Romans (33): Christians -- Preserved Securely in Messiah Yeshua

[Rebbe]

PAUL'S LETTER TO THE ROMAN CHRISTIANS (33)
Analytical Commentary on Romans

CHRISTIANS -- PRESERVED SECURELY IN MESSIAH YESHUA

The Audio MP3 of this lecture is available via this link: http://www.bripodcasts.com/Romans/Lecture33.MP3

Copyright © BRI 2017 All Rights Reserved Worldwide by Les Aron Gosling,
Messianic Lecturer (BRI/IMCF)
CAUTION: BRI Yeshiva notes are not available to the general public. They are not for distribution. They are not for reproduction. The notes may also bear little or no resemblance to the actual audio or video recorded BRI Yeshiva lecture.


Bob Dylan (Robert Zimmerman) informs us of what has to occur if a person is to effect creative change in the society and the milieu in which he finds him or herself. To accomplish this "you've got to have power and dominion over the spirits. I had done it once..." He adds that such individuals are able to "see into the heart of things, the truth of things -- not metaphorically either -- but really see, like seeing into metal and making it melt, see it for what it is with hard words, and vicious insight" -- Bob Dylan, Chronicles: Volume One, 2004, 219

"People seldom do what they believe in.
They do what is convenient, then repent.
All I can do is be me, whoever that is.
He not busy being born is busy dying"
-- Bob Dylan

Paul begins Romans 8 with an emphasis on "no condemnation" and culminates in a conclusion of the chapter by stating there is "no separation." Paul emphasises all throughout this epistle the security of the believer who places his trust in the Lord Yeshua as the Messiah. Rav Shaul tells us all, right at the beginning of his Letter to the Roman Christians, that we are lost. Then he explains that we are saved. God first tells men they are condemned, then He shares righteousness with them, and assures them that He will preserve them to the very end of the End of Days.

NINE PAULINE FACTS ABOUT OUR PRESERVATION
We are:

(1) preserved in the Son of God (Rom 8.1-4)

"There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Messiah Yeshua. For the Torah of the Spirit of life in Messiah Yeshua has set you free from the Torah of sin and of death. For God has done what the Torah could not do by itself, because it lacked the power to make the old nature cooperate, by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the just requirement of the Torah might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the desires that our old nature demanded but according to the desires of the Spirit."

(2) preserved in the Spirit of God (Rom 8.5-13)

"For those who identify with their old nature live according to the old nature by setting their minds on the things of the flesh that satisfied their nature, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things that satisfy the Spirit. To focus the mind on aspects of the old nature is to live in the death state, but to set the mind on the Spirit is to experience a full life and shalom. For this reason the mind that is focused on the old nature is hostile to God; it does not submit to God's Torah -- indeed it cannot, and those who are focused and activated in the old nature cannot please God. But you are not given to negativism; you are in the realm of the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because God reckons you righteous. If the Spirit of him who raised Yeshua from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.

"So then, brothers and sisters, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the old nature -- for if you live according to the old nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the practices of the body, you will live."

(3) preserved in the family of God (Rom 8.14-23)

"For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of Sonship. When we cry, "Abba! Father!" it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ -- if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.

"I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

"We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for our Sonship, the redemption of our bodies."

(4) preserved in the promises of God (Rom 8.24,25)

"For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience."

(5) preserved in the prayer of God (Rom 8.26,27)

"Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God."

(6) preserved in the providence of God (Rom 8.28)

"We know that the universe works together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose."

(7) preserved in the purpose of God (Rom 8.29,30)

"For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family. And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified."

[8] preserved in the power of God (Rom 8.31-34)

"What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else?

"Who will bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? It is Messiah Yeshua, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us."

(9) preserved in the love of God (Rom 8.35-39)

"Who will separate us from the love of Messiah? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, "For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered." No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all the universe, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Messiah Yeshua our Lord."

There are a total of nine categories of everlasting security in Paul's estimation.

BIBLICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE NUMBER NINE
The number "9" is held in vital importance to all students of occult sciences. There are normally nine months of pregnancy, and nine requisites of an ambassador -- and "Firstfruits" are Ambassadors for Messiah (2 Cor 5.20). It is also the number associated with the sum of the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet -- and these letters are also considered angels in the teachings of the Kabbalah -- being 4995 (5 x 999). Five is the number for Grace, and nine is finality in judgment. (See Ethelbert W. Bullinger, Number in Scripture, Its Supernatural Design & Spiritual Significance, 1894, for a full biblical exegesis on the number "nine.")

This numeral, however, also -- according to the biblical tradition -- signifies all that pertains to SPIRIT.

The holy Spirit of God has nine fruits, and nine primary gifts. Furthermore there are 9 Spirits within the holy spectrum of the highly sacred Throne of God in the heavens -- God the Father, Yeshua His Son, and the seven Spirits (Archangels) who worship primarily before the One at the controls -- the Throne-Centre -- of the entire (visible and invisible) Creation.

Not only is this the case, but John's Gospel indicates that "nine" is associated with the concept of EQUALITY. Consider Yeshua's claims of equality with God which are stated by the apostle John in nine categories.

Yeshua claims equality with God the Father in nature (Jn 5.17,18 cf Jn 1.1).

Yeshua claims equality with God in both power and works (Jn 5.19,20 cf Jn 3.34).

Yeshua claims equality with God in resurrection power (Jn 5.21 cf Jn 11.25).

Yeshua claims equality with God in judgment (Jn 5.22 cf Acts 17.31).

Yeshua claims equality with God in honour (Jn 5.23 cf Heb 2.7-9).

Yeshua claims equality with God in granting everlasting life (Jn 5.24,25 cf Jn 17.2).

Yeshua claims equality with God in self-existent life (Jn 5.26,27 cf Jn 1.4).

Yeshua claims equality with God over death and destiny (Jn 5.28,29).

Yeshua claims equality with God in the administration of absolute justice in his own right (Jn 5.30 cf Jn 8.16; 9.39).

QUESTION CONCERNING PAUL'S SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT
Now in my last lecture I spoke of Paul's personal mental and emotional crisis as revealed in Romans 7. I wrote: "The central issue is one [in which] Paul was struggling, albeit sincerely, to keep the law -- to attain holiness in life -- and willing within himself to "break the power of sin" by the keeping of the ten commandments and the other laws of Torah. The full horror of it all is grasped only when we come to realise that Paul was writing Romans 7 some 15 years or so AFTER his conversion."

Now, I stand by this statement concerning the great apostle. However, there may be some of my students who may differ with me over this for, after all, how could Paul have articulated so much rich spiritual understanding and knowledge about the experiential value of the Christian life throughout the first six chapters of his Letter to the Roman Christians if he was yet in a state of partial darkness in his psychological profile and in his pursuit of a Salvific holiness in his erroneous utilisation of the law?

There is so much value in the first six chapters, let alone a profound inner comprehension concerning his negativism -- his vicious Inner Opponent or yetzer hara -- in the seventh chapter. So how can we align a non-contradictory tone when comparing it all with his ecstatic exaltation in Romans 8?

It's a question with good standing in my opinion (although nobody as yet has approached me -- nor reproached me -- over it). My answer to this question, which I myself have raised, is that (again in my own opinion) his Letter to the Roman Christians was subject to a rewrite (like John's Apocalypse) or entailing a necessary overview editorially without losing the essential facts of his spiritual process in personal growth. Evidence for Pauline rewrites of his Romans letter is admitted in the classic authoritative monograph series Studies and Documents  -- a series founded by Kirsopp and Silva Lake devoted to basic research in the ms tradition of the NT corpus -- in Harry Gamble Jr, University of Virginia, Vol.42 The Textual History of the Letter to the Romans, 1977.

