Dereligionization: Salvation

After being asked many questions about my faith I find one of the largest hindrances to explaining Christianity clearly is the meaning of many “religious” words used in day to day Christianity. I realized also that because of the presuppositions of definitions for some of these words we have lost the true meaning of the Christian life as a whole. So I decided to start a project. I call it project Dereligionization. We will go threw various words which are commonly misunderstood because they have been “religionized”. Hopefully, in doing so, God can use us to breathe a sense of reality into Christianity for the dead Christian robots out there.

            The word of the day is salvation. I did a study on the word. And found some very interesting results that many would be shocked to realize are true today. Most of the time when we use the word in typical conversations we say little Timmy got saved yesterday, which by implication is referring to a theological term called “justification”. Which is a word that I hope to go over more fully at a later date. It means to be found not guilty of a charge, in this case being guilty of sin, and speaks to the idea of starting the Christian life. If this is all that salvation means then we presuppose that we can be saved once and only once. But what if I told you that that’s not true and that strictly speaking in the definition of the word you are saved again and again. You are being saved now and will be saved in the future. That would get you to react wouldn’t it!

            The Greek word for saved is “Sozo” and simply means to make or keep sound or safe. As far as I can tell, that’s it. The word saved means kept safe, nothing more nothing less. So in order to understand the meaning of the word in our lives we must look to what we are saved from.

            Jesus uses the word for many things. To be saved from the end times Matt 10:22, to be saved from sin and its results Luke 9:8-10, from nature Matt 8:25, death Matt 27:49, from God’s judgment Jn 12:27; 3:17, and from physical ailment Lk 18:42.

            It would seem that the misunderstanding in the definition would come from Paul’s doctrine. But even that has many more mentions than that of just justification. He mentions it in justification in Rom. 8:24, in sanctification in Eph 2:5, in glorification in 1 cor. 3:15, and freedom from sin 1 Tim 1:5; Titus 3:5.

            So what are we saved from? What is it that God does that comprises such a rich salvation? I go to Romans 5 for the answer. 6 “for while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— 8but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. 10For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. 11More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.” I included so much text mainly for the context it provides.

            The point I would bring up is in verse 9 where it says “we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.” This is stating in short the one main thing we are “saved” from. And that is the wrath of God. God’s wrath comes in two forms. First is active. This is the wrath that is experienced in Hell, the wrath where God is giving you exactly what you deserve for the sins that you have committed. The second is passive wrath and is described in Romans 1:18-32. this is described as God giving people in to the sinful desires of their heart. This form of wrath gets its bite because God knows that every form of sin will ultimately lead to a worse life and, until something is done about it, death. The same Greek word for “wrath” is used in both passages (Rom 1:18 & 5:9). So this is the very wrath that we are saved from.

            The Christ says. “Even more than just being justified by my blood we are and will continue to be saved by His blood from His wrath, both here and now and in the future when we will be judged face to face by God.”(Paraphrased) Now that we are reconciled we have the fellowship with God that we were always meant to have. Romans 8:1 says, “there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” And that we are if we are justified by His blood. There is nothing we can do now or later that can separate us from this salvation we have. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ. That is salvation. By God’s grace we are freed from His wrath now and forever no matter what.

            So what about those who are still experiencing the results of sin in their lives? The truth is that we are saved. Let God be true even though everyone else were a liar. So you can either believe this and hop on board the reconciled bus or you can ignore this truth and act as if it were not so, But either way it is true. We need to realize that every time someone is experiencing the results of sin that is no longer because He is angry with you or because he is executing passive wrath. It is now because He loves you unconditionally and is disciplining you to live a life filled with blessings instead of one that is not in His will. There is now no condemnation. Not now, not ever. Please take God at His word

            What now??? What is the result of this amazing truth? What are we to do? V11 says “More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.” Step #1 is to believe, as always. So take God at His word? You are saved from the wrath of God, period. And so we need believe it, that you know. But where does this hit real life for us as Christians? Step #2 We are to act like it. When it comes down to it there is no room for regret. After you mess up confess. What you did was wrong because you were no longer living in the love of Gods will. Not because you were unholy or unrighteous for a moment. God wants you to live a better life on this earth. That is His goal. So He will purge out all the things He calls sin by His Spirit in you. So stick with Him. He loves like no one could love! While we were yet sinners. While we were in active opposition to Him in our spirit, He died for us!

