Favorite Book Friday January 22,2021
Y’all I seriously lose track of the days. It’s #favoritebookfriday and I got distracted by interviews of my favorite actor. Let’s get to work today. We’re reading “Classic Christianity” by Bob George.
So we’re picking it up in chapter 3. Bob talks about his understanding of what communication is. Commutation isn’t what you say but rather what a person hears. The same is true about our relationship with God. Are you actually hearing what he’s saying? We talk a lot about how to get saved and why do we do it. What’s the meaning of Christ’s resurrection and how does that affect our everyday lives?
Bob noticed something when he picked up the Bible. The word “life” and sees life in everything. He points out places in the book of John that talk about this word like (John 10:10, 5:24, and 3:16). Well what kind of people need life? Dead people! So God made us in his image. We’re the only creation with a soul and our soul is meant for relationship with God. God’s relationship with us is love and choice based. Adam and Eve had “understanding of their God ordained purpose in life: walking in a dependent love relationship with their Creator, and through that relationship, bearing a full, visible representation of the invisible God.”
When they are offered the fruit, they were offered the opportunity to step out of their relationship with God. They didn’t die that day but their spirits did. They were spiritually dead and so is everyone born from them. Jesus’s birth was so important because he was the only person born spiritually alive so he could lay down his life.
Bob realized something, he was only living half the gospel. Jesus does to give us the opportunity to go to heaven when we die. But through his resurrection, we can receive the Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit doesn’t just give us power but the very life of God. My favorite verse Galatians 2:20 says that Christ lives in us.
Somewhere we got confused and thought the gospel was about getting saved then struggling with trying to shape ourselves up in the meantime. We’re saved by putting our trust fully in Jesus. We’ve forgotten Jesus lives in us and we don’t have to flop in failure of trying to the work ourselves. We’re alive through Jesus and that’s good news! He’s still in that life giving business today! This book helps
understand what that is all about
You can read chapter 4 on the website! Check it out!
So chapter 4 is about forgiven to be fulfilled. Like it’s easy to believe God forgives you buy hard that he still does in this very moment. Until we read in Jesus’s finished work on the cross, we can’t experience resurrection. 2 Peter 1:3-9 says he’s given us everything we need for life and godliness. We get to explore everything we have though Jesus. We get these qualities of faith, goodness, knowledge, self control, perseverance, godliness, kindness and love. They keep you from being unproductive and ineffective.
What stunts your growth a Christian is believing the sin issue isn’t dealt with. God’s forgiveness is in the present. You were dead and now you’re alive. Colossians 2:13-14 tells us this.
Bob gives us an example. We sterilize jars because we plan on putting something in them. We do this with the gospel. We have to stop separating the sterilization from the filling. Once the jar is filled up, it’s sealed. The seal in our example is Holy Spirit. Now we see Jesus dealt with the sin issue once for all. Romans 6:10, Hebrews 9:26 and 1 Peter 3:18 tell us this.
Jesus paid for sin in full so we no longer need the animal sacrifices of the Old Testament. Jesus says in John 19:30 “it is finished” Tellesti! It may seem bold but it’s true. Through Jesus we are made right with a holy God. There’s nothing else that needs to be done. You can’t lose your salvation. We get to experience the abundant life Jesus offers. Not only that we get to have lasting relationship with him. It’s why he gave his life for us. Accept the finality of the cross so you can experience the reality of the resurrection-real life restored to man.
Chapter Highlights (Chapter 3-4)
Where am I failing to hear what God is saying?
The most obvious implication of the word resurrection? The restoration of life.
From God’s point of view, the problem of man is not just he is a sinner in need of forgiveness; his greater problems is that he is dead and in need of life.
We have simply not come to the fact that it isn’t hard to live the Christian life, it’s impossible! Only Christ Can live it. And that’s why our only hope is to learn that Jesus Christ did not come to just to get men out of hell and into heaven; he came to get himself out of heaven and into men.
A dead person doesn’t need help. A dead man needs life!... salvation isn’t just something that Christ did for us but it is Jesus Christ himself living in us. It’s the process of passing from death to life.
A Christian like this will never mature. He will never as long as he is held in the bondage of guilt over a past sin, experience all Christ has intended for us to experience through his indwelling life.
Until you realize the finality of the cross, you’ll never experience the reality of the resurrection
The only solution is an understanding and a total understanding of a total trust in the fact Jesus Christ did it all at the cross; that the sin issue between man and God is truly over.
How forgiven are you in God’s sight? Totally. He doesn’t hold any accusations against you.
When we understand the ultimate goal of salvation was the restoration of life we can truly appreciate the purpose and meaning of Jesus Christ’s death for us on the cross
Th entire gospel is not the cross and the forgiveness of sin alone but the cross plus God’s gift of te resurrected life of Christ.
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