in this journey. And it is nothing to get anxious about. God is in you, clothing you, always walking with you, and His love and comfort are always given to you. It won’t always be easy, but why would God give us overwhelming power and guidance and then give us a smooth and easy path? It’s like telling you that you can drive a 500-horsepower car, but you have to stay in the driveway. Our lives are a testing ground for God’s superior power, and if we live the life He has given us, our only life, then we will see the infinite power of that life.