Brother John
Writings by Brother John
I Am Complete in Him - Col.2:10
In christ, I am already sanctified and holy. I am already perfect and blameless. I am already complete and sinless. The growth part comes in where this has to be processed through my intellect to convince and persuade me that I can believe this truth.
It is the process of pulling me out of a lie the moment I accepted christ and bringing me into the ultimate truth, which is able to save my soul. Not that this hasn't already happened. It's just that my mind must register and believe and surrender to it. unless my mind understands the salvation of my spirit, I remain hopeless, for without faith it is impossible to not only please god but to be saved. for how can I believe if I have not heard? and how can I hear if no one preaches. so I must be preached to and taught the things of god in order to be saved.
Now my point is clarified or solidified that unless I understand in my mind what is mine in my spirit, I will surely never possess it. Because you can give me the most beautiful and wonderful sermon and instruction on how I can be blessed by god and live in victory over every earthly and demonic thing, but unless you tell me it in english, I would never be able to apply those wonderful truths.
It is not just my thought process that has to conceive this truth, but my emotions. My emotions are a reactor to my intellect and therefore determines a lot of my decisions. The intellect was taught by some other means how awful and terrible certain sins are and how an individual is disgusting, lower than dirt, not fit to live, etc., who commit such acts.
When the individual commits such acts it relates this same thing to itself, causing the emotions to react in shame, guilt, hopelessness, condemnation, etc., instead of believing the wonderful gospel (the good news), they feel not good enough and fearful of being exposed to the condemning elements that they believe surround them. so, therefore, the emotions must be taught and persuaded of the love, forgiveness, acceptance, and mercy of god in order to work with the spirit and experience the grace of god to the extent god intended for us to experience it.
Life in the Spirit
My life is in the spirit of God. My life is no longer in the flesh, but in the spirit. No matter what my experience says, my life is now of the spirit because I have been born of God.
I am no longer a slave to sin. That is, I no longer do things that I don't want to do--no longer forced against my will to obey the demands of my flesh. That is, if I am truly born again of the spirit.
How can I say I will always sin if my life is in the spirit? How can I say I will always sin if God says I am more than a conqueror? Is it my experience that determines the words of my mouth or God's Word.
If I am always sinning, then I am either still a slave to sin and need to be recreated (born again) or I have deliberately and utterly thrown God's grace back into His face, trampling the son of God underfoot, treating as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctifies me, and insulting the spirit of grace. There is no sacrifice left for such people, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. Repent and turn back to the Lord--Hebrews l0:26-31.
How much longer will Christians look at the Christian walk through the eyes of the world? It's lifeless. It's no fun. You can never do anything. You’ve got to have some fun. You can't talk that way. You can't walk that way. You don't want to be too holy--holier than thou, stuffy holy rollers.
Don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God. Anyone who is a friend of the world is an enemy of God.
The Gospel is not a set of rules thrown on someone, but is freedom and liberty from sin. It is peace, righteousness, joy, and life in the Holy Spirit. It is a new life set apart from the world completely and entirely--not part world and part spirit. For those are the lukewarm that Jesus Himself declares He'll spit them out of His mouth.
Someone might say, "Paul said himself he had to become all to win all." That is true. He also said in that same passage that he would become as one not under the law, but he says, "not being without law toward God, but under law toward Christ." It is this law toward Christ that is the law of the spirit that sets me free from sin and death.
It's not about walking according to a whole bunch of rules. Instead it's about walking not after the flesh but after the spirit. It's not about being dry, stale, plain, boring, and bored and lonely. It's about having joy, peace, contentment, and fulfillment. It's about more than having life, but having The Life.
We are in this world but not of it. Our life is in the heavenly places seated with Christ.
Perfection Is in the Lord
“But may the God of all grace, who called us to His eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a while, perfect, establish, strengthen and settle you.”--Peter 5:10
If God will do all those things, then why do we still say that we'll always sin? God said He'll do these things. Who can stop the power of God? Is man stronger than God?
"No," someone may say, "but God has given us all free will.” But didn't your free will choose Christ? So God is saying that He'll perfect, establish and settle you.
"Well" someone may still say, "Because we have free will our free will jumps out of place sometimes.” Isn’t that the very thing that needs to be perfected? Having begun in the spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh?
If your free will remained on doing right all the time, would God need to perfect you? Nevertheless God is saying that He'll perfect you.
"Well" someone else may say, "My experience has taught me that I make mistakes and I sometimes sin even when I want to do right. Well, first of all have you ever believed that God would perfect you? Remember the just shall live by faith. If you always believed you would always sin, then your actions and life is only a by-product of that which you believed about yourself. If you did believe God would perfect you because of His Word, but felt that you had enough experience to know that you'll never be perfect, then what you have just done is exalt your experience above the Word of God. When has man’s experience ever dictated God’s word and promises? Having begun in the spirit are you now being made perfect by the flesh?
When I place my faith in Christ at any given moment by keeping my eyes on Him, I walk in the spirit and am transformed. And by walking in the spirit I don't gratify the lust of the flesh. So, therefore, I in that instant am walking in perfection. But then I slip once, twice, ten, twenty times, do I now have the right to say because of my sin I'll always sin? I can never be perfect because of me.
Isn't that the same attitude the great men and women of faith had before they believed God in spite of their circumstance and therefore through their faith they "subdued kingdoms, worked righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edged of the sword, out of weakness was made strong, became valiant in battle, turned to flight the armies of the aliens, women received their dead raised to life again.”
Everything I have and am is of God. So who am I to put my two cents in when speaking about the salvation and deliverance of my soul? We must continue to believe God until what He has promised in His Word has been brought to pass in our lives.
