Barry Newton

What do all of the following have in common? Chocolate, video tapes, cookies, alcohol, over eating and starving oneself. These can all become compulsive avenues for how someone attempts to handle their guilty feelings.

When Jesus died on the cross, he made it possible for us to be fully cleansed and brought into fellowship with God. But unfortunately, certain people feel so guilty about their past that they do not let go of it even though God has forgiven them.

I remember a young man who upon stepping out of the baptistery said, “God has forgiven me. Now I need to forgive myself.” He was right.

Failure to forgive oneself provides Satan with a powerful tool for his destructive purposes. Although God would have the Christian focus upon living the new life He has made possible, Satan can use the burden of past guilt to drag a soul through the mire. Energy and thoughts which should be expended upon gratitude and service can be sucked up into an ever descending spiral of self-condemnation.

When scripture tells us to forgive as God has forgiven (Ephesians 4:29), this principle includes forgiving ourselves. Listen to how God liberates His people, “I will remember their sons no more.” Hebrews 8:12 God wants His people to know they are free from the burden of sin and to live free of past guilt. Christians have no reason for lamenting over past failures. Christ’s blood is more powerful than our past sins.

Let’s not allow Satan to use something against you which God has taken away and remembers no more. It is great when a cookie can just be a cookie, and not an ineffective and destructive way to handle feelings of self-condemnation.

by Randal Matheny

It's important, they say. You really should, they claim. A Christian, truly converted, will do so, they insist.

But if you don't, they are quick to point out, it won't make any difference in your final, eternal destiny.

So they say.

The New Testament takes a different view.

"So then, brethren, we are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh-- for if you are living according to the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live" (Romans 8.12-13, NASB).

There is no sense in which one can understand the phrase "you will live," except spiritually, of one's relationship to God. And one cannot be dead spiritually and enter into eternal life.

What is, then, the condition to live spiritually, forever? Putting to death the deeds of the body. Giving obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ and making his life ours.

But if you don't? Paul doesn't mince words on this point either. "If you are living according to the flesh, you must die." Spiritual death is an inevitable, inexorable consequence of wrong living. Inescapable. Unavoidable.

The Greek uses the helping verb "mello" to strengthen the idea. The standard Greek lexicon (Bauer, Gingrich, and Danker) says it's used "denoting an action that necessarily follows a divine decree [and means] is destined, must, will certainly."

And that word "die?" It is used figuratively here, says the same good dictionary, "of losing the true, eternal life." Our passage of Romans 8.13 is the first passage cited as an example.

God's divine decree is that, if you don't live by the Spirit's standards, you will die and be eternally separated from him.

The message is plain: obey God and enjoy eternal life; disobedy him, and you will most certainly, by divine decree, forfeit that wonderful, everlasting life at the Savior's side.

by Emmett Smith

How could Isaiah refer to the Messiah as "everlasting Father"? Isn't He properly referred to as the "Son of God with power" (Romans 1:4)? Let's not any of us pretend to completely understand this paradox. After all, Paul told Timothy, "And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory" (1 Timothy 3:16).

We simply don't (can't) understand the divine nature. The Bible tells us that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one God. In Genesis, God said, "let us make man". How can God be one and yet three? That's a mystery. How could God become human? Don't try to tell me you understand it completely. I won't believe you. I don't believe anyone whose only experience is human experience can understand it. However, there are some interesting scholarly comments on this paradox.

Adam Clarke wrote that the phrase "everlasting Father" should be translated as "the Father of the everlasting age". Interestingly, some scholars say that Romans 1:4 which says Jesus was, "...declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead:", is supportive of this assertion. The phrase "by the resurrection from the dead" does not apply solely to Jesus, but is generic, i.e. "resurrection of those who are dead". As 1 Corinthians 15:20 says, Christ is, "risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept".

So Jesus is the Father of the everlasting age. The firstfruits of those who rise from the dead, never to die again! Both Old and New Testaments refer to the "last days". And Jesus certainly ushered in those last days (Hebrews 1:1,2). Daniel (chapters 2 & 7) referred to the kingdom that would never be destroyed, but would stand forever. And Jesus, who is the "the author and finisher of our faith" (Hebrews 12:2), established that kingdom, and now reigns over it. Are you one of His subjects?

“Parents need to eat the diet they would like their child’s diet to become,” nutrition researcher Jennifer Fisher advises in the September issue of Prevention magazine. “By eating fruits and veggies themselves, parents can start a lifetime of cancer-fighting food habits without having to say a word,” the article continues. This common sense observation has profound applications.

Your Example

Parents, your children are watching you. What you eat, they will likely eat. As they see you read the Bible, they will learn to read the Bible. As they see you pray, they will learn to pray. Personal habits learned in childhood direct the course of a life.

Certainly, habits of good health and of good hygiene are important for parents to instill into children. We appropriately take care through instruction and through example to help children develop proper physical practice which will last a lifetime. How much more important, however, is the development of spiritual health which lasts beyond a lifetime into eternity?

Today, not Tomorrow

Procrastination is the death of many good intentions. How many diet and exercise programs have perished in an endless succession of tomorrows? Likewise with our spiritual health, we often delay doing what we know we ought to do. We delude ourselves into thinking that we have unlimited time to make the changes we know we ought to make.

While this thinking is wrong-headed in reference to ourselves, how much more is it mistaken in reference to our children. Lost opportunities to bless a child are, in one sense gone forever. Be what you ought to be today, so your children will see what they ought to see today. No material investment could bring the payoff of a life invested in the future of a child.

by Barry Newton

Just as Ezekiel would not have readily understood Starbucks coffee and baseball, so too we are likely to fail in fully appreciating walled cities. After all, I have never lived in a walled city seeking refuge from marauding armies. Have you?

Apparently, the walls of a city could tell you a lot about a city. A highly successful city would sport grand walls which were constantly maintained while broken walls or deteriorating walls with gaps indicated weakness and societal decay. Wherever a city wall had been breached, the city’s protection would depend upon someone to stand in that gap to defend the city.

Standing in the Spiritual Gap

Through the prophet Ezekiel, God metaphorically alluded to the spiritual decay of both the nation of His people and its leadership as being a city whose walls had been breached by sin.1 Justice demanded a righteous judgment, yet love yearned for the spiritual rottenness to be healed. So God “searched for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand in the gap before Me for the land, so that I would not destroy it; but I found no one.”2

Can there be any more tragic words than these? What can be more heart breaking than for God to search among his people for someone to build up ruin lives ravaged by sin but to find no one who will serve?

Doing It Again

What God has done before He is doing again. Through the words of the Great Commission, listen closely to Jesus’ final exhortation to us. God is searching once again for people to be His tools to reach out to a world which has been chewed up by sin.

God’s righteousness demands punishment of sin, but his love has also provided through Jesus the means to build up those spiritually dead. God has a heart for the lost. The question is can He find among His people those who will stand in the gap before Him?

1 This metaphor of standing in a breach caused by sin is also used in the poetry of Psalms 106:23 to describe the narrative event of Exodus 32:11.

2 Ezekiel 22:30 NASB