            “Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of His glory with great joy, to the only God, our savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.” ~Jude 24-25

The Holy Spirit

I am reading a great book by Francis Chan entitled "forgotten God" and it has brought me to a conviction about the Holy Spirit that I had not thougt about before. In his book he brings to attention the idea that if we were to read the bible with no presuppositions then we would come to the place that as Christians we would expect a great deal from the Spirit of God. And yet we seem to put a large Amount of restriction on the Spirit because there are so many " radicals" in the world. This simply is in my mind the fear of man. We restrict the Holy Spirit because we are afraid of being labeled my others and we are scared that we will not be accepted anymore.
First of all I would point out Eccl. 12:13 "this is the conclusion of the matter;fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. So in essence fear God and obey His word. But first before we obey His word webmust believe it to be truth to the level of our hearts (Ps. 119:11). So then what does Gods word say of the spirit? For one it says that as long as you are walking by the Spirit you will not gratify the things of the flesh (Gal. 5:16). And there is a promise in Romans 8:9 that says "You however are not in the flesh but are in the spirit, if in fact the spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the spirit of Christ does not belong to Him.
So if you are reading what I am reading then it seems obvious that if you are indeed born again then you have the spirit of God great, so what does that mean to us now?
Well let's look at one classic passage that tells us the ramifications of a spirit filled person. Gal 5:22-23 says "the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and, self-control." A verse we have most likely memorized before in our lifetime. But the thing most do not realize is that the Spirit of God does not pick and choose from this list with the believers He indwells it's always all or nothing with Him. That is why the Greek word for fruit is in a singular form not plural. Because the Sporit is always complete so His fruit will be also. The thing is that the church has lost faith in the power the Spirit has mainly because of the fear of man.
Guys, people of God's church, Let's walk in His spirit by faith.
Here is how: Step 1) faith-we need to take God at His word and not what others say about it read it for what it says always be accountable to a bible believing evangelical church in your doctrine but don't let the fear of man hinder what the word of God says.
Step 2) surrender-without surrendering he things you love and hold dear to God for Him to use and control then He will not want to have any part of using us in His church. It may seem as though He is but what you see is nothing to the amount God would use you if you were to believe the power of His Spirit and be willing to give up all you have for Him to control and make something beautiful out of it

Living in Him
~Hammy

Our Spirit

My new blog post was suppose to be up days ago and I wanted to combine the two posts I have and talk more specifically of the role the Spirit has in the gospel. After I decided to study this topic I started studying and what ensued was likely the craziest and confusing study I have ever done. I still am not entirely sure where I am at on the topic and neither is this post’s purpose to give a doctrine class so I will share what my findings mean to the every day Christian as oppose to making this super long by proving it all. If you would like to talk to me about it then you can leave a comment with your email.

            So after much study I found that the spirit of the believer is holy and righteous and while his flesh is still bound under sin. But we have crucified the flesh with its passions and Rom (7:6). So now it is up to us to walk in the spirit because we are already alive in the spirit Romans (8:10). The gospel is all about providing us with righteousness. It gives our spirit righteousness here on earth and will give us righteous flesh in glorification. And so in the mean time we have sanctification to wrestle out.

            Then the question is what does this mean? and what do we do about it? My answer is very similar to my past two posts. We first need to believe what God says as the truth. We can talk about the gospel preach on the gospel and pray about the gospel all we want but until we believe the gospel with all of our being and cling to it as our only hope for life then we will never experience the true Christian life. The thing I am trying to point out in this post is the fact that we have a new spirit, a righteous spirit. That is significant because that is what we are to put our faith in. that is the gospel of the Christian that we are made righteous because of Christ’s work on the cross. In my next blog me and a good friend of mine Chris Plog are going to take a look at what righteousness means. But one thing I know of it now is that if our spirit is righteous then the character of our spirit is at the same level that Christ’s is. Otherwise His sacrifice was insufficient to give us complete character.

            Then just like before the outcome is just pure action. We know the truth so now we need to act like it. All the commands for holiness and to have flawless conduct are to you and me. Not to the “spiritual giants”. We have no more going for us than any church leader because our righteousness is from Christ as a gift. So we know that we have the makings for living a godly life. So just do it. When you fail just know that all God wants from you is to live in His love. So repent and return to His love and be what you were created to be.

Living in Him
~Hammy