(Prolegomenon as the first 3 paragraphs, before the matter at hand is discussed)
Reading His Scriptures, and praying this morning, I am overwhelmed with His grace, goodness and mercy in my life. And so, once again, I surrender to You, my Lord and my God. Will You use me for Your glory, and for Your glory alone? Lord, I am speechless when I think and realize Your utter goodness and mercy to me, the sinner! How thankful I am for Your Son, Jesus, who gave His life as a ransom for me. Lord, hold me in Your grace and mercy always. May I never wander from Your grace. Teach me, show me, lead me, always in the path of Your righteousness.
When bathed in His grace, every second with Him is heaven on earth!
Gal 2:20, O Lord, O Lord, please, open my eyes, and help me truly understand and realize the reality of this verse, that 'Christ lives in me'. Help me please, to understand and realize that 'the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me'.
And living in such a state of being lived in by Christ and by His faith, 'I do not frustrate the grace of God'. Even the life which I now live, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me. 24/7, 365 days a year!
Because we are united with Christ, His faith in us enables us to live in the flesh by that very same faith. In so doing, in walking by faith and not by sight, we do not frustrate the grace of the Lord Jesus, and so by walking by faith, we walk in His Spirit, and in grace, all by the power of the indwelling and risen Christ. No wonder Paul bursts in exclamation in Rom 8:37, 'Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.'
Rom 8:28 is one of the most misunderstood verses in the entire Scripture! Anyone who so much as think that they are a Christian, and who knows this verse, or who has heard this verse being preached and taught, thinks that this verse is for them. But is it?
Read the WHOLE verse. What does it say? This 'those' are 'those who love God'! Is this a big deal? Yes it is! By which love? Love coming from an instable, undulating sensory vibrations within fallen, sinful, Adamic beings? Or the very same love referred to by Scriptures in the very same letter of Romans, chapter 5, verse 5, And hope does not put to shame, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us. Not one ounce or even a micro-cubic litre of that base and instinctual, natural, love coming from a fallen heart of independence from God.
How do I know? Read the following verse, Rom 5:6; 'For while we were still weak, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.' So this 'all things working together for good to those who love God' work only for those God 'foreknew, He predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, and these He predestined, He then called through the gospel called, and these very ones He justified, and these justified ones, He also glorified!
I was always mystified by the terms 'believe', 'have faith', 'believers', and finally, the term, 'born again'. I realize now that they are almost synonymous.
Reading through the entire Scripture, from the Old Testament to the New, you begin to realize that believe as far as God would have us to understand, is a believe which is NEVER divorced from the experiential element, and especially a belief which MUST cause behavior in the direction of that belief. Mental assent is not known as 'belief' where God, and His Scriptures are concerned. If you believed, that you believed that God is God and Lord of all, and that only He is able to save through Christ Jesus Whom He gave, and sent into the world to save the world from sin, and the devil.
And therefore, to be born again is to believe, and this believe must be initiated by God, because it is impossible that dead people can belief. Via Ezekiel chapters 36 & 37, we see that God must sprinkle them with water, and then cause the Spirit to prophesy over them, for them to become alive. He has thus caused their hearts of stone to be removed and transplanted with hearts of flesh, and His Spirit put within them, and His laws written upon these new hearts of flesh.
However we reduce the scope of understanding and interpretation of the word, 'belief', or to 'believe', it yet must include the experiential aspect, that is, a belief which causes the human agent to move in the direction of that belief.
Belief in God means believe in His sovereignty, that indeed, God is God, and Lord of Lord, and of all.
And only to those who belief as such are they the called, and therefore, beneficiaries of this great promises that ' all things work together for good'.
Who will preach this? Who will teach this? Thank God, the Scriptures will, and all those 'called' will. Not by might, nor by pow
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