The astonishing fact often little comprehended by worldly, materialistic Christians is the simple truth that our God of Gracious Creative Love has purposed with majestic INTENT that all who are HisHer begotten Children must suffer REALITY in this life (or, lives) before they (in their spirit) can be psychologically qualified to enter HisHer Promised REALM OF ETERNAL GLORY! We must "BE" like God and we must therefore SUFFER with Him in order to learn what and how it is that Our Creator suffers. We suffer because we are made in His Image. Our Lord Yeshua was even the "suffering servant" --  nothing less than the mirrored reflection and IMAGE of his Father, was he not?

FATHER ABRAHAM A TYPE OF US
Please remember this: Abraham was a type of each and every human being who has ever been born. The story of Abraham given in Genesis tells us that God commands the patriarch to get up and out of his home country and to go to a Place where God wants him to be. But Abraham is filled with ego. Abraham is filled to the brink with lust and lustful desires. He is a total materialist, although he has a "bent" toward publishing news about "One Creator God" to his Chaldean kinsmen as the Jewish historian Josephus shares with his readers. But even this attempt at publishing is driven by his ego and his Chaldean opposition seeks to destroy his creative intellectual endeavours. He is a "blue blood" married to a number of "princesses" as I have explained in previous lectures. He is equally a bloodthirsty discontent who thinks nothing of pursuing and killing those who oppose him and his family... one might say he is the original Ray Donovan.

Abraham orients around Abraham, and all that pertains to his ego -- his nationality, his family, his father particularly, his fabulous wealthy possessions, his wives and concubines, and their children as his offspring. And God says to Abraham to leave it all behind him -- to give it all up, to surrender himself to El Shaddai, the many-breasted God (or, perhaps more accurately the Mother Goddess).

So Abraham flees his land, but in his heart (and on his camels) he takes it all with him (Gen 12.5). This is in defiance of his newly discovered God (Gen 12.1). So God takes him into Egypt to learn some very valuable lessons in his spiritual journey and personal exodus from ego. The Scripture in Hebrew fails to mention that Abraham "went to Egypt." Rather it tells us pointedly that "Abraham went down into Egypt" (Gen 12.10 Hebrew).

Abraham went into an experience of the differentiation that exists between what is called "religion" and what is termed "spirituality." Moreover he began to grasp the terrible power present in his Inner Opponent just as Paul was to later also discover. Abraham went into a spiral psychological descent through a recognition of what his egocentric materialistic views were really all about... he began to realise that these objects were actually reflective of, and designated, his poor spiritual states -- in the words of Rav Laitman "they are his very nature, and he cannot imagine a different way of thinking, much less a different way of action" (Michael Laitman, Awakening to Kabbalah. The Guiding Light to Spiritual Fulfillment, 2006, 33).

Abraham has to go down into Egypt, and to go through Egypt, until he experiences enough in that realm -- THAT TYPIFIES HIS STATE -- to qualify for entry into The Promised Land.

What made Abraham go down into Egypt? Famine! Listen to Rav Laitman as he further enumerates the plight of the patriarch, and see YOURSELF in his example.

"Abraham represents a spiritual trait that seems to be the basis of all our traits. It is a general spiritual attribute that is the first to be approached by the Creator. People don't come [to God's Wisdom] because they were sent here, but because the Creator approached them first. He begins to haunt them and make them hungry, and only then they come. One will never chase something without a reason or a special need for it. Only the sensation of hunger pushes us out of our metaphorical home country. Love and hunger, meaning the sensation of the absence of something, rule the world. That sensation is called Abram, and it is to that part of ourselves that the Creator turns to say: "Do you really want to fulfill your desires and attain the truth? If you do, you must leave this state of mind altogether and move on to another one called Egypt. That means you must really see who you are and study your egoistic desires from within. If you correct them, you will attain Me; I will be revealed to you in them." The Creator appears precisely in those desires we call Egypt. Only after that are they corrected" (ibid, 34).

