Paul's Key To The Christian Life - ROMANS SIX TO EIGHT

I have been a persistent searcher after God’s truth for years, and Romans, chapter six, seven and eight, have been well worn in my Bible. I think now, at seventy-five years old, I have a working focus on what Paul is saying. So I am writing this for those who, like me, are after the key to the Christian life.

I will assume that we are already born again as children of God by God’s Spirit (Rom. 5:5). As confessed sinners, in our guilty and lost condition, we found “peace with God” through Christ as Savior and Lord.

Now we come to the practical question of Romans 6:1, as up to date today as when it was first posed. “How do we go on from here? What can keep us from sinning more?” So in these chapters he begins to explain himself, and we will follow along.

Paul starts by taking for granted his readers have a deeper quality of spiritual understanding than most of us today had at our new birth. “Don’t you know,” he asks, “that when our Lord Jesus Christ hung on that cross, He represented us all, and therefore His dying there means you and I died there?” Water baptism – our being immersed beneath the waters and lifted out again – is a symbol of the fact that when He died on the cross and was buried in the tomb, by faith we died, were buried, and then were raised with Him (Rom. 6:3,4). And as the Holy Spirit entered the resurrected Jesus’ body, which represented all ours, the same Spirit has entered us, delivering us from Satan, whose sin nature had entered our bodies and taken us over because of the Fall (Rom. 6:5,6).

Therefore we have died in Christ’s death to the indwelling and operation of Satan’s nature in us: we are “dead to sin” (Rom. 6:7-11). Sin, however, isn’t dead to us as an operating power in our world, and thus we experience its pressures on us. But in our spirits we have died to its false claims to be still dwelling in us and thus expressing its self-for-self nature by us. Equally now, Christ has come to dwell in us and live His quality of other-love by us. Thus, we are containers and expressers of God’s holy nature, just as formerly we were containers and expressers of Satan’s sin nature (John 8:44).

“So,” Paul says, “based on the historical fact that Christ settled the sin question once for all” (Rom. 6:9,10), “we reckon ourselves dead to sin and alive to God” (Rom. 6:11). This is strong meat packed into a few sentences. But does it really work out in our lives?

A much deeper problem needs to be solved in order to make workable the life of being dead to sin by the Life of God through Christ. We must be dead to law, as well as to sin! But why? Isn’t the law a safeguard to keep us from running into loose living? “No,” Paul maintains. You have a much deeper reality to learn – THAT YOU HAVE NO INDEPENDENT HUMAN ABILITY TO KEEP OR NOT KEEP THE LAW.

Paul slips in a statement here which sounds startling, but which turns the key in the lock for us when we know it. “Sin shall not have dominion over you,” he states, because you aren’t under law, but under grace” (Rom. 6:14). But what does that mean?

Many would ask, “Isn’t the law the standard for right living, announced by Moses in those ten commandments and demanded of us by God, with the penalty of judgment and condemnation if we disobey it? Isn’t the law the means by which God exercises His control over us and by which we endeavor to live? Obviously, we would go wildly into lives of self-gratifying license if the conditions of the law were removed.”

But this is our ongoing error. We have been under the Satanic delusion of being independent selves who can and must respond to law. And while we think this, we are actually still listening to Satan, who influences us either to try and fulfill or to resist God’s laws, thereby obeying his own law of sin and death. So the more we work to obey God’s law, the more Satan is aroused to make us break it. And we will always have this problem while we blindly think we are independent selves who can keep the law.

At our new birth in Christ, we were still too blind to recognize the depth of Satan’s deceit in dealing with us. We thought that as saved and new creations in Christ, we could still take a share in managing ourselves.

Paul is showing that it is meaningless to say that we are now dead to sin and alive to God while that root deception isn’t yet out of us and we think we are more than a people managed only by the deity nature in us as vessels, branches, temples, slaves, or wives. It must become real to you that Jesus’ dying for and as us, and His rising by God’s Spirit for and as us means a change of deity ownership. But we never did own ourselves. Satan owner is out for keeps and Christ owner is in for keeps. Now we know our true nature is Christ-managed, never self-managed, and no longer Satan-managed.

The outer law of God is now meaningless. We are dead to it because our “I” is truly the nature of Christ’s Life; and He operates His laws and nature spontaneously in us, by us, and as us. That is our answer to every false claim in this Satan-infected world that Satan has a hold on us. Christ in us IS OUR LAW; and He fulfills it by us, just as Satan used to fulfill his by us.

Paul then begins to lay a foundation for this assurance in Romans 6:16 to 7:6. Paul here presents one strong evidence after another that there is no intermediate, “independent me” unless we foolishly think it.

“First,” he says, “we were always slaves; and a slave just obeys his owner.” We had allowed ourselves over to owner Sin-Satan, to express his sin-nature. “Put it this way,” Paul explains. “We were free in our sinning, with no response to God’s law. Now we are free in our right living, with no response to Satan’s laws.” And there is no “you”, with an in-between or independent life of your own (Rom. 6:16-20).

