Simplicity In Truth
Is the truth of Christ in you?
We've been talking of truth and lies. Truth and falsehoods. Truth and untruth. They are complete opposites and there are no gray areas in between. Gray areas we love to find and wallow in, gray areas that are soothing to the conscience and yet not holding too much pressure upon us. Gray areas exist all through our lives and in some aspects they are very necessary. How horrible it would be if we left no room in life for individual circumstances to matter. We see movies on tv all the time where there is that beginning- introducing the problem, the middle spent making the problem more realized, capturing the emotions through adversity- and then the ultimate end where the problem is resolved or not and sometimes were left feeling cheated by endings. Gray areas give us the black and white in startling contrast and then say lets see if we can't make this more acceptable, not too dark, not too light. Fortunately God deals in black and white and not grays. We don't have to live in murky gray areas, we can live in truth or in lies. We choose.
You know, even without being what one considers 'Godly' people live with a sense of right and wrong, a sense of fairness. People know when they do wrong, when they're not fair and yes they can be thrilled when they *get away* with being unfair, but they still know that it's unfair. They still have that sense of right and wrong, of truth and untruth. It's not just society which weighs us with strictures, it's humanity. It's being human. It's being humans answerable to a higher power, being accountable to God.
Is the truth of Christ in you?
Paul had the truth of Christ in him.
2 Corinthians
{11:1} Would to God ye could bear with me a little in my folly: and indeed bear with me.
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Here Paul is asking people to bear with him in his folly, not just asking for himself but ... 'would to God' they bear with him in his folly and not only in his folly but bear with him, period.
2 Corinthians
{11:2} For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.
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He was jealous with a GODLY jealousy. God's jealousy exists in that there is only one true God, one true Creator, one true Redeemer. No other Gods before God, none, not one and it's not a boasting thing, it's not a selfish claim, it's love, it's from love, it is love. God is love so completely that love doesn't exist without God, it just doesn't, not real love. Every bit of love we can feel we can feel because of God, and the love we know beyond feeling is of God. Love is of God.
Here Paul is saying he's jealous over the people with a Godly jealousy because he's espoused them to one husband, that he wants to present them as a virgin to Christ.
Think about it, it's a perfect analogy. One who is promised to another in the sacred bond of marriage is to be a virgin, to be solely for the one promised. Yes, it's very hard in this day and age in the culture I live in to recognize such a thing because remaining a virgin is something so foreign to most people. It's trivial, it's something that means little. Living in a culture of selfishness where denying self is frowned upon, or putting on airs is frowned upon, the majority of people are no longer virgins upon the marriage bed.
The church, the people of God are the bride of Christ, a bride espoused to Jesus who will come one day to claim His espoused virgin for the marriage when man and God by His grace live as one.
With so many seducing spirits about, with so many different claims to the *truth*, its easy to see how people can be seduced away by one other than their true partner.
Paul tells it like it is...
2 Corinthians
{11:3} But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.
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Beguiled by subtlety, corrupted from simplicity in Christ.
Such amazing words.
Corrupted from simplicity in Christ.
It doesn't take much to be seduced away when an expert in beguiling is working at you.
The simplicity in Christ. The Truth. His Truth. For by grace we are save through faith. The Truth. Simple truth, uncomplicated. Living in that truth. Living day to day knowing that by the grace of Christ we are save, by the grace of Christ we live.
The beguiling seducing spirits that would have us no longer espoused virgins waiting for our groom, but drawn away into untruth, into lies is very, very real. Real back then when Paul wrote this and real today as we read it.
2 Corinthians
{11:4} For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if ye receive another spirit, which ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear with him.
Preaches another Jesus. People do that all the time. They preach another Jesus complicating Him up in their beguiling ways. But make no mistake- the do preach Jesus, just not the truth in Him. Where are Jesus' statement of beliefs so that you may join Him? Where are Jesus' rules and regulations? Where are Jesus' sticky fingers trying to reach into your pockets constantly? Where?
Yes, the simplicity in Christ is all caught up in the beguiling ways of false teachings of Christ. False, so close to the true the deception is hardly noticeable- subtlety, the same subtlety that Satan used on Eve.
2 Corinthians
{11:5} For I suppose I was not a whit behind the very chiefest apostles.
{11:6} But though I be rude in speech, yet not in knowledge; but we have been throughly made manifest among you in all things.
{11:7} Have I committed an offence in abasing myself that ye might be exalted, because I have preached to you the gospel of God freely?
{11:8} I robbed other churches, taking wages of them, to do you service.
{11:9} And when I was present with you, and wanted, I was chargeable to no man: for that which was lacking to me the brethren which came from Macedonia
supplied: and in all things I have kept myself from being burdensome unto you, and so will I keep myself.
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Paul wasn't claiming to be the best one to preach as he was. He was claiming honesty. He was claiming to preach the gospel of God freely. Robbing other churches in that he was drawing people from other churches and accepting the offerings of those he drew away so that he could continue to preach, to do the service appointed to him. He didn't take from them, he was supplied by others, he wasn't a burden at all to those he was preaching to.
2 Corinthians
{11:10} As the truth of Christ is in me, no man shall stop me of this boasting in the regions of Achaia.
The truth of Christ is in him.
