What will it be like when God says enough is enough on his program for heaven so he can pick up where he left off with his program for those who will inherit the earth? Often times, people fail to see the distinction in the secret coming of the Savior and the second coming of the Messiah. When the apostle Paul talks about the last days or the latter times, he’s not describing the end of the world. The apostle Paul is describing some of the things that will be characteristic of the last day of this age just prior to the body of the Savior being caught up off this planet. A continual downward slide concerning human behavior; evilulotion not evolution, some call it devolution; increasingly more religious and superstitious in our last days, interested more in pleasure than lover of God. 


This is how God is operating with age of grace saints, he’s not giving you things to look at or giving you signs. If you see something and say that was God, isn’t God good; guess what, same things happen to non-believers today. Good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people. Personalize blessings that’s called worshipping at the altar of the miraculous. Worshipping at the altar of the miraculous is to worship at the altar of the flesh. To worship at the altar of the flesh is to allow experience to trump truth and to allow experience to trump truth is to allow emotion to trump truth. And when experience becomes king in a person’s life, experience is determining that person’s doctrine rather than the person’s doctrine determining the validity of their experience. Emotion not only becomes the fuel but the pilot of that person’s life.

Freedom from God’s condemnation is a reality for every single believer, not because of any new found performance capabilities, but because we are made the righteousness of God in our union with his perfectly righteous son. On top of that, everything necessary to prove to us beyond any shadow of doubt, and to prove to Satan and his rebellious forces that we are totally secure in our union with God’s son, we need nothing more, God supplied every need already. There were a lot of people in Paul’s day and in our day trying to earn their righteousness before God by way of their performance. They thought God would measure their do’s and don’ts and thought they were actually measuring up. God would considered them righteous worthy of his attendance, worthy of being in heaven. In fact, they were bragging, boasting about their achievements as though God could do nothing other than to declare them righteous because they deserved just such a declaration. Paul warned to guard against those who would promote a righteousness through performance idea.

It is up to those of the world to either accept or reject their redeemer, but that does no less make him their redeemer. When we accept our redeemer and the price he paid, the ransom he paid, then we are joined to Christ and we have his righteousness attributed to our account. Those who reject the gift are thumbing their noses at the one who died to paid that price for their redemption. The price was paid for all, and through that payment Jesus redeemed the entire human race from the sin barrier that separated the world from God. It is now a son issue, not a sin issue. Will those of the world accept or reject the payment Christ made for their redemption? Those who reject their redeemer will face the ultimate consequences of that rejection. God did for us what we could never do for ourselves, he took all of our performance off of us and put it onto Jesus and judged him for our faulty performance. The only thing God is asking us to believe to be placed into his son, is to take him at his word concerning what his son did where our sins are concerned. The instance we take our stand with God, we are not only saved, but sealed until the day of redemption of these earthly tents in which we dwell. Flesh wants to say if I broke it, I can fix it. God is not asking us to turn from anything to be saved, he is asking us to believe Jesus accomplished salvation for us and we are simply to believe it. Jesus did it all, there is nothing left for us to do, God did all the giving, we do only all the receiving, faith is taking God at his word concerning what his son did on our behalf.

If you’re not rightly dividing the Word of Truth, you’re going to be living in Israel’s program in your mind. When you’re living with Israel’s program in your mind, do you know what you’re going to be fixated on? The fix. And you’re going to be hoping that someone is praying for you for the fix. When Paul says, no, it’s not about the fix, it’s about your future hope today. Hope that isn’t seen is not hope at all. If you get the fix, what are you hoping for? God dealing with the outer man was the order of the day when it came to the earthly kingdom program and when it came to God validating the message and the messengers with whom he was entrusting the message he was delivering to people. So, there was an obvious change in program. It shouldn’t surprise us then that God would cease dealing with the outer man in connection with God’s program with Israel and prophecy concerning their promised earthly kingdom and then begin dealing with the inner man in connection with his program through the newly appointed apostle Paul concerning the saints of his heavenly calling.

Understand, this is an issue of vital importance, God told Paul a secret. Unsearchable simply means that which had never been made know, that which could never be search out about Jesus. The idea that Paul was simply taking the same message taught by John, taught by the 12 apostles, taught by Jesus during his earthly ministry, but Paul was taking that message in a different direction, same message, different direction. Something was different with Paul and something began with the apostle Paul. When Paul talks about placing no confidence in the flesh, he’s contrasting having Jesus’ righteousness freely imputed to the account of the believer with those who suppose that they can merit a righteous standing before God through commitment, through their performance, through their production. It’s only when we come to properly understand God from his perspective concerning ourselves, both before we came to understand Paul’s message and then what we are and who we are after we have believed Paul’s message and have been joined to God’s son, then we can be capable of viewing others and relating to others accordingly who are also members of the Savior’s body, of his flesh and of his bones. Ministers of righteousness teach the successful Christian life is all about reformed doing and commitments, they teach it wrong according to the apostle Paul. It’s all about transformed thinking. According to our apostle, the battle is taking place between the ears, between fleshy thinking and divine thinking. God’s work in us, not our work for God, major difference. 


Cafeteria Christianity, each group placing on their plate the portion, or portions of Scripture that appeal most to them. “We want this, but we will ignore that.” “We will take one of these, but we will leave the others off our plate.” But we can not pick and choose whatever doctrine suits our appetites as though it’s left up to us to serve ourselves. We have to allow God to tell us in the Word the portions of that Word that are specifically written about and directly apply to us. If you read the words “ye men of Israel” or “ye men of Judaea” don’t take from the table of that nation and put that instruction on your plate. You are not the nation Israel. You are not under the law, they were. You are under Grace. Allow God to tell you in his Word the identity of those he is instructing and discover the distinctions he’s defined in the economies that he’s designed and then get on board with what God is doing today and join him in it.

