A FORGOTTEN PRACTICE!
“I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me,” Galatians 2:20.
I can recall back in 1968, just after Ann and I were married and we had moved, for a short time, to a house in Brookeborough, Co. Fermanagh, bowing in prayer before this text and asking the Lord for understanding of it.
I. Spiritual understanding once granted, must be retained and sustained by a constant supply of God’ grace.
As we must repeatedly and regularly partake of food and water and sleep, in order to maintain physical life, even so it is with our soul’s strength and vigour.
If we are to remain ALIVE to God and His mind and will for our lives, there must be this constant partaking of His grace by the appointed means — prayer and the reading and musing upon His Word. As David said: “My heart was hot within me, while I was musing the fire burned: then spake I with my tongue,” Psalm 39:3. The word ‘musing’ carries the meaning of ‘whispering or muttering’. Those who read the Bible to themselves in this manner are seeking to savour and digest every word and its meaning.
Acts 8:30 says, regarding the meeting between Philip and the man of Ethiopia in the desert: “And Philip ran thither to him, and heard him read the prophet Esaias, and said, Understandest thou what thou readest?”
We should note how this man was reading, it was out loud. He was musing and seeking the meaning of what it was he read.
It must be recognised that few Christians so read their Bibles. For many it is an exercise similar to the counting of the beads of the rosary by the Roman Catholic! In other words, a ritual that must be performed!
We can never remain ALIVE to God by insincere observance of a vital means of grace and life to our souls. How often have Christian confessed to themselves and even to others that they feel so ‘dead’!
That is NOT an admission that spiritual life has ceased within them. No, that cannot happen to the child of God, for to them has been imparted ‘eternal life’!
No, it is the acknowledgement that the level of spiritual energy within them has dropped away because of their neglect of their soul and its requirements. They have become ‘cast down’.
“Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? Psalm 42:5. The words, ‘cast down’ carry the meaning of being ‘bowed down in weakness and sorrow and despair’. The word is used in Psalm 35:14. “I behaved myself as though he had been my friend or brother: I bowed down heavily, as one that mourneth for his mother.”
That is how we are reduced and rendered miserable and unhappy when we neglect our souls.
II. When we neglect to maintain our communion with God, sin takes over!
That is what brings in the sense of death and with it sorrow!
Jonah said: “When my soul fainted within me I remembered the LORD: and my prayer came in unto thee, into thine holy temple,”Jonah 2:7. He is clearly stating that when he forgot the Lord his soul fainted, or ‘swooned’ and was ‘overwhelmed’. Restoration and strength returned when he “remembered the LORD” and prayed.
The soul that enjoys strength and vitality is one experiencing victory over sin. The victory of the cross is being enjoyed when we find ourselves in such a happy condition.
“Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof. Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God. For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace,” Romans 6:11-14.
I recall earnestly seeking from the Lord an understanding of just what this word ‘reckon’ meant, for it is clear that it is the doorway to victory over sin and a life of overcoming.
Greek
The Greek word occurs in some other places which I believe helps us to understand what the Holy Spirit, through Paul, is saying. It is translated ‘reasoned’ in Mark 11:31; ’numbered with’ in Mark 15:28. It also appears in Acts 19:27; “So that not only this our craft is in danger to be set at nought; but also that the temple of the great goddess Diana should be despised, and her magnificence should be destroyed, whom all Asia and the world worshippeth.”
Here it is translated by the words ‘should be despised’. The silversmith, Demetrius, was here complaining to his fellow idol makers, that the gospel Paul preached would cause people to reject and despise the worship of Diana.
One more reference: “And thinkest thou this, O man, that judgest them which do such things, and doest the same, that thou shalt escape the judgment of God?” Romans 2:3. Here our word is translated ‘thinkest thou’.
Understand
I believe that by considering these various translations we may fully understand what Paul was saying when he wrote, “Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Let us reason that by God’s grace we have been made dead to sin and alive to God. Let us number ourselves amongst those in whom this miracle of grace has been wrought. Let us form the opinion that this is what God has done in us at our regeneration and which we must by faith grasp and live out in our day to day experience. We must take this truth into our hearts and minds and constantly think upon it and live by it.
