Our Blog

2017 40 Days of Prayer, Day 3

The Abiding Presence of God:
A Life of Complete Dependence

Day 3

“For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh” Romans 8:3

The Weakness of the Law

The Law could not free us from sin.  Over thousands of years of human history and the millions of laws scripted by cultures and leaders, no moral law has ever been crafted that can reform the heart.  Even God’s word, as lofty and beautiful as scripture is, cannot reform our hearts.  Galatians 3:21 says, “…for if a law had been given which was able to impart life, then righteousness would indeed have been based on law.”  No moral law has ever been given that has the power to make us right before God.  Is the problem with God’s Law?  Did He give an inferior standard for our behavior?  Were His principles simply failed policies of an unaware deity?  No!  A thousand times no!  Paul repeatedly defends the law of God as good, perfect, and righteous.  In Romans 7:12 Paul says, “So then, the Law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.”  God-given principles are right and good.  In Romans 8:3, Paul says that the problem is not with the Law itself but with us, “weak as it was through the flesh” or “weak as it was through” our sinful nature.  Our sinful nature is so sinful that the law cannot overcome our bent toward rebellion against God.  God has a standard of righteousness.  God holds us accountable for every violation of His righteous standard.  God put the knowledge of His righteous standard in words (the Bible, the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount, etc.)  God also put His Law in us, written in our hearts, through the instrument of our consciences. (Romans 2:14-15)  However, our sinful nature (our natural bent toward sin or our inclination toward independence from God’s law) overwhelms this revelation.  Our mind knows that we should obey.  Our heart tells us to submit to God.  However, we don’t want to obey God.  As John Owen famously wrote, “man would prefer inscribe every single word of the Bible with their bare finger into the hardest rock than to allow one word of God to penetrate to his heart.”  Even if we wanted to obey Him, we cannot obey Him because our sin nature is greater than our desire for good.  The Law cannot bring righteousness.  It is weak because we are weak.  There is no power in the mixture of the Law of God and sinful people. 

The Power of God

However, there is power; the power of God in His saving work in Christ Jesus.  The Law is powerless because of our sinful bent.  However, God is greater than our sin and greater than our natural inclination toward rebellion.  What the Law could not accomplish, God accomplished.  We are incapable of saving ourselves.  This truth bears on our eternal security.  There is no security in our own ability to make ourselves right before God, because we are powerless through our own ability to fulfill God’s holy standards.  Left to our own devices we would be lost forever.  However, God intervenes.  He gave the Law that reflected His righteous standards for us.  Then, He sent His Son to rescue us from our inability to keep the Law.  Salvation is the work of God.  With reference to our salvation, the Law simply identifies our desperate need of God.  God, in Christ, perfectly fulfilled every one of His righteous requirements.  The power to perfectly live out the commands of God came through the divine nature of Christ.  Christ, God in human form, took the Law of God and fulfilled every single aspect of it.  He did what we could never do.  Our faith is in the death of Christ for our sin, but our faith is also in the perfect life of Christ to provide for our need of righteousness.  God not only transfers our sin to Christ on the cross the moment we believe, but God also transfers His perfect life, a life of living out God’s Law flawlessly, to us.  When God looks on believers, in Christ, He sees a Law perfectly satisfied in the perfections of His Son.

Condemning Sin

Just as sin brings condemnation upon us that is both legal and relational, Christ brings condemnation on sin.  Christ defeated sin by condemning the power of sin.  Christ defeated sin by legally destroying the claims of sin on us under the Law of God.  Christ came in the likeness of our sinful nature.  It is sin that must be condemned, if we are to be released from its power.  As such, Christ must take on the same physical nature as ours in order to defeat sin’s power over us.  Christ never sinned, but He did live in a body just like ours while bearing all the same struggles and temptations.  This was necessary for His work of saving us from sin.  He defeated sin completely.  All forms of sin were destroyed by Christ in His perfect life and in His death on the cross.  In His death on the cross, God condemned sin in the same way the sin had condemned us.  God killed sin.  God destroyed its power.  All the ways that sin ruled us, God destroyed it in the work of His Son.  Christ bore all our temptations, yet without any sin.  In doing so, He completely fulfilled the Law.  When He died, He died not for His own sins.  Instead, Jesus died for our sins.  He willingly laid down His life in exchange for ours.  He died for you and me.  In His death, we are freed from the power of sin.  In this act, Christ broke the legal claim that sin had on you and me.  In this one amazing act, Christ broke the relational breach that sin had created between us and God.  Now there is no condemnation for us.  However, there is eternal condemnation for sin itself.  The power of sin is broken.  The sting of death has been defeated forever.