We have a self-sanctification in the positive sense of separating ourselves from those things we know that are not good for us or not good for others. Motivation is the key component when it comes to self-sanctification. Ministers of righteousness link practical righteousness with their salvation to some degree. Because according to them to walk after the flesh is to assign righteous credit to their fleshly conduct. They suppose that their behavior is the source of their right standing with God. They suppose that becoming more righteous in practice will make them more righteous in God’s sight. But from Adam onward people have been doing what seems right to a person in regard to having a relationship with God. Only one member of the entire human race has ever lived up to any system of rule-keeping for righteousness (Jesus). Yet, how many are attempting today to do what the human race before us was totally unable to do? How many people think they are measuring up to God’s standard today? 


Listen to the ministers of righteousness, the ones who don’t think salvation comes quite so easily. They think that salvation is contingent upon works in their peoples life. They would equate sinfulness with salvation and thus link grace to license. They want a formula to give their people some guidelines and they can do A,B,C and their people will be doing the Christian life successfully. As a result, their peoples attitude is “I’m not going to do that, because that is bad,” or “I’m not going to do that, because I cannot do that and remain a Christian,” or “I’m going to do this, because God demands I do it,” or “I’m going to follow the rules, because God will accept me if I follow the rules faithfully.” NOW contrast a walking after the flesh attitude with the attitude of one who is walking after their identity in the Savior: “I’m not going to do that, because that is not who I am in the Savior, and that is not good for me and it’s not good for the other person. These good deeds will not save me, they will not even help to keep me saved, but why spend my time wallowing in the mire that caused my Savior to have to die in the first place? I do not owe anything to this old flesh.”

“There’s no repentance for the Age of Grace.” Oh, yes there is! How about repentance? How about a change of thinking in the Age of Grace? If a person hears Paul’s good news message and that person refuses to believe Paul’s message, choosing instead to believe that their works can add something, that their works can do something to do with getting them saved or, keeping them saved, that person does indeed need to change their thinking, they needs to repent!
 All who are believing the messages presented by the ministers of righteousness today, wherever they are or whoever they are, the ones Paul is talking about in 2 Corinthians 11:15, they need to change their thinking and accept Paul’s good news message as being the truth in order to receive justification unto eternal life by being placed into the Savior. So, repentance (or, a change of thinking) is necessary, in that sense even in this Age of Grace. 


God’s sentence on the flesh was not reformation. It was total eradication. That sentence was carried out when we died with Jesus. God had no intention of repairing the old man. No plan to clean it up and make it more presentable. God’s intention was to kill it. God has already made you fit, being made complete to be a partaker of the inheritance of the saints in light. Not something we must wait for. Not something we must strive for. Not something that will have our fingerprints on it in anyway whatsoever. Our fitness for our heavenly inheritance is an inheritance that waits every believer. It has already been accomplished for us according to the apostle Paul. It’s a done deal. The fitness Paul speaks of here was accomplished by someone else not by you. Tell me, does your no condemnation status with God depend to any degree whatsoever upon your performance? Absolutely not. There is absolutely no condemnation whatsoever to those who recognize that it’s not their own righteous conduct but Jesus’ righteousness that sets them apart as holy and acceptable unto God. To walk after the new identity is to remove the credit from you and give the credit where the credit is due and that’s God’s power within you that produces fruit in your life. To walk after the flesh is to assign righteous credit to your fleshly conduct.

Paul had to remind people over and over again of his God given position. He had to remind them that he was not one of the 12. That his ministry was distinct and separate. His position was unique...that his message was brand new...that his ministry was different from that of the 12 and that it was divinely ordered. It wasn’t something he chose to do. Paul constantly had to emphasize his ministry, why? Because others were de-emphasizing his ministry. How many today would say we get our marching orders for the church today from the Apostle Paul and not from the 12? Tragically most people and sadly enough most Bible teaching pastors...most seminaries will tell you...Paul was simply preaching what the 12 before him had been preaching. What Jesus had been preaching. He was simply aiming their message at a different people. He was aiming their message at the Gentiles. They would say Paul was the Apostle “to” the Gentiles, rather he was the Apostle “of” the Gentiles. That is what’s being taught by pastors across the land today. Paul knew it was his responsibility to take the message of reconciliation out to a lost and dying world.

Romans 8:1 - There is THEREFORE NOW, the Now pointing back to the reality of our justification and our sanctification. Based on justification and sanctification, Paul often uses that word “therefore” which means he is ready to draw a conclusion. Paul took us through justification through faith, telling us how God has dealt with that problem of sin. And, then he took us through sanctification, the issue with sanctification is not about sin, but about perfection; God perfected us, made us as equally righteous as God himself.

Now, Paul draws it all together, based upon the fact that you are already sanctified, already IN the Savior, there is now no condemnation for you. If God sees you IN the Savior and he sees you as being complete in your identity with the Savior, totally identified with Jesus in every aspect of Jesus’ life and relationship with the Father, to condemn you who are IN the Savior, would be the same thing as to condemn Jesus. Colossians 2:10

There are those who say the final portion of Romans 8:1 where it says, “who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit” should not be there at all. However, the thought of not walking after the flesh, but after the spirit does indeed appear down in Verse 4 and is in the manuscript of the Majority text, so that idea is a valid idea. So, rather than ignoring them altogether, why not just explain them.

Walking after the flesh is not talking about committing sins, but with placing one’s confidence in the capacity of their flesh to provide righteousness through performance. Rather than having Jesus’ righteousness freely imputed to their account, the person who is walking after the flesh is the person laboring under the false notion that they can earn their righteousness through their performance. They are laboring under the false notion that there is capacity in their flesh to be right before God, that is precisely what Israel was doing. The more that we believe in the reality of our identity and focus on that identity, the more God is free to affect our practice, and he will by producing his fruit in our lives. The flesh is incapable of producing fruit acceptable to God. Believers who try to produce that fruit themselves through whatever religious system, through whatever legal practice of do’s and don’ts will only find themselves fruitless in their efforts.

Believer’s who strive to perfect their practice in an attempt to achieve or maintain a particular status with God is what Paul tells us he tried to do back in Romans chapter 7, how did that work for our apostle? The more Paul tried to make his flesh perform, the less his flesh was willing to conform.

