RESEARCH: PASTORS BISHOPS ELDERS TEACHERS DEACONS COMMENTARIES NOT A NOVICE
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| RESEARCH: PASTORS BISHOPS ELDERS TEACHERS DEACONS COMMENTARIES NOT A NOVICE Helpful Information & Questions ? >>> Email Me Here was my original question and my first answer: “In regards to Bible Study and asking questions in the local church … Please give me clarity to the following sources for answering your questions. Please give me scriptures.”Pastors that teachElders not a noviceTeachersDeaconsCommentariesBishops Here are couple of things: from a trusted source https://www.purecambridgetext.comClick on the Four Seperate Lines Right Below!What we can learn about the Ordaining of Bishops from the Fall of the Anointed Cherub Part IWhat we can learn about the Ordaining of Bishops from the Fall of the Anointed Cherub Part IIBishoprick https://www.purecambridgetext.com/post/2017/09/05/bishoprickPastors https://www.purecambridgetext.com/post/2019/02/11/pastors FULL TEXT ARTICLES ARE DIRECTLY BELOW: |
| PastorsDr. John M. Asquith Feb 12, 2019 8 min read And I will give you pastors according to mine heart, which shall feed you with knowledge and understanding, Jeremiah 3:15.Among the many English words used by the Holy Ghost to interpret the words of God into English is the word “pastor”. It never shows up in the bible until Jeremiah uses it 8 times. It is never used again except for one time when the Apostle Paul uses Jeremiah’s word to explain one of the gifts that God gives to men. To understand that word we need to look at a couple of things that made Jeremiah unique. Jeremiah began his ministrations to Israel after the first third of King Josiah’s reign. It was a time of promise and seeming revival. I call it Josiah’s revival and see it as distinguished by its thoroughness and its zeal. It was a revival given reluctantly by God and it was cut off when Josiah misunderstood his mandate. Nevertheless Josiah would not turn his face from him, but disguised himself, that he might fight with him, and hearkened not unto the words of Necho from the mouth of God, and came to fight in the valley of Megiddo, 2nd Chronicles 35:22. In King David’s time or in Jehoshaphat’s time, God would never have allowed a Gentile King to have so traversed Israel. The sins of Manasseh changed all that. God spoke through a Gentile to Josiah and he didn’t discern it as being of God. The prophecy given to Josiah was that he would die in peace. Behold, I will gather thee to thy fathers, and thou shalt be gathered to thy grave in peace, neither shall thine eyes see all the evil that I will bring upon this place, and upon the inhabitants of the same. So they brought the king word again, 2nd chronicles 34:28. Josiah died in peace in two senses. He was a peace with God which considering the history of the kings was quite a feat. Secondly, the chaos and war the engulfed Jerusalem started immediately after he died. I think that Jeremiah had a hard time with that. Years later he was to say; O LORD, thou hast deceived me, and I was deceived: thou art stronger than I, and hast prevailed: I am in derision daily, every one mocketh me. For since I spake, I cried out, I cried violence and spoil; because the word of the LORD was made a reproach unto me, and a derision, daily. Then I said, I will not make mention of him, nor speak any more in his name. But his word was in mine heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was weary with forbearing, and I could not stay. For I heard the defaming of many, fear on every side. Report, say they, and we will report it. All my familiars watched for my halting, saying, Peradventure he will be enticed, and we shall prevail against him, and we shall take our revenge on him. But the LORD is with me as a mighty terrible one: therefore my persecutors shall stumble, and they shall not prevail: they shall be greatly ashamed; for they shall not prosper: their everlasting confusion shall never be forgotten, Jeremiah 20:7-11. Jeremiah lived in difficult times of transition. Jeremiah wrote the Book of Lamentations after Josiah’s death, not when Nebuchadnezzar sacked the city as is commonly supposed. And Jeremiah lamented for Josiah: and all the singing men and the singing women spake of Josiah in their lamentations to this day, and made them an ordinance in Israel: and, behold, they are written in the lamentations, 2nd Chronicles 35:25. The Lamentations are prophetic of the sacking of Jerusalem and later times, but they date from Necho’s conquest. The temple was stripped of its glory during Jeremiah’s ministry which overlapped with Ezekiel’s visions. Then the glory of the LORD departed from off the threshold of the house, and stood over the cherubims. And the cherubims lifted up their wings, and mounted up from the earth in my sight: when they went out, the wheels also were beside them, and every one stood at the door of the east gate of the LORD’S house; and the glory of the God of Israel was over them above, Ezekiel 10: 18,19. Jeremiah’s ministry was similar to the Apostle Paul’s ministry in that he ministered in a time when the Nation of Israel was stripped of its secular power, stripped of the power of the law (Her gates are sunk into the ground; he hath destroyed and broken her bars: her king and her princes are among the Gentiles: the law is no more; her prophets also find no vision from the LORD, Lamentations 2:9.) When the false Jews of Paul’s day sought to bring the emptiness of the covenants that they themselves had defiled and rendered