Prayer Focus

How great You are, Oh God!  I humble myself before You and Your great love.  Thank You for sending Your Son to be my sin bearer.  Thank You for condemning the legal and relational power of sin through the sacrifice of Your Son.  Thank You, Jesus, for dying in my place and for condemning sin forever.  You are my only representative before the Father.  You are righteous and good.  You fulfilled the Law when I could not keep the Law for even a day.  Help me to rely on You today.  Walk with me so that Your eternal victory over sin might be seen in my daily struggle with sin.  I want my life to reflect the victory that You have given to me eternally.  Amen.

From DL Moody’s Secret Power

In addition to the teaching of God’s Word, the Holy Spirit in His gracious work in the soul declares His own presence. Through His agency we are “born again,” and through His indwelling we possess superhuman power. Science, falsely so called, when arrayed against the existence and presence of the Spirit of God with His people, only exposes its own folly to the contempt of those who have become “new creatures in Christ Jesus.” The Holy Spirit who inspired prophets, and qualified apostles, continues to animate, guide and comfort all true believers. To the actual Christian, the personality of the Holy Spirit is more real than any theory science has to offer, for so-called science is but calculation based on human observation, and is constantly changing its inferences. But the existence of the Holy Spirit is to the child of God a matter of Scripture revelation and of actual experience.

2017 40 Days of Prayer, Day 2

The Abiding Presence of God:
A Life of Complete Dependence

Day 2

“For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.” Romans 8:2

The Law

The word “law” has various uses throughout the scriptures.  Sometimes “law” refers to the first five books of the Bible, also known as “the Books of Moses” or “the Pentateuch” or sometimes “the Torah.”  As an example of this, in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus gave us the Golden Rule, “In everything, therefore, treat people the same way you want them to treat you, for this is the Law and the Prophets.”  Jesus used the term “the Law” as a reference to the Books of Moses with the complementary term “the Prophets” as a reference to the rest of the Old Testament;  “For this is the Law and the Prophets” meaning “this is what the entire Old Testament is all about.”  Sometimes the word “law” refers to the specific commands of God as found in Ten Commandments.  In Romans Chapter 7, Paul quoted the tenth commandment of the Ten Commandments.  Romans 7:7 “…for I would not have known about coveting if the Law had not said, ‘You shall not covet.’”   In this verse, Paul used the term “the Law” to point to a specific command within a set of commands that God gave to Israel.  The original giving of these commandments can be found in Exodus 20, beginning with the first of the Ten Commandments, “You shall have no other gods…” 

The Law of the Spirit of Life

Another use of “law” arises out of our verse of the day, where “the law of the Spirit” does not refer to a set of books in the Bible or to a specific list of commands.  Instead, “the law of the Spirit” refers to the broad principle of holy living that comes through the work of the Spirit of God.  In Romans 7, Paul contrasted living under the Old Testament Law with the new life now found through the Spirit.  Romans 7:6 says, “But now we have been released from the Law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter.”  From Paul’s perspective, the believer in Christ Jesus has been “released from the Law.”  The moment a person believes in Jesus Christ, vast and glorious things happen.  Paul described one of those glorious truths in the first verse of our 40 Days of Prayer, “no condemnation.”  When we trust Christ and believe in His death in our place, He bears our condemnation.  The specific condemnation Paul had in mind was the just condemnation God has for us because we have broken His Law.  However, the moment we believe in Christ Jesus, we die with Him.  His death becomes the fulfillment of our just condemnation, thus we are immediately and forever freed from the condemnation of God due to our violation of God’s Law.   

