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The author, Paul, is
an exceptional example for anyone to see that there are two sides of man.
There’s a side of man that walks after the flesh. There’s also a side of man
that walks after the Spirit.
When we were
introduced to Paul in the book of Acts, he was known by the name Saul of
Tarsus. He held the coats for those who were throwing stones at Deacon Stephen
(Acts 7:58). Next we find him reaping havoc on the Church. He would enter every
house and haul away the Church folks to prison (Acts 8:3). Then (Acts 9) Saul
breathing out threatening and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, gets
letters of authority from the High Priest, heads down the Damascus Road to
bring these disciples back to Jerusalem bound in chains. Saul believed in his
heart that he was doing God’s work,
when in fact he was not.
You see my brothers
and sisters without a regenerated spirit everything you do seems right in your
own eyes. Right seems wrong, wrong seems right, and your every existence is
self-serving. If you didn’t know this, Satan seeks those whose existence is
self-serving. His only business is to manipulate you into thinking that it’s OK
to do things your way. The Bible calls that walking after the flesh and not
after the Spirit.
It was on that same
Damascus Road that Saul met Jesus.
After meeting Jesus, Saul repented,
was converted, and his life was never again the, same. He stopped walking after
the flesh and began walking after the Spirit.
Jesus knows everything about each of
us. He is the creator. When you meet
and get to know Jesus for yourself,
if you repent and become converted, the Holy
Spirit will indwell you, He will
abide in you forever, and like Saul, your life will never be the same.
When you know that
you are not all you would like to be, but yourself nothing like you used to be,
you have experienced conversion. That’s what it means to be converted, to know
for yourself that you’ve been changed. The Holy
Spirit is now working in you. He
will remind you that it wasn’t because of you. It wasn’t because you were so
careful and so cautious, it wasn’t because you were so daring or so deliberate,
it wasn’t because you were so good or so kind, nor was it because you were so
evasive or persuasive, or quick or slick, it wasn’t anything that you could
have done that kept you alive and out of the grave.
The Holy Spirit will remind you that you
were kept by the power of the True and Living God. Then, my brothers and sisters, you won’t have any trouble
agreeing with what the Holy Spirit
tells you because your spirit agrees with Him. The Bible tell us in (John 1:12) But as many
as received Him, to them gave He power to become sons of God. (Romans 8:14) For as many as are
led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. (Romans 8:16) The Spirit (that is the Holy Spirit) “The Spirit
itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God.
Along with his
Damascus road experience, not only is Saul’s life changed, he no longer calls
himself Saul, but Paul. He and the writer to the Hebrews are the only writers
to use the word carnal. Eleven times this word is used, three times in the book
of Romans: (7:14; 8:7; 15:27), five times in the book of I Corinthians: (3:1,3,3,4;
9:11), once in the book of II Corinthians: (10:4) and twice in the book of
Hebrews (7:16; 9:10). The word carnal translated from the NT Greek word Sarkikos that means unspiritual, human
wisdom, all pertaining to the flesh. But to truly get down to the real deal of
understanding the meaning of the word carnal there is another NT Greek word Sarkinos, which declares the whole
matter is the result of the fall of man. In a word, it’s a sin thing. Sin
causes us to behave carnally.
We hear so much about
sin, that its true meaning sometimes gets twisted and convoluted. True that we
are all born in sin. But! We are not born a servant to sin. No! No, we become
the latter by voluntarily yielding to sin. To be born a sinner is not your
fault. But to remain and die a sinner is your fault. We are all born in sin
that we can’t help. It is when we began to sin by practice that we become
responsible to God for the sins we
have committed. Those who walk after the flesh are practicing sinners. The
Bible calls them carnal minded. Just as It declares that the wages of sin is
death, It also declares to be carnally minded is also death, why? The carnal
mind is enmity against God, because
it is not subject to the law of God.
In other words the sinner can never reach the divine standard. He is unable to
evolve of himself a standard pleasing to God.
Therefore he must begin at a new center which is God’s plan of Salvation.
This Salvation is by
the redemptive work of Christ, and
the regenerating work of the Holy
Spirit. What I’m saying to you is, he who is born in sin, must be born
again. The terms of Salvation are so simple that even a child can understand
them. If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him
from the dead, thou shalt be saved. Upon this confession and this belief, we
start walking after the Spirit. We have a new life, that includes an eternal
destiny with God. The old Church said because of our Salvation we started
walking in the light. Which ever you subscribe to, they both denote a change in
you. That change ought to be noticeable to everybody. One preacher said, the
way people can tell you are a Christian is that we lie, cheat and we steal.
That’s how others can tell that you are a Christian, because of lying cheating
and stealing. We lie in our own beds, we cheat the devil out of a soul that
he had, and when the road gets rough and the goings get tough, we steal away to
Jesus.
What that preacher
was trying to say, that Christians are different. So let me ask this question, why
doesn’t everyone become a Christian? I have an idea, it may not be all that but it’s mine. I’m sure that
you have your own opinion about this question; but my idea is that fear keeps
many from becoming Christians. Fear is a powerful force in the living
experience. We are not born to fear, we learn fear as we go through life.
That’s one of the reasons that God
says to the believer, fear not. In His
word it is written some 365 time, one for every day of the year. In the NT
Greek, the word for fear is Phobos
from which we get the word phobia. Phobia means the action caused by being
scared. Is it possible, that unbelievers remain in unbelief because they are
scared to believe in God?.
If the word fear were
an acronym it could stand for False
Evidence Appearing Real. Grant it we do live in an era where false
evidence is everywhere. False witnesses, false reports, false
prophets, false swearers, false accusers, false teachers, false
brethren, false hope, false security, false truth, false
gods, and yes even a false Jesus. You don’t have to be a Rocket
Scientist to figure out who’s behind the false.
Truth opposes false. Our God is the true and living God;
Jesus is the way the truth and the life, the Holy Ghost is the Spirit
of truth. If truth opposes false, the sum of the whole matter is that Satan and
not God, promotes false. Therefore
the unbeliever fears and his fear causes him to be scared to trust and believe
in God. Without trust and belief in God no one can escape doom and
damnation. What fear needs is to be replaced with courage and when courage
replaces fear, belief will replace unbelief, and when belief replaces unbelief,
sinners are changed to saints and when sinners are changed to saints, the Bible
becomes more than a best seller, it becomes our Basic Instructions Before
Leaving Earth. Life has new meaning.
God is our Father, Jesus our elder brother, the Holy Ghost
our guide, there’s no way we can loose with the stuff we use. There is
therefore now no condemnation to them, which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.
Greater is He that is in us than he that is in the world. If God be for us,
He’s more that he world against us.
God Bless You.