Next Paul introduces a second illustration: a fruit-bearing tree. He describes how we are now producing right, good fruit in our lives, whereas we were ashamed of the former fruit (Rom. 6:21,22). He wants us to understand that we are only branches who have changed trees! We never produced fruit without a tree!

In Romans 7:1-6 Paul uses one further powerful and convincing illustration – the law of marriage, which he speaks of here as the “law of the husband” (Rom. 7:2). The wife is legally bound to her husband so long as he lives, and he is her “lord” (1 Peter 3:6), she receives his seed, conceives by it, and produces their family.

We humans were “married” at the Fall to our Sin-nature husband and became his sin family, he working in us the “motions of sin” which produced “fruit unto death” (Rom 7:5). We had to do this according to the law and demands of marriage, as any change of husbands would have been an “adultery”. It looked hopeless; our husband was not going to die.

But there was One, representing the whole human family, who died as us. So the marriage was dissolved because we died “wherein we were held” (Rom. 7:6). The dissolution of the first marriage and release from that husband meant that in Christ’s resurrection we were immediately married to another, our risen Savior, and are now under His law. We have never been widows conceiving without a husband!

Romans 7:6 completes Paul’s illustrations of slave, branch and wife showing how a new nature in Christ has replaced the old sin nature.

NOW COMES A NEW BURNING QUESTION: If the new relationship has replaced the old, and given us our fully-satisfying life, happy service, rich fruit, living union and communion, and the conscious ability to be who we long to be and help others to be the same, WHY DOESN’T IT HAPPEN? What is wrong? Where is this completion in Christ, loving as He loved, walking as He walked with the faith that overcomes, being more than conquerors, easily living out the Sermon on the Mount as Jesus said we would, as lights in the world? Hasn’t Paul made it plain to us that we have been crucified, raised, and ascended with Jesus and inwardly confirmed by the Spirit? Then what is the snag? What is holding us back?

This burning question has caused many sincere, born again, Bible-rooted Christians to use a nice little cliché: our position in Christ is one thing, but our condition in its outworking is quite another. And they usually add, “Of course, our condition doesn’t level up to our position.” But this is precisely what Paul says DOES LEVEL UP! Our position in Christ and our condition in living this Christ-Life are one and the same.

Next Paul reaches the least understood and most misused section of his Roman letter, or of all his writings. This section extends from Romans 7:7 through 7:25.

Paul turns from general statements about salvation and new birth to the strictly personal. How do I find that the Christian life works? How do you? To explain this and to identify with us all, Paul does a big thing. He deliberately backtracks from his actual present experience as “dead to the law,” and aligns himself with every born again believer, using the present tense of “I,I,I.” He starts with his new-born experience, then shares with us his early years of spiritual adolescence, and finally his searchings and wrestlings right through to the final answer for himself, and thus for all of us.

Paul’s use of the present tense about himself, in sharing what he had long left behind, has been misunderstood through all these succeeding years by millions of sincere believers, who have themselves not entered into Paul’s final knowledge. Thinking that the furthest a believer can know in life is humiliation, struggles, and constant failures under sin’s apparent domination, they have falsely deduced a “two-nature” condition. They see it as if we humans are permanently caught up in the opposing strife of sin and holiness natures. If, as they say, these natures were both a part of our very selves, then we would have to oscillate despairingly between them and take them for granted as our normal experience.

The truth is that our God-created human self is merely a neutral vessel, or container. In Romans 7:19 Paul described it as being in itself neither the good nor the bad, which he was discovering back then was the external influence of sin and not his true nature. Paul is saying, “I see myself with you. I am back with you confronting that old outer law, to which in actual fact I am dead.”

In order to underline that final necessary confrontation with the law by Paul, and by all of us, Paul describes in detail his past dramatic experience. It was the sudden impact of that tenth commandment, with its “You shall not covet”, which so rudely awakened him. He had been blissfully ignorant of its having any personal impact. “I was alive without the law once,” he says (Rom. 7:9); and that is how all the world lives until confronted by the law. Paul had been “delighting in the law” (Rom. 7:22), as everyone born anew of the Spirit delights. But under the influence of the lie of independent self, when that “You shall not covet” struck him, he blindly thought, “No, of course I won’t and don’t.”

Then the blast hit him. Paul found an inner uprising of the mind over which he had no control, which he named sin and which “produced in me every kind of covetous desire” (Rom. 7:8). He was devastated, not that there were these sin drives, but because he thought he ought to be able to control them. That was his condemnation and bondage.

Paul pondered, “In my newly-born and responsive condition, in which my whole desire is to fulfill the law and produce the fruit of the Spirit, there is this disturbing experience that when I want to do good, there is an evil presence influencing me (Rom. 7:22). Yes, I want to live by God’s law. I would do the good and not the evil (repeated in verses 15, 16, 18, 19, and 21), but I am driven by this humiliating condition to say that something grabs me and uses me.”