And Paul's freedom-experience of the GRACE of God? It came only AFTER his 15 years in servitude to his principal Ego. Paul had to touch rock bottom -- to flounder in murky mental misery UNTIL the LIGHT OF GOD finally shone brightly upon him. We are all Abraham, and we are all Paul. We "all have a need to touch rock bottom, to experience the worst that life has to offer, to wrestle with our demons, to test our intellect to its limits and journey to the other side of madness" (Mark Booth).

GOD PRE-SERVED US IN ANCIENT TIMES
In our previous lecture I noted in its conclusion that the word "preserved" really means PRE-SERVED. That is what our God has been doing for each and every one of us for all eternity: "serving" us through ancient times ("pre"). We are not strangers to God. He has known us, as some might venture, "from days of yore."

QUESTION: Are we mortal in and by our nature? Of do we possess the spark of the Divine? Is this present life our only existence, or have we lived before as Augustine also queried? Augustine? Did he actually wonder about a previous existence? He wrote,

"Say, Lord, to me... say, did my infancy succeed another age of mine that died before it? Was it that which I spent within my mother's womb?... and what before that life again, O God my joy, was I anywhere or in any body? For this I have none to tell me, neither father nor mother, nor experience of others, nor mine own memory" (The Confessions of St Augustine, Bk.I., Harvard Classics, tr. by E.B. Pusey, 1909 ed. VII, 9).

If we have an immortal "soul" then we are deathless, and in other lectures we have explored this subject at length. (See our series of 14 lectures entitled Is Man the Phoenix? A Biblical Study in Human Mortality & Immortality which best explains our present position.)

One thing is for certain in this matter of belief and/or acceptance of the doctrine of metempsychosis. The teaching of the "New Testament" is that the people of Galilee and Judaea expected the prophet Jeremiah -- and other prophets -- to walk the earth again in a reincarnated form in the days of the Messiah (Mt 16.13,14). Some even thought Yeshua was Jeremiah reincarnated!

"And Yeshua having come into the districts adjacent to Caesarea Philippi was asking his disciples, Who do men say that the Son of Man is? And they replied, Some say indeed, John the baptiser and others say Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the other prophets."

Some of us may have some difficulty acknowledging and accepting this teaching, but there it is in black and white. Again, I am not saying that you should accept it as a doctrine. All I am saying is that you should accept that it was believed in the first century, quite widely in fact.

Note too, that all these blessings are to be found only in "Messiah Yeshua" and in no one else. "There is therefore now no condemnation to them who are in Messiah Yeshua" (Rom 8.1). Not only so, but the most horrific of circumstances and trials cannot in any way separate us "from the love of God that is in Messiah Yeshua" (Rom 8.39). Paul begins with "Messiah Yeshua" and he closes with "Messiah Yeshua." Indeed, right throughout Romans we locate his constant references to "Messiah Yeshua" for in Rav Shaul's mind everything God has for us is only in and through Yeshua. There can be no other Way for spiritual blessings to abide on us. If we do not have Yeshua as Our Lord as well as Our Saviour and Redeemer, then we certainly do not have Grace. And, we definitely do not have security in preservation.

GOD SERVES US IN THIS PRESENT TIME
There are some Christians who have a terrible self-image -- an image of sinfulness, rebellion, a deep inner sense of self-loathing and failure. Now, to some degree we all have these feelings -- they ebb and flow daily, I would imagine. But some believers feel it all the time which leads to a largely nurtured anxiety, deep depression and despair. We have seen in Romans 7 that Paul had a severe "bent" in this direction. And, I might add, there are believers who are obsessed with a chronic disease known in psychiatric circles as "obsessive mental compulsive disorder." Scrupulosity, for short. When this disease is found in a Christian it is usually present because of the absence in input of a positive biblical knowledge and a general ignorance of the remarkable contents of the biblical revelation. So, because of their upbringing and other factors their thinking goes askew and awry and delusion is the all-too-often result. (For those who would pursue a deeper grasp of the issues involved in such a situation please refer to http://www.net-burst.net/guilty/ scrupulosity.htm This is a truly beneficial web site and I have recommended it to many with whom I have had contact who are suffering from negative thoughts which are little more than the embodiment of self-inflicted torment. Also cf Clyde M. Narramore, Encyclopedia of Psychological Problems, 1966. Narramore, himself a psychologist blamed the church universal for its utter lack of authentic biblical teaching relating, in particular, to eternal security of the believer.)