In Romans 8:2, Paul revealed another glorious truth about our life in Christ.  We have been set free from the futile way of life found in attempting to follow a set of commandments.  Something new has come, a new way of living by serving God “in newness of the Spirit.”  In Romans 8:2, Paul restated the principle he articulated in Romans 7:6.  “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.” He restated the principle by setting in contrast, “the law of the Spirit of life” with “the law of sin and of death.”  The Old Testament Law was good and righteous.  The problem was never with the Ten Commandments.  The problem is with us.  We, in our natural human effort, can never keep the commandments of God with perfection.  His holy expectations for us cannot be achieved through our own effort.  The Law came to identify our inadequacies.  The Law exposed our inability before a holy God.  Now, in Christ, we have been “released from the Law.” (Romans 7:6)  Now, in Christ, we have been “set free from the law.”  (Romans 8:2)

The Law of Sin and of Death

In this case, just as in Romans 7:6, “the law of sin and of death” refers to the Old Testament Law and the commandments of God as found in the Ten Commandments.  By the grace of God, the life giving principle found in Christ Jesus overwhelms the fundamental principle of sin and death that comes from the Law.  The phrase “the law of sin and of death” encapsulates the principle that sin, the breaking of God’s Law, brings death into the world.  Everyone is a sinner and everyone falls under the natural consequence of sin.  “The wages of sin is death,” Romans 6:23.  Death screams to us that this world is not as it should be.  Death screams to us that we are not as we should be in reference to a holy God and His holy standards.  Death is God’s calling card for the truth of His Word.  From the inception of the world, the reign of sin and death has been on display.  God articulated the principle of sin and death to Adam and Eve.  God said to them, “…from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.”  (Genesis 2:16-17)  Adam and Eve’s rebellion and subsequent death exemplifies this universal principle.  Their deaths function as a microcosm of all sin and subsequent death.  We know intuitively that there is no escaping this fundamental reality.  We know there is no escape, at least not an escape we can produce in our own power.

Set Free

However, God has set us free from “the Law of sin and death.”  He has done this through a greater power than the consequences of breaking His Law.  The greater power is His work in our lives through faith in His Son.  God has set us free.  Freedom reigns over us now that we are in Christ.  We are free from the Law and the underlying principle of sin and death that followed us.  Though we have all broken God’s Law, the dominion of death over us has been broken.  God delivered us from the binding principle that goes all the way back to Adam and Eve.  When sin and death seemed insurmountable, God sent His Son into the world to establish a new principle.  The new law states that there is life through faith in Christ Jesus. 

If God has set us free from the law of sin and death eternally, He intends this freedom to have its desired effect in the here and now.  God freed us from “the law of sin and death” through the life giving work of the Holy Spirit when we put our faith in His Son.  However, God did not set us free simply to bring us to eternal life.  He set us free for the glory of His Son both now and forever.  We were once dominated by sin and we were destined to face the judgment of God.  God makes His name glorious by defeating the power of “the law of sin and death.”  God brings Himself praise in the death defeating, life giving, and sin destroying work of Jesus.  We maximize the glory of the name of God when we embrace this freedom completely.  In other words, God set us free from the fundamental truth that our sin naturally leads to death.  We display God’s power over sin and death when we allow the Spirit of God to free us daily from sin’s dominion over us now.  We have been set free.  Now, we display our everlasting freedom in the daily dependency on the Spirit of God.  A life lived daily in the power of the Spirit of God puts on display the reality of the eternal life given by the power of the Spirit of God.  May we live today through the power of His Spirit.

Prayer Focus

God, I worship You for Your perfect plan to bring glory to Your name.  You, and You only, deserve our praise.  Oh Father, only You could bring about my liberation from sin.  Only You could overwhelm the power of sin and death.  I praise You for setting me free.  In my freedom, I confess to You that I have far too often allowed sin to dominate aspects of my life.  Forgive me for taking Your work of salvation with so little weight.  In Your grace Lord, be my liberation today.  Free me from the daily bondage to sin the way You have already freed me from the eternal consequences of sin.  Free me from my selfish desires.  Empower me through my continual reliance on Your Spirit today to live for the glory of Your great name.

From DL Moody’s Secret Power

The first work of the Spirit is to give life; spiritual life. He gives it and He sustains it. If there is no life, there can be no power; Solomon says: “A living dog is better than a dead lion.” When the Spirit imparts this life, He does not leave us to droop and die, but constantly fans the flame. He is ever with us. Surely we ought not to be ignorant of His power and His work.