“Here is the law, which I delight in, hammering at me with its godly standards. But I find myself helpless and hopeless. I have the will but there is nothing in my human makeup which has the capacity to combat this negative power influence, which gets me in its grasp (Rom. 7:18). I am a wretched man! (Rom. 7:24); newborn, but still grabbed by sin! Where lies the trouble? Is there a remedy?”

Paul’s good self-efforts to combat his uprising sin thoughts, unknown to him, were still Satan at work by external influence and not internal control over him. What a universal deceit in all us humans, and what an exposure and deliverance! The shame and humiliation of Paul’s defeat was just the necessary negative God used to make him desperate enough to find the answer, and thus that final usefulness of the law in exposing the lie of self-effort.

Have not I, like Paul, vainly thought there should be some way in which I could combat and overcome this evil influence on me, a Christian? Doesn’t the whole world operate by doing its own stuff? Isn’t “I must,” “I can,” “I will” or “I’m going to” the sole absorbing incentive of human living? Yes, that is humanity’s vast, lost blindness. Everyone in the fallen world, with no exceptions, really lives by that Satan lie with which we were inoculated.

NOW WE MOVE WITH PAUL INTO ROMANS 8. Here he comes right out with who he IS. What he said he had “reckoned” on in Romans 6:11, he now says he “realizes” (Rom. 8:2). The governing principle, “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus,” has set him free. In “reckoning,” you SAY it is so; in “knowing,” you KNOW it is so. And in Galatians 2:20 he proclaims, “I have been crucified with Christ – nevertheless I live- yet not I, but Christ lives in me.”

Now at the summit there is no condemnation. We are freed from that false self guilt – we are Spirit people in outer bodies. There is nothing to condemn (Rom. 8:1). Now we are under Christ’s law with no escape. There is this change of governing principle controlling our lives.

On Calvary, Christ put the old indwelling sin nature on death row from where he is able only to shout at us. That old law standard, which had seemed unattainable, is now our natural way of living – “the righteousness of the law fulfilled in us” (Rom. 8:3,4).

Paul lays unique emphasis on life being the Spirit in us. Nowhere else in the New Testament is this said in such plainness. There are fifteen mentions of the Spirit in Romans 8, in place of those many “I’s” in the previous chapter.

Paul says, “Get this clear: we are now Spirit people. Christ is living our life. We are walking His way (Rom. 8:3). We think His thoughts” (Rom. 8:5,6). He in us counteracts those former self-for-self thought patterns.

Paul says, “IF the Spirit dwells in you…”, for he could not speak our word for us. But speaking for ourselves we say, “SINCE He dwells in us…” Paul says, “IF you walk after the Spirit and not after the flesh…” We say, “We DO live by the Spirit” (Rom. 8:11,13).

Certainly there are flesh pulls or material pulls – sin’s self-for-self influence getting at us through leftover thoughts in our minds from the past and from the world’s atmosphere around us. But we don’t resist them by any false self-effort. We recognize and admit them, but then we affirm who we ARE and know we are – Christ in our forms; and our faith affirmation puts to death those “deeds of the body” )Rom. 8:13).

The normal background to our daily lives is the Spirit’s witness that we actually are God’s children (Rom. 8:16). By the Spirit we are at home now with our Father/“Daddy”, which is very different from our former fears of Him in our old self-condemning life (8:14,15).

From the moment in Romans 8:17 when he opens up the incredible destiny of us humans being co-inheritors of the universe with God’s Son, Paul changes the tone of what we are to experience in our daily lives. This talk of sufferings comes as a shock until we see at the end of the chapter that those are the devastating condition in which we, as sons, operate TRIUMPHANTLY as Christ people.

Face it, Paul says, the animal and material creation around us is engulfed in suffering – living in tension. And that, Paul continues, is a God-ordained necessary opposite to the “glorious liberty” which will swallow up the “groanings.” The deliverance will come through the sons of God, but the methods aren’t explained in detail (8:19-22).

Paul says, “Let’s not fool ourselves on the physical level. We “suffer” with all the creation, and our “salvation” on that level is by hope, not faith. It is a prospect not within our present reach (8:23-25).

Added to that, we live in a sea of frustration of every kind about which we don’t even know how to pray for deliverances (8:26,27). But we must have one solid unshakeable confidence that, however totally confusing, ALL THESE THINGS are actually working out FOR GOOD. Meanwhile we love our Father, trust our brother Christ, no matter how painful the situations, because we know the security of our calling, with outcomes always GOOD, GOOD, GOOD! What a word of faith is Romans 8:28!

Then Paul goes a glorious step further. He opens up the hidden purpose behind our sufferings and disturbed conditions. “You destiny is to be a Co-Son with THE Son in His glory. So these are necessary TRAINING YEARS on earth. But we must not confuse God’s soul transforming operations, taking place in us through our constant trials and pressures, with the total basic transformation of human spirit already taken place. Growth in conforming us to the image of Christ, which Paul is now speaking about (8:29), is the daily spontaneous development of trusting in our Christ union. We are being conformed marvelously through our new birth even to present glorification (8:30). Where anything does disturb us, let our contribution be faith in God-in-action (8:31-34).

