Dead to the law

A friend and I are doing a Bible Study of the Book of Romans. Last week we were reading Romans chapter 7.

V 1-4, Or do you not know, brethren (for I speak to those who know the law), that the law has dominion over a man as long as he lives? For the woman who has a husband is bound by the law to her husband as long as he lives. But if the husband dies, she is released from the law of her husband. So then if, while her husband lives, she marries another man, she will be called an adulteress; but if her husband dies, she is free from that law, so that she is no adulteress, though she has married another man. Therefore, my brethren, you also have become dead to the law through the body of Christ, that you may be married to another—to Him who was raised from the dead, that we should bear fruit to God.

Suddenly, as I read it, the comparison became a reality. If I put off my old life and I am born-again, then it is as if I have died and I am a brand new person. These verses say that if a woman is married she is bound to her husband, but if he dies then she is no longer bound to him. Just so, we are bound to the law, but when we are born again we are no longer bound to the law. We are free to follow the teachings and ways of Jesus.

V 6, But now we have been delivered from the law, having died to what we were held by, so that we should serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter.

Now we can serve Christ is freedom. We don’t have to worry about religious rules. In the Old Testament the priest made atonement for the sins of the people once a year. People had to bring animals and birds to sacrifice for all kinds of things from babies being born to being cleansed from illnesses. There were so many rules and regulations to follow! I have often heard people speak about things that are mentioned in the Old Testament that were regarded as sin, and now they are not called sin anymore. For instance, the debate about tattoos. People say that if tattoos are a sin, then you also shouldn’t be allowed to wear fabric woven from two types of fabric

Deuteronomy 22:11, You shall not wear a garment of different sorts, such as wool and linen mixed together.

What is that all about? I really have no idea. I haven’t researched it at all. All l know is that Jesus says about the greatest commandment.

Matthew 22:37-40, Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

Every action I take, everything I do, every word I speak and every thought I think, ultimately affects not only myself, but others too. If I love God and if I love my neighbour, then I am not going to do things that will hurt either of them. We should always be aware of what we say and what we do. Our actions and our words have the potential to heal or to harm, and if we profess to be believers, we seriously don’t want to hurt anyone. I’m not saying that we should be pushovers and allow people to walk over us at all. We should be led by God’s Word because the answer to every question we have if there. I’m not going to get into lawful and unlawful things because I know that Jesus set me free and I allow the Holy Spirit to lead me. Obviously I make mistakes and when I do Jesus says that I will be forgiven.

1 John 1:9, If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all

To live a life free from condemnation is what Jesus is offering. All we need to do is take it. When we accept Him as Saviour He causes us to become new people who are not dragged down by the old things in our live. We need to live like free people every day and revel in the freedom we have been given.

Perfect Christians

Are you supposed to be perfect if you’re a Christian?

Ephesians 4:21-24, Assuming that you have really heard Him and been taught by Him, as [all] Truth is in Jesus [embodied and personified in Him],  Strip yourselves of your former nature [put off and discard your old unrenewed self] which characterized your previous manner of life and becomes corrupt through lusts and desires that spring from delusion;

And be constantly renewed in the spirit of your mind [having a fresh mental and spiritual attitude], And put on the new nature (the regenerate self) created in God’s image, [Godlike] in true righteousness and holiness.

This paints a picture of a perfect person, a perfect Christian. Your old sinful life is behind you and now you are brand new and none of the old dirt is on you. So you surely have to be perfect now. Don’t you?

I cannot even imagine trying to be that perfect person. I would be such hard work!

1 John 1:6-10, If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us.

Clearly, we will never be perfect, which is really quite a relief, because we cannot do it in our own strength anyway. This passage is extremely consoling as we have the promise of God’s forgiveness and His grace.

I often hear criticism that people who are in ministry have faults. I have been guilty of that myself. How can so-and-so be leading a church or be an evangelist or a prophet when they do whatever. The answer is that God uses imperfect people to do His work, and not the obvious one’s according to worldly standards.

