Tag Archives: Grace

Face to Face

31 Monday Jul 2023

Posted by in Studies, Whole Armor of God

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Hello Readers!  Welcome to a new week and a new post on Renaissance Woman.  This week’s post is another installment in my study of the Whole Armor of God.  I am looking at Ephesians 6:10-18a and I have not progressed any further than “Stand”.  The Apostle Paul says to “stand” three times in this passage and I was certain he meant for us to stand fast or stand firm against the onslaught of the enemy.  There is a word in the Greek which does mean to stand, persevere, hold fast, and it is steko.  That is not the word used in this passage.  The word used in this passage is histemi and it means “to stand, abide, appoint, bring, continue, covenant, establish, hold up, lay, present, set up, staunch, stand (by, forth, still, up). 

These two Greek words are related to each other.  Steko comes from the perfect tense of histemi.  The perfect tense in Greek is used to describe actions already done or completed in the past which produced results still in effect in the present: something to bear in mind when reading the passages that use steko.  Histemi carries more of a meaning of “made to stand” or “cause to stand”.  We see this in verse ten of my study passage: “Finally, by brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.”  We stand because Jesus Christ in us causes us to stand.  We are made to stand because we are in covenant with Him.

Covenant is a weighty word.  I have been meditating on the covenants of the Bible since last year when I completed a course on them.  During this course, the Teacher said the Western Church has very little understanding of what covenant means.  The Western Church defines covenant in the terms of contract: if you do this then I will do that.  Surely not, I thought to myself and I have spent a great deal of time since then listening to what my fellow believers here in the west are saying.  I have found this Teacher is correct in his diagnosis of the Western Church.  It came to a head for me when I was watching a television show on the life of Jesus.  Two characters are running a scam on a landowner and, once the landowner agrees to sell, one character says “we’ll draw up the covenants.”  I heard that and I almost exploded.  For the word covenant to be used when contract was so clearly implied left me utterly discombobulated.  The two words have nothing to do with each other. 

I have heard covenant being used when contract is meant many times since by many of my fellow believers.  It is like my ear has been tuned to it.  And, this lack of understanding is being noticed by others.  Just this week I read this in the Spring 2023 edition of Biblical Archeology Review: “The theme of covenant is central to the Hebrew Bible.  It provides the background to many of its most memorable stories where Yahweh establishes alliances with figures such as Noah (Genesis 9), Abraham (Genesis 12; 15; 17), Moses (Exodus 19; 24), Aaron (Exodus 29; Numbers 18:19), and David (2 Samuel 7). 

“Yet modern biblical scholarship has marginalized the covenantal aspects of the Hebrew Bible in favor of the many individuals and events associated with such arrangements, which are generally reduced to their legal aspects and interpreted as obligations subsumed under the law (Hebrew: torah).  The word torah even serves to designate the first major division of the Hebrew Bible.  Reading the Bible in its wider Near Eastern context, however, rehabilitates the covenant as a crucial factor in diplomacy as well as political and private alliances.”

A contract is indeed an if/then document.  Punishments are usually clearly spelled out should either party fail to comply with the contract’s terms.  Covenants are a matter of life and death.  They were not drawn up: they were typically established in blood.  Animals were split in half and the two parties would walk between the pieces through the blood.  The blood of the parties was also often shed and mingled.  A covenant meant both parties were swearing all they were and had-their very lives-were being given to the other person.

In all fairness to the Western Church, they can’t be blamed for thinking in terms of contract because the Covenant of Moses given at Mount Sinai was given in the language “if you don’t do these things, then these things will come upon you.” (See Exodus Chapters 19-24).  I have heard Bible Teachers say the people of Israel made a terrible mistake when they answered with one voice saying, “All the words which the Lord has said we will do” (Exodus 24:3).  Of course they did not.  They could not.  Their inability to do wasn’t a surprise to God either because the Apostle Paul writes, “Moreover the law entered that the offense might abound.  But where sin abounded, grace abounded much more” (Romans 5:20).

There is a fascinating verse that appears earlier in this same chapter: “For until the law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law” (Romans 5:13).  I cannot venture into a study on this subject now.  The Apostle Paul beautifully explains himself in Chapters 6 and 7 and I highly recommend you take the time to read through them.  I think the Apostle Paul’s point, and the point I am making about the Mosaic Covenant is summed up in Hebrews 7:18-19: “For on the one hand there is an annulling of the former commandment because of its weakness and unprofitableness, for the law made nothing perfect; on the other hand, there is the bringing in of a better hope, through which we draw near to God.”

