So then, each of us will give an account of himself to God.
Romans 14:12(HCSB)
In Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and you have been given fullness in Christ. (Colossians 2:9,10 NIV)
We have said that Christ is a heavenly revelation, but Christ is also a heavenly fullness. If God has revealed His mind, His thought in Christ; if all that God intended has been brought to us in a personal revelation: God has followed that up by the fullest provision in Christ for its realization and its attainment. So that every need of ours is supplied according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus. In Christ there is not only a standard set, but every kind of provision for attaining to God standard. All the secret resources of God to reach His end are there in Christ for us. If He has come out with the mind of God in fullness, He has also come out with the resources of God in fullness. All the fullness dwells in Him, and we are made full in Him (Col. 2:9). God could never judge us at the end by His standard of revelation if He had not made all provision for our realizing of that standard....
God thought is centered in Christ in heaven, and God resources are centered in Christ in heaven. That means that the Lord people in this dispensation are essentially a heavenly people, and that means that it is quite impossible to attain unto God thought or to know God resources in Christ until we are a heavenly people. If in any way (and we are speaking to the Lord people now, and speaking of the life which we would call the Christian life), or in any measure we areearthbound, it will be in that measure impossible to attain unto God thought, and to know God resources. God only takes responsibility to supply and to carry on that which is essentially heavenly, and in the measure in which a thing is heavenly, and only in that measure (but surely in that measure), God takes responsibility for it. If it is in any way linked with this world, becoming a part of this world system, related to this earth, it has got to take responsibility for itself to carry its own weight, to find its own resources, to see its own way through.
He will choose our inheritance for us. § He encircled him, He instructed him, He kept him as the apple of His eye. As an eagle stirs up its nest, hovers over its young, spreading out its wings, taking them up, carrying them on its wings, so the Lord alone led him, and there was no foreign god with him.
I am the Lord your God, who teaches you to profit, who leads you by the way you should go. § Who teaches like Him?
We walk by faith, not by sight. § Here we have no continuing city, but we seek the one to come. § Beloved, I beg you as sojourners and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul. § Arise and depart, for this is not your rest; because it is defiled, it shall destroy, yes, with utter destruction.
The heavens are not pure in His sight, how much less man, who is abominable and filthy, who drinks iniquity like water! § The stars are not pure in His sight, how much less man, who is a maggot?
Who is like You, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like You, glorious in holiness? § Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.
As He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, because it is written, “Be holy, for I am holy.” § Be partakers of His holiness. The temple of God is holy, which temple you are. § What manner of persons ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness? … Without spot and blameless.
Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification … And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.
If [since] ye, then, be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God" (Col. 3:1).
The Christian cannot thrive but in his environment, "hidden with Christ in God" (Col. 3:3).
"Let us rightly divide the Word of truth. To go back to the Psalms for proper Christian experience is to lose the savor of grace and to breathe legalism; it is to climb down from heaven to earth. If the Psalms are really understood, they yield a harvest of blessing to the soul; but if misunderstood and misapplied, as alas! is too often done, only loss can result." -W.K.
"If we confound the Jewish spirit of the Psalms with the Epistles, and take it as the expression of our feelings, we falsify Christianity. No doubt I shall find lovely confidence in the Lord in respect of His government of this world, the comfort of forgiveness, the happy confidence of integrity of heart, and remarkable prophecies of Christ; but where shall I find heavenly hopes, or my union with the glorified Lord Jesus, or even the out-flowings of divine grace, as manifested in His person on earth, or the blessed affection which flows from hearts acquainted with these?
"Where is the blessed Spirit of adoption? Every saint knows the touching expression of piety which the Psalms furnish to us; but no intelligent believer can turn from the writings of John and Paul to the Psalms without finding himself in an altogether different atmosphere."
"Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth" (Col. 3:2).
A man’s conduct is always determined by his view of God. A man’s conduct is always determined by his understanding of God. The more we come to understand the Lord, the more we trust Him, and the more we come to trust our God, the more we love Him.
The more we come to love our Saviour, the more we come to know Him. The more we come to know Him – the more we understand Him, but a man’s conduct is always determined by his understanding of God. And this is the wonderful way that God is training each of His children today – to understand Him – to trust Him – to love Him and to know Him more.
His revelation began to unfold in Eden, as ELOHIM the strong almighty God. His character continued to be revealed as ADONI, my Lord and my Master, but the infinitely incomprehensible, eternal God continued revealing Himself. Little by little He unveiled new ways of revealing His nature and His character, and the unfolding of Himself is likely to reach through time and into eternity.
For when Moses removed his shoes from off his feet on the holy mount, God started one of the most astonishing unveilings of Himself: as YHWH. He told Moses “I AM That I AM”, and YHWH began His newest disclosure: I AM What : I AM Who : I AM When : I AM How : I AM Why : I AM. Every question of God is concealed within His Name – I AM THAT I AM.
Whatever you need – I AM. Wherever you go – I AM. Whoever you are – I AM. Whenever you are – I AM. However you are – I AM. I AM That I AM. But a man’s conduct is always determined by his view of God.
God knew that a man’s conduct is determined by his view of Him, and so He began to unveil
read moreWhen Self is identified as irreparably damaged and incapable of improvement, we are brought to the end of our 'self-life' and cry out at long last, “self must no longer have sway in my life.” For it is not the “old I” but the “new life in Christ” that lives, and it must only be Christ. For me to live is Christ and Christ alone. Phil.1:21 This is a truth that discerning men of God have come to understand, but often after many years or decades of heart-break when the struggle with the self-life ends up with a life broken before the Lord.
“Many a young Christian, who has not been warned of this necessary voyage of discovery upon which the Holy Spirit will certainly embark him (i.e. Romans 7), has been plunged into almost incurable despair at the sight of the sinfulness which is his by nature. He has in the first place rejoiced greatly in the forgiveness of his sins, and his acceptance by God; but sooner or later he begins to realise that all is not well, and that he has failed and fallen from the high standard from which he set himself to reach in the first flush of his conversion.”
“He begins to know something of the experience which Paul so graphically describes: ‘What I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I (i.e. Romans 7:15), and, in consequence, he feels that the bottom has fallen out of his Christian life; and then perhaps the Devil whispers to him that it is just no good his going on, because he will never be able to make the grade. Little does he know how healthy his condition is, and that this shattering discovery is but the prelude to a magnificent series of further discoveries of things which God has expressly designed for his eternal enrichment. All through life, God has to show us our own utter sinfulness and need, before He is able to lead us on into realms of grace,
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