The flesh cannot be perfected, it cannot be changed, and it cannot be Christianized, so render it dead. The more we focus on perfecting the flesh, the more we will end up minding the things of the flesh, and Paul wants us to put the flesh behind us.

Thank God, that in his perspective we are not in the flesh, but we are safe and secure in the Savior. Whose righteousness? Jesus’ righteousness freely attributed to the account of the one who takes God at his Word concerning what Jesus accomplished for our sins.

We were never told to teach the law to our children. We were never told to talk about the law when we’re sitting in our house, when we’re walking down the street, as we go to bed, as we a raise in the morning. We were never told to make a law list and attached it to our hand. We were never given feast days to observe or rites and rituals to preform as Israel was told. These were all part of Israel’s work of faith. Believing what God wanted them to believe. Doing what God wanted them to do in accordance with the Law contract. According to our apostle, the apostle Paul of the Gentiles is to rightly divide the word of truth. So we were given scripture, not Israel’s scripture. Of course we should know Israel’s scripture. How can we rightly divide one from the other if we don’t know both. To rightly divide is to be able to understand the differences dealing with God or having God deal with us under a law contract and God operating with us according to as Paul calls it his grace and unsearchable riches of the Savior. 


When it came to the earthly program, God’s glory was magnified through seeing. And, the prayer of faith was the catalyst. That was God’s earthly kingdom plan. Miraculous events...visual events. However, when we come to understand the we’re living in a brand new age, a brand new dispensation called the dispensation of grace and that that earthly kingdom program is no longer in progress, but on hold, we come to realize that God wants to stabilize every believer today in a completely different way. Romans 16:25, did the 12 know it? No. Did Jesus preach it? No. Will you find it in the 4 gospels? No. You won’t find it till Paul because it was kept secret till God committed it to Paul to tell to us, the people of the Gentile program. Did the apostle Paul know what to pray for as he ought when he was asking God to deliver him from the thorn in his flesh? You see, had Paul known that God’s strength during the dispensation of grace is perfected in the lives of those who are weak, Paul would probably not have asked for deliverance in the first place. However, when Paul did come to understand how God was working in this dispensation, he did an abrupt about face telling us that he now took pleasure in infirmities. What a sudden change of direction from our apostle.

Judgment and Chastisement, there are two traditional answers in the hallways of religion to why Christians should not think they should continue in sin; spankings from God and judgments from God. Paul gives two entirely different reasons, instead of chastisement and judgment, Paul holds up two entirely different issues, identity and slavery. Paul would have us ask ourselves, Who am I? Paul told us how we were at the point of our belief, we became fully identified with our Savior, in union with him, so that we actually became a part of him. In a very real sense: Two becoming one flesh from the standpoint of God. Being fully identified with the Savior means that we died when Jesus died. Unbelievers are under no obligation to serve righteousness, because the unsaved world is simply serving the master they are under. Human righteousness comes from self interest motivation, it is self glorifying and while it may be of earthly benefit, that will not cut it when it comes to meeting the demands of God’s perfect justice. Paul is just bringing this to our attention, and he is not taking us to judgment and chastisement, he is taking us to identity and obligation. We serve God to no greater degree than we serve those to whom he’s joined, and they are joined to the Savior equally. My service to God, is no greater than my service to you. Your service to God, is no greater than your service to the one in Savior’s Body that you like the least. Choices to make? You can not lose your salvation, but you can certainly reap a boatload of harm to yourself and others around you, and we are doing it everyday.

The pathway of rules and regulations for righteousness, otherwise called religion in the Word of God seems right to a lot of people today. Does Romans 6:1 mean that once a person becomes saved they can just go out and do anything they want to do, live anyway they want to live and still be saved? Does Paul give people a license to sin? Human reasoning would reason it that way. Divine reasoning, divine viewpoint would say, NO, GRACE IS A MUCH GREATER MOTIVATOR. The criteria for salvation is repentance and repentance means turning away from sinning or, at least, a commitment to turn away from your sinning. This is what is commonly taught from the pulpits across the country, from the pulpits of pastors who REFUSE to acknowledge the truth of 2 Corinthians 5:18-21. Has sin been taken off the table of God’s justice through Jesus’ death for those sins according to the apostle Paul, or has it not? Now, how many people not understanding Justification or Sanctification will look at 1 Corinthians 9:27 and say, “See there! If you don’t live right, if you just let that flesh run wild, why, you’re going to be a castaway, you’re going to lose your salvation.” Romans 6:14, isn’t about doing, it’s about believing something and when we believe something and we continue to take in God’s Word and study God’s Word, it should change who we are, not change what we’re trying to do and trying to become. 


Paul is letting us know here in the book of Romans that God didn’t make Heaven for good people, God made Heaven for sinners who are justified freely by his grace. It could be said this way: the washing that the Word of God rightly divided provides, cleanses the tidy-bowl of people’s religious stinkin’ thinkin’. Away it goes right down the drain. Only when the truth of reconciliation achieved through Jesus is believed, does a new creation become a reality as far as that individual is concerned. Realizing the entrapment of the flesh and therefore the wretchedness of the flesh this side of the redemption of our bodies, helps us realize the direction which true righteousness comes. Our reasonable service is a reflection of our appreciation for the fact that the sin question was forever settled. Paul is simply saying that God’s righteousness is now being manifested apart from the principle of rule-keeping. What Jesus did for us doesn't make you measure up to God’s rightness. You have to be declared righteous and that comes by grace through the blood of Jesus and through Jesus’ faithfulness, and you are going to find out your faith has to be in those three components. God’s integrity is at stake in doing what he promised he would do. We can have security of mind that we have Jesus’ test score written on our paper in Heaven. Sanctification can also be a source of great comfort and assurance because sanctification like justification is proof positive that once a person takes God at his word concerning the accomplishment of his son, that person remains in a sanctified identity before God forever, performance notwithstanding.