2017 40 Days of Prayer, Day 1

The Abiding Presence of God:
A Life of Complete Dependence

Day 1

“Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”  Romans 8:1

The Weightiest “Therefore” in the Bible

For the next forty days we will pray together while contemplating the great work of God of our salvation.  We will spend each day meditating on a single verse from Romans 8, working verse by verse throughout the forty days.  I realize that by selecting Romans 8, this places us right in the middle of the greatest theological treatise ever written.  The opening word of the chapter, “therefore” contains unimaginable presuppositions by Paul.  He is assuming the reader of Romans chapter 8 has read and comprehended the first seven chapters.  In this regard, throughout Romans 8 he links the work of God in our daily spiritual life to the incredible work of eternal salvation already accomplished in us.  Paul spent those first seven chapters articulating these glorious truths.  This is the weightiest “therefore” in the Bible.  The implications of seven chapters of rich doctrine come to critical consummation in Romans 8.  In the first three chapters, Paul presented humanity in a sea of sinful, caustic rebellion against God.  The language of our depravity graphically details our natural bent against the things of God.  Our depravity collides with His righteousness in God’s justifiable anger against such sedition.  God holds all people accountable for their sin.  Romans 3:21 transitions the reader from the terrifying wrath of God to now contemplating a salvation so rich and profound as to stagger the imagination.  We have been saved by God from God’s wrath.  Romans 3:21 through the end of Romans chapter 5 covers us in rich, theological language while sharing the wonderful message that God has transformed us from lawbreaking rebels into His adopted children.  God performs this transformational act through the work of His own Son, Jesus Christ.  This great work was predicated on divine love.  “God demonstrates His own love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us,” Romans 5:8.  How then shall we now live?  How shall we now live knowing this great salvation?  How then shall we live, now that God has saved us in His Son?  In Romans 6 and 7, Paul called on all believers to live according to their newfound status.  God has not only saved us from eternal hell, but He has provided eternal access to heaven.  Beyond those future graces, God liberates us here and now.  We are to live as our newfound spiritual status dictates.  God sees us in Christ.  He sees us as holy, justified, righteous, and free.  We cannot return to a life dominated by sin.  God unshackles us from that old way of life.  He then binds us to Himself through our identity in His Son, Jesus Christ.  We are called to a life of righteousness and purity.  However, we cannot live this life of righteousness in our own strength.  Our complete dependency continues beyond our initial salvation.  We are saved by faith, a faith that is completely dependent upon God.  But our dependence does not cease at the moment of salvation.  Our complete dependence on God for our daily living has just begun. 

From this theological foundation, Paul launched into thirty-nine of some of the most glorious statements ever written.  God has eternally set us free from the power of sin and death.  He has also provided the means for us to live free from the power of sin and death.  How do we live free?  There are thirty-nine verses in Romans chapter 8.  We will spend these forty days praying with these biblical truths in mind, one verse at a time.  And then, with a look back, on the last day we will then contemplate the entire chapter as a whole on the final day of the forty days of prayer.

Therefore, “there is now” A radical change has occurred.  In this first verse of chapter 8, Paul captures the nature of the change God has brought about in our lives.  Once we were under God’s condemnation.  Now we are under God’s grace.  At one time we were destined for an eternity separated from God.  Now we have been brought into an eternal relationship with God.  This dramatic shift occurs for all who call upon Jesus Christ as their Savior.  The “before and after” images of those who are in Christ dwarf any diet company’s promotional ads or any house remodel's transformation.  If you are a believer in Jesus Christ, your life has been radically and eternally changed.  Ironically, only God can see all the before and after effects of this change.  Only God can see us in Christ.  Before coming to Christ, God saw all of our sin, all of our blemishes, and all of our rebellious nature.  Before coming to Christ, God held us in contempt of His sovereign reign and authority.  Now God sees us in Christ.  Now when He sees us, He sees the righteousness of His Son.  That is a radical change indeed!