Paul, under the inspiration of the Spirit of Holiness (the Ruach HaKodesh), has explained that absolutely NOTHING -- no thing -- can separate us from God's Love (Romans 8.38,39). This is due to the fact that God's love is entirely unconditional. Our inadequacies are met by Christ's adequacy, and applied to each of us, for he freely took our place and represented us to his Father which was an act of Grace entirely. Nothing can separate any of us from God's love. Sin cannot and will not. The Scrupulosity web site lists the following issues which Christians may believe can separate them from God's loving kindness. It states,

"The inner false alarm feels so terrifyingly real that people plagued by it get highly inventive in dreaming up excuses for believing their never-ending anxiety rather than believing the reality that God has forgiven them. There is no valid reason for anyone seeking forgiveness through Jesus to doubt that they are cleansed from all sin, but here are some examples of the false reasons people come up with for doubting their salvation:

"They have blasphemed the Spirit
They keep falling into sin
They are more sinful than anyone else on the planet
They never feel God's presence
They don't have enough faith
They have not adequately repented
They have demons
They have sold their soul to the devil
They are not sincere enough
They are not chosen by God
They have denied Jesus
They cannot pray without blaspheming
They are angry at God
They don't feel guilty when they sin
They have found some Scripture or authority that confirms their fears
They feel condemned whenever they read the Bible or go to church
They never feel peace or joy or an inner witness that they are saved
They keep having dreams or supernatural signs that they are not saved.

"Not one of these things is a valid reason for doubting your salvation. None of them can separate us from the love of God. None of them -- nor anything else you dream up -- is unforgivable. If you were to keep stubbornly refusing to believe that God is loving enough or powerful enough to forgive you through Jesus, or you kept refusing God permission to rule in your life and you were not in the slightest willing even for God to make you willing, you would have a problem until you changed your mind....

"It is with reluctance that I provide the above list because it is like listing a thousand diseases never before considered by a hypochondriac who keeps needlessly fearing he is ill. The bottom line, however, is that anyone going down this path will keep being plagued by anxiety, no matter what he does, and the sooner he realizes it, the sooner he is likely to accept his need for an entirely different approach.

"Evil spiritual powers can never touch God's love for us, nor the infinite power of the cross. All they can do is meddle with our feelings, in the hope that we will start believing our changeable feelings rather than stick to believing in God's unchangeable love and forgiveness. So anyone looking to his feelings to confirm that he is right with God is leaving himself wide open to doubting his salvation. In fact, until completely weaned off treating feelings as a spiritual barometer, every one of us is dangerously vulnerable to spiritual deception. Moreover, if anyone with an anxiety disorder looks to his feelings to confirm that God accepts him, doubt will always win because, no matter how close he is to God, highly unsettling anxiety will keep dominating his feelings."

Precisely! But what most Christians have never realised is the truth that GOD PRAYS FOR THEM. This can be illustrated in the words of Yeshua (God in flesh). He said, "I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which you have given me; for they are your own" (Jn 17.9 See also Lk 22.31-34).

