Friday, December 14, 2018

PT-3 "Salvation is from Sin" from Eph. 2:1-3


SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 12/14/2018 11:15 AM



My Worship Time                                                                 Focus:  PT-3 “Salvation is From Sin”



Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Eph. 2:1-3



            Message of the verses:  1 And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, 2  in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. 3 Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.”



            I promised to first of all in this SD talk about the word “trespasses):  Paraptoma (trespasses) means to slip, fall, stumble, deviate, or go the wrong direction.  Hamartia (sins) originally carried the idea of missing the mark, as when hunting with a bow and arrow.  It then came to represent missing or falling  short of any goal, standard, or purpose.  In the spiritual realm it refers to missing and falling short of “God’s standard of holiness, and in the New Testament it is the most common and general term for sin (used 173 times).  Paul does not use the two terms here to point up different kinds of wrongdoing but simply to emphasize the breadth of the sinfulness that results from spiritual deadness” (J. MacArthur).



            MacArthur goes on to write about things found in the book of Romans, first in Romans 3:13 “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”  This verse does not give two truths but two views of the same truth.  Paul explained in Romans chapter one that in its most basic sense sin is failing to glorify God.  We now look at Romans 1:21 “For even though they [fallen mankind] knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened.”  I want now to look at what could be described as an epitaphs of Herod which is found in Acts 12:23, (something you would not want written on your tombstone “An angel of the Lord struck him because he did not give God the glory, and he was eaten by worms and died.”



            We talked about the term “total depravity” in our last SD, and to say that all mean are as bad off as they can be does not mean that every person is equally corrupt and wicked.  Being as bad off as can be means that no one can save themselves, it has to be something that God does, which He did provide the means of salvation through the death of His Son on the cross.  MacArthur writes “Twenty corpses on a battlefield might be in many different stages of decay, but they are uniformly dead.  Death manifests itself in many different forms and degrees, but death itself has no degrees.”  This quote goes along with the definition that I gave about total depravity.



            One thing that I want to point out is that all of the things that we have been learning in our study of the book of Ephesians thus far was not at all known to most of us before we became believers in Jesus Christ.  Someone may have quoted Eph. 2:8-9 to us as they shared the gospel with us, but before becoming a believer we did not understand exactly how bad off we were, and so it is good for all believers to understand exactly what we were before Christ came into our lives in order to better understand what it was the Jesus Christ did for us when He took our place on the cross in order to bring about salvation for us.



            Jesus said in Matthew 5:48 “"Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”  This, of course is not a new standard of what we have to be in order to come into the presence of God for we read in Lev. 11:44 “’For I am the LORD your God. Consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am holy. And you shall not make yourselves unclean with any of the swarming things that swarm on the earth.”  Peter says the same thin in 1 Peter 1:16.  Jesus did not add something new when He came to earth, but spoke of what was already known from the teaching of the Old Testament.  The teaching is this that God only has one standard, and that is perfect holiness which shows that every person ever born from the seed of Adam is not perfect, thus they are sinners.



            An example of trying to be holy on our own, which of course is not possible, can be seen as a group of different people try to jump across a wide river, perhaps a mile wide.  They young children can only jump a few feet the older children a bit further, those adults in good shape a bit further and well trained athletes can jump the furthest, but none can jump all the way across, or even near all the way across.  The degree of success varies only in relation to each other.  In relation to achieving the goal they are equal failures.



            Again we go back to our definition of total depravity and as we see there are some people in this world who according to the worlds standard look like they are achieving some kind of holiness, but because they are trying to do it on their own they will always fail.  I once heard a story of an undertaker; you know about the undertaker, he will be the last guy to let you down.  Well anyway what would happen if the undertaker would look at a man he is getting dressed for his funeral and say to him “do you want this tie, or do you one this other tie?”  He will get no response because that man is dead.  Spiritually we are all dead and we go around like those on the TV program “The walking dead.”  Sin has caused us to be spiritually dead and God demands complete holiness.  So as we go back and talk about the different degrees of what people think are good people, like men who are good husbands, and good fathers, and never cheat on their income tax, and even go to church on a regular basis, but have not experienced the new birth, these men will be in the same shape as the skid row drunk or the heartless terrorist.  They do not lead equally sinful lives, but they are equally in the state of sin, equally separated from God and from a spiritual life.  We will continue to look at this subject further in our next SD, as this section we are looking at will take some time to get through.



            Spiritual meaning for my life today:  I am thankful that I am learning more about what I was before the Spirit of God gave me an effectual call in Jan. of 1974.  I can better see that I had no hope of getting to heaven on my own merit.



My Steps of Faith for Today:  Continue to learn about what I was before Christ saved me so that I can then tell others the kind of shape they are in, and their need for Christ.



Answer to yesterday’s Bible question:  “Miriam” (Exodus 2:7).



Today’s Bible question:  “In Psalm 23, I will fear no evil even though I walk through what valley?”



Answer in our next SD.



12/14/2018 12:26 PM

No comments:

Post a Comment