Joshua and Judges: The doctrine of leadership part 37 - Essential qualities of leadership: The filling of the Spirit; Rom 5:12- 6:13.Title: Joshua and Judges: The doctrine of leadership part 37 - Essential qualities of leadership: The filling of the Spirit; Rom 5:12- 6:13.
Announcementsopening prayer:
If the monarch of your life is forever grace, righteousness, and eternal life by your position in Christ, then what should be your character?
Rom 6:1 What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace might increase?
Rom 6:2 May it never be! How shall we who died to sin [this is the nature of us - separated from the sin nature] still live in it?
Paul declares the mechanical impossibility of a Christian habitually sustaining the same relationship to the evil nature which he sustained before he was saved.
Rom 6:3 Or do you not know [are you ignorant of these truths] that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death?
By the baptism of the Holy Spirit at salvation, the believer was placed into union with Christ, being identified with His death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and session.
Do you know what it means to be one with Christ? You are buried (planted) with Him and raised with Him. You are the same plant.
Joh 12:24 "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains by itself alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.
He is the vine and you are the branch. You are the same organism, for He is the Head and you are the body. Do you believe this, and if you do, how would you see yourself, your sinful nature, and your life?
What a wonderful story of life that God reveals to us including everything that makes for a great epic: Great joy, heartache, sorrow, struggle, strong enemies, great sacrifice, and eternal victory.
Hab 3:19 The Lord God is my strength, And He has made my feet like hinds' feet [steady upon the steepest slopes], And makes me walk on my high places.
Rom 6:4 Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, in order that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.
Buried means that our sins can never again be brought up against us. We acknowledge sin for the purpose of restoration to fellowship and not for forgiveness. God has cast them as far as the east is from the west and He no longer looks upon them in judgment. When we restore fellowship they need to be left permanently in the past.
The baptism of the Spirit at salvation also entered us into Christ's resurrection life. This is the position from which the believer draws his energy to live that life.
What specifically that life consists of is not here stated. Paul reserved that for chapters 12-16. This is a reference to the inner workings that make divine character, honor, and virtue possible.
Might walk is correct since the purpose clause is a subjunctive. Yet it is a direct purpose rather than a moral obligation.
Looking at the life we are called to as a binding contract or a moral responsibility is to take a lesser view. A contract may be viewed as something that the one party is stuck in and that the other party will force them to fulfill the responsibility. All of us must honestly say that we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into, for none of us knew the plan of God on the day of our salvation. Rather, the justified life should be viewed as a direct purpose of the new creature in Christ. It is not the moral obligation for a bird to fly. It was made for flying and so it does. The new creature was made for righteousness and sanctification and so it does. Our problem, one that the bird doesn't have, is an extant sinful nature that doesn't want us to fly, a godless world that hates righteousness and so hates and isolates us, and a devil who constantly tries to deceive us into thinking that we can't fly. We have formidable enemies, but He who is in us is greater than he who is in the world. If by faith the believer submits to the will of the Trinity and the word of God, he will have victory over his enemies through Christ and he will walk in righteousness.
We have been entered into Christ's life so that we may conduct ourselves in the power of the His life. Our will is now free. We may choose between the evil and the good nature, whereas before salvation, we did not have this choice.
Pro 4:18 the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, That shines brighter and brighter until the full day.
The new nature has supplanted the old. The new nature loves holiness and truth and by the transformation of the mind by means of the ministry of the Holy Spirit, the believer will see just that. He realizes that his new nature doesn't have to live in sin and he truly doesn't want to.
When is the last time you did something that you didn't have to do and didn't want to do?
Too many believers think resurrection life, power, and ruling are reserved for the future heaven.
Martha was much more willing to believe that resurrection for her brother Lazarus would be much easier after his body had been dead for thousands of years than when it had been dead only four days.
Joh 11:23-24 Jesus said to her, "Your brother shall rise again." Martha said to Him, "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day."
The Lord raised him immediately and then gave some very important instructions.
Joh 11:44 "Unbind him, and let him go."
Some have felt bad for Lazarus, that he had to experience death twice. Do you think he was in any fear the second time? Plus, the second time he died as a church age believer.
Unbind him is a reference to his freedom from the reign of death, and let him go, is his freedom from slavery unto men and the world.
Like Martha, many believers have an easier time believer that there is a life beyond dreams far from now on the other side of the heavens than the very real fact that such a life is available to every believer now. It has been gifted to him at salvation.
Eph 3:20 Now to Him who is able to do exceeding abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us
The believer must understand that when he understands the true meaning of identification with Christ in His death and resurrection, the forces of Satan and the kingdom of darkness will be aroused and he will be attacked.
Paul was beset with a thorn in the flesh from a messenger of Satan because of the surpassing greatness of the revelation that he had, meaning that he understood and put into practice the divine truths of the church. Carnal believers are no threat to the kingdom of darkness. They only promote their cause. The spiritual man exposes the lies of the KOD as well as the truth of the kingdom of Christ and so Satan moves his resources against such believers. |