worthless, Paul quoted the Philistine leaders who were confronted by Israel seeking to hide behind the Arc which they themselves had dishonored. As the Philistine leaders had told their men; Be strong, and quit yourselves like men, O ye Philistines, that ye be not servants unto the Hebrews, as they have been to you: quit yourselves like men, and fight, 1st Samuel 4:9. Even so the Apostle Paul was to tell the Corinthians, Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong, 1st Corinthians 16:13. What word can we use to describe those leaders of the people who for either ill or good lead the people, but do not occupy the traditional roles of the established Kingdom of Judah because those roles were made void by the hand of God? Jeremiah called them pastors. Woe be unto the pastors that destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! saith the LORD, Jeremiah 23:1. For some odd reason scholars try to discern the meaning of the word through translation analysis when in reality the context of the usage pretty well gives it away. They are scattering flocks of sheep from the pastures of God. Do I really need to spend years in a classroom studying Hebrew to understand that they are shepherds? Many pastors have destroyed my vineyard, they have trodden my portion under foot, they have made my pleasant portion a desolate wilderness, Jeremiah 12:10. Do I need to trudge through endless lexicons to see that they are husbandmen?The priests said not, Where is the LORD? and they that handle the law knew me not: the pastors also transgressed against me, and the prophets prophesied by Baal, and walked after things that do not profit, Jeremiah 2:8. Do we need to go any farther than this verse to see that the pastors are something apart from priests and prophets? A pastor could be a dual role as in the case of Jeremiah. As for me, I have not hastened from being a pastor to follow thee: neither have I desired the woeful day; thou knowest: that which came out of my lips was right before thee, Jeremiah 17:16. When God wanted Jeremiah to prophesy, he did not cease being a pastor. Almost all of my friends who are evangelists have heard me beseech them to take a church. They are good men. They are like the Americans who fought in Vietnam. Good men fighting a bad plan. They occupy a village for a weekend. Everyone swears loyalty and pays up their taxes. They count the bodies to report their success. They leave on Monday and the Viet Cong slip back in and run things until next year’s visitation. It is the formula for defeat. God bless a man like Sammy Allen who has pastored a church since 1960 and yet preached 50 weeks out of every year since then as an evangelist. He is almost always back in his church every Sunday to lead his flock. Jeremiah filled two roles, he was a pastor, but he did not hasten from being so to follow God. My friends have done so, and it is hastening the destruction of this nation. A good pastor is a gift from God. And I will give you pastors according to mine heart, which shall feed you with knowledge and understanding, Jeremiah 3:15. This is where the Apostle Paul borrows the term from Jeremiah. He lists the gifts that Jesus Christ gave unto men when he resurrected from the dead. And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers, Ephesians 4:11. So often that verse is misread. It is errantly read to mean that God gave some men the gift of being apostles, some men were given the gift of being prophets and so on. That is not what it says. By reading it that way they stumble over the pastor and teacher combination. Paul is telling us that if you study the Book of Acts you will see that God sent apostles to some men. That was the gift for those men. Peter or James or John came to them. To some men he sent prophets such as Agabus. To some men he sent evangelists such as Phillip. To most men he sends pastors and teachers. This is really part of the formula for the Baptist Church. They are two distinct different gifts given to men. The word pastor is often interchanged with the word bishop, but that is an error. When the Apostle Paul described the two great offices of the church, he used the terms Bishop and Deacon. Pastor is not a church office though a man should never be a bishop who cannot be a pastor. A bishop is to be a seasoned leader who is apt to teach and can rule the church having proven himself in his lifestyle, his years of service and his ability to teach. Our modern church constitutions and bylaws call this office a pastor, but God does not. God calls him a bishop, but every qualification that he is supposed to have compels him to be a pastor. I am the bishop of the Black Creek Baptist Church. Under God, I execute executive authority for the good or ill of my church. I am a pastor to my people, but I am not the only pastor. We have two men who have been ordained bishops of Baptist churches, myself and Pastor Roger Hain who in perfect Holy Ghost harmony exercises his gifts as a gift to my people. He retired after pastoring a church for 39 ½ years. In God’s good grace to us, he gave him as a gift to us to co-labor with me. We have another man, Dale Morey who because he has three living women with whom he has shared holy matrimony, it is not the practice of this ministry to ordain him as a bishop or a deacon. He ministers to the prisoners of Western New York. He counsels in our church. He teaches classes and he fills pulpits. To those men and women who weep while he preaches to them of the grace of God given to such a sinner as himself, and who receive