Call to Commitment

 I need to finish reading through the New Testament twice and the Old Testament once this year, before starting an expositional study of a Bible book. I have started to read the book of Revelation and I still have a few chapters to read in Acts. When that is finished, I will concentrate on what is left in the Old Testament. I think, I will be able to start the project this month and then will post the introduction to the exposition on this blog.

 In the meantime, we are studying a tool for evangelism. Christian, if you have a desire to share the gospel with friends, relatives, and whoever the Lord would have cross your path, you need to study it. I am not talking about following a method, but using biblical and spiritual principles in evangelism. This was the way of the great evangelists throughout church history. They would start with the law of God, then show that no one has kept it. Therefore, everyone needs to repent. When there were signs of true repentance, the evangelist would share the hope of the gospel… the good news! It is there that the sinner must put his trust. Trust is synonymous with faith; faith in the person and the work of Christ. This is what Jesus meant, when He said, “Repent and believe the gospel!”

 You might want to review the first two articles. Here is the last part of this excellent tool. It deals with the following issues… Condemned by our genes… The only remedy… Your debt has been paid!... The need to be born again… God promises a new life… A future without end… What are you waiting for?

 If you want to give people something of value to read, you can receive this and two other installments in the form of a small book. Simply write us at loelmarga@telefonica.net . A tract is all right, in order to get someone’s attention, but it gives little information concerning salvation and the reason why it is needed. This little book will inform them clearly about the righteousness and the love of God. I really wish that many, who have a desire to evangelize, would use it.

 

Condemned by our genes

 The Word of God says that the human being is dead in trespasses and sins. That is, as far as God is concerned, he cannot move a toe in His direction, nor lift a finger to help himself out of his sinful state. No human being on his own initiative can ever launch an exploratory trip in an effort to rediscover his Creator and he is absolutely helpless in reference to God.

 Adam and Eve are the source of all human nature and so, naturally speaking, we have no other forefathers than they and possess no other genes. According to human possibilities, we can be no more than they were. If they fell into a hopeless state of sin and were  separated from God, then we fell, as well, and if they were condemned to death, that same condemnation rests upon us. Though we have not chosen this state, we surely have inherited it, just the same as we have not chosen the family in which we were born or the color of our skins, eyes, etc.

 For that reason, modern teaching about picking up broken pieces and starting over are foolish and unbiblical. They are bandages applied to a corpse. There is no fixing the ruined nature of Adam. In order to be free from sin, we must be free from the old sin factory of adamic nature and receive a new one.

 The only remedy

 Do you recognize that in truth you are a sinner and that you need forgiveness from God? If that is so, what do you think you must do? The only thing we can do, if we see that we stand before an offended God, is to repent and place ourselves in His hands, trusting that He will show us mercy and save us.

 The only remedy is the one that God Himself has provided, given to us through the death and resurrection of His Son Jesus Christ. His death on the cross was much more that a historical fact or a heroic act that we should remember. It is something that goes beyond our ability to comprehend. The only hope of salvation and reconciliation with God for the human being is in that cross, where God made man, Jesus, the Son of God, not only challenged sin and conquered it, but also destroyed the old nature.

 Faith in His person and in his work is the only way to assure our salvation, excluding totally any of our own works or personal effort. “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9).

 Your debt has been paid!

 It is excellent, comforting and hopeful news for the one who sees himself as a sinner, to know that around 2000 years ago, his debt was paid. God Himself sent His Son from Heaven as a unique sacrifice, the only one that could be offered for your sins and mine. It had to be a perfect sacrifice, free from sin, in order to die, not for His sins, but for the sins of others. Jesus was that sacrifice, offered in our place, because there was no other acceptable substitute. The righteousness of God is satisfied in His own Son.

 Please understand! Each one of us must see this very personally. When I contemplate Jesus dying on the cross, I recognize that I am responsible for His sufferings. If it were not for my sins, He would not have had to die, but because He did, now I am free from guilt. He took my place and paid my debt. You also must see that He did this for you: “Being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation (one who appeases an offended person) in His blood through faith” (Romans 3:24-25).

 Christ, after He became a man, having lived in this sinful world and having offered His own blood and life as a sacrifice for our sins, was accepted into Heaven. Although he was the only beloved Son of the Father, He could not enter into Heaven with any trace of sin left upon Him (see Hebrews 1:3; 9:25-27). Everything had to be perfect. We can be thankful to God that He was accepted!! This tells us that His sacrifice is effective, even before the perfect Judge. He took our sins and destroyed them completely on the cross.

 As certainly as God is God, this remedy is powerful; it functions and will do all that is necessary to be done in your life. The sentence against every one of your offenses has already been paid. Now, you can be forgiven and be presented before the just Judge, as innocently and clean, as if you had never sinned. You must deal with the Lord Jesus Christ right now! You must turn your back away from the direction that your will and your choices for your life has led you. That way has only produced in you the sins that have offended your God! You must surrender and submit to His complete authority over your life, place yourself in His hands and hope in His mercy!

 The need to be born again

 However, you lack something else, something that we have already mentioned, in stating the need of a new nature. You need to be born again. The death and resurrection of Christ accomplished another magnificent work that must be applied to your life. It is the most wonderful part of this remedy from Heaven and it has to do with a new life. The Bible says to us that “unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God … you must be born again” (John 3:3, 7).

 The old nature, that has been the cause of all our problems with God, has received a death blow through the work of Christ on the cross, so that we can now be free from its enslaving service. “Our old self (the nature that comes from Adam) was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin… If we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him” (Romans 6:6, 8).

