Time To Reckon - Part II
March 2023
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New believers ask the question, “Now that I’m saved, what must I do? In other words, what are my responsibilities and duties as a believer? We’ve all heard the expression, “God gave His all for us, and now we have to give Him our all.”
The idea of consecration is to get busy for God. Our newfound zeal and excitement after being saved is a result of experiencing the guilt of sins removed. Salvation is usually accompanied by many wonderful new experiences. After a season of multiple victories and powerful touches of God’s presence, we feel that nothing can ever go wrong again. Surprise! We begin to realize that the presence of sin is still there. We find ourselves in a new confrontation. To sustain our feeling of joy, we set out to overcome the evidence of ‘creeping up’ sins manifesting in our lives by means other than faith.
Oftentimes, the appeal of Christian activities such as praying, reading the Bible, fasting, and church attendance make logical sense to us as they are suggested by pastors and fellow believers in their honest effort to help us on our journey to holiness. This is where Christian activities become disciplines. But we soon make them into laws to deliver us from sinful actions. Although this is done with the best of intentions, many believers find themselves struggling while experiencing more and more failures. What happened? The joy and peace that was so natural when the believer got saved has all been lost and replaced by a sense of obligation to a set of activities with a renewed realm of guilt and condemnation. We desperately try to psyche up our willpower to overcome this new unseen power that is causing us all kinds of difficulty. The once joyful believer is now trying to fight the law of sin and death with the very means that strengthens sin—law! (I Cor. 15:56).
Our object of faith is now in our regimen of works. Because this is mostly done out of ignorance, the believer compounds the problem by instituting either more activities or incorporating different ones. The realization that he is not living up to his profession is most troubling. Eventually, God will allow the believer to become exhausted and realize that he is wretched and miserable, and his bountiful efforts are ending in failure. This is when the good news can come in. The believer is now ripe for deeper truths to take root.
The church world has been inundated with programs and fads, psychology, new age mystical teaching, and any other sort of community activity as a means to live out the Christian life. The consequences reveal heartache at every level: pastors failing and leaving the ministry, laity wounded and broken, and fewer people than ever attending church. We could blame the Covid outbreak and shutdown, but if we’re honest, most people haven’t returned to church because there really wasn’t much to go back to. Covid may have been the convenient excuse many people needed to break away from the hamster wheel of religious failures. The church may now be ripe for the complete message of the cross!
RECKON ON FACTS
People clump promises and facts into the same category. The Bible has many wonderful promises, but these must never be mistaken for facts. A promise is a declaration or assurance that one will do a particular thing or that a particular thing will happen. One may look forward to a time when a promise is fulfilled but currently may not have the benefits of that promise while waiting for its fulfillment. Abraham was given promises by God. Although he did not obtain their fulfillment in his earthly life, Hebrews 11:13 says, “These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them.”
Throughout the entire Old Testament, God gave many promises of the coming Messiah—His ministry, death, and resurrection. By faith, the Old Testament saints looked forward to the coming promise of Messiah made by God. The prophets of old reminded disgruntled believers to keep the faith and their trust in God who gave them the promises in anticipation of their fulfillment.
A fact, on the other hand, is a thing known or proven to be true. Reckoning for believers is now based on facts. The fulfillment of the promise of the coming Messiah—His ministry, death, and resurrection—is no longer a promise but a fact. Jesus made it very clear to us when he said, “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32).
There are several simple principles that believers must learn:
• The principle of knowledge—know the spiritual truths.
• The principle of faith—reckon on the truths known.
• The principle of time—yield to God’s lifetime process of growth in the truths known and reckoned on.
SIMPLE TRUTHS
When the lost sinner gets saved, he is told that Jesus died for him. Through His death on the cross, Jesus paid the price for sin on our behalf, and we are freed from the penalty and guilt of sin. Nothing is more amazing and wonderful than knowing and receiving salvation. Alongside receiving His saving grace is the fact that the power and domination of the principle of sin was broken at the cross. A principle is the method or manner by which a thing operates. Prior to our salvation, the sin nature ruled and dominated us in every facet of life and living.
In Ephesians 2:1-3 Paul wrote, “And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins; Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air [Satan], the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience: Among whom also we all had our conversation [way of life] in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.”
The former position of the lost sinner mentioned above is changed at salvation: “Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:5-6).
Our new position is in Christ, and we have a new nature: “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things become new” (II Cor. 5:17).
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