Do we wilt? Do we question, “Why does God allow that?” Do we murmur and harbor more disturbed feelings than enjoyment and praise? Paul uses just one word: “conquerors” (8:37).

And then that glorious chapter ending verse of total security – we will be forever enveloped in the love of God as His child and NOTHING “shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (8:39).

[Back to Home]

Maximum Recommended Pressure

Let’s talk about tires. We tend to take the tires on our vehicles for granted. They do the job of attaching our vehicles to the road without any fanfare. They provide the friction so that we can start our vehicles, gain momentum, and stop in a very short distance.

Tires hold up best when kept at the maximum recommended pressure. They will roll more easily over the bumps and be less prone to “flats” and “blowouts” caused by bruising.

Isn’t there an analogy here for those seeking to live the Christian life? Internal pressure balances external pressure. Our earth atmosphere weighs down on us at 14.7 pounds per square inch at sea level. We would all be crushed if the internal cells in our bodies didn’t respond with an opposing internal pressure.

The world, the flesh and the devil constantly create external pressures of human living which require a counterbalance of internal pressure of Christ Life. That is why Christ indwells a Christian – to counteract the pressure of trials and temptations which would “bruise” or “weaken” our “tire tread”. This allows us to roll along and be used by God on the journey of life.

Talk about maximum pressure – the apostle Paul knew what it was. Reading his letters, we learn that pressure was something Paul was acquainted with on a daily basis. But he knew exactly how to handle it. Paul was apparently the first person in history to learn the “mystery”: Christ in you, the hope of glory (Col. 1:27) – and part of our glory is the resistance to damaging pressure around us. In the tire analogy, we may falsely assume that our tire (our human soul) is manufactured BY US strong enough to withstand any external pressure. But even the strongest made tire tread and sidewall can be damaged and fail without keeping the maximum recommended internal pressure.

Paul knew where his maximum recommended internal pressure came from: “… Christ lives in me…I live by the faith of the Son of God…” (Gal. 2:20). By staying in awareness and fellowship through prayer, Paul drew on the power (internal pressure) of Christ within. He didn’t depend on the strength of his tire tread and sidewall.

Sometimes the external pressure is from a circumstance. Sometimes it may be from a person who comes into our lives. And how do we know that God didn’t send that certain one for the purpose of making us stronger? That most difficult individual may be providing an opportunity for us to grow, to “pump up” with Christ.

How are we to triumph as Christians when we face outward pressures that seem almost too great? And what about those tire tread and sidewall weaknesses – the fear of failure, or the fear of aging, or disappointment of financial concerns?

Our tire analogy of “flats” and “blowouts” does not really apply to Christians – only to non-Christians. Why? Weak auto tire treads and sidewalls CAN blowout and fail even with proper internal pressure. But the Christian “soul” will never “blowout” and totally fail God. Christ is there forever to provide balancing pressure within us. He will never let the resistant pressure from within get too low and allow tire failure.

Just as we must routinely check our vehicle tires for pressure and pump them up to maximum recommended pressure (because they all leak somewhat), so a Christian must “pump up” the resistant pressure of Christ within by regular spiritual disciplines of Bible study, prayer and quiet times of fellowship with our Lord.

Christ holds the controls, and only He knows that just-right amount of pressure that will make us able to roll over the bumps more easily, with less bruising and more comfort. Only He knows the true value of maximum recommended pressure, and when that external amount might be exceeded, and He will make a “way of escape” so that we will not be harmed. This meeting of pressure with pressure will give us the strength to endure to the end.

Let me close with the personal testimony of my “tire miracle”. I was in my automobile on the Interstate highway with two small grandchildren in the back seat. I happened to have an 18-wheeler truck on each side of me at full speed when I had a tire blowout. As I fought the car to gain control and keep from sideswiping the trucks, I prayed one of the shortest prayers I know of: “Jesus, save these children!” The car immediately stopped swerving and went straight as an arrow allowing me to turn off the highway to the nearest service station. As I pulled in and got out, I couldn’t believe my eyes. I called an attendant over, he took one look and called his fellow workers over too. The left front tire had a hole in the sidewall as big as a baseball – AND YOU COULD SEE INTO THE TIRE! In fact you would be able to put your fist right into the inner chamber of the tire. There was no way that there could be any internal pressure holding that tire up. By all rights, a hole that big in the sidewall meant total collapse of the tire. But there it was sitting there with the wheel as high as the other three wheels. After they had all examined in amazement and stood back, the tire suddenly collapsed flat as a pancake!

What was going on? Why a miracle? I do know that at that time I had been in a crisis of disappointment with God over a personal matter. Was God demonstrating His love and protection to me to recharge my commitment to Him? After all, other Christians have died in accidents. Was God protecting a grandchild for some future use in life that only God knows about? Was God witnessing Himself to one of the attendants at the service station who needed the testimony?