his letters and other visitations, he is the only pastor they know. If the Pharisees were to forbid those people from calling him such, the very rocks and stones would call it out. He does not exercise executive authority in the church under any bible office. What then is the difference between a pastor and a teacher. A teacher teaches. So does a pastor. A pastor goes farther than just teaching. He guides a flock. He chooses teaching material. A teacher is responsible for what he teaches. A pastor organizes who teaches, what is taught, and watches the flock to see to it that they are properly fed. Such a combination of men is truly a gift from God to men. Both Jeremiah and Paul tell us that in Jeremiah 3:15 and Ephesians 4:11. For the sake of bible accuracy, do not confound the words pastor and bishop. Bishop is a bible office. A pastor is a gift to men. They may be one and the same man in many cases, and certainly every bishop should be a pastor, but every pastor need not be a bishop, yet he needs to be under the authority of a bishop. That’s how God runs his church.#DrJohnMAsquith BishoprickDr. John M. Asquith Sep 5, 2019 4 min readUpdated: Oct 14 For it is written in the book of Psalms, Let his habitation be desolate, and let no man dwell therein: and his bishoprick let another take, Acts 1:20. There are few words in a King James Bible as controversial as the word “bishoprick”. It is one of 11 words that Miles Smith changed of his own accord in between receiving the translation committee’s final draft of the King James Bible, and his own polishing of that work. It has been reported that many of the Presbyterian translators saw that change as a betrayal. Certainly, there are many today who see it as such. We will look at why they believe that, and then why the word is accurate.When Peter says that, “it is written”, he is quoting Psalms 109:8, Let his days be few; and let another take his office. Why doesn’t the King James Bible use the word “office” when quoting that verse, and what is the difference? To understand that, we must understand the difference between the words “translation” and “interpretation”. The word “translation” is only used in our bible three times and none of those times is discussing rendering something said in one language into another language. Instead, our bible uses the word “interpretation” when a word used in the Old Testament in Hebrew, is then rendered into Greek in the New Testament. The Holy Ghost does not give the gift of “translation of tongues”, it gives the gift of “interpretation of tongues”.Translations are often stiff and awkward. Somehow, translating a series of words found in a sentence in one language, rarely sound the same when the same words are strung together as translated individual words. It often looks like gibberish. As an experiment, I would challenge my reader to pull up a Google translating program and write a sentence into it. Have the program translate it into a common European language. Then copy that translation which you may have no ability to understand and paste it back into a program that will translate it back into English. There are whole Youtube channels dedicated to the hilarity of such antics. It will not be what you originally wrote.Whenever the word of God renders a word from on language to another, it always interprets the word. The King James Bible is best understood as the Holy Ghost’s interpretation of the Word of God into the English Language. A word can be honestly translated many different ways. Only an interpreter can make sense of it. Imagine a movie in which two street thugs are leaning on an old brick wall in an alley. A big black limousine pulls into the alley and one thug says to the other, “Last week, I laid a rock through that cat’s windshield”.We know what that thug said. We can picture him smashing that windshield with a rock. It implies a casual disrespectful violence. When it is rendered through a couple of languages, the casualness of the violence is missing. What is needed isn’t an exact translation. What is needed is a living breathing spirit that can think about and understand what what was said, and then say the same thing in another language so that the reader has the same feel. That is a gift that the King James Translators clearly had. So many new translations of the bible read like a teletype account of a football game, all facts and no spirit.Why then is “bishoprick” the correct word? Why didn’t the translators render the Greek word exactly as they had rendered the Hebrew word and left it as “office”? Was Miles Smith justified in what he did? Well, the word “office” in Psalms 109:8 implies more than just a title and responsibility. Jesus tells us that territory went with it. And Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That ye which have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel, Matthew 19:28. The land grant the God gives to Israel in Ezekiel 48 will be ruled by the twelve apostles. The New Testament always expands and explains the Old Testament. What is a mystery in one, is explained in the other.Of course, Episcopalians were delighted at the concept of physical territory being ascribed to an office. To this day, the Episcopalians (meaning rule by bishops) cannot discern the difference between a bishop over a local church and an apostle. In this respect they are like Roman Catholics. I am a Baptist. I am a bishop over a local church. My church is named for a territory, It is the Black Creek Baptist Church, all churches in the bible were named for the territories they were in. That does not give me temporal authority over my territory as is, and has been practiced by the persecuting churches of old. The apostles will have temporal authority over a physical territory in the regeneration.As far as I know, the King James Bible of the English Language is the only primary tongue (meaning that it was translated directly from the original languages) that has used the term “bishoprick”. That is from an old Anglo-Saxon word derived from the German word “reich” , meaning a territory. Its usage here is another illustration of why we have a perfect bible.