Death by one, life by one

Death came on all of us by one man, even so shall not life and that abundantly come through one man?

When Jesus went to the cross, Revelations 1:18 tells us that He took away the keys of death and hell. The writer to the Hebrews reminds us that, through death, Jesus slew him who had power over death, that is the Devil (Hebrews 2:14).

These scriptures are generally interpreted from an eternal perspective and assure us of ultimate victory over death.

However, death, as used, in the scriptures has two tenses, namely an eternal tense and a present continuous tense.

The eternal tense is well appreciated. We will rise again and experience the power of an endless life.

However, the present continuous tense of death, as used by the scriptures, refers to separation, rejection, nakedness and torment of the soul. Adam and Eve were beguiled by Satan, who knew God’s meaning but nonetheless misled those two souls into believing that they would not die if they ate of the tree. In the eternal sense, death would yet come to them, but their disobedience introduced human mortality and ended their eternal bliss.

The other aspect of the lie, namely “the day you eat of the tree you will not surely die”, obscured the present continuous or ongoing experience of death. Indeed, by way of confirmation, God immediately separated them from Himself and banished them from the garden. That was also a death: separation death as opposed to physical death.

The good news is that, just as sin introduced both deaths, so it is reasonable to conclude that Calvary resolved both deaths. Romans 5 says that if sin entered into the world by one man, and death by sin, how much more shall eternal life and mercy redound to one man, that man Paul referred to as the second Adam.

So the keys taken from Satan are keys to your eternal destiny and your ongoing life. The key to abundant life now and eternal life then, is no longer in Satan’s grasp. He has no power to impose death or hell on you.

You may well go through hell, to which Winston Churchill said, “If you are going through hell keep going”. But of importance is that the key to such “hells” or “deaths”, does not vest with your enemy. Does that mean that Jesus casts you into such pains? No it doesn’t. It just means that the key to deliverance vests with Jesus and your future is no longer a fait accompli. Satan may well attack and bring all kinds of troubles into our lives, but He has no legitimate power to sustain such darkness, for the keys were lost to Jesus.

Certainly God often leaves us in our difficulties so that we can grow and discover His power, but the initiative still rests with Jesus and He, at the Father’s behest, will deliver us in due course. Do not be beguiled again by Satan.

He succeeded in convincing Adam and Eve that they would not die if they ate of the tree of knowledge, yet they did, but let him not now convince you that you shall not live if you eat of the tree of life, Jesus. It is not for Satan to determine your times and seasons, that is the sole purview of the Father and it is not for Satan to keep you from the life that Christ bequeathed you through His death – that, I am sorry to say, is only possible if you allow it, for His life is your life and your irreversible inheritance.

Don’t give your enemy undue credit in times of difficulty. Rather cast your cares on Jesus. The bible says, “His name is a strong tower, the righteous run in and are safe”. Jesus lifts us above our struggles when we flee to Him and He will give you a right perspective, high above the melee, where you will gaze out from the tower to see the right perspective: a fallen enemy cowering at the feet of a conquering redeemer.

© Peter Eleazar at www.bethelstone.com

The carnal mind

Self-centeredness is the playground of the devil, where Godliness is eroded and souls are enslaved.

In the past few articles, I have touched on issues of: personal power versus Godly authority; doing things our way; and the yoke of learning.

All of these point to the crux of human disempowerment, yet they also highlight a great contradiction. Humanism places our locus of power within us. It argues that we are gods: the so-called “little gods” philosophy that underpins the new-age movement.

My youngest son, who loves mediaeval warfare and adores the Lord of the Rings, once observed that the real power of the rings given to men, lay not in the power acquired by people, but in the power that wearing the rings ceded to Sauron, a picture of Satan.

As we see in the great temptations, Jesus was offered all the kingdoms of the world, but the price was His soul. In return for bowing to Satan, Satan offered a cease-fire and power to rule the world. It had some appeal, surely, for Jesus had a heart for a suffering world and Satan’s deal offered some peace or release from suffering. It also offered Him a chance to do what He could to help the world, but the price was too high.

Had Jesus conceded, death would not have been conquered. You may recall that death came through Adam after Satan had deluded him into believing he would not die from the fruit. But he did die. He was immediately cut off from the garden and from that moment he became subject to corruption, which ultimately brought him down to the grave where he was subject to the power of Satan. Satan had no power to defeat or prevent death, yet he had the power to enforce death (Hebrews 2:14) by obliging God to do to men what had been done to him because of sin – this is what the bible calls, “The keys of death and hell” (Revelation 1:18).

So if Jesus had conceded to Satan, death would never have been destroyed and salvation for humankind would never have materialized.

Thus, humanism, whilst conceding power to the human soul, is no more able to offer solutions to the greatest dilemma we face – it cannot circumvent death, yet it involves a ring that gives some power in return for power over our souls. It argues that “we will surely not die” if we take such rings, but that only alludes to physical death. Thus it suggests a better, more prosperous life whilst we are alive, whilst obscuring both the inevitable consequences of our choices and the shorter-term implications for lives that trade their souls for a taste of power.