Cafeteria Christianity, each group placing on their plate the portion, or portions of Scripture that appeal most to them. “We want this, but we will ignore that.” “We will take one of these, but we will leave the others off our plate.” But we can not pick and choose whatever doctrine suits our appetites as though it’s left up to us to serve ourselves. We have to allow God to tell us in the Word the portions of that Word that are specifically written about and directly apply to us. If you read the words “ye men of Israel” or “ye men of Judaea” don’t take from the table of that nation and put that instruction on your plate. You are not the nation Israel. You are not under the law, they were. You are under Grace. Allow God to tell you in his Word the identity of those he is instructing and discover the distinctions he’s defined in the economies that he’s designed and then get on board with what God is doing today and join him in it.

Those who were familiar with law would have immediately understood what Paul was getting at here in Romans chapter 7 as he brought the issue of marriage into the picture. His point was simply this: just as a death must occur according to Roman law in order for a woman to be married to a different husband, a death also had to occur in order for sinners today to be married, or we might say, legally joined to the Savior, the death had to come first. You see, the Law of Moses had a relationship claim on every member of the human race. God absolutely refuses to share those who are joined to his son and the law, with the law husband. If you’ve been maintaining your relationship with the law in connection with your righteousness before God, in your mind, he’d have you come out of that realm of thinking. You are either under the jurisdiction of the law which requires performance for righteousness or you are under the jurisdiction of the Savior and your identity in him is your righteousness, but you can’t have it both ways. Grace and Law are polar opposites and God will share no one joined to his son with the law. If the law has a rightful claim on you, God cannot have a rightful claim on you. If the Savior has a rightful claim on you, the law has no rightful claim on you whatsoever. To be joined to the Savior and joined to the law at the same time would not only be bigamy, it would be adultery according to Paul. 


Is Paul telling us in Romans 6:14 that as believers, we’ll never again have the propensity to sin, or sin shall not have dominion over you because now you are capable of beating it? Is Paul telling you that you are now capable of never committing another sin as long as you live because sin shall not have dominion over you? Is Paul saying it is possible for a believer to live a sinless life? All believers, we’re all alike in this respect, we all continue to struggle with that issue of sins in our lives. Not only do we continue to have the propensity to sin, we do in fact do those things that come short of the glory of God far more often than any of us would like. Sin shall not have dominion over us because we’re not living under the law program, we’re living under grace. The victory has already been won and who won it? Jesus won it. Sin shall not have dominion over us because believers are not under the law, but under grace.

The law pointed to sin and then required death for the sinner. Can the law now stake a further claim against the one who has already satisfied that claim? Will the law ever again have a future claim where Jesus is concerned? Or did Jesus satisfy that claim once and for all. Of course he did! And you are joined to him; being joined to him meaning: fully identified with his satisfying the law’s claim. It only stands to reason that once a person is joined to the one who has satisfied the law’s requirement for sins, and is now standing only in the Savior’s perfect righteousness, that believer’s sinfulness can never be used as proof of that believer’s lack of righteousness. Paul moves us away from the realm of condition and he takes us straight into the realm of identity. The law can make no demand on the world of the lawlessness because Jesus met the law’s demands for the world of sinners for which he died. Today, the law can only serve the purpose of proving people’s need for a righteousness that no person is capable of gaining through performance. 


Paul had all the motivation that Paul needed to bring his body into subjection to whatever degree possible for Paul, not allowing it to reign supreme when it came to his actions. But, had Paul arrived when it came to the sacrifice of himself for the sake of those to whom he had been sent? Paul prayed that he might be made conformable unto Jesus’ death (Philippians 3:10). Jesus sacrificed himself for the sake of the Father’s enemies, for the sake of his enemies. Paul wanted to be made conformable to Jesus’ selflessness. But, Paul hadn’t arrived at Jesus’ selflessness as he states him in Philippines 3:12. You see, even with the proper motivation (and Paul had it, as do we), the flesh is incapable of removing self from our service. So, Paul wasn’t able to divorce self from his service when it came to what he did on behalf of others. Paul was certainly motivated to serve the Savior who died for him. But, Paul was being honest with himself and with us when it came to the capacity of his flesh to merit righteousness before God through performance. If God was going to declare ungodly people righteous, it would have to be freely by his grace. It could come no other way. People’s performance could not be allowed to enter the picture. God would have to use belief rather than behavior as the criterion whereby to join believers to his son.

When Paul’s ministry to the Gentiles was getting underway before God’s Word was complete...was send a handkerchief in order for God through his power from on high to jump into action and perform a miraculous sign for the sick. (Acts 19:11-12) Do you believe that someone could send you a handkerchief and with that handkerchief you're just automatically going to be healed of all manner of sickness and disease? God certainly worked that way in that day. But, Paul himself, revealed a change that was to take place as the ascended Savior let Paul know that change would be coming. 1 Corinthians 13:8, these were signed gifts; the ability to proclaim God’s message prior to the completion of God’s Word through the supernatural empowerment of God’s power from on high. 


1 Corinthians 13:9, it would have been impossible for the prophets of that day, those proclaiming the truth of God before the completed Word of God to reveal all the knowledge of God that would be contained in that completed Word of God. Paul’s epistles were to be passed from assembly to assembly, but keep in mind, he’d only completed 3 letters up to the point of what he’s telling us right here. All the written word the saints had up to that time, pertaining to the dispensation of grace was Galatians and the two letters to the saints at Thessalonica. Paul kept getting more revelations from the ascended Savior on what to tell us and the way God’s working with us today. 


1 Corinthians 13:10, when that which was to be finished comes to completion, there would be no need for the sign gifts to remain in operation. What was unfinished at that time? Paul’s writings to the Body of the Savior of this age!2 Corinthians 12:7-10, notice the change in operation that was beginning to take place in this new, previously undisclosed dispensation. What revelations? The revealing of the secret that God had been keeping where we Gentiles are concerned in light of Israel’s program being placed on the shelf for a time; the revelations concerning the change in program relative to the new dispensation God was ushering in. 


2 Timothy 4:19-20, Trophimus have I left at Miletum SICK. No handkerchief, no anointing with oil, no laying on of hands, no naming it and claiming it, no power of a positive confession, no seed faith sowing, no prayer of faith prayer meeting mentioned whatsoever, just the truth resident in Ephesians 3:20 in light of God’s change of operation in connection with his new program and the dispensation of the grace of God. We can now trust the truth of Romans 8:28.