#DrJohnMAsquithWord Studies•Doctrine•John Asquith | What we can learn about the Ordaining of Bishops from the Fall of the Anointed Cherub Part IDr. John M. Asquith Feb 13, 2019 4 min read Not a novice, lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil, I Timothy 3:6.Just what did Paul mean when he said, the condemnation of the devil? To understand that we need to look at Ezekiel 28 wherein the fall of the anointed Cherub is well documented. When we look, we find this gem; Thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty, thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness: I will cast thee to the ground, I will lay thee before kings, that they may behold thee, Ezekiel 28:17. Just how did the devil’s brightness corrupt his wisdom?As the anointed Cherub that covereth, he carried God’s light. His brightness was a direct reflection of his closeness to God. When I was a young preacher, a novice, I sometimes was given insights by the word of God that eclipsed even my teachers’ insights on a narrow subject. God often grants this grace to young aspiring preachers and students of the word of God. It is always a joy to me when one of my students is given such an insight and can expound it to me in humility and wisdom.Many times after such an insight, I would get in the pulpit and preach using that very insight which was holy and from God. I would watch experienced preachers and mature church members murmur with delight at the grace and wisdom I showed. The problem with that is that I didn’t have a life that matched the insight. I wasn’t living in fornication and I wasn’t extorting money, but when I look back on those days, I see a young man who though outwardly had the appearance of a mature Christian, and in fact could easily have impressed an ordination board, I spent more of each day walking in my carnal nature then in walking in the Spirit.I was often overthrown with pride and my wisdom would be corrupted when I was given overmuch applause. The cause of my fall was never some creepy sin, it was all too often the very brightness given to me by God. Part of the duty of the Bishop of a church is to insure that the man in front of him preparing to be ordained into an executive office within the church is seasoned enough in the grace of God that he could never be considered a novice. His very talents and brightness will be turned against him.I cannot read 2nd Corinthians 4:2 without lowering my head in shame. But have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully; but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God. It was easy and profitable for me to renounce the obvious open sins of life. How I prospered when the Lord took fornication, alcohol, evil communications and uncleanness away from me!It was the hidden things of dishonesty that continually defiled me. To fudge on a tax form or a bill of sale was second nature to me. Little white lies seemed to keep me out of trouble. All of that time I was a grief to the Spirit of God. I have learned that the Lord will oft times give great insights and blessings to the newest and even weakest saints of God. He tenderly wraps those same blessings in his chastening. Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby, Hebrews 12:11.A man is never ready to be a bishop who has not experienced seasons of blessings and chastisement that have effectively purged the rascal inside of him. My God has put me through things that I would not unleash on my worst enemy. I have watched foes mock me and friends turn their heads away at the severity of God’s rebuke in my life. He has never forsaken me. He forsook Jesus Christ on the cross for a season (Psalms 22:1) and will never forsake him again. I am in Christ.God did not make me the Bishop of the Black Creek Baptist Church until I was 53 years old. I have seen men successfully be bishops at an earlier age, but they will testify to you of cycles of blessings and chastisement that are not for the novice. Rehoboam was 41 years old when he became the King of Israel and yet King Abijah under the anointing and inspiration of God described him in rebuke to Jeroboam; And there are gathered unto him vain men, the children of Belial, and have strengthened themselves against Rehoboam the son of Solomon, when Rehoboam was young and tenderhearted, and could not withstand them, 2nd Chronicles 13:7. (Thank you for that insight Brother McVey.)Part of the destruction of our Western churches has been the reluctance of young men to grow up. The men who stood in row after row at Gettysburg and Antietam were often 16 and 17 year old men who after the war were able to settle down and earn a living, marry a wife and raise a family. Our government now considers 26 year olds to be juveniles and sadly that can be seen reflected in our churches.Too many churches are occupied by men demoralized over their calling and utterly ineffectual in advancing the Kingdom of God through the Church of our