1 Corinthians 1:26-31, Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don’t see many of “the brightest and the best” among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. Isn’t it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these “nobodies” to expose the hollow pretensions of the “somebodies”? That makes it quite clear that none of you can get by with blowing your own horn before God. Everything that we have—right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start—comes from God by way of Jesus Christ. That’s why we have the saying, “If you’re going to blow a horn, blow a trumpet for God. (The Message)

And why doesn’t God use ‘perfect’ people? Just picture this. You belong to a church and the pastor is perfect. I mean 120%, head and shoulders above the rest, immune to all temptation, never puts a foot wrong, perfect. Everyone will love him so much and he will have the biggest congregation… because he is perfect and people are going to worship him, and they won’t need God. I think we should be very happy that our leaders aren’t perfect because we are going to need to pray for them. Perfect people don’t need prayer. The more time we spend in prayer the better for us. It also gives us hope because if God can use someone who has faults that we can see, He can also use us.

So, Christians aren’t perfect, they never were and they never will be. They are imperfect people who have been saved by grace and God uses them because they love Him. That’s all that is expected from them. If we ever thought we needed to be perfect we can give up on that idea straight away and use the time we spent worrying about it, worshipping and loving God.

Confess your sins

I am in the position at the moment where I suspect someone of having done something illegal but I don’t have sufficient proof. It’s a really bad place to be in. It is not affecting the way I am treating the person because believe you’re innocent until proven guilty and I lean toward the side of mercy where there is doubt.

I tried to put myself into that person’s shoes and it hasn’t been that hard. I am far from perfect and I’ve done a lot of things that I’m not going to go around boasting about. If we do things that we have to keep secret it is not good for our souls. There is so much stress because we have to be careful about what we say and do. What if we say the wrong thing and someone realises what we have done? We are going to look bad and will lose face in front of people who think we are good. We could lose our jobs and family and friends could reject us.

1 John 1:8-9, If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us.

James 5:16, Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.

Living with this kind of secret doesn’t only affect your mind and emotions but can make you physically sick. This verse says that you must get the thing you’ve done into the open so that your sickness can be healed. Forgiveness is so strong that it can heal sickness.

The other thing that happens is that we are not in right standing with God because the devil has something he can accuse us of. He can stand in the throne room of God and accuse us of whatever it is we have done and not confessed and received forgiveness for.

Revelation 12:10, Then I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, “Now salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren, who accused them before our God day and night, has been cast down.

And God cannot lie and say that the devil cannot torment us because we haven’t made right with Him.

Numbers 23:19, God is not a man, that He should lie…

So what do we do to get back to a place of righteousness, or are we condemned for ever?

Revelation 12:11, And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death.

Daniel 9:9, To the Lord our God belong mercy and forgiveness, though we have rebelled against Him

It is so important to fix everything we have done which can cause a rift between ourselves and God and between ourselves and other people. It is so much better to live in unity with people and to know that when we speak to God we can come before Him with no guilt. Guilt will kill us in the long run. Unfortunately doing one wrong thing often leads to doing something else to cover up the first thing and so on. God does not need to punish our sins, we are punished enough by the consequences to our minds, emotions and bodies.

Once we have confessed and we have been forgiven we need to forgive ourselves. Don’t remember your wrongdoing once you have asked God for forgiveness. Look up, dress up and show up.

Romans 8:31-34, What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? Who shall bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us.

Straighten you crown and walk with your head high. You are a worthy child of the most high God and you have to act that way.

For all have sinned

I have started making podcasts of that blogs I write. Here is the link.

https://anchor.fm/alexandra-esterhuizen/episodes/51-Dont-make-a-plan-e3b8k3/a-ab31cq

This post is partly an old post and partly new. I read it and realized there were things I wanted to add.