The television show about the life of Jesus I mentioned does, in my opinion, do some things brilliantly; one of which is pointing out how the Pharisees especially revered the law.  The laws given by God at Mount Sinai and in the Book of Leviticus were not enough: they developed a system of 613 more laws.  What I find to be tragic is that a great number of believers today choose the same way of living.  Matthew 5:16-20 records Jesus saying, “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets.  I did not come to destroy but to fulfill.  For assuredly, I say to you, til heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled.  Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.  For I say to you, that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Strong words indeed and I cannot blame my fellow believers for using them as a basis for their endeavors to keep the law.  Some do try to keep it in their own strength.  They fail of course and the penances and punishments of their denominations are there for them.  There are others that believe that, because the Spirit has been given, we now have the strength that was lacking in the Israelites of the Old Testament to keep the law. This passage is not a warning given to us by Jesus if we don’t keep the law. For one thing, even those who break the least of the commandments and teach others to do so are in the kingdom of heaven.  They are least in the kingdom, certainly, but they are not burning in hell which is interesting but not the most important point I would make. That point is: the New Testament makes it clear Jesus has fulfilled the law.

Again, I would point your attention to Paul’s letter to the Romans.  Paul writes, “I was alive once without the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died.  And the commandment, which was to bring life, I found to bring death.  For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it killed me” (Romans 7:9-11).  He goes on to write that famous passage that ends in “O wretched man that I am!  Who will deliver me from this body of death?”  He has an answer! 

“I thank God-through Jesus Christ our Lord!  So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.  There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.  For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death.  For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit” (Romans 7:24-8:4).

Our Christian life is not one of extra ability to keep the law.  It is not one of contract.  I have carefully read the New Testament and I do not find our Christian lives are to be lived as if/then but rather because/therefore.  (Malcolm Smith first put our covenant life in these terms and I’ve never heard it better expressed).  We are partakers of a New Covenant and one we had no part in making.  It was established in the blood of Jesus and He is its mediator (See Matthew 26:28, Hebrews 9:15).  He is in us and we abide and rest in Him.  Because this is the truth, we therefore have ceased from our own works as God did from His. We are made to stand in His strength and the power of His might.  We are made to stand in the covenant position with Him: face to face.

Hallelujah!  Hallelujah!  Amen.

Unless noted otherwise, all Scriptures are quoted from The Holy Bible, New King James Version, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee, 1982

References

Greek Tenses Explained

The Rules of the Pharisees – pursueGOD.org

Pharisaic Laws | Bible.org

Heintz, Jean-Georges, “Covenants in Context”, Biblical Archaeology Review, Volume 49 Number 1, Spring 2023, 61

Strong, James, LL.D., S.T.D., The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville Tennessee, 1990

Vine, W.E., Vine’s Expository Dictionary of Old & New Testament Words, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee, 1997    

Come to the Mountain

17 Monday Jul 2023

Posted by in Studies, Whole Armor of God

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Hello Readers and welcome-or welcome back-to Renaissance Woman where, this week, I continue my study in Ephesians 6:10-18.  This passage is where the Apostle Paul describes the Whole Armor of God. In last week’s post, I looked at verse 10 which states, “Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.”  This week, I want to look at how “be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might” relates to Paul’s admonition that we “stand”.

I have read this passage many times but I have to say I never paid close attention to how many times the Apostle Paul says the word “stand.”  Verse 11 says, “Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.”  Verse 13 says, “Therefore take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day and having done all to stand.”  The first word of verse 14 is “stand”. 

Malcolm Smith has pointed out that the soldiers guarding the Apostle Paul during the writing of the Epistle to the Ephesians were just that: guards.  They were not equipped to go out onto the battlefield and fight but, should the battle come to them, they were ready to mount a defense.  The soldiers stood in the strength and might of the authority of Rome.  How much more strength and might belongs to us because we are in Christ Jesus!

This is a truth I have not heard proclaimed by very many of my fellow believers.  They acknowledge that their Salvation is entirely a work of Jesus Christ but then everything else pertaining to the Christian life is somehow achieved based on behavior and merit.  The Apostle Paul asks the Galatians; “Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh?” (Gal. 3:3).  I would ask this same question to those conducting warfare.  Our warfare is Spiritual not carnal.  Our weapons are Spiritual and so is our enemy.  It ought to be obvious ours is not a warfare we wage in our own strength.  We do not need to go out and seek our enemy.  We stand and our strength is in the Lord Jesus Christ and in the power of His might.  We stand in His victory which is made our victory because we are in Him and He is in us.  Our flesh life is exchanged for His.  As the Apostle Paul says, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Galatians 2:20). (NOTE: the word “in” I have italicized is really “of” in the Greek.  It is not that we put our trust in the strength of our faith in Jesus, rather we live by His faith because He lives in us.  An important distinction.)