No man could stop him from proclaiming this, the truth of Christ!
Why?
2 Corinthians
{11:11} Wherefore? because I love you not? God knoweth.
God knoweth why, God knows, God understands the love he has for Christ, for the truth of Christ which he could not stop from preaching to others out of that love.
2 Corinthians
{11:12} But what I do, that I will do, that I may cut off occasion from them which desire occasion; that wherein they glory, they may be found even as we.
The simplicity of Christ, the Truth of Christ. As long as we are true to that Truth of Christ and the Truth of Christ is in us, no one will have an occasion to speak otherwise. However that subtly is at work, and working hard...
{11:13} For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ.
{11:14} And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.
{11:15} Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works.
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Satan himself is transform into an angel of light.
No marvel.
No great thing that HIS Satan’s ministers are transformed into ministers of righteousness.
Deception! Deceived! Beguiled! Betrayed!
We shouldn't be shocked at all to realize that Satan works so closely to the truth with just enough deception that he and his followers appear to be ministers of righteousness.
We're not fooled by outright unsophisticated counterfeits.
Only those counterfeits so close to the truth it's all but undetectable that they're are counterfeit are the ones that fool us.
People counterfeit money and stores and such go to special lengths to see they aren't deceived. Ever see a cashier hold up your money to the light? They're checking for the seemingly hidden shadings and such that are embedded in the money, shadings that are hard for counterfeits to duplicate. The cashier doesn't want to be fooled and given worthless monies.
We need to hold up our lives, our beliefs to the Truth of Christ! It's so easy to be deceived, so easy to be fooled and we aren't a 50 or 100 dollars when the deception is uncovered, but out eternal life. Make no mistake, we are accountable to hold our beliefs up to the Truth in Christ. That amazing simplicity in Christ. Don't follow anyone or anything blindly, measure it to the bright and shining truth in Christ.
By the Grace of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ may none of us be deceived by any of Satan's ministers, seemingly ministers of righteousness.
In His Name, by His Mercy and Grace
Amen.
11/07/09
Rev 2:26 And he that overcometh, and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations:
overcometh- prevails, conquers
keepeth- guards, holdfast
works- deeds, labour, acts
How do we guard Christ's deeds?
How do we holdfast to Christ's labours, His acts?
Seriously? How? If we're to prevail in this life and keep Christ's works to the end, what are we doing? What action? Guarding, holding fast, keeping the works of Christ.
If we're busy doing this guarding, this keeping we are occupied with doing so. Being a Christian isn't a check box we mark on a form that asks us if we have a religious preference. Being Christian isn't something we are one day a week, it's a way of life. Jesus' way of life. It's something that incorporates all that we are and all that we do. We can't separate our lives into little compartments and say this one is my work self, this is my home self, this is my public self, this is my private self, this is my religious self, this is my worldly self, this is my evil self, this is my relative self, this is my close friend self and yet don't we often find ourselves adjusting to various situations accordingly? Such as behaving one way in public and another in private. Allowing more leniency in behavior when no one is watching. It's natural isn't it? Natural for us to show our anger more to those close to us than those who aren't. Natural for us to bring home our upsets and sadness than to weep in public. We learn early on what sort of behavior is accepted where. We learn by the examples of our parents, by the various situations we see whether in real life or fictional on television, maybe even in school. We learn that in church you are to be reverent because in that building God is somehow closer to us, but once we step out the door we leave that behind and so things are back to every day life- actions and reactions without much consideration for God being close to us.
People like to compartmentalize their lives and yet if we are to truly keep the works of Jesus we can't compartmentalize Him. He is a way of life, not one compartment in many. He is life.
The devil would have us treat Jesus and our walk with Him as something that only happens every now and again, once a week, once a day, three times a week, three times a day, four...five. He would have us put our Christianity into points of time rather than having our Christianity timeless and forever in us.
We need to follow Christ fully and perhaps you're saying that you can't really think about God while you're sitting at a desk under the grind of paper work, or while you're out there banging away at a hammer constructing a house it's not good to be distracted by anything when you're busy concentrating on what you're doing for your job whatever it may be, even if it's putting together a recipe for dinner that night.
No one is saying that to be fully Christ's you have to stop doing your job. Christ was a carpenter and for years He concentrated on doing His job while being prepared for His ministry. While He planed that wood was His mind not on the correct way of doing it, of taking off just the right amount of wood to complete what He was doing? No, Christ concentrated on His work as well, but He was forever God's. He consecrated Himself to God in all that He did.
Christ didn't want us to stop working, but in all that we do, we do it to the glory of God.
1Cor 10:31 Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.
For our lives to be Christ's, for us to keep His works our lives must be consecrated to Him and all we do must be done to the glory of God. Can you dig a ditch to the glory of God? Yes. Can you sweep a floor to the glory of God? Yes. You can live and do all to the glory of God if He is truly alive and real in our lives and not put into a compartment to pull open as desired.
May God help us all as we seek Him in all that we do. If we are having trouble giving glory to God in something we do, may we ask for His mercy and grace, His help in our time of need to overcome whatever may be hindering our walk with Christ. Only by His righteousness do we have hope, by faith in His ability to overcome and save us through His grace.
By His mercy and love, in Him now and forever.
Amen.
11/07/10
11/07/11