I ought to also mention Hebrews 7.25, Romans 8.34, and 1 Jn 2.1 for these texts inform us that the Lord Yeshua is productively engaged in the heavens interceding for us. And he accomplishes this solely out of his unconditional love for us because he was, and is, Son of Man. He identifies with humankind because he was (and remains) one of us. But perhaps more importantly in the scheme of things Yeshua is the FULL AND TOTAL EXPRESSION (the Image of) the Father's attitude toward us. There is no conflict in opinion concerning human beings, and especially converted human beings, between Christ and his Father Anochi. What Yeshua is doing in interceding for each of us is (in some way) demonstrating to the Father that as he was also a human being he is fully aware of the issues involved in experientially being merely human. This is not to imply that God the FatherMother is not aware of what it is to be constituted human (for "God was IN Christ reconciling the world unto Himself") but rather that Christ's incessant communication is involved in a deep penetrative unity which none of us human beings can ever hope to fathom in the flesh. This is established in the movement of the Spirit in prayer for us.

"In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words" (Romans 8.26 Mounce translation. Emphasis mine).

That is HOW DEEP God's loving understanding of us and overarching concern for us actually goes. The further we transport ourselves into the MIND of Creative Infinite Intelligence and Unconditional Love the stronger and more stable will be our faith and trust in Him. WHY? We are created in the IMAGE OF GOD and God is therefore experiencing HIMSELF IN EACH OF US, and as the Spirit has stated candidly and clearly, "The Spirit searches the depths of God" (1 Cor 2.10) and as a consequence "God cannot deny Himself" (2 Tim 2.11-13).

As to the latter quotation we need to seriously reflect on its inclusions.

"The saying is certain: If we have died with him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him; if we deny him, he will also deny us; if we are faithless, he remains faithful -- for he cannot deny himself."

There are important, indeed vital, qualifications in this section of Paul's second Letter to Timothy.

FIRSTLY, we have died with Yeshua on the bloodied tree of Golgoleth way back when Messiah died for the world. As a result we will "also live with him."

SECONDLY, by enduring the Salvific Way of Life we will ultimately rule the universe with Our Lord Yeshua.

THIRDLY, if we deny Christ it is stated with warning that we will be denied.

FOURTHLY, if we are faithless God isn't.

Far too often the latter expression in this text is taken way out of context. If we prove to be faithless we will have to face the consequences of that faithlessness -- whatever they may be. We may prove to be faithless but despite us God is absolutely TRUE TO HIMSELF -- that is the REAL point Paul is making. We MUST depend on God's GRACE. I have said so many times that we worship and serve a WILD GOD. Brethren, I cannot emphasise this truth enough. We need to get this impression firmly in our heads and BELIEVE it to be true. The thought may humble us but that is what we are learning about in this our last life here below. HUMILITY -- and God will bring humility about one way or another. None of us can afford to strut around like little Napoleon's putting others "down" in order to make us "feel better" in ourselves. Where is our nobility? Where is our integrity? After all we are the King's KIDS and we need to be subservient and respectful toward our heavenly Dad. "Toward" means "to ward (off or away)" anger and ruthless well-deserved repercussions.

OPEN YOUR MINDS TO ACCEPT AN AWFUL TRUTH
Can we open our minds enough, just like the apostle Paul, to accept an awful truth about ourselves? Believe me, I can only agonise with fellow believers who have had this truth hidden from them by the Dark Lord in some cases for YEARS AND EVEN DECADES of imposed religious slavery. I know students who access my writings on both my public and member's sites who have been led by the proverbial nose in the not-so-distant past into some of the most exhausting servitudes in a religious sense, swallowing disastrous debilitating doctrines of demons through false religious educational systems (especially evident in sects like the JW's and various Armstrongite organisations that have used the Sinai Torah of God to manipulate and make slaves of fellow human beings) and via demonic "ministers" (who mismanage those same fragile human beings bending them psychologically to the overwhelming will of an autocratic personality possessed by a "Borderline Personality Disorder" and its associated "Special Person Misconception"). These so-called "ministers of God" themselves are nothing more than snot-nosed dictators in urgent need of an entire team of professional psychoanalysts -- in my not-always humble opinion.

But the many-breasted God, through Messiah, is releasing His children INTO the wondrous Gospel of nurturing GRACE.

