 
The buck stops at the Cross
Did God create people to recognize Who He is? Or, is it up to people to decide for themselves Who they want Him to
be? When Jesus said, “I will make you fisher’s of men.” He was not speaking to sportsmen with a rod and
reel out for the thrill of landing the prey of their hobby. He was speaking to commercial fishermen who used nets.
When the Word of God, as understood by
a faithful follower of Christ, is shared with others, there arise people of learning, ministers professing to understand the
Scriptures, who denounce sound sensibilities as heresy. The result is a turning away from natural inquirers after Truth in
living unto Salvation. If the world were not vulnerably intoxicated with the wine of wisdom, doctrine, dogma, traditions,
and opinions, multitudes would be convicted and converted by the plain and cutting Truth of the Word of God in responsibility
to Him as their source of life.
But, religious hopeful wishing steeped in intellectual/emotional reasoning, thought of as faith,
appears so confused and conflicting that people know not what to believe as truth. Materially centered ministry in the name
of spiritualism, leads the sins of the world’s incompetence by prideful impenitence, at the door of organized religious
church. The actual ‘dividing line’ to unravel the confusion is found in inner-personal understanding (as opposed
to inter-personal understanding where “out from the heart” is assumed to mean, “out from the shared rules
of ways to Salvation”) of what a “group” means.
In common worldly wisdom called 'reasonable logic', the “Body of Christ” means a people
of like agreement of principles and creed who adhere to shared motives in service to the ideals of God, by and in the principles
of Christ, as human thinking and emotion affects personal and social behavior. As the true meaning of ‘Spirit’
is the product of certainty, rather than being an emotional expression of disposition, proper cognitive responses to who God
says we are through our responsibilities has been lost to seeking realism based
in experiences.
Consequently, many people believe that Jesus Christ only pays for one’s sins as they come to
Him for salvation. This denies attention to faith in His Resurrection and leads to emotional hope for His rapturous return
to rescue His Own out from the world of ignorance, neglect, degradation, and filth. His admonition that He came not to take
His followers out of the world, but to give them the power in His Victory to live righteously through Him, in the world, gets
forgotten as self-centered people use disgust to separate their temptations from others they blame for their own weaknesses.
However, Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior for everyone, at all times, because on the Cross He literally
paid the price for all sin, for all people, for all time. Faith in Him unto salvation is faith in Who He is in His mercy to
have paid such a price, not because He was required to, but because He wanted to. Accepting His Life of wholeness in the Truth
of living He created to share with ‘whosoever will’ comes about by trusting, through faith in His leading by the
Gospel, His Word of generosity provided in and through His Resurrection.
The entire point of Christ’s Messiah-ship is that nobody deserves to be accepted by Him. Salvation
is the unwarranted gift of life through faith in Him much like a child is conceived and born by the combined choices of his
or her parents. People are glad to be alive but had no input into being born. Because we are alive we learn to believe we
are the master of our own fate. And, in a sense each person is, in that we all realize deep inside our hearts that life is
the most prized accountability anyone can experience. Accordingly, we have God’s invitation to agree to being born anew,
while at our physical birth into this world we did not.
A claim to be without sin is, in itself, evident sinful pride that who makes that claim is far from holy. It is because
one has no true conception of the infinite purity and holiness of God, or of who he or she is in comparison to Him they are
claiming to be as in harmony with His character; because blindness to a true conception of the purity and loveliness of Creation
of Christ Himself – ignorantly displaying the malignity and evil of sin that man or woman can regard themselves as holy.
The greater the distance between one’s self and Christ, the more inadequate perceptions of righteousness are based in
positive emotions that perpetuate personal esteem.
As a person’s own senses of divine character and requirements supplant Christ’s, the more righteous a person
appears in their own eyes. We cannot accord holiness to anyone without bringing them to the measurement of God’s standards
of holiness in heaven and in earth. When people perceive no weight of responsibility to others with whom they are committed,
when they make light of and belittle God’s precepts for their own will, when they betray the trust of their spouses,
families, and general society, and teach others to do the same; they shall be of no esteem in the sight of heaven.
But it is not for anyone to judge another’s motives. Many people are persecuted by unbelieving believers who
are conditioned to believe spiritual matters are tools of convenience for establishing proper worldly conditions. That God
and His salvation in Jesus Christ is provided so that humankind as a species may make a perfect world of peace and overall
well being. Thank our Father in heaven He saw fit, through the mercy of grace, to address these issues through faith in His
Son to guide unfaithful hearts into being faithful through His intercession.