The gateway of Satan is “Self”. Our self-centeredness is the ring of power and humanism will provide all kinds of ways to empower the soul, including relatively safe philosophies such as religion, status and politics, plus darker metaphysical and occultic offerings. Such powers and the demand for them are real, hence the popular appeal of Harry Potter and the increasing availability of witchcraft or occultic publications.

But at the heart of all this darkness is really just a simple factor – “Self”. Self awareness alienates us from God and exposes us to the darkness of Satan. Good people are as vulnerable to this as bad people are and many innocent lives have been ruined by it. Teens have a huge surge of self-awareness that makes them vulnerable to all kinds of social and commercial exploitation, as Satan targets them during their most susceptible years. Advertisers have been able to push impressionable minds into buying things that have done little to help but lots to damage such young hearts, often permanently.

Our biggest cry relates to “Self” and our sense of power relates to “Self” but the lie behind all this is that “Self” is the key to disempowering and disarming us, as it makes us captive to the other team. It is a problem for the un-regenerated soul but it is also the key to the spiritual battles raging around all believers.

The way out is to allow the Life of Jesus to rule in our hearts. God’s provisions for our needs include: His Word, revealed truth, the indwelling Christ and the provision of the Holy Spirit. These provisions are not an endorsement of self nor do they lead us down other oppressive roads, but they will liberate us so we could live life abundantly.

Our carnal minds (self-centeredness) alienate us from God (Romans 8:7), but they that walk in the Spirit (follow Jesus in the way that He leads us out of the ways of the world back to His Father), they will be the Sons of God.

© Peter Eleazar at http://www.bethelstone.com

My yoke is easy

It was Jesus who said: Take my yoke on you. Learn of me for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

In Isaiah 10:27, we read that “the anointing breaks the yoke”. This scripture has been misused, so I will just stick to the principle. Wherever the bible refers to a yoke, it speaks of a casting off of restraints, things that hold us down.

The restraint that Jesus applies to us is a restraint or yolk of learning, thus He says “learn of me”. Clearly God is not at odds with Himself in anointing us to break the restraint He imposes on us. Nor would it be correct to interpret the yoke as coming from Jesus, even though He said, “take my yoke on you”. Rather He is referring to a yoke that was also on Him throughout His long seasons of preparation for ministry.

The concept relates to growth and maturity, a process that parallels the growth cycle of children, who are subject to a yoke of learning until they mature into adults. When we were young, the yoke subjected us to the instructions of parents and other adults in our culture. It was not a heavy burden and Jesus confirms that saying, “For my yoke is easy and my burden is light”. It involved real learning and growth, combined with fair doses of frustration, to equip us for life.

However, Jesus refers to spiritual life and the burden of discipleship. It is frustrating because we understand so little of God’s heart and keep on running into His unmovable, unyielding ways. We bash around as we compensate and over-compensate in our desire to understand and outgrow spiritual childhood.

Jesus never offers to relieve us of the yoke of learning. It is not His to impose or remove. In many ways He is also limited, for our times and seasons are appointed by the Father alone (Acts 1:7). Thus Jesus does not have a special right to intervene on our behalf and have the yoke removed.

However, we know that He prays for us, thus petitioning the Father on our behalf for grace and mercy. He also invites us to come to the throne of mercy (Hebrews 4) to obtain just that: Mercy and grace to help in our times of need.

Romans 8, is a reference often used to describe the Holy Spirit even though the entire context of Romans (or Romans 1 to 8 at least) is about Jesus and His indwelling life (Romans 8: 9-10). Paul defines that the mark of sonship. In Romans 8: 26-27, we read about the Lord interceding on our behalf with groanings that cannot be uttered, because He really does know the heart of God and what is at work in our fragile hearts.

Jesus is the sustaining life within us, the well from which we may drink and never thirst again, the rock that follows us through the wilderness and the good shepherd of the sheep. His life in us is a powerful and real interpretation of what He said when suggesting that He would share our yoke of learning.

The implication is that He makes our burden His burden. He does not cast it off but shares it. He walks with us to lead us to maturity and the ultimate approval of His Father: the only significant man who can validate our maturity.

In essence He walks next to us and says, “I cannot take away your burden of learning, for you must go through deep experiences in order to grow up and reach maturity. There is no short cut, no easy way. You must go through it, but I love you so much that I will share your burden, pray for you and sustain you through my indwelling Spirit”.

The Father is aloof of the process: how else could He validate us except by remaining neutral and objective. But, as God said to Joshua, “the way you go you have not been before, so follow the ark (a picture of Jesus)”.

When the process does reach its climax, the anointing or life within us will strain against the yoke until it breaks to assert our claims to sonship. That is a real process and must become the quest of every believer. The seed of God is Jesus, who is sown into our mortal frames and then germinates until it breaks through its restraining shell to become a tree of righteousness, the planting of the Lord.

