Salvation of our Souls Christ’s number one priority

Repentance meaning turning away from sin is the first step of our renewed life in Christ.

In this we receive the mind of Christ to call on God for salvation, but this is only the initial step towards the fruitful life promised in Him.

The Bible says God knows those who are His even before the time they were formed in their mother’s womb. What an incredible wisdom, which man cannot fathom in his fallen state. Such wisdom is too profound to us. This means He is the One who brings us to the revelation of His Son in our hearts, but later on the scripture teaches us through the Holy Spirit that we too need to co-operate with the work of His Holy Spirit for sanctification in us.

What an incredible act of grace on behalf of fallen creature called sons of men.

It is unfathomable how God of all creations chooses His creation to be joint heir and a co laborer with Him?

This is too marvelous to the human mind.

The Lord knows and predestines us for this great act of grace called repentance and it is Him who reveals His Son to whom He may will. How glorious and profound such knowledge is to us. Amen?

But the Lord God has done all this to prepare a people to transform this world and He wants to do this through us. The Bible says we the gentiles by birth were the wild olive trees in this world and the Jews were the natural branches and Christ is the supporting tree. What does Apostle Paul in Romans 11 mean by this statement? How are we wild? And how is Israel the natural branches? What makes us wild? Here is where may stumble in understanding of Paul’s mind here. By natural branches he means, to them were the mind of God revealed first by giving them the oracles of the law and the prophets and all the promises. We as goyim or gentles were not privileged by such revelations in the past.

We were out side of the common wealth of His chosen people Israel after the flesh.

Now by their rejection of the gospel we are grafted in to this inheritance.

Apostle Paul says we cannot be engrafted in without walking away from our former ways of living our lives.. Apostle Paul  also in his letters to the Churches of Asia Minor writes, that we all need to renew our minds with the renewing or washing of the word.

Since  before the Kingdoms can change men need to change their thinking to appropriate it to the ways of the kingdom they have and will enter in.

This is called the process of sanctification that is being performed in us through the working of the Holy Spirit in righteousness, where I and you need to co-operate in.

Here is the subject matter discussed in today’s sermon. The need for our thinking to change. This is the will of our God Paul says in 1 Thessalonians our sanctification, and that is to have our minds renewed by the word of God daily.

The word teaches us upon initial repentance we turn from our past sins from death unto life, but that only happens through the Holy Spirits work only in the area of our spirit. However the greatest battlefield remains our mind, which needs to be captured by the renewing of it through the washing of the word. Why washing? Because we have years of polluted thinking patterns there from our former life.

This ofcource is a divine act of grace in righteousness done through Christ’s seed that is in us after our true conversion, but it requires our free will to agree in its process and it is not done without our agreement to it. We need to agree that the word of God is the constant means of washing the spiritual dirt from us or from our former ways.

In Ephesians  chapter 4 Paul the Apostle tells the gentile Church in Ephesus that they should no longer walk as the rest of gentiles who walked  in the futility of their minds.

Now having said all this, let us look at what God wants from us in His Son Jesus the Christ. What is His will for us?, we who are still on the earth after our initial salvation in our spirits?

The writer of the epistle of Hebrews speaks to the Jewish believers now and says to them that you too need to come into the renewing of your minds by the word of His truth, since He said  to them you are not of those who do not believe in the salvation of the soul. Here he says, it is not enough that your spirit is saved upon receiving the revelation of the Messiah who is Jesus, but you need to want to grow in the knowledge of His word.

In chapter 5 of the letter to the Hebrew believers the writer says… “ For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principals of the oracles of God; and you have come to need milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe.” Heb. 5:12-13

So what is he saying here?,  that some in the Body of Christ are not willing to grow up and willingly remain as children, while they need to be mature in the understanding of the necessity of acknowledging of all righteousness, they remain stiff-necked. This is another dilemma in the Church since the first century folks.

Christians being saved in the spirit are unwilling to become mature and take responsibility to live like men and women who are spiritually mature. We act as babes,  and this is to our shame. We refuse to daily mediate on the word of God to understand the mind of Christ. We struggle with childish thoughts harming ourselves and those around us and soon even walk away from the life of faith once we made a confession of.

We remain babes since the word of rightousness has no place in us, we remain with no normal renewed minds,  without discernment of His will for our lives.

Many of us live in constant fear and anxiety and worry and torment and the only reason is because we have not decided to co-operate with the Holy Spirit in letting His renewing work to take place in us. Why because having the light of His word in our hands we too unfortunately prefer to live in darkness.

We have not understood this heavenly love letter as our nearest of kin. We trust our former human way and thoughts, and are not ready to cut away from them, since men love darkness rather than light.

The word of rightousness requires us to go to the cross and carry our own cross. This many do not want since the way is narrow which leads to life. Who is Christ.

How can someone find the way, when they themselves are enslaved to the former passions in life.

How can two people walk together unless they are in agreement with each other?

Many times in the scriptures men are likened to the trees. Have you asked yourselves why?

Why do the word of God likeness us to the trees? I believe because as trees grow and are well nourished, would bring good fruits, so are we if we remain in Him.

The deeper the root better its longevity and the better it is nourished richer the fruits would grow. Unfortunately many in the body of the Lord walk like trees with no evidence of maturity and fruitfulness. We live selfish lives of our former patterns.

We do not produce the fruits of the Holy Spirit, which eventually will make us leave our own selfishness and live to even produce fruit in the kingdom of God.

Remember when Jesus spoke about a tree that had to be cut off, since three years the owner of the garden was coming and could not find fruit on it? Some of us remain in such a state do to our unrenewed minds.