Do you remember when you were a child and the teacher left the classroom with the instruction: “Be quiet while I’m out!”? And you try your best. You really do. You try to concentrate on the work in front of you and not on your friend next to you. You try to ignore the whispers around you and the paper jet that just landed on top of your Math book. You even try not to acknowledge the boy who is poking his pen into your back or the one who is pulling your hair. You try. You try so hard but before you know it you are caught up in all the activity around you when the teacher returns your name is on her detention list and you just can’t understand why. If we try to be good people, if the try to follow the laws and rules in the Bible we are going to get caught up in all the worldly activity around us and become so involved in it that by the time we have to stand before the Judgement Seat we are not going to receive the ultimate prize of living in Heaven for eternity. That is, if we TRY.

Romans 3:11-18 tells how there isn’t even one righteous person who is under the law. Verse 19: ‘Now we know that whatever the law says, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore by the deed of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin.’ We can’t be good on our own. We can try as hard as we want, but in our own strength we cannot keep the law. We can for a while, or sometimes, or with certain things, but not all the time with everything. All that’s going to happen is that we will wear ourselves out trying and then find ourselves mixed up in everything that’s against the law.
So, what do we do to avoid this? Make the decision that you want to be a child of God. Ask Him to forgive your sins and ask Jesus to come and live in your heart.
Make a decision that you want a relationship with Jesus Christ and allow Him to be master of your life and stop TRYING. All His grace to rule within you. Give the Holy Spirit the reigns and let Him lead you. Paul said in Romans 7:15 -18, “For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do. If, then, I do what I will not do, I agree with the law that it is good. But now it is no longer I who do it, but the sin that dwells in me. For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice. Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.” It is obvious that Paul, who was the greatest apostle ever, and the author of most of the New Testament, struggled with sin. Who are we to think that we are above that?
Are you now going to be perfect? NO!! But you are going to be justified. Romans 3:23-24 – ‘for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.’ In verse 25 – 26 Paul goes on to say that because Jesus died for us, God has forgiven our sins. This grace that we are given because we are children of God is enough to keep us from going to Hell. It is not an excuse to just carry on doing what we want to do without regard for anything, but it covers the things we do that we shouldn’t be doing and it gives us the strength to resist the temptations that come before us daily. We can’t DO anything to win God’s favour. The only way we get His favour is to hold onto His Son and give our lives to Him. Paul also says in 1 Corinthians 15:31 “…I die daily.”
Just like Paul we should ‘die daily’ to the old things, to the worldly things that drag us down and be alive and aware daily of God’s redeeming grace.

Abortion

Facebook has been bombarding us with anti-abortion posts. I think its high time that people take a stand against abortion. Its high time people stand up for what they believe in regardless. Taking a stand and standing with what you say is always better than sitting on the fence.

I was thinking about what I would do if someone close to me were to decide to have an abortion. I know that I wouldn’t like it, but I also know that I wouldn’t be able to judge her. Firstly if I only found out about it after it was done I wouldn’t have been part of the process and thus had no insight into the situation. I wouldn’t know how much fear she possibly went through. Secondly I am not allowed to judge. James 4;12 says, “There is one Lawgiver, who is able to judge to save and to destroy. Who are you to judge another?” Romans 2:1, “Therefore you are inexcusable, O man, whoever you are who judge, for in whatever you judge another you condemn yourself; for you who judge practice the same things.” It’s like the woman who was caught in adultery in John 8:1-11. Jesus told her accusers that the one who is without sin, should cast the first stone. Everyone dropped their stones and left. Not one of us is perfect and we do not have the right to judge anyone else. So is abortion wrong? Yes, most decidedly so. Abortion is murder and murder is always wrong. But, as I’ve illustrated, so is judging and as far as I can discern there isn’t a difference between sins. A sin is a sin is a sin. We should hate the sin, but we need to love the sinner. Jude 1:22-23, “And have mercy on those who doubt; save others by snatching them out of the fire; to others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh.”