Since Jesus Christ is in Authority to guide faithful hearts of men and women, and their families,
the gathering together of like faithing people is the natural church unto God in His Authority. When the church, as an entity,
takes authority as the divine dispenser of the Word, the church negates Who Christ is to the people it serves. This ‘tail
wagging the dog’ philosophy leads to believing God is working for us through socially organized structure, instead of
Him working through us in the moments of daily available decisions and choices, in reliance to the God Who is, present and
alive wherever we are.
Belief in character cycle behavior patterns founded in environmental/instinctual intellectual/emotional
ways (based in the right/wrong practicality that emulates God’s Word of natural Law) reinforces human will of wisdom
through artificial faith; over God’s active will of wisdom in leading a man, a man with his wife, and the church because
of it. False Gospel leading through unwarranted church authority is used to control for power profit and procedure, marriages,
families, and communities in the belief that cohesive social structure is somehow God’s divine goal for His Creative
ends.
This is the nature of a cult (the root word of ‘culture’) where misdirected faith through
works, and adherence to group controls, blinds our hearts to the true Gospel in the freedoms to defend individual faithful
family unity founded in marriage. A genuine shared message of faith in Christ unto God will lead to following Christ in one’s
own distinctive walk with those whom people are personally involved. Consequently, the true Body of Christ is, in honest response
to who each of us is in Him exactly where we are at all times, personally, with ourselves and others, spiritual and eternally
real instead of socially contrived.
A non-Christian believes he or she knows what a Christian is by realizing their own guilt in using
others to further their own ways, and to cover (usually by passing the buck onto any convenient person or circumstance) having
used others to further their own ways. The opportunity for emotional purging of personally carried hidden guilt and shame
is represented by the organized church, civil court, and (of all things) sports and entertainment. Socially shared situations
contain an ongoing rendering of checks and balances to maintain acceptable behavior from citizens.
Conforming pressures to comply with well behaved “Godly will” is gradually developed
through natural growth, maturity, education, and practice with adverse consequences in punishment as a backdrop threat to
ensure ambitions to beneficially constructive behavior. Because God’s created patterns of natural healthy well being
for flesh living are commonly and honestly accepted as normal for human beings to function, non-Christians assume that deviations
from straight laced honor in healthy living by Christians means they are not a Christian.
“Christians do not lie, Christians do not steal, Christians do not… etc.” is what
a non-Christian expects from a Christian – and rightly so. Non-Christians (as well as many professing Christians) also
assume that doing the right things that a Christian should be doing will make them a Christian. But, the non-Christian does
not know, in truth, what a Christian actually is, or the nature of a Christian’s reasons for being a Christian, simply
because it takes the infilling of Christ’s promised active being by His Truth of the Word of Life, the Holy Spirit,
for a Christian to be what a Christian is.
It is Jesus Christ Who makes a Christian a Christian. No amount of human training, psychology, emotional
enticement, money, or care-giving can make a non-Christian a Christian. Faith is thought to be a person’s honestly driven
desires of expectation to have good things from God. However, faith is quite different in God’s view: faith is simply
trusting Who God is, and therefore who we are, in whatever situation and circumstance that arises. But, this does not imply
in any way that we should think of faith in God in ways where we capitulate to a karma/fate that God allows evil to teach
us our lessons. Hardship is not the business God is in.
Scripture throughout tells of an evil one who is opposed to God’s will for us to be of Him
through the gift of faith He gives to us to overcome evil. Evil never is of itself as separate from a generating evil spirit-being
presence of will not human. Because all religions are steeped in responding to the yearning needs of their surrounding residents,
there has arisen, throughout the ages, religious restraints against rebellious behavior of local congregants and perspective
local congregants.
The actual presence of a church and its faithful followers (whether sincerely and honestly concerned
with following God’s will or not) in a community gives a passively active reminder to not steal, lie, cheat, etc. that
is brought to fore when a non-Christian finds life and its issues too overbearing to remain detached from efforts to at the
least inquire of the church for answers. The answers given by clergy are many times, if not most times, exactly correct according
to Scripture… but most often in the wrong focus of direction for the wrong reasons, because the clergy itself is misinformed
by its training, expectations, and inspiration.
Certainly, no amount of remorse, wallowing, crying and wailing, and feeling sorry for the harms one
has done to others and the self will make anyone a Christian. And, certainly, those things do not open the heart to Christ
so that He may enter in and make everything right for socially responsible attitudes and behavior. Letting people know they
are cared for by apologies and heartfelt recompense, as one may do, is both worldly human and Godly human though the selfish
or selfless reasons for an outreach are completely different.
Christian principle based psychological conversion has no more power to transform an individual into
a right minded honorable citizenship than straightening and repainting an automobile has to the functional condition of the
engine and driveline. Many church organizations teach and practice socially driven results based ministry, in the Name of
God, because convention and worldly common sense tells them the purposes for the Gospel are to serve mankind and his best
wishes to live properly, peaceably, and honorably.