All I know is that it was a miracle of God that has no earthly explanation. I will always remember and go back to that event in my praise and knowledge of the truth of God.
Remember – keep checking your spiritual tire – maintain maximum recommended pressure.

[Back to Home]

Look To The SALMON - A Lesson In Determination

Around the world, the changing seasons and a strong determination to survive cause many creatures like me to make an all out do-and-die journey home to the place where we were born. It seems to be part of the Creator’s instinctual design for many species of fish, animals, birds and even insects. To observe our remarkable ability to navigate some thousands of miles against incredible odds, is to think about the great Designer who conceived the idea of making me.

I am a king salmon – an Atlantic species who can tip the scales to as much as 125 pounds. But this is small compared to my ancestors in the fossil record, one of which claims a weight of about 500 pounds, a length of ten feet, and is even equipped with fangs for battle – watch out for him.

My life is one of change. Progressing from an egg, to an “eyed egg”, to a “fry”, and finally to a young “parr”, I was finally ready to begin my incredible preparation for life in the ocean. Adapted for life in fresh water, I would quickly die in the ocean. But the ocean is my destination. Depending on the species, my kind begins migration to the ocean about a year after hatching (chum and pink salmon begin their migration to the ocean no more than a week or so after hatching!).

How will I survive when I get to the ocean? Well, I won’t – not without the masterful handiwork of my Creator.

Before reaching the estuary where fresh and salt water mix, I undergo a dramatic change called smolting. I become more streamlined, my tail becomes more elongated and forked, the parr marks (vertical bands on my sides) disappear and turn to a very silvery color. Simultaneously, internal changes take place. The memory and smell centers in my brain grow rapidly. Also my kidneys convert to be able to excrete salt instead of retain it! After reaching the estuary, I remain for a short time while the final stages of smolting are completed.

Before I was a fresh-water fish which would quickly die in the ocean. Now I am fully adapted for vigorous and competitive life in the deep salt water. But my traveling days are far from over.
My brother salmon, the Pacific salmon, migrate to the North Pacific Ocean where they remain for one to seven years, depending on the species. For some, it is a long journey of 3,000 to 3,500 miles – actually much further because salmon don’t swim in a straight line. We swim in the ocean an average of 18 miles per day and can maintain a speed of 34 miles per day for long periods.

We have a row of sensory pores called lateral lines along our sides which help us to navigate. The sensory pores provide a means of hearing low frequencies which help to detect very small ocean currents. They also help to find food and avoid predators. Some Sockeye salmon also use the sun and moon for navigation.

We spend different lengths of time in the ocean before returning to our home-rivers for spawning. Some of us spend one winter, others two, others three winters in the ocean. Could the Master Designer have built in this feature so all the eggs would not end up in one basket?

With an instinct for procreation so strong that it could only be by the Creator’s design, I then change course and head for home.

How can I find my way to the place where I myself was given life? Remember the rapid growth of memory and smell centers of my brain? Now I put these features to good use. I have a sense of smell hundreds of times more acute than that of a dog (and a dog’s sense of smell far outweighs a human’s). Scientific studies show that I can detect one part per million which is the equivalent of one drop of my home waters (from where I was hatched) in 250 gallons of water from another source.

After traveling thousands of miles I can finally pick up the scent of my birthplace, whether a hatchery or a stream, and I change direction once more. Then comes the seemingly impossible odds of navigating the rivers upstream. Some of my Pacific brothers swim more than 2,000 miles up the Yukon River and its headwaters. Determined by a built-in desire to navigate to the site where we were hatched, we fight rapids, and can leap falls more than 12 feet high! When we come to a fork in the river, we know just which one to take – we remember!

My life cycle is delicate. The odds against survival from egg to the return to the spawning grounds are very high. Only two to ten percent live to make the journey.

Starting from the time salmon eggs are deposited beneath the gravel of a stream they must be provided with cold, clean, swift water. Without these conditions, the incubating eggs will suffocate due to lack of oxygen. If the water becomes too warm they will become infested with disease. As the climate becomes warmer, and due to deforestation, warming water has become a concern. May of us die from this cause alone, and the threat grows every year.

Another threat to us is that of predators. Fish and small animals are always ready to snatch a young salmon during migration. Studies indicate that about 97% migrate at night to avoid predators as we swim backwards downstream seeking the safety of deep areas. Many of us are prized sports fish. While in the ocean, we are fair game for a variety of predators including seals, porpoises, birds-of-prey, and other large fish. We swim in schools for protection, displaying our flashy silver sides to confuse predators. Migrating back up the rivers many of us meet with hungry bears anxiously awaiting our return.

Before beginning our long and difficult journey back home, we must be prepared. Why? While making this amazing migration of two months or more and thousands of miles, we never eat a bite of food! Our one purpose is to reach home and spawn.

When in the salty waters of the ocean, we are a bright silver. But when making our way up the rivers, other last changes take place varying according to our species and the inland distance traveled.

