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817. Beginning in the Spirit – But Perfected by the Flesh?

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Doing good, avoiding evil. Those four words would seem to be a no-brainer within almost every religious creed. And this seems to be the foundation upon which Christianity has been built, at least within many church denominations. So if this is supposed to be the goal for believers in Christ—if this is the primary purpose—what is it that makes our faith unique?

Paul spoke to the Galatian churches in frustration because after receiving the Spirit of God freely by faith, they had been persuaded to begin trusting in the works of the old law in addition to faith in Christ. Paul called this a work of the flesh. Its roots go back to the same tree Adam ate from when everything collapsed. It was called The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. It was an unbelief problem as Adam decided to turn from trusting in the sufficiency of the life of God … and chose to begin trusting in the knowledge of both good and evil. He was told it would make him more like God, but it had the opposite result.

Many believers today are struggling with the same thing. They are working at trying to become more like God, and it becomes more about doing—or not doing—instead of being or resting in who God has already made them to be.



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What does it mean to remove a church’s lampstand?

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If you wanted to control people using fear and dark threats, you could become a Sith Lord, or you could take the good promises of Jesus, turn them inside out, and use them to terrorize God’s children. Let me give you an example: Unless you repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand out of its place. (Rev. 2:5) What does that mean? It sounds scary. I’d better do whatever the man of God tells me. And bam, there goes your freedom. Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to work we go. In the research I did for Letters from Jesus, I read dozen of commentaries and was regularly horrified by how this good promise was interpreted. What does it mean to remove your lampstand? Apparently it means Jesus is going to close your church or kill your pastor. Yes, I actually read that. “How dreadful are the punishments of Christ!” said a certain Victorian minister. “He may take away your minister; and he may also take away the light of his word.” (Think about that for a second: If you don’t repent, the man up front gets whacked by Jesus. Makes perfect sense.) Sadly, this was par [...]

Rewarded for What We’ve Done?

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The Bible says that we will be rewarded for what we have done. Not what we have believed, but done-diddley-done-done. So what do we have to do? In this three-part series, we’re going to look at some of the rewarded-for-what-we’ve-done scriptures, beginning with this one: For the Son of Man is going to come in […]

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