It does not matter who you think God is! Does it?

Since the rebellion of Adam and Eve, humanity has belittled and demeaned our creator by worshiping and loving god’s who are not God at all but are figments of our evil imagination. We proclaim to be worshiping God when in reality we have fashioned gods that look allot like us. These are gods we can live with because they are under our control and power. This is why there are so many conflicting views about who God is. There are multitudes of peddlers on every street corner who will sell you the god who best conforms to your ideas of him or her. Humanity perceives God to be like a wet lump of clay that we can form and mold into whatever image suits our fancy. Of course it is obvious that if God is whatever you or I perceive him or her to be then there is no God, and he is just a figment of mans ingenuity and imagination. Many people speak of god as if he is a magic potion or panacea. We often here this said, if your idea of god makes you happy and a better person then your religion is good for you, or my view of god may differ from yours but they both lead to the same end by making us happier and better people.

If the above logic is true then God is not a person that has attributes of love, hate, likes and dislikes, he is just a collection of diverse ideas that supposedly makes people feel and act better. There is another possibility to consider though, and that is that God does truly exist (He is not just an idea) and demands to be loved and served as He truly is, and that He is angry every day to be misrepresented and slandered by the people He created and whose hearts He keeps beating.

• (NLT) Romans 6:23
  

For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.

Please feel free to post comments. Your ideas are welcome both agreements and disagreements.

Sacrificial service towards God done out of lifeless duty is odious to God. People love being religious because it causes them to boast in their achievements and to feel superior in comparison to other people. Religion can also take the place of a club; let us say like the Lions club. However, those who have truly come to know the grace of God find their most precious delight and treasure to be Him.The Bible declares that those who are recipients of God’s grace have a strong and intense love for God. Those who have been born of God will have times of intense longings and desires for God; along with a desire to please Him, as well as His people. The following scriptures point this out. One thing I have asked from the Lord, that I shall seek that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord and to meditate in His temple. (Ps. 27:4). “As the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants for You, O God.” (Ps. 42:1). “God, you are my God; I shall seek you earnestly; my soul thirsts for you, my flesh yearns for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water. Thus I have seen you in the sanctuary, to see your power and your glory.” (Ps. 63:1-2). “How lovely are your dwelling places, O Lord of hosts! My soul longed and even yearned for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God. The bird also has found a house, And the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, Even Your altars, O Lord of hosts, My King and my God.” (Ps. 84:1-3). “My soul waits for the Lord More than the watchmen for the morning; Indeed, more than the watchmen for the morning.” (Ps. 130:6). “More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ.” (Phil. 3:8). You can see by these scriptures that genuine intense longing for God and a desire to become more intimately acquainted with him is the normal response of those who have been known of God.

1. . Natural life itself is a free-gift given to us by God. We did not merit, nor earn it, nor deserve to be born into the natural world, but were created by God’s sovereign choice. Spiritual life is also a gift of God's grace freely given to us. Now one of the ways we can tell the difference between a corpse and an individual that is alive is through the motion and workings of the body. Where there is human life there is movement, at the very least we detect a heartbeat. Therefore, those who are spiritually alive have received from God a new heart with new affections whose strongest inclination is to love God and ones neighbor. This new hearts motion and bent leans towards a life of good works that desires to be pleasing to the Father who has adopted them. The Christian does not work to obtain eternal-life, but because they already possess eternal-life, they work. The same principle applies to natural life, people work and move not to obtain life, but they do so because they already possess the gift of life. These distinctions are important to point out when discussing the subject of good works. Works are a sign of life, if something is alive it will move even if minutely.
2. New affections of love for God follow conversion and if they do not the individual was probably never born-again. We as Christians have been created in Christ Jesus unto good works”. “If you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone also, who practices righteousness is born of Him” (I John 2:29). “The one who practices sin is of the devil; for the devil has sinned from the beginning. The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil. No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God” (I John 3:8). “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.” (I John 4:7-8). “Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and whoever loves the Father loves the child born of Him.” (I John 5:1). As you can see from these scriptures that those who have truly been born again have a love for God that is genuine, and along with that love they have a new bent that desires to walk in a manner pleasing to Him. The hardest thing for a preacher to do is to know how in love to expose the counterfeit sheep so that they awaken to see their need for salvation, and yet in doing so bring comfort and not condemnation to the sheep whose conscious are easily bruised and suffer from numerous doubts. Lord, help us to be faithful shepherds to both groups of people.
3. A continual dispassionate and affectionless Christianity is not biblical Christianity but a counterfeit. For an individual to serve consistently God out of affectionless duty reveals that there is something drastically wrong with their profession of faith. If day after day my wife was to serve me as a husband obediently doing all that a good wife should do, but it was done just out of a sense of duty and not out of love for my person. I would find no pleasure or delight in our relationship. It is the same with God. God would ask us the same question that he asked Peter three times on the beach “Peter do you love me? The greatest commandment that Christ gave to us is to “love God with all the heart and with all the understanding and with all the strength, and to love one’s neighbor as himself is much more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices” (Mark 12:33).