If we live with such a daily reckoning and understanding, that we have been rendered dead to sin, we are thus enabled to live for God and holiness and realise that we are no more the slaves of sin.
True prayer and constant feeding our souls and minds with the Word of God ALONE can enable us to see and understand that this is what happened to us when we were ‘born again’! Faith lays hold upon the truth Paul states in Romans 6:14: “sin shall not have dominion over you”.
We are to thus exercise this faith and “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof,” Romans 6:12.
Failure to daily live out this truth by faith will permit sin to ‘reign’ and we will yield to it. Christians may sin. That is so true. “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us,” 1 John 1:8. Failure to recognise that some of our actions are sinful and then doing nothing about them, is allowing sin to have dominion over us!
The governmental regime in Ulster in recent decades allowed terrorism to go largely unpunished and we found ourselves under their rule. We surely can learn from that and see that ‘resistance’ to sin is required on our part if we are to remain free from its power.
How do we resist?
1. Recognise our sins.
2. Bring them before God for pardon and forgiveness. As John puts it: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness,” 1 John 1:9.
How many Christians live under sin’s dominion by their failure or unwillingness to see sin in their lives and own it to be so and confess it to the Lord?
Denial of sin and unconfessed sin, enslaves many a Free Presbyterian! It is the reason that we have NOT what once we abundantly enjoyed. That enjoyment will never be ours again if sin is not confronted and confessed and put away.
Oh, how I recall this being driven home in years gone by whenever the familiar words of 2 Chronicles 7:14 were declared.
“If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land,” 2 Chronicles 7:14.
That promise is still there to be claimed today!
III. Dominion by sin causes the backsliding Christian to take on a likeness to the world.
“And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God,” Romans 12:2.
That is what happens to the backslider who yields to sin’s dominion. They become ‘conformed’ to the world. As a garment is fashioned according to a pattern, so the ‘conforming’ Christian takes on the form and appearance of the world!
Consider Peter’s brief backsliding at the time of the Saviour’s crucifixion.
(1) he sat with the worldly crowd, Mark. 14:54.
(2) He repeatedly told lies and denied the Lord, Mark. 14:67.
(3) He adopted the foul language of the world, Mark. 14:71.
That happens to every backslider, to some degree or other. Even preachers can display this conformity. O they may not consort with worldly people or use foul language but they may imbibe the thinking of the world and its modernistic notions and seek to dole them out to their flock from the pulpit! That is how the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, the Church of Ireland and the Methodist Church in Ireland has arrived at their present state of apostasy!
If backsliding happened to Peter then let us learn that it can happen to us in the Free Presbyterian Church, and if it happens and is not dealt with, then we are on the road that will take us to the same unspeakable wicked place where the main denominations in Ulster are today: allowing the most awful false doctrines and denials of God’s Word to be proclaimed in their pulpits and even condoning the most evil lifestyles in their pews!
Let us remember Paul’s companion, Demas. Paul said of him: “For Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world, and is departed unto Thessalonica,” 2 Timothy 4:10.
From such holy company this professing Christian ‘departed’ from Paul because he ‘loved this present world’!
Why is it that so many rise up in anger and miscall any who seek to point out these truths? It is because they know what is being said is TRUE OF THEM and they do not want to hear it!
Miscalling God’s servants for preaching God’s Word is only proof that such individuals have indeed become ‘conformed’ to the evil world. They do that which s forbidden.
“Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever,” 1 John 2:15-17.
Character of the world
Remember what the Saviour said of the world and its attitude!
“If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you,” John 15:18-19.
“These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world,” John 16:33.
As so many fatal diseases start off in a small way, which if recognised and dealt with can be cured, so it is with sin amongst Christians. If not dealt with, in the individual, in the family, in the congregation in the denomination: SIN WILL LEAD ON TO DEATH!
The late Carl McIntyre (1906 – 2002), who in his day contented earnestly for the faith, wrote a book entitled: ‘The Death of a Church’. It was about the decline of the Presbyterian Church from which he separated in 1936, ‘the Presbyterian Church USA’.
It is what will happen to any church, including our own, which choses to ignore backsliding and worldliness and modernism in its pulpits and pews.
Rev Ivan Foster (Rtd)
17th August 2024