How should we treat a woman or a girl who has had an abortion? Just like any other person. We should love her so much. We should love her so much that she can overcome the fear that drove her to have the abortion. 1 john 4:18, “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts our fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love.” That is so absolutely frightening. I  can just imagine the grotesque faces of the demons who inflict the kind of fear that drives a person to ending the life of their own baby. I want to weep when I think about it. We, who are believers, are failing those who are living in fear. Fear of the consequences. Fear of what people will say. Fear that she won’t be able to take care of a new life. Fear of what her husband or boyfriend’s reaction will be. Fear that she won’t be able to complete her studies and that she will be a disappointment to her family. Those are the kind of things that are being whispered to her. The verse says hear involves torment. The Oxford Dictionary gives the meaning of torment as, “Severe physical or mental suffering.” Fear is very real and fear is from the devil. Hebrews 2:14- 15 says that Jesus will destroy the devil and release those who through fear of death were subject to bondage throughout their lives. 2 Timothy 1;7, “ For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.”  The ESV version says, “for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self control.” I would think that a sound mind would practice self control.

If we show love to this poor girl who has been through all that trauma we are doing the will of God. That is the only way she is ever going to have a chance to get away from the torment of the enemy. If we were to push her away and judge her as a sinner and mark her as a bad person she is not going to have a hope and a future. Who is she going to turn to if she can’t turn to believers when the tormentors don’t stop tormenting her. And they won’t stop. The devil is a liar.  John 8:44, (paraphrased) “…the devil was a liar from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it.“  So, as I see it, the devil or rather one of his demons sets about tormenting someone who is vulnerable. Then, once they are good and scared, he tells them that the only way out of the situation is the abortion, then everything will be okay because it will be over, there will be no consequences and nobody will even know. She goes ahead with the procedure but she doesn’t realize that the torment won’t stop. She will have feelings of guilt and failure. Until she is set free by the love of Jesus she will not be whole.

Our duty is to show her that love and to guide her into perfect freedom.

For all have sinned

Do you remember when you were a child and the teacher left the classroom with the instruction: “Be quiet while I’m out!”? And you try your best. You really do. You try to concentrate on the work in front of you and not on your friend next to you. You try to ignore the whispers around you and the paper jet that just landed on top of your Math book. You even try not to acknowledge the boy who is poking his pen into your back or the one who is pulling your braid. You try. You try so hard but before you know it you are caught up in all the activity around you when the teacher returns your name is on her detention list and you just can’t understand why. If we try to be good people, if the try to follow the laws and ruled in the Bible we are going to get caught up in all the worldly activity around us and become so involved in it that by the time we have to stand before the Judgement Seat we are not going to receive the ultimate prize of living in Heaven for eternity. That is, if we TRY.

Romans 3:11-18 tells how there isn’t even one righteous person who is under the law. Verse 19: ‘Now we know that whatever the law says, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore by the deed of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin.’ We can’t be good on our own. We can try as hard as we want, but in our own strength we cannot keep the law. We can for a while, or sometimes, or with certain things, but not all the time with everything. All that’s going to happen is that we will wear ourselves out trying and then find ourselves mixed up in everything that’s against the law.
So, what do we do to avoid this?
Make the decision that you want to be a child of God. Ask Him to forgive your sins and ask Jesus to come and live in your heart.
Make a decision that you want a relationship with Jesus Christ and allow Him to be master of your life and stop TRYING. All His grace to rule within you. Give the Holy Spirit the reigns and let Him lead you.
Are you now going to be perfect? NO!! But you are going to be justified. Romans 3:23-24 – ‘for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.’ In verse 25 – 26 Paul goes on to say that because Jesus died for us, God has forgiven our sins. This grace that we are given because we are children of God is enough to keep us from going to Hell. It is not an excuse to just carry on doing what we want to do without regard for anything, but it covers the things we do that we shouldn’t be doing and it gives us the strength to resist the temptations that come before us daily. We can’t DO anything to win God’s favour. The only way we get His favour is to hold onto His Son and give our lives to Him. Paul also says in 1 Corinthians 15:31 “…I die daily.”
Just like Paul we should ‘die daily’ to the old things, to the worldly things that drag us down and be alive and aware daily of God’s redeeming grace.