SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 12/14/2018 11:15 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-3
“Salvation is From Sin”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Eph. 2:1-3
Message of the verses: “1 And you were
dead in your trespasses and sins, 2 in
which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to
the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the
sons of disobedience. 3 Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of
our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by
nature children of wrath, even as the rest.”
I
promised to first of all in this SD talk about the word “trespasses): “Paraptoma
(trespasses) means to slip, fall, stumble, deviate, or go the wrong
direction. Hamartia (sins) originally carried the idea of missing the mark, as
when hunting with a bow and arrow. It
then came to represent missing or falling short of any goal, standard, or
purpose. In the spiritual realm it refers
to missing and falling short of “God’s standard of holiness, and in the New
Testament it is the most common and general term for sin (used 173 times). Paul does not use the two terms here to point
up different kinds of wrongdoing but simply to emphasize the breadth of the
sinfulness that results from spiritual deadness” (J. MacArthur).
MacArthur
goes on to write about things found in the book of Romans, first in Romans 3:13
“all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” This verse does not give two truths but two
views of the same truth. Paul explained
in Romans chapter one that in its most basic sense sin is failing to glorify
God. We now look at Romans 1:21 “For
even though they [fallen mankind] knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became
futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened.” I want now to look at what could be described
as an epitaphs of Herod which is found in Acts 12:23, (something you would not
want written on your tombstone “An angel of the Lord struck him because he did
not give God the glory, and he was eaten by worms and died.”
We
talked about the term “total depravity” in our last SD, and to say that all men
are as bad off as they can be does not mean that every person is equally
corrupt and wicked. Being as bad off as
can be means that no one can save themselves, it has to be something that God
does, as He did provide the means of salvation through the death of His Son on
the cross. MacArthur writes “Twenty corpses
on a battlefield might be in many different stages of decay, but they are
uniformly dead. Death manifests itself
in many different forms and degrees, but death itself has no degrees.” This quote goes along with the definition
that I gave about total depravity.
One
thing that I want to point out is that all of the things that we have been
learning in our study of the book of Ephesians thus far were not at all known
to most of us before we became believers in Jesus Christ. Someone may have quoted Eph. 2:8-9 to us as
they shared the gospel with us, but before becoming a believer we did not
understand exactly how bad off we were, and so it is good for all believers to
understand exactly what we were before Christ came into our lives in order to
better understand what it was that Jesus Christ did for us when He took our
place on the cross in order to bring about salvation for us.
Jesus
said in Matthew 5:48 “"Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly
Father is perfect.” This, of course is
not a new standard of what we have to be in order to come into the presence of
God for we read in Lev. 11:44 “’For I am the LORD your God. Consecrate
yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am holy. And you shall not make
yourselves unclean with any of the swarming things that swarm on the earth.” Peter says the same thin in 1 Peter
1:16. Jesus did not add something new
when He came to earth, but spoke of what was already known from the teaching of
the Old Testament. The teaching is this
that God only has one standard, and that is perfect holiness which shows that
every person ever born from the seed of Adam is not perfect, thus they are
sinners.
An
example of trying to be holy on our own, which of course is not possible, can
be seen as a group of different people try to jump across a wide river, perhaps
a mile wide. They young children can
only jump a few feet the older children a bit further, those adults in good
shape a bit further and well trained athletes can jump the furthest, but none
can jump all the way across, or even near all the way across. The degree of success varies only in relation
to each other. In relation to achieving
the goal they are equal failures.
Again
we go back to our definition of total depravity and as we see there are some
people in this world who according to the worlds standard look like they are
achieving some kind of holiness, but because they are trying to do it on their
own they will always fail. I once heard
a story of an undertaker; you know about the undertaker, he will be the last
guy to let you down. Well anyway what
would happen if the undertaker would look at a man he is getting dressed for
his funeral and say to him “do you want this tie, or do you one this other
tie?” He will get no response because
that man is dead. Spiritually we are all
dead and we go around like those on the TV program “The walking dead.” Sin has caused us to be spiritually dead and
God demands complete holiness. So as we
go back and talk about the different degrees of what people think are good
people, like men who are good husbands, and good fathers, and never cheat on
their income tax, and even go to church on a regular basis, but have not
experienced the new birth. These men will be in the same shape as the skid row
drunk or the heartless terrorist. They
do not lead equally sinful lives, but they are equally in the state of sin,
equally separated from God and from a spiritual life. We will continue to look at this subject
further in our next SD, as this section we are looking at will take some time
to get through.
Spiritual meaning for my life today: I am thankful that I am learning more about
what I was before the Spirit of God gave me an effectual call in Jan. of
1974. I can better see that I had no
hope of getting to heaven on my own merit.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Continue to learn about what I was before
Christ saved me so that I can then tell others the kind of shape they are in,
and their need for Christ.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Miriam” (Exodus 2:7).
Today’s Bible question: “In Psalm 23, I will fear no evil even though
I walk through what valley?”
Answer in our next SD.
12/14/2018 12:26 PM
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