One thing we must never mix together is salvation and sanctification:

Salvation is a gift of God’s grace for all who believe that cannot be earned or merited. Sanctification means to become more like Christ and to grow in maturity as a Christ follower. Sanctification has nothing to do with salvation. We are not saved because of are Christ-likeness or our spiritual maturity but only because of God’s gift that comes through receiving Christ alone (Romans 6:23). Once we have believed in Christ and are eternally saved through Christ alone we begin to walk in sanctification (Christ likeness). How well we walk and mature in Christ does not impact in any way our future place in heaven or the fact that we are God’s adopted kids

Growing up in Christ and becoming Christ-like has everything to do with our impact for Christ in this world and the fruit we bear. Also our obedience to God in this life affects our intimacy with God and how we are disciplined by Him. If we are rebellious children He does discipline us accordingly for our good. We will reap what we sow in this life. If we are disobedient we will reap the consequences of our actions good or bad. But even those sons and daughters that walk in disobedience and are continually getting in trouble remain God’s kids and will be with Him in heaven. Their rewards and the fruit they produce in this life will impact their rewards in heaven and in this world, but this has nothing to do with their place in heaven that remains forever secure.
What I have said above does not mean that when we see bad things happen in life to fellow believers that they are always a result of their disobedience to God. There are many who walk uprightly before God in this life and experienced many trials an tribulations according to God’s over all design and good pleasure. A good example of those who walked uprightly before God yet experienced extreme hardship is Job, Apostle Paul, and Jesus Christ. So we need to be extremely careful as brothers and sisters in Christ how judge one-another, as it says in, (Hebrews 12:6) For the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes each one he accepts as his child.” We as Christ followers will all experience the rod of God’s correction for our good and a proof of our adoption.

Stone to Flesh

Stone to Flesh

Therefore, someone who is born of God has a new nature and the bent of this new nature is to walk in holiness and love for God and humanity. Though we have not been perfected in love and good works as Christ-followers, we do have a deep longing in our hearts to be so. That day when we will be perfected is soon to be ours as the Apostle John says, “We know that, when He appears, we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him just as He is” (1 John 3:2). So to me this is the answer to the conundrum I had faced. We are saved by a gift of God’s grace that cannot be purchased, and because God’s Holy Spirit indwells us the new bent of our hearts is to love God and our neighbor’s, and our love is displayed through a life-style of good works. As the children of God we have been given a new nature like our Fathers, we have become “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). Therefore, God by the power of His Spirit gives to His children the gift of perseverance in righteousness, and a love for God and our neighbors; that protects His secure kids from the fatal spirit of antinomian ism (Excuse for license to sin).

This Knowing that God is with us gives us the strength not to sin and the power to overcome sin. God’s children when they have the assurance that they are secure in Christ; are by this knowledge freed from the bondage of religion, and then they begin to serve God from pure motives; not to gain His love or to gain heaven through their merit, but because they are loved by Him, they have hearts full of joy and gratitude. For they know heaven is their home, their sins have all been forgiven, and that they have been adopted by the Father. Knowing these things produces hearts that will work hard for the Father not motivated by the fear of judgment, but because they love God and want to bring Him pleasure. 1 John 5: 11- 12,

11And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. 12He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.

A genuine question asked by many about the truth of the eternal security of the believer:

If works of the law do not save me, why work? If I am not saved by obeying God, why obey? Some would say that, if I am secure and get to go to heaven no matter how I live, why should I go to church and strive to be a good moral person that loves my neighbors? I can go out now live for my own selfish lusts and still make it to heaven, I have Jesus, and He is my fire insurance. If an individual thinks this, when they hear about the security of the believer it only exposes the motive of their heart. They do not really love God but are only going to Church and being religious because they believe in heaven and hell, and they are afraid they might end up in hell. Or because they are like a religious Pharisee who is full of pride and loves the esteem of people more than God; and for them religion has become a form of social respectability and worldly gain.

Why can’t I fall from grace and lose my salvation? The answer is, “We love, because He first loved us” (1 John 4:5), “and though you have not seen Him you love Him” (1 Peter 1:8), “Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God; and whoever loves the Father loves the child born of Him”(1 John 5:1). A person who is born of God loves God because “God first loved us.” This is a Characteristic of one who is a genuine Christian; to love God We do not love God with a perfect love, but a love that is genuine and sincere. Also as one who truly loves God, we will strive to walk in obedience with Him, though imperfectly in this life (1John 1:2). Therefore, the fruit of one truly born of God will be obedience that comes from a heart of love. Though we may fall down many times as Christ followers, we will get up and continue on the path of righteousness. God’s spirit within us will pick us up and help us overcome and persevere in faith even if that faith becomes a little flame. . 1 John 5: 11- 12,

11And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. 12He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.