The overcomers who are addressed at the close of each of these seven Epistles in the book of Revelation will be living in the days of the Beast, in the midst of the great Tribulation, they will be special overcomers of a specific form of evil. No one can put this Epistle to Ephesus by the side of that of Paul to the Ephesians and think for a moment that it can be the same Assembly that is addressed. Note the standing of grace in the one and the standing of works in the other. In Paul’s Epistle to the Body of the Savior in Ephesus, God speaks to those who are all of them on the highest ground of privilege and of grace, but in John’s Epistle, there is no blessing at all except to the overcomers. One of the most disturbing things is someone unable to express confidence about whether they can know if they will have eternal life or not. The very power that raised Jesus from among the dead is available to us; we were baptized into Jesus with this power. Faith is taking God at his word concerning what his son accomplished on our behalf.

After the Body of Christ is lifted off the earth, the whole period of the Day of Yahweh is called the final meeting of the ages, or the Greek word “sunteleia”; but, the crisis in which it culminates is called the end of the age, or the Greek word “telos.” These two Greek words are rendered “end” in the New Testament, but the use of these two words must be carefully distinguished. Sunteleia denotes a finishing or ending together, or in conjunction with other things. It implies that several things meet together, and reach their end during the same period; whereas telos is the point of time at the end of that period. The sign of the telos is the setting up of “the abomination of desolation” spoken of by Daniel the prophet. Thus the telos, those who endure to this, the same shall be saved, and will be among the overcomers specially referred to in these seven letters during the Great Tribulation; to whom these promises are made, and to whom they peculiarly refer.

What will it be like when God says enough is enough on his program for heaven so he can pick up where he left off with his program for those who will inherit the earth? Often times, people fail to see the distinction in the secret coming of the Savior and the second coming of the Messiah. When the apostle Paul talks about the last days or the latter times, he’s not describing the end of the world. The apostle Paul is describing some of the things that will be characteristic of the last day of this age just prior to the body of the Savior being caught up off this planet. A continual downward slide concerning human behavior; evilulotion not evolution, some call it devolution; increasingly more religious and superstitious in our last days, interested more in pleasure than lover of God. 


This is how God is operating with age of grace saints, he’s not giving you things to look at or giving you signs. If you see something and say that was God, isn’t God good; guess what, same things happen to non-believers today. Good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people. Personalize blessings that’s called worshipping at the altar of the miraculous. Worshipping at the altar of the miraculous is to worship at the altar of the flesh. To worship at the altar of the flesh is to allow experience to trump truth and to allow experience to trump truth is to allow emotion to trump truth. And when experience becomes king in a person’s life, experience is determining that person’s doctrine rather than the person’s doctrine determining the validity of their experience. Emotion not only becomes the fuel but the pilot of that person’s life.

ifex370:
Everyday I struggle to realize that I am the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus...












There are 2 message's coinciding with each other...


Grace and Law keeping..


I chose to believe Grace.. Help me Lord,lest I be a cast out

It is difficult for the human mind to lay hold of the magnitude of what the grace of God is all about and what that grace has accomplished on behalf of every signal person who has trusted what Jesus accomplished. For a person to have to make his own peace with God would be nothing more than an exercise in futility, it could never be done. To say that any person could make their own peace with God would be to limit God to his mercy. Every miss deed, every miss step, if we are making our own peace with God, every failure no matter how large or small to our way of thinking would require a new act of mercy on the part of God. Mercy simply withholds that which is due, mercy simply withholds that which we deserve. Grace on the other hand, bestows freely that which we could never earn and could never deserve. We need to cease attributing our righteous standing before God to our performance and keep our mind focused solely on how God views us IN the Savior, that is what grace-life is all about, and we will be victorious in that God’s power can now produce it’s fruit in our life.

If you have not yet believed Paul’s good news message, you have not yet accepted the gift of your salvation. You are standing only in the righteousness your flesh has been able to produce for you, which means you have missed the mark of the righteousness God requires for heaven. What Paul wants us to see in Romans chapter 4, is that God justified Abraham (declared Abraham to be righteous) solely on the basis of Abraham’s belief. Abraham learned that it would not be his own fleshly production that would accomplish God’s purpose for him. It is significant when we think about Abraham’s faith, that God wanted Abraham to place no confidence in his flesh. Paul wants to make it crystal clear that Abraham was not justified according to a ritual, a ceremonial observance, even the ritual of circumcision that Abraham was given to perform. 


“That we might be made” is the subjunctive mood. It is not that everyone will be made, it is that those who believe might be made the very righteousness of God in the Savior, which is what dwelling with God through eternity is all about. There is no more powerful message than that, God was using Jesus’ death for the sins of the entire world as his criteria to no longer impute sins to the world. The issue is not our sins today, most people think sin is the issue, so they are looking for ways to keep short accounts. The issue is: In order to dwell with God in eternity future; we have to be as righteous as God, his justice will not allow nothing other, and until you believe what happened to the sins Jesus died for concerning yourself, you are not placed into the Savior. 


When Paul refers to us as the called, he is referring not just to the fact that God is extending a call to us, an invitation or summons. Paul’s also referring to the fact that God’s calling us to participate in that to which we have been called, the body of the Savior. The body of the Savior is an expression denoting the point when God began to judicially join believers to his son. The body of the Savior is not about program, but about judicial identity. God forgave us, not because he had to, but because it was his desire too. God accomplished through Jesus what we could never do on our own. God did not wait for us to do the first step. God had a choice, Jesus Christ had a choice, and they chose to do it. Jesus believed that his sacrifice would settle the sin issue once and for all, and that God would raise him from among the dead.