If I say I'll always sin, then I'm saying God isn't going to do what He promised. I just don't believe that He's able to perform what He has promised in His Word.
Thessalonians says: “Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely; and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, He who calls you is faithful, who also will do it.” “But may the God of all grace, who called us to His eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a while, perfect, establish, strengthen and settle you.”--Peter 5:10
If God will do all those things, then why do we still say that we'll always sin? God said He'll do these things. Who can stop the power of God? Is man stronger than God?
"No," someone may say, "but God has given us all free will.” But didn't your free will choose Christ? So God is saying that He'll perfect, establish and settle you.
"Well" someone may still say, "Because we have free will our free will jumps out of place sometimes.” Isn’t that the very thing that needs to be perfected? Having begun in the spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh?
If your free will remained on doing right all the time, would God need to perfect you? Nevertheless God is saying that He'll perfect you.
"Well" someone else may say, "My experience has taught me that I make mistakes and I sometimes sin even when I want to do right. Well, first of all have you ever believed that God would perfect you? Remember the just shall live by faith. If you always believed you would always sin, then your actions and life is only a by-product of that which you believed about yourself. If you did believe God would perfect you because of His Word, but felt that you had enough experience to know that you'll never be perfect, then what you have just done is exalt your experience above the Word of God. When has man’s experience ever dictated God’s word and promises? Having begun in the spirit are you now being made perfect by the flesh?
When I place my faith in Christ at any given moment by keeping my eyes on Him, I walk in the spirit and am transformed. And by walking in the spirit I don't gratify the lust of the flesh. So, therefore, I in that instant am walking in perfection. But then I slip once, twice, ten, twenty times, do I now have the right to say because of my sin I'll always sin? I can never be perfect because of me.
Isn't that the same attitude the great men and women of faith had before they believed God in spite of their circumstance and therefore through their faith they "subdued kingdoms, worked righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edged of the sword, out of weakness was made strong, became valiant in battle, turned to flight the armies of the aliens, women received their dead raised to life again.”
Everything I have and am is of God. So who am I to put my two cents in when speaking about the salvation and deliverance of my soul? We must continue to believe God until what He has promised in His Word has been brought to pass in our lives.
If I say I'll always sin, then I'm saying God isn't going to do what He promised. I just don't believe that He's able to perform what He has promised in His Word.
Thessalonians says: “Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely; and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, He who calls you is faithful, who also will do it.”
Triumph & Victory
To tell a person he or she will always sin until the day they die is giving them zero hope for total victory over sin which the word of God promises. To say that a person will always sin is to say regardless of how much I try I'll always end up in some way messing up. I can never be what God has placed within me to be so I better do the best I can until I fall, then get back up, and keep trying until the day I die. In doing that, we nullify the grace of God, because instead of walking by grace through faith, we're walking in works.
Sin does not lie in our actions but in our hearts. So circumstance and situations never make me but rather show or expose me to myself. A pure minded man can't be made to commit some vulgar sin at the spur of a moment, because he doesn't have the capacity in the recesses of his mind lest he has already conceived such things in his heart. That's why the Word tells us to keep our hearts with all diligence, and if we couldn't do that the Bible wouldn't tell us to. If I'm serving the Lord, and every now and then slip and do something contrary to the spirit, it is not something that is odd or is just part of my Christian walk, but is something that has been in my heart and has never left and the only salvation or saved life I've displayed is not from the heart where it matters but in my actions which is a habit in that particular area. The outside of the cup not the inside. That's why the Word says to purify our hearts, to sanctify the Lord in our hearts, and to establish our hearts in the grace of God. It is in our new hearts which have become our new identities, for “as a man thinketh in his heart so is he.”
Through the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, we live holy and blameless lives, free from sin and the penalty of sin, all supplied to us by God because of His great love with which He loved us, Who is rich in mercy. Even when we were dead in trespasses, He made us alive together with Christ.
No, we shall not always sin, but will be lead in triumph and victory by the blood of the Lamb. We shall overcome by the word of our testimony. I am new in Christ! I am dead to sin and alive unto righteousness! It is no longer I who live but Christ that lives in me. I am more than a conqueror. I can do all things through Christ! For it is God who works in me to will and to act according to His good pleasure! I am not saved by works lest I boast but by the mighty grace of God. This is the good news, the Gospel of Jesus Christ and of the grace of God.
Victory
When we openly admit that we have sin issues in our lives, we are openly admitting that we have deliberately refused to apply the blood of Jesus in every area of our lives. If our excuse is, "I'll never be able to overcome every single sin because there's so many but I will strive with Christ, we are merely living legalistic lives and implementing Christ as one that strives with us to obey. And when we fall, He's the one to pick us up. But that is not the Gospel.
Christ did not die to help us strive or do. He died to create in us a new identity that we may become and be instead of do. That is truth. Now in the process of me being and I stumble through believing a lie based on circumstance or some other external cause, Christ is my Advocate and serves as a reminder that I am free; and instead of falling in the same area, I recognize the lie and turn from it to truth. We as Christians a lot of the time grasp to the lie and never let go, so that in consequence we live a life fighting a lie that has already been defeated. We have some how mixed the two together--Law and Spirit. We have said, “I am free and liberated in the Spirit, but I'll never be able to amount to God's perfect standard.”
How can I be free but still in bondage? Does God's word say one thing but really mean another. I must continue to strive to do lest I go to hell, but yet the Holy Spirit seals me. How can I be perfect in God's eyes and know this is what He desires for me to be in the natural through Him but at the same time say I can never be what God says I am? Or is God really incapable of performing His Word in my life and is only some weak and feeble God?