Lord Jesus Christ. These men often shrink in fear for their livelihood. They are capable of great preaching on occasion. What they do not have is the ability to be consistent. They cling to their position through church politics. They fear the rebuke of their peers. They view every new thought and concept through the lens of how they will be received in their standing with the brethren. Such men should be under a bishop. They should not be a bishop.Word Studies•Doctrine•John Asquith What we can learn about the Ordaining of Bishops from the Fall of the Anointed Cherub Part II Dr. John M. Asquith Feb 14, 2019 5 min read Not greedy of filthy lucre, I Timothy 3:3.Some years ago, I was approached by a preacher who believed that the King James Bible had been translated errantly when the Apostle Paul said; For the love of money is the root of all evil which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows, 1st Timothy 6:10. He reasoned that when a man was tempted to fornication, gluttony, drunkenness and pride that money had no part in those things. According to his wisdom, money was not the root of all evil and the King James Bible should have said it differently. It was misleading people.What he missed while trying to reason in languages that he could barely read and certainly not think in, was that the Apostle Paul was making a comment on the fall of the anointed cherub. By thy great wisdom and by thy traffick hast thou increased thy riches, and thine heart is lifted up because of thy riches, Ezekiel 28:5. The Apostle Paul pinpointed the exact time and place wherein evil took root.The anointed cherub took his eyes off of the God that he had been anointed to glorify and began to look at the riches that his God had so graciously granted to him. In the fall of Adam, that was transferred to man’s nature. Part of my sorrow in pastoring among poor rural people in a very fallen America is that without having any of the trappings of wealth, they have the sorrows of wealth.Without having two cents to rub together, they covet money. They often live in shabby rusted trailers at the end of muddy driveways and dream of taking their next welfare payment and buying a winning lottery ticket. They can be seen at convenience store counters huddled over a string of lottery tickets slowly scratching away hoping to end their poverty. Their schemes and shading of laws by lying to social services and ex-spouses keep them in perpetual misery and sorrow.In the early 1970s I left rural Western New York and began to meet city people my age from New York City and Long Island. I remember being shocked at how many of them came from broken homes, hated their own siblings and needed antidepressants. They were sustained by rich parents who sent them all of the latest toys and gadgets and saw to it that they had sufficient party money. I had seen sorrow and broken homes in Cattaraugus County, New York but never had I seen such a level of hopelessness. Those homes were by far the minority and those who came from them coped on a higher level.Thirty years later, I returned to Western New York. Due to the blessings of socialism, the general despair that I had seen on the faces of the rich spoiled kids was now on the faces of the poor. Now the poor came from broken homes. They hated their siblings. They all have smartphones and party money. They are on antidepressants. They are pierced through with the sorrows of coveted wealth without even getting a sniff at the money itself.God seeks for men in such circumstances. He seeks for men who can handle wealth or handle poverty. He looks for men who will not be blinded by lack, or blinded by plenty. The Apostle Paul was to say; Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content, Phillipians 4:11. Paul found contentment in saying; Even unto this present hour we both hunger, and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwellingplace, 1st Corinthians 4:11. But he also found contentment in a hired house with servants. And Paul dwelt two whole years in his own hired house, and received all that came in unto him, Acts 28:30.Paul’s last days in Rome are often depicted as a man chained to a dungeon wall eeking out epistles. Nothing could be further from the truth. He was a Roman citizen under house arrest wherein his only chain was his legal obligation to report to Cesar. He had just saved the life of one of the richest citizens of the Isle of Melita (Malta) and earned the gratitude of the Roman governor. You can be sure that the post of being governor on such a lucrative trade route was not held by any poor man.Paul came to Rome with unexpected riches to write those last epistles and to wait to make his case to Cesar. We know from 2nd Timothy that the wealth did not turn Paul’s head. He knew that the answer that he was about to give Nero would cost him his head. For those who find the plain truth of Acts 28:30 to be strange and contrary to what they have always heard, read the book, Roman Society and Law in the New Testament (Sarum Lectures 1960-1961) by Sherwin-White AN. You will see that Paul’s chain was a legal chain.When a man is ordained as a bishop, he cannot be greedy of filthy lucre. We often think of that as gambling money or bank robbery proceeds, but the sad reality is that filthy lucre is any money held by a man through covetousness. I have heard more than one missionary or evangelist tell me that he was promised all of the money from a particular meeting only to receive far less than that as a pastor secretly shifted funds.I am reminded of the