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Poju Oyemade - Conversation with My Friend Part 4

  • April 26, 2017 8:28 AM CEST
    Understanding the love of the Father and our acceptance in Christ.

    When I say my friend had discovered the rest of justification, let me explain what I mean. There are two questions every believer must settle as soon as possible. First is, Does God fully accept me? and if so, on what basis does He do so? This is crucial. Many believers move through life without this precious fact to rest and build on. It is the root of our faith in His grace.

    Every believer has been accepted by the Father based on the work of Christ period. Rom 5:1 says Being justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ" The peace is God's towards us, through Jesus and we must never forget that His peace towards us is founded solely upon the finished work of Christ and not our good conduct.

    Our faith becomes a fixed attitude, once it begins to rest in this wonderful fact. This is the steadying influence most believers are in need of today. Even though he was still making mistakes, my friend had his faith fixed in the fact that God had accepted him in Christ and that God had his back through the process of perfecting the finished work in his flesh. At no stage did he call God's love for him into question.

    (Read this line by line carefully)
    Over a century ago a great evangelical preacher uttered these words, "The blessed God never alters nor diverges from the acceptance in which He has received us because of the death, burial and resurrection of Christ. We may change from the state when we become conscious of sins in our flesh and hence suppose we must renew our acceptance with God, this is not so. The truth is that God has not altered. His eye rests on the work accomplished by Christ for the believer. When you are not walking in the Spirit you are in the flesh you have turned to the body of the old man who has been crucified".

    Now understanding our justification leads us to this, when sins are introduced there is the fear that God has changed. He has not changed but you have. You are not walking in the Spirit but in the flesh. You have to judge yourself. Once a believer sins, the HolySpirit within is grieved and He bears witness of that grief to the conscience of the believer wanting him to judge that act in his life. If he doesn't and continues in a life of sin, in order for him not to get his conscience seared he i.e the believer, comes under the chastisement of God. God steps in to stop that process of sinning without acknowledging it as being wrong leading him to repentance. None of these activities of the Spirit is an act of condemnation. In fact these are done to avoid condemnation. Hear what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 11:30-32King James Version (KJV)

    "For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep. For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged.
    But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world".

    If we judge ourselves we won't be judged, but if we do not judge ourselves then God has to judge those actions through what is termed chastisement so that we don't get condemned with the world. To call the acts of the HolySpirit of bearing witness in our conscience that something is wrong condemnation, or accusation, is wrong. If I put my hand in fire my brain will bear witness that sustaining yourself in that state will lead to death, the brain does it through pain. It is not condemning me but warning me. The HolySpirit will bear witness by withdrawing His peace within us when we do wrong. This doesn't mean the Father has stopped loving, in fact His chastisement is an act of His kindness. As a natural father sees the future of his brilliant son and corrects him of certain types of behavior, he does it in his son's interest. The correction may not be pleasant at the time but it will yield a lot in his son's future.

    Hebrews 12:7-9King James Version (KJV)

    "If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons. "Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?"

    God will never depart from the love He has bestowed in Christ. You will find that when the cloud which walking in the flesh produced has passed away, His love had never changed.

    God's basis for our acceptance must be our basis and no other. Our good works don't give us better access to the Father it is by the blood of Christ we enter. Many feel that when all is going well and God seems to be blessing, then they feel He loves and accepts them. But when they are stumbling and everything is dry and hard, then He doesn't love and accept them. His basis is not our basis.

    Unbelief and not lack of devotion is the great sin of the New Covenant for its through faith we access the grace by which we can live a devoted life towards God. If condemnation sets into a man's conscience and he thinks his access is impaired, he is finished for he can no longer receive the grace to live right according to God's standard.

    My friend understood this, if I step out of line, the Spirit will caution me but God is for me. There was no cause in the life of my friend why such grace should be shown and he brought himself off trying to give God cause for His care. He had been accepted in Christ, Who is his standing. He wasn't on probation as a son for the finished work is complete in itself. As to his life past, it does not exist before God: he died on the cross. Christ is now his life.

    He had entered into the rest of his justification in Christ. To be able to walk with God in His grace that perfects us in Christ, we must have an assurance of our acceptance. Mistakes will be made, there will be times the flesh will assert itself then must we know that the blood is more powerful than our sins.