What else are Satan’s ministers of righteousness trying to hide? They have deceived a great many people into believing a negative view of the body in contrast to the soul, and a concept of salvation as interior experience rather than total transformation. A great many people have been deceived into believing that their nature is dualistic, that is, consisting of a material, mortal body and a spiritual, immortal soul. The conscious survival of the soul and its reattachment to the body at the resurrection. They are cheating people out of being caught to meet the Savior in the air, when the Age of Grace is over. Paul never alluded to the conscious survival of the soul and its reattachment to the body at the resurrection, that is a notion totally foreign to Paul and to Scripture as a whole. 


The goal of God’s redemption is not the destruction of his first creation, but its restoration to its original perfection. This is why the Scripture speaks of the resurrection of the body rather than of the creation of new beings. The resurrected person will be the same individual as those who existed previously on earth. As believers, we do not possess the life that Jesus got when God raised him from among the dead as an inherent quality any more than we possess God’s righteousness as a property in our own nature. Just as in the midst of our sinfulness, we are righteous, so in the midst of our self-evident mortality, we are going to get the life God gave to Jesus. Developing a godly character in this present life, this will be our personal identity in heaven. God has committed himself to preserving our individuality, personality, and character.

There is an element of pride today on the part of many who think God must be looking on them with special favor, because they happen to belong to a particular denominational persuasion. In fact, there are people who take great pride today and elevate themselves above others, because they rightly divide the word of truth, when rightly dividing the word of truth is merely a tool to use so that a person can come out with a proper understanding of scripture. So-called Christendom today fails to rightly divide the word of truth, because they have mixed God’s program with Israel and his program with the Body of the Savior and mixed dispensations together; dispensations that do not mix together, and as a result, they think they have taken on Israel’s role from the point where Israel left off. The programs have simply been intertwined in the minds of the religious world. Any kind of works at all, even if they appear to be good works in a our minds, that are done for the purpose attaining salvation, or for the purpose of maintaining salvation, and even for the purpose of proving our salvation is a slap in the face of God, who had to provide the gift of salvation, because our righteousness would be totally incapable of meriting it. 


Our good works must be done solely out of appreciation for what God has already accomplished. God knows whether there’s a hidden motivation even to ourselves, hidden by our pride nature to look good before others, to appear knowledgeable before others, to somehow elevate self in relation to others, to gain the praise of others. God knows the motivations of the human heart. Paul is not telling us to eliminate doing good things once were save, he is telling us to totally and completely once and for all, remove any and all works forever from the criteria in our minds by which God saves us, or the basis by which God keeps us saved. God completely took works out of the equation when it came to gaining or maintaining salvation! Paul has fenced us all in and it is a closed-in pen, in a manner of speaking, of wrath worthiness. Therefore, the human race is in need of a Savior, simple as that! Working to maintain a standard, any standard whatsoever while trying that standard in our mind to the acquisition of or the maintenance of our right standing before God is an exercise in futility, it will not work. Works are absolutely excluded as a basis by which God gives the righteous standing Paul has in mind for the human race.

Righteousness cannot be found in the individual through performance and righteousness cannot be found in the law and Paul proved that righteousness cannot found in religion. Grace on the other hand, bestows freely that which we could never earn and could never deserve. Therefore the assumption is, God is not reconciled when people sin. In their mind they are separating themselves from God by their sin and Paul is saying, God has already reconciled the human race where their sins are concerned. The vast majority of the people of this earth don’t understand what reconciliation is all about, they think that new sin needs a new measure of reconciliation. Is that not the golden thread woven through every denomination out there, it’s called religion. The truth is the human race couldn’t obtain an ounce of forgiveness if they tried, because God has already forgiven all the human race. 


There are many who refuse to believe in what Jesus actually accomplished. They fail to understand what the ‘for my sins’ part of Paul’s message of the grace of God is all about. They refuse to acknowledge that Jesus’ death actually resolved God’s justice where the sins Jesus died for are concerned and they continue to hang on the notion that God is hanging on to their sins. Justification is a legal act, wherein God deems the sinner righteous on the basis of Jesus’ righteousness. Justification is not a process, but is a one-time act, complete and definitive. Justification is a legal term which changes the believing sinner’s standing before God, declaring them acquitted and accepted by God, with the guilt and penalty of their sins put away forever.

Superstitious mind set can make something out of nothing in order to validate a belief. Superstition is all that is required for many people to come to believe that supernatural events are actually taking place. Satan has as much a field day with superstition as he does with counterfeit miracles. And last days religion will have signed on to the superstition band wagon and will be riding it when God calls an end to the age of grace. Colossians 2:8 Previous held beliefs especially superstitious beliefs are a most difficult thing to discard. There is a tendency of people’s preconceptions to bias, their interpretations of what they see. People will tend to engage in a search for evidence that is bias towards confirmation of their beliefs. They engage in evidence that tends to confirm their previously held belief. Not fully utilizes all the information that’s out there. Only searching out that which agrees with their cause. Avoiding information that might dis-confirm their cause. The tendency of the human mind is to seek out information that supports their belief and attribute a great deal of weight to that when they find it while they discount or ignore evidence that goes contrary to the belief they hold. Seeing what they except to see...if they expect to see Mary making an appearance in the window, the concrete or the grill cheese sandwich...they’ll see the outline of Mary. Setting their criteria so broadly that their preexisting beliefs is validated no matter what the outcome.

Our degree of judicial perfection in the eyes of God comes not through Jesus’ death for our sins, but through our identity with Jesus’ resurrection life. Paul’s statement that Jesus’ resurrection was “the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep,” the expression “first fruits” has little meaning for today’s urban dwellers. In Bible times, it had a rich meaning because it referred to the first produce of the harvest, which was offered in sacrifice to God to express gratitude for granting a new harvest. Thus, the first fruits, which were brought to the Temple, were seen not as mere hope of a new harvest, but as its actual beginning. Jesus’ resurrection, then, is “the first fruits” in the sense that it has made the resurrection of believers not a mere possibility, but a certainty. 