old joke about the preacher who told his wife that he had received an offer to pastor from another church. He told her that he would need to pray about it. She asked him if the new job had a larger salary. When he said that it did, she told him that while he was praying she would be upstairs packing.One thing that I see in the blighted landscape of broken and fallen American churches is the sorry results of pastors who have continually moved on in discontent. As a pastor makes a few good moves, and as his people seem unthankful over them, he gets the feeling that he should have a larger church. I heartily agree. I tell them to make the church they have larger. Since they don’t really have a clue how to do that, they get into the musical chairs game.I have the honor to serve with a man who started an Independent Baptist Church in a small impoverished Pennsylvania town. They built their sanctuary in a corn field miles from anywhere. After 39 1/2 years of laboring in one spot, they had a regular attendance of over 150 people and a mission budget measured in 6 figures. They launched men and women to foreign fields and domestic pastorates. There is no limit to what God can do with a man who ignores the lure of filthy lucre but channels everything back into the work of God.He spends his retirement as a janitor in a local library. I often wonder at the people who see him sweeping floors or cleaning bathrooms if they know about the eternal mansion that Jesus Christ has built for that man. It has been to our honor at the Black Creek Baptist Church to call him Pastor Emeritus and to learn from his experience. The love of money is where evil took root. A man must be measured long and hard to see that he does not covet after filthy lucre before he is ever ordained as a Bishop.#DrJohnMAsquithWord Studies•Doctrine•John Asquith |
| Dr. John M. Asquith Nov. 21, 20213 min read AdoptionTo redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons, Galatians 4:5. In order to understand adoption, we need to back up a little and look at another doctrine that runs hand in hand with adoption, imputation. One of the things that imputed righteousness and adoption have in common is that they are both future events absolutely guaranteed to the saint of God. It is popular to say that we have imputed righteousness just as Abraham did, but we do not. The Apostle Paul puts our imputed righteousness in the future. Romans 4:23 Now it was not written for his sake alone, that it was imputed to him;Romans 4:24 But for us also, to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead; For a moment, try to forget your indoctrination and try to focus on what Paul is saying. Start by getting the context. Abraham had a body, a soul and a spirit. Romans Chapter 4 is not about the complete man. It speaks of his flesh. What shall we say then that Abraham our father, as pertaining to the flesh, hath found?, Romans 4:1. The Apostle Paul went to great lengths to teach us. Part of that teaching is to explain how God handles the problem of sinful flesh.We know that God can change a heart, and we know that he can give a man another spirit. What he does not do here on this earth is give a man a new body. What God did for Abraham was to impute God’s righteousness to Abraham’s flesh. When Abraham walked on this earth, God treated his flesh as if it was God’s own flesh. He poured wealth and honor upon it. He made promises to its offspring.This is not the status of the Christian. A Christian will have imputed righteousness to his flesh, but he does not have it now. A Christian does not need imputed righteousness to get into heaven, His inward man is the righteousness of God. For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him, 2nd Corinthians 5:21. The inward man of a Christian is perfectly righteous. In fact, it is as righteous as God himself. It is the righteousness of God. It is no wonder that we are called new creatures in Christ.It is in the process of adoption that God imputes righteousness to the flesh of a Christian. My inward man is born of God. We are told that it cannot sin, and he cannot sin, because he is born of God, 1st John 3:9. My flesh has a problem. It cannot stop sinning. It cannot be born of God as my inward man is. My flesh was born on April 2, 1954 in Salamanca, New York. Its father is a man who was a sinner just as I am. In order for my flesh to be allowed into heaven it needs two things. It needs the righteousness of God imputed to it, and it needs God the Father to adopt it as his own. That is exactly what the good apostle promised it when he said, to whom it shall be imputed, and it is the gist of Romans chapter 8.Read Romans 8:23. In plain English it tells you that we are waiting for the adoption and it tells us that the adoption is the redemption of our body. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body, Romans 8:23. If you have salvation you are not adopted. You shall be adopted. God has given you the Spirit of adoption. That Spirit is the earnest of your inheritance. It is God’s proof inside of the believer that God will redeem our bodies. Ephesians 1:13 In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise,Ephesians 1:14 Which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory. The redemption of the purchased possession is the rapture. It is the adoption of our bodies by God the Father after he imputes righteousness to our flesh. If you have salvation that is a sure thing. Doctrine•Word Studies•John Asquith |
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