The male Pacific salmon generally develop hooked jaws, and their gills turn a bright red as they begin their inland trip in fresh water. By the time they reach the spawning grounds, some of them are bright red, others green, brown striped, and even purple. These colors are most pronounced in males.

Our lives end with the process called spawning. While the Pacific salmon spawns only once and then dies, my Atlantic brothers may live to spawn three or more times before dying.

Once we reach the spawning grounds, the females choose a site and prepare nests for laying eggs. They lie on one side and rapidly move their tails back and forth over the gravel. Hardly touching the gravel with their tails they create water currents that wash away the gravel. These nests are about 6 inches deep. This process takes up to a whole day. They then deposit from 500 to 1,200 eggs while the males fertilize them. After covering the eggs, they move upstream, where the process is repeated for as many as four more times, until a total of 2,500 to 6,000 eggs have been deposited per salmon depending on the species. (Why so many eggs? The Creator has made this provision for the benefit of many creatures to fight the odds against survival). By the time the females have finished spawning, they have lost half their weight.

Through dogged determination, strength and navigational abilities that only an intelligent Creator could provide, we have accomplished our mission. With what strength is left, we guard the site until our death as an instinctive loyal duty dictates. Interestingly, our decaying bodies form a plentiful food supply for small organisms which are the main food source for the hatching offspring.

Yes, us salmon have a determined life – an instinctual life determined by a wonderful Creator.

Writer’s note: My wife and I were privileged in August, 1982 to witness the salmon spawning at Ketchikan, Alaska. We followed streams and waterfalls inland all the way to spawning beds where we were able to see the spawning activities up close. It is a somewhat sad sight to see these determined old fighters die in weakness, but we can learn some things about their Creator by their determination.

How much more is the determination of God to bring created human beings into His Family as His true children? There is a purposiveness there in God which even far outweighs the determination of His creature salmon. God is determined to have spiritual children! While the end of the salmon’s struggle is always death, the end of the human struggle doesn’t have to be death. By faith in our Savior Christ, we can have death to sin but eternal divine life from God.

Christ died a determined death in order to bring new life to newborn children of God (the salmon giving their lives for procreation are a lower level lesson for us). Even the example of the body substance of the adults nourishing the growth of the newborn salmon is a kind of a lesson. After His death, the spiritual “substance” or nature of God in Christ comes to nourish the spiritual growth of the newborn Christian. “CHRIST LIVES IN ME!” says Paul in Galatians 2:20. There are many lessons in nature.

[Back to Home]

Long On Faith - Short On Love

I wonder if we mostly conservative Christians do not come short on the love of God. I know I do. For years my main occupation has been with faith. Do I truly believe God? Do I transmit to others “the faith once delivered to the saints,” – Christ according to the Scriptures? I have no intention of belittling that. Forty years ago I fought a core battle whether I would stand on the Bible as God’s inerrant revelation of Himself to fallen man, despite questions some could raise to which I had no answer. I was supposed to be a Christian, but I had begun to question the reality of God and Christ, for they meant nothing to me in my daily life. I had been taught many scriptures from my childhood. But my reality of faith was not settled.

Then the peace of God filled my soul and my doubts of Him were settled for I said to myself, “Here is a God that satisfies my highest possible conception of Him – a God who gives himself as an atoning sacrifice for the very people who hate Him and sin against Him. I can never find a higher motivation that that.” And where had I learned that? From the Bible.

I remember opening my Bible and laying my hand on it: and I made my vow there that I stood by that Book – if it was erroneous, I would be in error along with it – if the God I knew was a big mistake, I would be a little mistake along with Him. If there were portions of the book I couldn’t explain, or could apparently be proved wrong, well to me the correct things of the book were so overwhelmingly many, I would be content to leave those questions still unanswered, and boldly mold my life and witness on it. The Bible would be “Thus saith the Lord” to me.

Forty years have now passed. I remain, by the grace of God, exactly where I then was. The Book has opened up infinite riches, from Genesis to Revelation, as it unveils a limitless Christ. Every section of it is its own storehouse of treasure. Difficulties still remain and there are questions unanswered, but they are just as minor as they were forty years ago. My soul has become deeply satisfied with the rationality of the gospel as well as with its sufficiency. Face the world squarely on any level, in philosophy, psychology and science; in politics and economics; in problems of society and industry; there is no adequate alternative to the Christian faith worked out in human lives.

But through the years I think it is true that faith has outrun love, and in that respect I have fallen short of the very revelation I claim to adhere to. Nothing could shine out more brightly from the Scriptures than love. Of course all living faith is motivated by love: “Faith that works by love.” But “…ADD to your faith…charity [love]”, Peter wrote, with a good list of additions before faith reached its goal in love!

To faith, love must be added and here I have come short. There are reasons. The gospel has two sides to it – justice and love. It divides the world into two camps, for as Paul said, it is the savior of death unto death as well as life unto life. The day of “the revelation of the righteous judgment of God” will bring eternal life to the one, and “indignation and wrath” to the other. It is much easier to have an easygoing show of love to all if, as many have, we sidestep the judgments of God and throw an indiscriminate blanket of acceptance over all. The Bible does not do that nor those that preach its message faithfully. A love of that nature cannot be the pure love of God in us, for it is false to His Word. We must find another way of love if it is to be the same as flowed out from the Savior, Paul, John, and the others.