Paul and the other 12 apostles before him preached the reality of the resurrection of Jesus. Paul preached what that meant to us Gentiles. The 12 apostles had preached the necessity of their Messiah being raised from among the dead in order to sit on the throne of David in the promised kingdom. And even though they were distinctly different messages, with different purposes, the preaching of both messages contained the reality of the bodily resurrection of Jesus. The message from the 12 apostles was about their king being alive. The promises made to their fathers can now become a reality. As long as Jesus lay in the tomb, he was just another tragic religious figure who suffered a martyr’s death. In fact, Paul tells us that the resurrection of Jesus is the greatest display of God’s power ever to be demonstrated, nor can it ever be surpassed. 


Paul is the foremost example of the impossibility, the total impossibility of gaining righteousness before God through the performance of the flesh. Paul could never preach and never preached the Gospel of the Kingdom, because the kingdom was no longer at hand. God cease dealing with “the outer man” in connection with God’s program with Israel and prophecy concerning their promised earthly kingdom, and then began dealing with “the inner man” in connection with his program concerning the saints of his heavenly calling. The resurrection of the body did not arise from philosophical speculations or wishful thinking like the notion of the immortality of the soul. It arose from the conviction that such an event had actually already taken place with the resurrection of Jesus from among the dead. The resurrection is proof that Jesus is who he claimed to be, and that his sacrifice was pleasing to God.

Romans 2:1 - Paul knew that the defense mechanism resident within the pride nature of the human heart would be instant in it’s response to protest the accusation of wrath worthiness. Paul knew the human heart would not only be quick, but that it would be ingenious in the pleas that it would offer as to why we are not wrath-worthy. Paul anticipated the reaction of the human heart given the the moral choice of good and bad disease. Paul anticipated that we would jump to defend ourselves. Paul anticipated that some people would be quick to defend other people. Paul has done what any wise prosecuting attorney would do, he has been elimination our excuses before we have opportunity to present them. No one has a self-defense plea that will successfully excuse them from being counted worthy of God’s wrath. No one therefore, will be able to escape the judgment of God by anything that they do. This is what Paul has been setting out to prove; the necessity of justification, the gift declaration of righteousness by faith.


Here’s good news! God has held back the wrath you so justly deserve and he’s been good to you in holding back that wrath. God hasn’t held back his wrath because he is happy with who you think you are, or because he is satisfied with who you are trying to become. God has been longsuffering in holding back his wrath because he hopes that you will consider his goodness through what his son accomplished on your behalf. God wants you to change your mind about who you are from fleshly perspective apart from the Savior. God isn’t patiently waiting for you to change your mind about what you do, many have done that thinking it gains salvation. Is the “Give your life, or commit your life to God if you want to be saved” message we hear so often today. And many have done that and many have become very good humanly speaking; even to the point of the self-righteous moralizer Paul is referring to in Romans 2:4. You see, the self-righteous moralizer looks in his self-righteous mirror and he thinks God must be satisfied. I’m a prized package.

Why is it that so many in religiondom suppose that God will have to hire a truck load of workers to harvest their crop? They think that they are righteous when it comes to their law keeping. These people who want to think they're obeying the law contract today, they think they’re fulfilling that law contract at least to a degree that God will say that they’re doing the very best they can. The law required much more than that. People today think that if we post that contract, at least as it was boiled down to the big ten on the schoolhouse or the courthouse walls, our children will be able to fulfill it. Why, your children are sinning, and it’s all due to an abandonment of the big ten. The Pharisees, the strictest of the law keepers had the law. How was that working for them? Did it deter sin? Or did it make the sin nature stand out like a Q-beam during a new moon? The law was given to Israel not to deter sin, but to show them their sin. Take away the big ten and people will have a license to sin they tell us. The truth is, those with a sin nature have never needed a license to sin. We do it naturally. 


This will be the issue at the Great White Throne Judgment. People will be standing there not clothed in the Savior’s righteousness because they’ve rejected what Jesus accomplished where their sin debt is concerned. They’ll be standing there in their own righteousness and that righteousness is the righteousness Paul said, I don’t want to be found in that. I won’t measure up. Nobody’s righteousness will measure up. You say, well, there are a lot of good people out there. Yes, from an earthly perspective, certainly they are good, but not when their earthly goodness is measured beside God’s perfect righteousness. It doesn’t cut it. We might think of them as good and they would be good relatively speaking; good citizens, good neighbors, good people from a relative standpoint, but from God’s standpoint, they do not measure up to who he is. And so therefore, we have the dilemma of the human race. Just as religion did not save the Israelites during the time of the law contract, religion could not save the Gentiles during that time either; just as it cannot save Israelite or Gentile today. Religion is an equally inadequate self-defense plea today for people to make as it was in Paul’s day. And we’re not even under the law program today according to Paul, we’re under grace.

God’s attitude towards a believer does not fluctuate in response to action. It’s not condition on their behavior. Believers have been justified judicially in the mind of God through the avenue of their faith in Jesus’ faithful performance on their behalf rather than peace based upon their performance toward God results in an unchanging attitude of peace with God for every believer. What Adam brought to the human race was brought about by a single sin but the free gift that provides justification was brought about because of many sins. God provided the free gift of justification because that one sin provoked the many sins of the human race. Since Adam’s one sin affected the entire human race. And, because Adam’s sin resulted in the many sins of the human race, God provided a sufficient gift to solve the dilemma of the human race. Judgment came through one sin, Justification solves the problem where many sins are involved. To be justified means to receive that gift that came to all the human race. 


Sealed and earnest speak to the security all believers have in that God’s indwelling power from on high guarantees that those who have believed Paul’s good news can never be lost. They belong to God. Sealed means sealed for preservation. The seal is the securing device used to preserve the contents. God’s power from on high is the seal that God uses to secure all who believe in this dispensation of grace. Earnest means a pledge in the sense that an advance deposit has been made as the security guaranteeing the fulfillment of that which has been promised to those who have been sealed. According to Paul, God’s indwelling power from on high is both God’s seal and his deposited pledge that all believers are forever his and are destined to inherit eternal life. 


God predetermined to conform everyone who believes to the image of his son. God in his infinite wisdom pre-decreed that every believer would be joined to his son, fully identified with the last Adam. God pre-decided that the believer would be blessed with all the blessings and privileges of an adopted adult son. God decided in advance that the believer are to be to the praise of the glory of his grace. God has pre-determined all these outcomes for the believer and his mind is not going to be changed on this.

