For Thought and Meditation - Friday, October 06

[Pine Baron]

Good morning all. What a great, positive message. This'll get you through the drudgery. Have a safe and blessed day.

The Nature of Regeneration
By Oswald Chambers

When it pleased God…to reveal His Son in me… —Galatians 1:15-16

If Jesus Christ is going to regenerate me, what is the problem He faces? It is simply this— I have a heredity in which I had no say or decision; I am not holy, nor am I likely to be; and if all Jesus Christ can do is tell me that I must be holy, His teaching only causes me to despair. But if Jesus Christ is truly a regenerator, someone who can put His own heredity of holiness into me, then I can begin to see what He means when He says that I have to be holy. Redemption means that Jesus Christ can put into anyone the hereditary nature that was in Himself, and all the standards He gives us are based on that nature— His teaching is meant to be applied to the life which He puts within us. The proper action on my part is simply to agree with God’s verdict on sin as judged on the Cross of Christ.

The New Testament teaching about regeneration is that when a person is hit by his own sense of need, God will put the Holy Spirit into his spirit, and his personal spirit will be energized by the Spirit of the Son of God— “…until Christ is formed in you” (Galatians 4:19). The moral miracle of redemption is that God can put a new nature into me through which I can live a totally new life. When I finally reach the edge of my need and know my own limitations, then Jesus says, “Blessed are you…” (Matthew 5:11). But I must get to that point. God cannot put into me, the responsible moral person that I am, the nature that was in Jesus Christ unless I am aware of my need for it.

Just as the nature of sin entered into the human race through one man, the Holy Spirit entered into the human race through another Man (see Romans 5:12-19). And redemption means that I can be delivered from the heredity of sin, and that through Jesus Christ I can receive a pure and spotless heredity, namely, the Holy Spirit.

Wisdom From Oswald Chambers

The great thing about faith in God is that it keeps a man undisturbed in the midst of disturbance. Notes on Isaiah, 1376 R

[square butte]

Amen & Thanks for the encouraging Scripture and message this morning - God Bless

[USMC87]

Amen, Only Jesus can change the nature of lost humans.

[dverna]

The nature of sin entered the world from the Angels that sided with Lucifer. Fully 1/3 of the Angels sinned well before Adam and Eve.

I do not buy into the accepted thinking that man was the first to sin and thus all mankind deserves eternal punishment.

If the divine Angels sinned within days of being created, are we any better? Should God have expected better from us than the Angels under His dominion?

Christians love to beat themselves up but we were created to sin. Without sin, we would not need God or Jesus. I do not understand why God created us to sin but it is a given that cannot be ignored. In fact, I will go so far as to conclude it was His design. If you believe God is omniscient, He knew what would happen before it happened.