SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 4/30/2019 9:23 AM
My Worship Time Focus: Knows God’s
Truth
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Eph. 4:21
Message of the verses: “21 if indeed you
have heard Him and have been taught in Him, just as truth is in Jesus,”
As
we look at the focus: “Knows God’s
Truth” we have to remember that we are looking at “The Walk of the New Self,”
and so we could say that a part of the walk of the new self is that this person
knows God’s truth, and this is the opposite of what we were learning of the
person of the old self that we looked at before we began this section. The person of the new self has heard Christ
and is also taught in Him. MacArthur writes
“Both verbs are in the aorist tense, again pointing to a one-time past act, and
in this context referring to the time when the readers were taught and came to
believe the gospel—here called the truth…in Jesus. These terms describe the moment of
salvation-conversion. When a person
receives Christ as Savior and Lord, he comes into God’s truth.”
Let’s
compare Matthew 17:5 with our verse for today:
“While he was still speaking, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and
behold, a voice out of the cloud said, "This is My beloved Son, with whom
I am well-pleased; listen to Him!’” In
comparing these two verses we can come to the conclusion that the verse in
Ephesians 4:21 could not possibly refer to hearing Jesus’ physical voice on
earth, because there is no way that could have been true of all the believers
in Asia Minor to whom Paul was writing, so it must refer to the hearing of His
spiritual call to salvation as can be seen in verses like John 8:47; 10:27;
Acts 3:22-23; Hebrews 3:7-8. There are
many New Testaments references that speak of this hearing and being taught as
the call of God. John MacArthur writes “En autoi (‘in Him’) means in union with
Christ and further emphasizes the fact that at conversion we received the truth
embodied in Christ, because we came to be in Him.”
When
people are living without God they can become cynical about truth, similar to
what happened when Pilate asked the question “What is truth,” and just like
Pilate when unbelievers ask this question they really don’t want an
answer. This is different with the
Christian, or at least should be, as we can say “The truth of Christ is in me”
as seen in 2 Cor. 11:10. We could also
look at 1 John 5:20 “And we know that the Son of God has come, and has given us
understanding so that we may know Him who is true; and we are in Him who is true, in His Son
Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life.”
John
MacArthur writes “The ‘truth’ that ‘is in Jesus,’ then, is first of all the
truth about salvation. This idea is
parallel to 1:13, where Paul says hearing the truth and being in Him are
synonymous with conversion: ‘In Him, you
also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your
salvation—having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of
promise.’ ‘The ‘truth…is in Jesus’ and
it leads to the fullness of truth about God, man, creation, history, sin,
righteousness, grace, faith, salvation, life, death, purpose, meaning,
relationships, heaven, hell, judgment, eternity, and everything else of
ultimate consequence.”
Spiritual meaning for my life today: Knowing the truth that is in Jesus Christ is
one of the most important things that a believer can learn as it answers the
many questions that John MacArthur tells about in the list that is written
above. Think about the privilege that I
have in knowing the answers to these questions is something that is very
precious to me and something that I want to share as I write these Spiritual
Diaries that the Spirit of God sends around the world as they go onto my blogs.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Continue to
truth the Lord to teach me humility.
Quotation for today is from an unknown
author: “Anger is an acid that can do
more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to the person on which it is
poured.”
4/30/2019 9:51 AM
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