It must have a foundation of faithfulness at any price, yet it must be clothed in a love which is more prominent than the faithfulness. But I think we often have those two in a reverse proportion: faithfulness is more prominent than love.

Though eager to speak of Christ, for instance, I am not immediately at home with the “pagan” as Jesus so obviously was – the friend of publicans and sinners. I think for too long I have loved “souls” instead of simply loving people. I have instinctively had the two-camps approach, and taken it that everybody is outside the Lord’s camp unless I have found out for sure that they are in it. I have not sufficiently just loved a person because he is a person, and sought the human touch with him which could lead on to sharing what Christ has meant to me. I shrink from contacts when I should welcome them and refuse to judge by external appearances.

I think that most of us who know the internal condition of churches and missionary activities and other agencies who hold the faith will agree that we have much to learn and practice in our ranks about loving one another. We do not face up at any price to the command the Savior gave absolute priority to in His last prayer in John 17 and His last words to His disciples. Why not? Again I think that some of it is because we have occupied ourselves in safe-guarding the truth, expounding the Bible, regarding each other more as consistent or inconsistent believers, rather than as plain beloved brothers and sisters. It is really a carry-over of the same outlook towards my brethren as I have had so much towards “outsiders”.

I am beginning to learn that Christ in me gives me the ability to not only love Christ in another person, but also any person himself and for himself, because that is the love of God to us, and thus to others through us.

[Back to Home]

Bickering

In C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters, Screwtape is an upper-level functionary in the complex bureaucracy of hell, and his nephew, Wormwood, is a little demon given the assignment of recruiting people for hell.

At one point Lewis has Screwtape saying to Wormwood, “You will find that the church is fertile soil. One of the best places to find recruits for hell is the church.”

Lewis’ Screwtape even has specific advice for Wormwood:
“Keep them bickering over programs, procedures, money, organization, personal hurts, misgivings. Keep them bickering. Whatever you do, don’t let them see the banners wave, because if they ever see the banners wave, we’ve lost them forever.”

As Christian followers of Jesus, where is the center of our attention? What do we spend our time talking about and debating? Is the center our personal relationship with Christ and how He within us can and will guide us, protect us, and keep us on the right track?

Here is a partial list of church in-house bickering which I believe would make Wormwood happy:
· The Rapture. One side says, “It’s going to happen. Get right or get left. If you don’t believe it now, you will when you watch as all ascend, and you will then suffer the consequences of your lack of belief when you get yours in the tribulation.” The other side says, “This rapture idea is not right. The Rapture occurred already in 70AD with the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple.”

· Politics. One side says, “If you don’t vote Republican, you are either a temporarily deranged Christian, or at worst probably an anti-God Demon-crat.” The other side says, “The Bible says to stay out of politics completely – don’t vote at all.”

· Baptism. One side says, “The only way to be baptized is to be a mature adult, to be fully immersed under water, in the name of Jesus. If you weren’t baptized like that, then your baptism is not valid, and if you want to join our church you’ll need to be re-baptized in our church by our pastors.” The other side says, “Get those children baptized as soon as possible. Sprinkling them is all it takes to get them saved.”

· Lord’s Supper/Communion. One side says, “The body of Christ is right there within the bread of communion so therefore we need to receive communion as often as possible and it must be received in our church, not somewhere else.” The other side says, “The Lord’s Supper is a remembrance of Christ’s death. As Christians, we already have Christ living within us all the time. Communion must be taken once a month, it must be grape juice (never wine), it must be unleavened bread.”

· Evangelism. One side says, “You must ‘witness’ and you must give others your ‘testimony’. If you don’t, then how will the church grow? If you don’t evangelize you are a lazy, perhaps Laodecian Christian.” The other side says, “What good does it do to evangelize? God has already elected and chosen who will be saved.”

Have you looked up recently to see the banners of Jesus wave? Two things about the Cross of Christ: 1) The Cross of Christ drives out C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape, his nephew, Wormwood, and all of the other demonic powers of hell once and for all. They are still corrupting and perverting, but their time is limited, and the outcome of history is certain. They lose. 2) Jesus on the Cross gave us the ability to have a spiritual, vertical, personal relationship with God. Religion is almost exclusively a horizontal enterprise – with a focus on the importance of our exertion and effort in the here and now. Religion is all about what humans can do to please and appease God. Christianity, however, is about a vertical relationship with God. Christianity is about God coming out of the heavens to dwell within us in the person of Christ, doing for us what we can never do for ourselves.

Some propose, in yet another earth-related in-house squabble among Christians, that the great anthem, “Onward Christian Soldiers” be homogenized so that it is not so war-like…or deleted from our worship altogether.