The mistake is that anti-christ persuasions misguide a convert to believe Salvation is a saving,
a justification, of the good side of the person they already have been – the person they wish to be without the dark
side. This deceptively sly concept of corruption to the Gospel by the church comes from catering to the expectations of the
non-Christian through mutually recognized good works. Society tells people to be what he or she believes being a Christian
means when a person declares their decision to walk in the Christ commission. So
they are set up to lose the race before it starts by focusing on winning the positive results of Christ’s transformation.
This causes retention of the very who of who one believes he or she is in casting off the evil...
“to become a better me” and does not recognize who Christ created one to be. Salvation is mimicked by flesh motivations
to conform to the ideals a non-Christian believes Salvation is about and the church has lost its way to the world’s
standards. Forgotten in the entire process of living to improve one’s own person and the person of others, a couple
in marriage, and family unity with purposeful respect to who each member is (and probably at this moment while you, the reader,
are reading this sentence) the fact that Jesus Christ is alive exactly now in the way He said He is in Scripture.
We think of yesterday, and times past when He lived in the flesh, died, and rose. We think of times
future when He returns for His own who have accepted His ever-present dynamic truth of being-ness. But, we do not realize
His presence in the moment no matter where we are and/or what we are doing… because? We do not know Him as He asks us
to inquire of Him to know. And, knowing Him is not the same as knowing about Him. Being a fan of Jesus, as if He is the ultimate
perfect celebrity, has nothing to do with living unto Him in His will for each and every life.
But, it sure does set us up to personalize Him to suit our fashion, fascinations, and excitement.
When we have our personally designed Jesus there is no wonder we find fault with people who do not please the Jesus we think
they ought to be pleasing. It makes it very difficult (and all too common) to understand defending the Cross and Resurrection
of Redemptive Gospel by running down with stand-offish fighting anyone who does not suit our will of pride in self-determination,
“in God’s Name”, through malicious muckraking against anyone who we consider is not worthy of our honesty
and respect. Makes one painfully wonder who it is Jesus Christ actually raised from the grave to redeem. “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household.” Acts 16:31
Unlawful
Law
There is no viable law of mankind as distinct and separate from the law of God through Christ the living Word of Creation.
It is wrong to believe we have grace from Christ because we are forgiven through the works of the law. It is right to realize
that in Christ we have forgiveness, from beginning to end, through trust in the gift of grace over the law of works. Society’s
developing laws of pragmatic worldly sensibilities are feeble attempts to compensate for private and personal faithful living
as described by messengers (angels, prophets, priests, preachers, pastors and leaders; kings, emperors, rulers, and husbands
with their wives; as well as Jesus Christ Himself) from God.
Law legislation and enforcement, whether of organized governments and/or churches, without honor and confidence to
trust in God as He designates, will always be in contradiction to proper advancement into tangibly realized social benefit.
Bringing someone to justice by worldly wisdom condemns him or her to bondage under the rule of law. Bringing someone to justice
by God’s wisdom resolves his or her transgression, gratefully, through Christ’s righteousness.
Methods designed for administration of justice of and by the rule of law based in worldly wisdom may seem to safeguard
the general safety and welfare of inhabitants of a land. But, as people see that they cannot maintain their positions without
following Christ, they increasingly determine to maintain worldly standards at all hazards. With an indignant malicious spirit
they assail the character and motives of those who stand in defense of unpopular truth.
It is the same policy that has infiltrated social senses throughout the ages. Elijah the prophet was declared to be
a troublemaker in Israel, Jeremiah a traitor, Paul a polluter of the Temple, and Jesus Himself a blasphemer. From ages past
to now, those who would be loyal to truth have been denounced as seditious, heretical, or schismatic. Multitudes who are too
unbelieving to accept the sure word of living, will receive with unquestioning credulity an accusation against those who dare
to reprove traditional and fashionable sinfulness.
The Bible plainly teaches a time is approaching when the laws of the state will so conflict with the law of God in
its fulfillment in Christ that whosoever would obey His leading through faith to live in His divine precepts must brave reproach
and punishment as an evildoer. Punishment, isolation, retribution, restitution, profiling standards, and psychotherapeutic
treatment (soul invasive techniques and preparations termed ‘clinical’) serves to esteem an instinctual reliance
in religious dogma, in a Godless way, where people are thought to be extended animalistic branches of a bio/evolutionary tree.
As in harmful treatment practices for labeled conditions such as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, facing one’s
traumas by reenacting those traumas, and/or forcing fury because of fury over any affliction, denies a person’s reasons
for healthful desires. This process actually attempts to bring the Great White Throne Judgment at the end of all ages into
the here and now where people are treated to become stigmatized by who they are proclaimed to be - according to the acts and
ways that seem to generate from them and their surroundings.