Fortunately God has covenanted in Hebrews 9 to write His principles in our hearts so we can expect to grow in understanding, but it is useful to confirm that your present struggles are not mindless and goalless. God has allowed us to struggle out of our cocoons so that we can learn to fly and thereby surmount the restraints of life to be free-spirited sons of the Most High God.

So take His yoke willingly – and learn of Him.

© Peter Eleazar at http://www.bethelstone.com/

I did it my way?

Humanism challenges our theology right where we first stumbled with God - in our self-centeredness.

The first consequence of the fall and arguably the only real consequence thereof, was knowledge of self. The tree of knowledge did not imbue intellectual awareness, for knowledge of life and its workings, is a virtue of God, celebrated by many biblical writers. Knowledge of sin was also not given by the tree, in fact knowledge of sin really only came through the law, as we read in Romans 5:20.

The text of Genesis ascribes the knowledge of good and evil to the tree, but as that knowledge did not do the work of the law, in giving us the knowledge of sin, we must look into the context and examine the implications of eating the tree. There were two implications: death, which implies separation from God, and awareness of nakedness.

These two ideas are linked, for self-awareness begets alienation from God. Thus Paul teaches in Romans 8, that the carnal mind is enmity from God. God may have thrust us from His presence, but we actually alienate ourselves from God through our carnality (self-centeredness).

Humanism looks at our weaknesses and regards them as purely circumstantial: a function of learning, upbringing, context or social predispositions. God does not see it that way. He blames sin and when Jesus hung on the cross He set aside all human solutions to world problems by pointing back to sin and its consequence, a consequence that was supremely borne by Christ on His cross.

Humanism also proposes all kinds of solutions to our innate vulnerabilities, which Paul refers to in Romans 8, as vanity. We need to cover our nakedness, because of our self-awareness, but fig-leaves are hopelessly inadequate. Modern proxies for fig leaves include: status symbols, careers, wealth, material possessions, cosmetics, self-improvement philosophies, etc. But they never address our underlying vanity, rather they fuel it.

Marketers have learnt that giving some sense of wellbeing through commercially available fig-leaves, provides a broader incentive for the masses to part with their hard-earned billions in desperate search of a better fig-leaf. I must ask, do you really think the marketers of such products want you to feel fundamentally whole and fulfilled – never, that would destroy very valuable markets? Do you really think modern medicine want you to get better – never, that would wipe out the wealth or the wealthiest segment of our population. But as long as you have some perception that wellness is possible, you will spend, spend, spend and then suffer the resulting stress or debt-induced disorders that will recycle your spending into another round of fruitless waste.

Hey, the Pharisees sent Jesus to the cross because he threatened their well-developed trade in human vanity. Jesus is the single greatest threat to materialism and capitalism, because He offers real freedom and fundamental wholeness.

I have been deeply challenged about my current circumstances and have had a lot of input relating to my own sense of self-confidence. I accept, in part, that lack of self-confidence is not helpful and there is a form of self-deprecation that is as carnal as pride and as alienating as any other sin. It can sometimes do more harm than pride, for it not only excludes God, it excludes people from our inner worlds. To this end, we at least need to redress the ways we respond to God, for negativity is a cancer to the soul.

But, Paul said in Philippians 3 that he would put no confidence in the flesh. He had more than enough personal credence to put confidence in his own flesh: his impressive resume included an outstanding education, noble birth and Roman citizenship. But Paul said, “I count these things but dung (there are modern substitutes for dung that might convey how strongly Paul felt when he wrote this). He cast it all aside, not for self-knowledge, but for the surpassing knowledge of Christ.

He conceded to an ambition, a shrewdly-worded counter-trend to human ambition, which is fuelled by self-awareness. Paul’s ambition was to know Christ and the power of His resurrection - that quest consumed his soul. He accepted that he had not yet achieved his goal or attained to the fullness of his faith, but he was committed to fighting for supremacy, just as a runner might do in a race.

The secret to his power lay not in his human presence, powerful words, learning, intellect or a forceful nature. Paul’s power and authority lay exclusively in His knowledge of God. He mastered a sense of God-confidence that far exceeded the best of human confidence.

Human confidence is fragile and based on passing fancies. What works for a season, rarely works throughout life and what bolsters us in our youth, rarely sustains us in old age. Human confidence is a life-sapping, tiring, wearisome effort that brings limited fulfillment, but God-confidence is peaceful and joyous, because its departure point is the clothing of our nakedness by a great, heavenly Father.

Satan will exploit and weaken us as long as our centre-of-gravity is self, for self-awareness is the gateway of sin and the principle lever of Satan. But the devil stumbles in the dark or clutches at straws, when Jesus becomes our centre-of-gravity and the foundation for a divine sense of personal wholeness.

(c) Peter Eleazar at www.bethelstone.com