At the risk of offending the politically-correct among us, permit me to note, along with C.S. Lewis, the hymn’s emphasis on the Cross of Christ and on His banners that fly above us.

Here’s the first verse, in case your part of the body of Christ has censored it:
Onward Christian soldiers,
Marching as to war,
With the Cross of Jesus, going on before.
Christ, the royal Master, leads against the foe;
Forward into battle,
SEE HIS BANNERS GO….

Be Christ centered. Set aside dissension and pride. Focus on our Lord and Master. May all that we do be because of Him IN us, because of Him FOR us, because of Him THROUGH us – devoted to Him and centered in Him.

[Back to Home]

We Only Know Right Through Wrong

It has pretty well been established that God’s purpose for humans is “to bring many sons unto glory,” glory being a vast family of sons brought to their highest conceivable destiny as co-sons and co-heirs of the universe with His own Son. He had this in hand before the creation, “according as He has chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world,” and this meant one thing – that the sons must be mature, capable sons, not a crowd of irresponsible little children, but knowing who they are as persons, knowing how to function as sons, and thus knowing their destiny and able to fulfill it.

That means training and development from little children to adolescents and then to sons who can represent their Father and do His business for Him. And this is the history of the human family.

There is one facet of mature experience which is often missed, yet it lies at the roots of capability on any level and none can be sure of himself and his proficiency in any profession without it. A THING IS ONLY A THING BECAUSE IT HAS ITS OPPOSITE. It has a right and a wrong and the one has overcome the other.

You cannot say a certain yes in a decision until you have first canvassed the alternatives and said an equally certain no to each of them. The strength of the yes is in swallowing up the nos! Not in having no nos, but in facing them and replacing them by the final yes. Then only is the yes a strong and certain one.

Proficiency is not in ignoring the wrong way of doing a thing, still less in denying that there is a wrong way; but proficiency is in having known the wrong way and tried it out and learned once and for all that it doesn’t work that way. Then the yes has its strength in swallowing up its no.

A carpenter, to be proficient, must first have learned that you don’t use your chisel this way, or make your measurements that way, but then these are the right ways.

No housewife can be confident in her kitchen until she first knows you don’t cook that meat at this heat or mix those ingredients in those proportions; then she is spontaneously at ease in her good cooking.

And so through every conceivable activity of life. You must know the wrong way and have proved it wrong, before you are secure and confident in the right. The one must “swallow” the other up.

And here we have God’s perfect wisdom in the birth of the human race, and in having a convenient opposite, the wrong one, the evil one, through whom He would bring His vast family of sons to maturity. This was His wisdom in allowing the devil to be His convenient agent. To have sons, they must find themselves in their freedom. They must discover that to be a person is to be conscious that there are alternatives and make their free choice; and ultimately their right choice through having first made the wrong one, and tasted the consequences.

And the wonder of our perfect God is that He knew this was the way His predestined family of efficient sons must take, from wrong first and then to right. And He knew the suffering that entailed for them with its possibility of a lost eternity. So He took it upon Himself to go that same way to its total final end, and in the person of His own Son, Himself in His Son form, to participate in the sufferings in their fullest measure. The writer of Hebrews says that this involvement to the full in the sufferings of humanity was the only way the perfect Father, to be perfect, could go so that “it became Him, for whom are all things and by whom are all things, to make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through sufferings.” Tremendous!

Coming down the family tree from our first parents, Adam and Eve, we became misused selves. We became children of the devil as John says – that devil who is quite simply the created being who brought into manifestation the potential there must be in freedom, of being the opposite to God. And we have participated in this exposed opposite. But by doing so, we have gone along a necessary road by which a person must know and reject misuse before being established in the right use. And here is the meaning of the Fall, and its value.

We had to discover and experience what it is to be a wrong self before we are conditioned to be a right self. We have to learn misuse before we can settle into right use. Even Jesus Himself, to be a person, had to be confronted with the devil and come under the temptation of the “evil” way of self-interest. By that means He found His human self in its determined fullness with all its normal capacities and reactions.

From that first moment of the Fall and its consequences, there was the pronouncement of deliverance. And the deliverance is Jesus Christ in the seed of the woman, Eve, Who would “bruise the head of the serpent”. And what is more, though He would come to do this in due time in human history, in God’s timeless sight He was already, in that remarkable phrase in Revelation 13:8, “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.”

So the first stage of training for humans is downward, not upward, and is necessary preparation for that vast family of sons of God. As we choose the wrong downward paths of sin, we hopefully learn that we do not have it within our human selves to control the wrongs and truly seek the rights. At this point, God would have us cry out for a Savior – that Savior provided “from the foundation of the world.”

And it is only by the act of choosing Christ as Savior and Lord that we can be born again and enter into that Family of God as sons.

Then God does an awesome and marvelous thing – Christ comes to live right within this new son or daughter to give this new son or daughter the ABILITY to overcome the wrong and choose the right. It is a lifelong process with many slips along the way – but it has the guaranteed results of growth and maturity as true children of God.

[Back to Home]