 When you submit to Him, pray for his forgiveness and receive the resurrected Christ into your life, He, who is alive today, will enter into it to stay. In that moment, He will impart to you His life, a resurrected and eternal life that never dies, and so, His own life becomes yours: “God has given us eternal life and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life” (1 John 5:11-12).

 True Christianity begins in anyone’s life, when that one receives Christ; not just His teaching, not His rules or His ideals, but His person. At that point we become sons of God, through a miraculous divine birth. “As many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe on His name, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:12).

 A Christian is born, not made. A reformation of thinking and lifestyle will never do. That is a path of frustration and disappointment. The characteristics inherent in the old nature are totally at odds with this new way. It is only compatible with another nature and unless that nature is engendered in a human being, walking in the new way is an impossibility. The effect of the cross must come into play in each individual life.

 These vital necessities are greater than any other need that exists on this planet. The need of health, social security, financial funds, family relationships, intellectual and spiritual education, are not to be compared with the need of receiving that, which God has promised to give.

 Over anything else in this world, what a human being needs is the forgiveness of God and a new birth. Forgiveness is for all his misdeeds and new birth is to guarantee the beginning of a new life, with a new nature inside that is in agreement with that of God. This birth gives you the possibility to live from the heart a life that pleases your Creator.

 God promises new life

 It seems impossible, doesn’t it? But it is a promise about which the prophet Ezekiel wrote thousands of years ago, inspired by the Holy Spirit. Since the gospel began to be announced by Jesus and His disciples, each true Christian has experienced it. Nevertheless, because of unbelief, millions of people that call themselves “Christians” lack it and cannot even imagine what it means to possess it. However, for the sake of anyone who longs to benefit, here is the promise: “I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness… I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances” (Ezekiel 36:25-27).

 This experience will give you a nature totally compatible with that of God, helping you to do the things that please Him and to avoid those that irritate and anger Him. You will be born again and begin a life that you cannot even imagine possible at this moment. Willingly and from your heart, you will offer yourself to Him. I assure you that this has taken place in many who, as you, have offended God and had no possible way to change themselves.

 As you read these words, someone at this moment in some part of the world is experiencing it. These are a testimony to the 21st century of all that we have written here, eliminating every kind of excuse that this cannot be possible or that it is too good to be true. The Bible says, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever!” What He has done in the past, he is doing today, and His faithfulness and the reality of His presence in someone today, guarantees that person’s future forever.

 A future without end

 The life that you receive when you are born again is forever and cannot be destroyed. The purpose of God in creating man was not that he should live 70 or 80 years in a world without purpose, a life of vain cycles. Think about the normal human life. A man arises in the morning, breakfasts, goes to work, takes a break for lunch, returns to work, goes home, has dinner, watches TV for a while, and goes to bed. Why? So that he can repeat the same the next day. Why? So that he can be free for the week-end or spend time on vacation. Why? So that he can return to work afterwards. Why? So that one day he can retire and do what he wants. Why? So that he can soon die and lose all that he has gained during his entire life on earth, just as has been done by generations before, by his great-grandparents, his grandparents, his parents…

 Is this why human life exists? Is this all that there is for him? If that is so, then all is vain and we have every right to consider ourselves the most miserable and deprived beings in the universe. But it is not so! Man has been created to enjoy an intimate fellowship with his Creator and to rejoice in His person, not only in this life, but forever.

 Christ came to save us from the life of routine and give to us a life that has no end. However, eternal life means more than marking an interminable period of time. It signifies a quality of life, beyond what our imagination can capture. Upon being born again, an individual receives heavenly life and converts into a citizen of a perfect homeland, where he longs to go. Even though, on this earth he experiences and enjoys love, a peace and a joy that he did not know existed, the world is no longer his home. It has become for him a battleground, a proving ground that prepares him for his true destiny. He endeavors only to help other people enter the same happiness that he is enjoying.

 What are you waiting for?

 “All these died in faith… having confessed that they were strangers and exiles on the earth…, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; for He has prepared a city for them (Hebrews 11:13, 16). The Bible teaches us that the heaven and earth that we now know will pass away. Nothing will be left of them and, at the same time, it tells us of a totally new place, a city with characteristics that are very different from that which we have known until now. Even though it is very difficult for minds like ours to capture it, we know that it will be infinitely incomparable to anything that we have seen or experienced. I think that any intent on my part to define or explain what awaits us there, would be insufficient. So I will limit myself to a description about this place that was revealed to a man, because God willed that we should know of it, who then wrote what he saw in a book, the last book in the Bible, called the Revelation.

 “He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them. And He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain” (21:3b-4).

 “The city has no need of the sun or of the moon to shine on it , for the glory of God has illumined it… there will be no night there; its gates will never be closed” (21:23-25).

 “Then he showed me a river of the water of life, clear as crystal, coming from the throne of God…” (22:1)

 “There will no longer be any curse… and His bondservants will serve Him; they will see His face… (22:3a-4a)

 “There will no longer be any night; and they will not have need of the light of a lamp nor the light of the sun, because the Lord God will illumine them…  (22:5).

 The joy of being eternally in His presence, to see things as they really are, and to be able to enjoy them, just as He has designed and teaches in His Word, is something far beyond our ability to comprehend now, but by no means less real. It is the pure reality of that, which awaits us and which those, who have by faith received salvation through Jesus Christ, will experience forever.

 Don’t miss the opportunity to experience it and enjoy it yourself! Don’t wait! Leave behind all, in which you have put your trust until now. Crown Jesus as King and Master of your life. No other, not even you, can rule it rightly. Trust the One, who died to save you. Receive him through a simple prayer from your heart, surrendering all that you are to Him.