Christ’s victory is total and complete.  There is nothing that is not subject to Him (See 1 Corinthians 15:27).  This truth is something it appears believers have forgotten especially when it comes to sin.  My fellow believers do not recognize sin is put away by the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ and not for us only but for the entire world (1 John2:2) but are out engaging in “spiritual warfare” and miserably failing.  The result of conducting a battle in the strength of the flesh is much like the Hydra from Greek myth: if one head is cut off two more grow in its place.  Christ’s ultimate victory over sin and death is not spoken of as if it is the reality of believer’s day-to-day lives.  The Apostle Paul wrote an amazing passage on Jesus Christ’s victory over sin and death in his letter to the Romans.  I am quoting from The Message as I like the emphatic language:

“All that passing laws against sin did was produce more lawbreakers.  But sin didn’t, and doesn’t, have a chance in competition with the aggressive forgiveness we call grace.  When it’s sin versus grace, grace wins hands down.  All sin can do is threaten us with death, and that’s the end of it.  Grace, because God is putting everything together again through the Messiah, invites us into life-a life that goes on and on and on, world without end.

“So what do we do?  Keep on sinning so God can keep on forgiving?  I should hope not!  If we’ve left the country where sin is sovereign, how can we still live in our old house there?  Or didn’t you realize we packed up and left there for good?  That is what happened in baptism.  When we went under the water, we left the old country of sin behind; when we came up out of the water, we entered into the new country of grace-a new life in a new land.  That’s what baptism into the life of Jesus means.  When we are lowered into the water, it is like the burial of Jesus; when we are raised up out of the water, it is like the resurrection of Jesus.  Each of us is raised into the light-filled world by our Father so that we can see where we’re going in our new grace-sovereign country.  Could it be any clearer?  Our old way of life was nailed to the cross with Christ, a decisive end to that sin-miserable life-no longer captive to sin’s demands!  What we believe is this: if we get included in Christ’s sin-conquering death, we also get included in his life-saving resurrection.  We know that when Jesus was raised from the dead it was a signal of the end of death-as-the end.  Never again will death have the last word.  When Jesus died, he took sin down with him, but alive he brings God down to us.  From now on, think of it this way: Sin speaks a dead language that means nothing to you; God speaks your mother tongue, and you hang on every word.  You are dead to sin and alive to God.  That’s what Jesus did” (MSG, Romans 5:20-6:11).

I often hear 1 John 1:8-10 quoted as proof that even we believers are doomed to sin.  These verses ought not to be quoted without starting in verse 7:  “But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.  If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.  If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.  If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us.” 

Read the passage of Romans again.  We each one of us lived in a realm of darkness where we knew sin.  Our eyes had not yet been opened to the reality of our lives in Jesus Christ and so, we cannot say we have not sinned.  But now, we have been raised into a light-filled world in Jesus Christ.  We are new creations in Him.  Romans 6:23 says, “For the wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” 1 John 5:20 says, “And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us an understanding, that we may know Him who is true; and we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ.  This is the true God and eternal life.”  1 John 5 also says, “We know that whoever is born of God does not sin; but he who has been born of God keeps himself; and the wicked one does not touch him” (verse 18).

 The word “keeps” in 1 John 5:18 is a word of warfare.  It is tereo (G5083) in the Greek and means, “a watch, to guard (from loss or injury by keeping the eye upon, to withhold, hold fast, preserve.” Paul writes to Timothy, “O Timothy!  Guard what was committed to your trust, avoiding the profane and idle babblings and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge-by professing it some have strayed concerning the faith” (1 Timothy 6:20-21).  We are not to be idle or passive in our Christian lives but, like Paul’s Roman Soldiers; we guard the revelation of who Jesus is in us, we watch for those who would steal it from us, and we stand. 

My precious fellow believers, let us stop wasting our energy engaging in battles that cannot be fought in our own strength.  The battle is the Lord’s! So is the building the Kingdom of God here on earth.  Let us remember the word of the Lord which came to Zerubbabel through the prophet Zechariah: “not by might nor by power but by My Spirit.”  This word echoes that written by Solomon hundreds of years before: “Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it; unless the Lord guards the city, the watchman stays awake in vain” (Psalm 127:1).

His victory is ours by sheer gift. The greatness of the power that is ours in Christ Jesus is the same mighty power the Father worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and set Him at His right hand in heavenly places.  The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set us free from the law of sin and death.  We are not come to Mount Sinai, the physical mountain where Moses received the law which was incapable of making anyone perfect: we are come to Mount Zion and the city of the Living God, one not built with hands. (See Ephesians 1:15-23, Romans 8:2, Hebrews 10:1-4, 11:10, 12:18-24). 

“Seeing then that we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession” (Hebrews 4:14).  Our warfare is not conducted in the same way the world conducts theirs.  Ours is not to gain victory but is rather conducted from the safety and security of His victory.  We stand in the truth of who Jesus Christ is in us and our strength is not that of the flesh which fails but is in the Lord Jesus Christ and in the power of His might.  May that truth saturate your being in the coming days and may it be the foundation on which you stand.

Unless noted otherwise, all Scriptures are quoted from The Holy Bible, New King James Version, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee, 1982

Scripture quotations marked MSG are taken from THE MESSAGE, copyright ©1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson.  Used by permission of NavPress.  All rights reserved. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

References

Strong, James, LL.D., S.T.D., The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville Tennessee, 1990