Therefore, Salvation is not a matter of us keeping the law or not keeping the law, but the question that must be answered is have we been born again. Are we a new creation, this is what counts with God. So it is not a matter of us cleaning the outside of our plate and bringing it to God, but God comes into us Tabernacling with us, and His spirit in us cleans up the plate (our heart). “Therefore if any man is in Christ he is a new creature” (2 Corinthians 517); “ your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you” when we are born again God’s Spirit indwells us, and were the Spirit of God dwells lives are forever transformed. For the God that is holy cannot take up residence within someone without there being a changed life, and God receives all the glory and honor for the person’s transformation.

No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God” (1John 3:9). So those who are born of God will not practice sin as a lifestyle without coming to a place of repentance, for if they are born of God His seed (Spirit) will lead them back to righteousness, because they have been indwelt by God. We know that this verse is not talking about living a completely sinless life because John says in (1 John 1:10) “If we say that we have no sin we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us.

John 3:17,though not as well known as verse sixteen is nevertheless an incredible promise it states in verse,17For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

The world was condemned already and lost without hope, but God sent his Son to earth on a rescue mission to save those who had no hope of rescue.The guilty condemned individual that believes in Jesus is ,forever rescued from the condemnation, that leads to everlasting banishment from the kingdom of God .(Rom 8:1)states, Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus for the law of the spirit of life has set us free from the law of sin and death.

For God’s adopted kids there will be no eternal punishment due them on judgment day Christ was punished in place of us on the cross, and we walked away forever forgiven(1 Peter 3:18).

There is no greater news found in all of the earth than the gospel (good news). The gospel offers forgiveness for all of our sins, reconciliation with God, and life unending in heaven, through faith alone in Christ alone through His life, death, and resurrection alone ( John 11:25).

Prat 2 on The Asurance of Salvation

Look at kids who are raised by loving responsible parents. They are raised in the steady confidence that they are secure in their parents love. These children for the most part grow up to be mature responsible adults. Those who are raised in family’s were they are made to feel that they are never secure in their parents love will be for the most part kids that grow up to be immature and stunted adults (Rom 8:15).

This example above holds true for the Christ follower as well. Therefore, it is vital to your Christian growth that you come to understand that you are eternally secure in the Lord, and that you are assured of your salvation.Read these versus (Romans 5:1-2) Notice this verse says "We have peace with God" As AW Tozer says,"We have peace with God but not with the world, the flesh, and the devil." Having the assurance that God is at peace with us and that He is for us gives us the courage and strength to fight the daily battles and trials of life. If you try to fight these daily battles without the assurance that God is with you, you are doomed to a christian life of failure and discouragement. Knowing that God is with us alone give us the ability to be over-comers against the world, the flesh, and the devil.

Peace and Joy

1Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God (italics mine) through our Lord Jesus Christ.

God is at peace with us because Jesus has forever rescued us from the just consequence due our self-exalting God belittling sins. We as Christ followers have peace with God because of Christ life, death, and resurrection alone, though there are times we may not feel like It. Theses times of doubt do not take away from it being a fact . There are times when I do not feel married or old enough to be a grandparent either but I am.

We must trust in what God has promised us more than our unstable emotions. This is what the Bible promises to those who have trusted in Christ alone to rescue them from the just penalty due to their sins.

1 John 5: 11- 12 says, And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.

John 3:16
"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life”. Notice that this verse says we have eternal life, if the life God gives us is eternal this means we can never lose it, also this verse declares that we will never perish for something to never perish means that it will never cease to exist.

Security or Insecurity

How can there be peace or rest for Christians that are convinced of the possibility that they may commit some future sin and thereby forfeit their place in heaven (lose their salvation)? If there is a genuine belief in heaven and hell, and some may end up in hell what good news do we have to offer this world, the possibility of salvation! This belief is not much different from all other world religions that make salvation dependent on good works and offer the possibility of salvation not the assurance of salvation that God through Christ alone offers us. I do not understand how those who believe this could ever rest who fear that one day they may be excluded from heaven because of committing a mortal sin. How can this gospel be good news and bring peace to the heart? I think maybe why some Christians may hold to this belief and not live in fear is because hell is not that real to them.

The word gospel in the Bible means good news. Christ followers have good news to proclaim to the world not bad news. It would not be good news to proclaim to the world a gospel that promises to forgive all their sins, reconcile them to God, promises them heaven, but then add by the way, you could in the future lose all of this.God’s promise to the Christian is security not insecurity. As a Christ follower we are not walking on a tightrope by which if we stumble to many times; God will let go as we fall into the flames below.This kind of thinking causes many to serve God out of a wrong motivation based on fear or duty. Service that brings God pleasure is motivated from hearts overflowing with love and gratitude for His undeserved kindness and everlasting mercy.