The Daily Word of Righteousness

Death and Resurrection, continued

If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine. (Luke 4:7)

All humans are seeking someone or something to worship, to adore, an object of joy. It is our responsibility to insure that we offer ourselves to the Lord God of Heaven. We are legally free to do so because we have risen from the dead with the Lord Jesus.

When we yield to Satan and his demons, who work through our bodily and soulish appetites, we gain a temporary, frantic pleasure. But we sin when we yield to the demands of the wicked. The members of our body become instruments of wickedness. We need to understand clearly that all sin is the worship of Satan. "He who commits sin is of the devil" (I John 3:8).

We are commanded to offer ourselves to God, to offer the members of our physical body to God until we are practicing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with God.

The unsaved individual does not have the authority or the power to choose to yield the members of his body to the Lord. The unsaved is in the chains of Satan and can be compelled to sin. But the believer who has entered the death and resurrection of Christ has both the authority and the power to resist the passions of sin and to present the members of his body as an offering to the Lord, to become the slave of righteousness.

The Evangelical of today has a false model of salvation. He perceives salvation as a device to deliver him from Hell and to insure his reception in Paradise when he dies.

The truth is, salvation is the Divine deliverance from slavery to sin and the bringing of the worshiper into slavery to righteousness. The Christian salvation is not deliverance from Hell but from the worship of Satan. Salvation is not admission to Heaven but the power to be changed into Christ's moral image and to enter union with the Father through Him.

For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace. (Romans 6:14)

How does the Law of Moses enable sin to be our master?

The knowledge of sin comes by the Law, just as in the case of Adam and Eve. They were living in nakedness, a shameful state. But because they were unaware of their nakedness they had fellowship with the Lord with an untroubled conscience.

When they partook of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which is the law of God, they became conscious of sin. The Law of Moses makes us conscious of sin but it does not provide deliverance from sin.

We have a strong desire to please God but there is much sin in our personality. The Law forbids us to act in a sinful manner, continually making us conscious that our appetites and behaviors are displeasing to God. Because of the condemnation the Law brings, sin keeps us from having fellowship with God. We are aware that much of our personality is opposed to God just as Adam and Eve realized they were naked. It appears there is little we can do about it. The moment we have peace, some aspect of the Law reminds us that we are sinning against God by our very nature.

To be continued.