Condemnation We use this term in two distinct ways.  First, condemnation functions as a legal term.  A convicted criminal is legally condemned to serve a particular sentence for his crime.  For instance, we might say, “the judge condemned the bank robbers to twenty years in prison.”  Second, condemnation functions as a relational term.  A husband may say to his wife, “Please don’t condemn me for forgetting our anniversary.”  When a relationship is damaged because of sin, condemnation describes the broken fellowship because one of the two parties views the other as a violator of their trust.  When we hurt another by our betrayal, we can often sense his condemnation.  In this case, condemnation describes a relationship that is broken because of a violation of trust.  We break the trust of another, and at the same time we break the other person’s heart. 

Condemnation describes a legal action by a judge acting upon the law and condemnation describes a relationship breach by an individual whose trust has been broken through sin.  Both of these ideas describe what happens in our relationship with God prior to salvation.  Before coming to Christ we were justly condemned under the Law of God.  We have all violated God’s Law and must face the just punishment due for our crimes against God and His Law.  However, there is a relationship breach as well.  It is not that God sits as impersonal judge over humanity.  This is no mere mechanical transaction on the part of God.  This is intensely personal.  He is heartbroken over our betrayal.  Because of the depth of God’s condemnation, this state of condemnation is insurmountable by humans.  We are not strong enough, rich enough, or resourceful enough to remove this legal and relational condemnation.  Only God can fulfill the requirements of His Law’s just penalty, and only God is big enough to heal His broken heart.  Both aspects of condemnation, the legal and the relational, are satisfied in the work of Jesus Christ.  Christ pays the legal penalty for our sin.  He bears our just punishment.  Christ also satisfies the relationship breach with the Father by bearing the just wrath of our brokenhearted God.  God the Father and God the Son determined long ago to do this great work of salvation.  Before there were stars, before the earth rotated on its axis, before the moon orbited around the earth, God the Father and God the Son had our salvation on their mind.  God made you even though He knew you would violate His trust.  God created you even though He knew your actions would break His Law.  God created us even though He knew our relationship and just standing before Him would cost His Son a violent and unjust death.  God brought the world into being, knowing that He would confront and solve our just condemnation.

In Christ Jesus

It is all about Jesus.  This is the Father’s desired plan for the entire universe.  God the Father wants to make much of His Son.  Jesus Christ is the reason we were created and the reason we were saved.  Since He saved us from our sins through His Son, we will now and eternally worship the Father through His Son.  God is most glorified when His Son is exalted in our lives.  This is God’s plan for you.  He removed our condemnation in His Son so that the Son would be the eternal focus of our praise.  God is most glorified in our complete dependence in the work of His Son.  Condemnation is now gone because we are now in Christ.  In Christ, we stand before God as though we ourselves were righteous because He is righteous.  In Christ, we stand before God as perfected in our relationship with God because Christ has a perfect relationship with His Father. 

Prayer Focus

God, I worship You for Your glorious power.  Through Your great might, You have saved me from my just condemnation.  I confess that without You I am justly condemned under the Law.  I thank You that in Your Son, I stand before You as though I am righteous.  I thank You that in Jesus Christ I stand before You as beloved.  Please Father come and work in my life today.  I want to be used by You to bring glory to Your name.  I want my relationship with You to be reflected in my relationships with others.  Please do a work in me for Your name’s sake.  In Christ Jesus, my Righteousness, I pray.  Amen.

From DL Moody's Secret Power

POWER – ITS SOURCE

“Without the soul, divinely quickened and inspired, the observances of the grandest ritualism are as worthless as the motions of a galvanized corpse.” - Anon.

I quote this sentence, as it leads me at once to the subject under consideration. What is this quickening and inspiration? What is this power needed? From what place is its source? I reply: The Holy Spirit of God. I am a full believer in “The Apostles’ Creed,” and therefore “I believe in the Holy Spirit.”

 A writer has pointedly asked: “What are our souls without His grace? - as dead as the branch in which the sap does not circulate. What is the Church without Him? - as parched and barren as the fields without the dew and rain of heaven.”

There has been much inquiry of late on the subject of the Holy Spirit. In this and other lands thousands of persons have been giving attention to the study of this grand theme. I hope it will lead us all to pray for the greater manifestation of His power upon the whole Church of God. How much we have dishonored Him in the past! How ignorant of His grace, and love and presence we have been? True, we have heard of Him and read of Him, but we have had little intelligent knowledge of His attributes, His offices and His relations to us. I fear He has not been to many professed Christians an actual existence, nor is He known to them as a personality of the Godhead.