Listen! God is recreating Himself, and incarnating Himself, in each of us in our spirit. As we look directly at our Egypt -- whatever that may be -- we will be aggravated by the need to overcome that condition or state of existence. Clearly! And, the Scroll of the Apocalypse leaves us in no doubt whatever that we all need to change, to become more like God, to overcome our very nature, to win against our Inner Opponent.

But do we really appreciate WHAT THIS MEANS? Especially in relation to our overcoming in this life? If you wonder where I am leading and to what I am about to suggest, let me explain it plainly to you.

On the one hand we are expressly informed of the need for overcoming (really, to "come over" to God's side of right thought -- of right education). To "overcome" in the Greek means literally, "to prevail, to conquer, to triumph." John writes,

"These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world" (Jn 16.33).

"He who overcomes, I will grant to him to sit down with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne" (Rev 3.21).

"Stop weeping; behold, the Lion that is from the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has overcome so as to open the book and its seven seals" (Rev 5.5).
 
"These will wage war against the Lamb, and the Lamb will overcome them, because He is Lord of lords and King of kings, and those who are with Him are the called and chosen and faithful" (Rev 17.14).

"But thanks be to God, who always leads us in His triumph in Christ, and manifests through us the sweet aroma of the knowledge of Him in every place" (2 Cor 2.14).

"When He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through Him" (Col 2.15).

"You are from God, little children, and have overcome them; because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world" (1 Jn 4.4).

"But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us" (Rom 8.37).

"For whatever is born of God is constantly overcoming the world" (1 Jn 5.4).

These are just a few of the texts I could have utilised to reveal something of staggering proportions. But these few will suffice, IF we grant time to meditate upon them. In relation, however, to 1 Jn 5.4 please appreciate what the apostle does NOT say. He does not write "He that overcomes," as the NIV translates (the participle is neuter), but "everything that is born of God" (See Kenneth Wuest translation). My students please grasp that it is NEVER EVER THE MAN OR WOMAN who overcomes. Again, reflect on ALL the above texts to realise this once and for all time.

THINK about the Pauline statement in Romans 8.4 for a moment. He writes, that "the just requirement of the Torah might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the desires that our old nature demanded but according to the desires of the Spirit." Or as the AV has it, "That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us."

Again, he does not write (and note this fact carefully) "that we might fulfill the law." He does not write that! In his pre-Romans 8.1 position he would have done so, because he was still attempting to keep the law to break the power of sin. Rather, he writes that IT might be fulfilled in us. Oh, what a monumental difference such a mental shift exhibits. One of our keen and dedicated students has posted the following on the Forum: "Many of us are tired because WE FIGHT a daily battle that only the spirit can win as we SUBMIT!" (emphasis mine).

And how right she is! It is entirely our spiritual birth from the living God -- God INCARNATING in us -- that ushers forth EVERLASTING LIFE into our life. And it is THIS INCARNATION which gives the capacity to overcome the world, the flesh, and the Dark Lord. In a word, to crush the defiant, rebellious, self-satiating, avaricious yetzer hara.

If we take off our previous religious glasses (our lens) and put on some NEW spectacles we will realise that God does not give US the power to overcome SIN. Shocking? Yes, but true! God comes into us, incarnates in us, works in us, and finally and violently creates FOR us VICTORY -- despite us. GOD IN US OVERCOMES SIN as we yield to Him.

Otherwise, it remains our works that save us, our qualifications that save us, our doing the right thing that saves us. And all that leads to is self-righteousness, the pride of life and absolute self-sufficiency. We have seen it manifest in Talmudic rabbis, and in self-appointed arrogantly strutting sectarians of the so-called "Christian Faith."

What outcome can such a positive mental move make in our life? Our praise and boasting will not be about ourselves anymore but about God -- fully and authentically.

"So that no one can boast in the presence of God. But you are of him in Messiah Yeshua, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, "Let the one who boasts, boasts in the Lord" (1 Corinthians 1.29-31).

THIS CONCLUDES LECTURE 33

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