1 Corinthians 6:9-10, if Paul had ceased writing after going through this list of deplorable practices then we could safely assume that continuing to do these things after believing the good news message would result in a reversal of the offenders salvation or as some teach perhaps even a lost with a connect with God that must somehow be restored. But that isn’t what Paul is saying here at all. Paul is telling these carnal saints at Corinth that the reason these detestable deeds had not and could not result in a lost of their salvation or their fellowship with God for that matter is because as carnal as these Corinthians happen to be they had a holy standing with God through their identity with his son. And the gift decree of righteousness belonging to the son had been totally and permanently credited to the account of these carnal believers to their account in heaven at the point of their belief. Little wonder that right after listing all these deplorable sins the apostle Paul follows up immediately in verse 12 with these words “All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any. So while none of the things on Paul’s list either 1 Corinthians chapter 6 or we might even say Galatians chapter 5 where Paul presents a similar list...none of these things can send a believer to the second death. They are definitely things all believers should avoid. 


Romans 12:2, separation from the world means growth requires something where the believer and the world is concerned. Stop serving the idols to whom the world pays homage to. Lust of the eyes and the lust of the flesh. Identity in the last Adam will get you into heaven, practical sanctification is that which will get you rewarded at the judgement seat of the Savior. Practical sanctification is the hallmark of maturity. Knowing your complete in the Savior, how would agape (love) operate, knowing I have perfect righteousness in the son, how should I then operate positively on behalf of others. You must serve the earthly manifestation of the Savior’s body. Knowledge finds expression through our behavior. Agape will never show up empty handed where where the judgement seat of the Savior rewards are concerned. Agape always edifies and unifies. Relationships is both sides of the growth process. One without the other is entirely useless. Knowledge and agape application of that knowledge is the idea behind growth. Sin is not the issue at the judgement seat of the Savior, service is the issue.

If we think that our justified standing before God, our sanctified standing is contingent upon the presence of holy deeds and the absence of unholy deeds in our life, we are going to think that God’s attitude toward us and therefore, our new identity with in the Savior is of a fluctuating nature. If we think our relationship with God is of a fluctuating nature, we never know where we stand. So, people’s minds are up and down and all around, an emotional roller-coaster as to where does one stand with God. God may be happy with me today, he may very well be angry at me tomorrow is how it is often reasoned. It’s the “I have been good, I have been bad, God’s happy, God’s mad” mindset; a mindset that results in people having to be dishonest with themselves as to their own practical holiness. The religiously minded begin to believe they are indeed measuring up as righteousness becomes relative to those people. A misunderstanding of the need for and the manner of justification (Our being declared righteous) and sanctification (How we are set apart in the Savior), resides at the core of that unstable thinking.

Let’s suppose that God had not separated out a brand new apostle with a brand new message for a brand new creation called the Body of the Savior. Imagine with me for a moment that God had allowed that kingdom program to continue on as some believe today. What message would we as Gentiles, have heard under those circumstances, had that program continued on? You see, according to Israel’s program, when the messiah was cut off according to the 483 years of Daniel’s prophesy fulfilled, the time for that nation to come to their last days prior to the entrance of their kingdom had come close to hand. Only 7 years remained at that period of time on Israel’s prophecy clock before the earthly kingdom would be set up and the messiah would be ruling and reigning on the throne. The tribulation was on its way when Pentecost took place. These are the last day Joel was talking about. If God had not put Israel’s program on the shelf, he would be gathering Gentiles, and bringing them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat. (Joel 3:9-16) At the culmination of the tribulation period, Gentiles are going to be coming against the nation Israel. The Gentiles will be the bullies when this day arrives. Jesus is coming to stand up for that remnant and who will the messiah be coming to fight? The Gentiles.

Nowhere in the Bible are we told that the dearly departed saved ones are given wings. The saints in heaven do not become angels, they will rule over the angelic host according to the apostle Paul. But, it’s certainly a fascinating and emotional story for those uneducated in the Word of Truth; those who are looking toward experience and the tweaking of their emotions rather than studying for themselves rightly-divided doctrine. In each instance, somebody went and somebody saw in direct contradiction to the Paul’s very clear statement that “we walk by faith not by sight.” Why do books based on so called experiences of going to heaven become best sellers? Could it be because the time will come as Paul states so clearly in 2 Timothy 4:3. We might call them “emotional cravings, abandon sound doctrine preferring instead to have their ears tickled. The reason they sell so well is because in the minds of the vast majority of so-called Christendom today emotion trumps doctrine. Take note of which churches grow the fastest and where the multitudes want to congregate in your city and you’ll see meetings designed with emotion in mind. We walk by faith not by sight. We can rely upon nothing we see because the enemy is able to provide miraculous manifestations and we can rely only upon what we hear from others to the extent that what others say aligns itself with the Word of God rightly divided.

A miracle is a supernatural act of power, but most often when people think of the term miraculous, they think of some special display of power that God performs just in special instances and for particular people or perhaps for a particular person and at a particular time. A criteria in a believer’s mind that they would use to decide whether that event they witnessed would be from God or from Satan, keeping in mind that Satan’s miracles would be the things a believer would expect God to do, not Satan to do. Divine miracles were always in scripture preformed to indicate or signify something. They were to indicate or signify or to be the signature of not only the massager but of the message. 


Satan distracts from the truth through the miraculous. The meaning of deception is to be distracted from the truth, to believe a lie. When a believer lines up the miracle beside the message, it will immediately tell them whether or not God or Satan is involved. And Paul makes that so easy by telling us what the message is. (2 Corinthians 11:3) The simplicity of Paul’s message is total payment for sin, accomplished by Jesus’ total sacrifice. The believer has therefore how much forgiveness? Total forgiveness! If the message isn’t total forgiveness all upfront and all inclusive, the believer can bet it’s not a miracle being preformed of God. Satan’s miracles will never stand on this message, because they want to distract from this message.