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  Here is an over-simplified picture of what I have spent the past five years trying to convey from all these Bible lessons with plenty of scripture included to support what I share. God set a law in place which He expects to be obeyed, and it can best be summed up like this: We are either going to surrender to His Lordship and allow Him to replicate His divine nature in us so that we can manifest His love to the world…or we will be destroyed. I don’t know that I could make it any plainer than that. We are told that God is ‘long-suffering’ towards us, ‘not wanting any to perish but for all to come to repentance’ (2 Pet. 3:9). It is His desire for “all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” (1 Ti. 2:4) And ‘unless we repent…we will all likewise…perish’. – Jesus (Luke 13:3,5). Oh, and here’s a news-flash in case anyone forgot this little nugget of truth taught by Jesus: He gave us a ‘new commandment, that we love one another as He loved us’…and…’by this will all...
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  The apostle Paul wrote: “Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law…having become a curse for us…” (Col. 3:13). Before you go and pop the cork on that bottle of champagne upon hearing this news regarding what Christ did…may I challenge you to take a moment to consider this: who was Paul referring to there when he mentions….'us'? Who are the ones that are actually included in that great news…about being ‘redeemed from the curse’? I only do that because we know how easy it is for people to ‘jump to conclusions’ when they read various scriptures and just automatically ‘assume’…it applies to them, especially when it comes to being on the receiving end of blessings and/or good news. How many people are we told in Matt. 7:22 will ‘come in that day’…when they stand before God and just presume they are ‘in’ as they list all those glorious works they did in ‘His name’, only to discover that Jesus ‘never knew them’? (Matt. 7:23) And how many people did Jesus imply would be on th...
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  Those who are followers of Jesus have been instructed (commanded actually) to deal with their ‘old man’…or their sinful flesh nature in the most severe way: as in put it to death! (Col. 3:5-9) We were not advised to consider ‘dialing it down, putting it on a leash, or in a cage’. We were told it ‘must die’…and stay dead. And those who truly belong to Jesus and hear His voice and follow Him (John 10:27)…have done this very thing. They 'have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” (Gal. 5:24). Did you notice that is written as ‘past tense’? We are told by Jesus that ‘not everyone who says ‘Lord, Lord’, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but those who do the will of His Father who is in heaven.” (Matt. 7:21). We also learn in scripture that it is those who are ‘led by His Spirit’ that are the true ‘children of God’ (Rom. 8:14). We learn that those who ‘walk in the Spirit will NOT fulfill the lusts of the flesh (nature), since they are contrary to one another (Gal. 5...
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  “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven.” – Jesus (Matt. 7:21) “Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified (put to death) the flesh with its passions and desires.” – Paul (Gal. 5:24) Try as you may (and many have)…you just can’t conveniently toss those statements aside as if they ‘don’t apply to us today’. They were written down in our Bibles for a purpose; and if for no other reason…hopefully to get our attention and prompt us to dive deeper into God’s word to gain more clarification and understanding. Do you know what I have come to learn over the years? When people are taught to believe a false doctrine… it has this eerie effect on sincere believers where they can be quick to dismiss other scriptures that don’t ‘fit’ with what they have been taught to believe. Remember - most deception will have a thread of truth interwoven through it…which is what makes false teachings so deceptive. ...
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  If you’ve been around church teachings for any length of time, you probably are familiar with the words of lament that Paul expressed in Romans 7, talking about how he agrees that God’s law is good, but also recognizes that within his own self (his flesh)… there is ‘no good thing’. We read in those passages (13-21) how he seems to ‘want to do good…but he does not’, and that the ‘evil he doesn’t want to do…he does’…because of the ‘indwelling sin that is in him.’ I only say we are familiar with those words because that is how many people are made to feel better about themselves and their ongoing sin problem…because if Paul continued to live as a ‘sinner’, who were we to think we could do any better? There’s just one problem with that ‘spin’ on scripture- Paul was NOT suggesting that we will continue to live as sinners ‘saved by grace’ as many presume, or that he did himself. Paul was merely expressing rather well, the conflict we all find ourselves in when we hear ‘the law’, an...
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  There really is no getting around the fact that God seems to lay down some pretty lofty and demanding expectations for us to comply with…if we have any hopes or longing to spend eternity with Him. I would even call them ‘unrealistic requirements’. I mean, really…listen to some of these familiar phrases we have read in scripture: “Go and sin no more.” (John 5:14; 8:11). “Be Holy in all your conduct, for I am holy…” (1 Pet. 1:15-16) “Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.” (Matt.5:48) “I give you this commandment to love others as I have loved you.” (John 15:12; 13:34) And let’s not forget those reminders that despite whatever impressive ‘works for God’ we may do and accomplish over the span of our lives, if we have not been perfected in His love, then all of our works are for ‘naught’, and profit us nothing. If we learn nothing else from Matt. 7:21-23 and 1 Cor. 13:1-8, it should be this. Didn’t Jesus say in multiple places that we cannot be His disciple unless we are w...
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  If we don’t understand the significance and relevance of God’s laws, or are ignorant of them, then we really can’t have a clear understanding as to what ‘sin’ is. (1 John 3:4). If our understanding is limited as to what sin is… then we won’t understand what God’s judgements are all about. (John 5:14; Rom. 6:23). Failure to recognize God’s judgments on sin would be the primary reason there is an absence of the ‘fear of God’ these days. (Rom. 3:18) And where there is no healthy ‘fear of God’, then we are truly lacking in knowledge; because the ‘fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge’ (Prov. 1:7). Which then leads me back to the question you should know this answer by heart to- ‘Why are God’s people destroyed’, according to Hosea 4:6? Welcome back to my ongoing study where I am reviewing the three main components of an outline that focuses on three areas of truths found in our Bibles that unfortunately…many sincere believers are lacking an understanding in these days. The p...
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