The resultant disallowing of the freedoms God gives to us as a people through faith in Christ causes delusional and
fear based belief systems in the highest, and organized, ranks of the enemies of the gospel of Christ. They are they who openly
and explicitly ‘judge the law itself’ and ‘speak evil of the law’, who teach men to break (to dissolve,
to loose, to untie the obligation of) the law of the Truth of God in Christ Who brings redemption to all… through His
work of mercy and grace for all… by standing in for each of us, as us, in paying the price for our separation from His
leading.
People, and the social systems they devise and maintain, believe in the laws of this world as separate from the law
of God in Christ. They dispense with His purposes for the law; not one aspect of His law only, whether of the least or of
the greatest, but all the commandments at a stroke…. by viewing interconnected situations as the reasons for people
to be. But, the reasons people are is to be as God wishes. God’s wishes are for people to recognize evil for what it
is, as it happens, and respond to it with leadership and guidance from Him by their hand through Christ.
However, their concerns through knowing are misplaced by searching out evil to overcome through counteractive retribution.
Consequently, analysis and stricture are worked to humanly take measures of authority that only God trusts Jesus Christ to
manage through the hand of those who are faithing in Him – causing an intrusive necessary mole attitude as a cowardly
snooping way into affairs that belong between people and God. False defenders of right will speak indirectly to their prospect(s)
(or not at all), as they assume that character defines conditions when it is the conditions that define the character of a
situation.
The mistake made is an equating of the character of circumstances conditional situations bring being identified with
the people involved as if the people are the problem. But, contrary to personal integrity and authority in Christ, people
are subject to the very structure of society that admires the troubles it claims to despise. The most surprising of all
the circumstances that attend this strong delusion is that they who are given up to it really believe that they honor Christ
by overthrowing His law, and that they are magnifying His office while they are destroying His doctrine.
They honor God just as Judas did Christ when he said, “’Hail Master”, and kissed Him.’ And
He may justly say to every one of them, “Betrayest thou the Son of man with a kiss?” It is no other than betraying
Him with a kiss, to talk of His blood, and take away His Crown; to set light by any part of His law under pretense of advancing
His Gospel; nor indeed can anyone escape this charge, who preaches faith in any such manner as faith either directly or indirectly
tends to set aside any branch of obedience to justification in and through Christ’s resurrection; who preaches Christ
so as to disannul, or weaken in any wise, the least of the commandments of God for the intention the commandments are given.
The “be my lowbot or be nothing” clever attempts at interpersonal controls comes from the dread of wrath
being outside the Light of the Word of Truth. When accepted, that Light is realized as the glorious liberty of joy in appreciation
He truly is. Living through faith in Christ under God’s mercy in how we deal with others is quite different from living
in an emotionally self-defensive ‘quitter’s philosophy’ where people are thrown away and kept depending
in whether one or another serves a personal ‘law of belief’.
False preaching of the Gospel, which also includes preaching against the Gospel by touting the elements of natural
laws, entails characteristic undercurrents that appeal to personal notions of will that resembles Sodom’s exploitation
of their own lives in unrestrained experiencing God’s gift of awareness of life with disregard to why they possessed
such life.
State moral debasement and corruption, by the rule of law as separate from the church (as honestly structured civil
law, for Christ’s sake, by any state compliments the church), in flagrant defiance against respect for the Gospel’s
freedoms to choose one’s way through faith in Jesus Christ, is similar to that which brought destruction upon the ancient
cities of the plain, and represents together the cynicism and licentious mortal self-devised “freedoms” as foretold
in prophecy.
Thus, intimately connected with the laws affecting Godly faithful living in Christ, by controlling and/or opposing
religious compatibility with governmental respect of faith-in-Christ precepts, leaders laboriously uphold that which reduces
the union of marriage – the most sacred engagement which human beings can form, and the permanence of which leads most
strongly to the consolidation of society. Anti redemptive social norms of fittest survival, without Godly standards, devolve
through secular postulations into the state of mere civil contracts of a transitory character, which any two persons might
engage in and cast loose at pleasure…
If fiends had set themselves to work to discover a mode of most effectually destroying whatever is venerable, graceful,
or permanent in domestic life, and of obtaining at the same time as assurance that the mischief which it was their object
to create should be perpetuated from one generation to another, they could not have invented a more effectual plan than the
degradation of marriage and the family.
Understanding the nature of law as God created law to be in Christ – for the Word of Law necessarily is by and
through the fact of Christ Himself - there exists the closest vital connection that can be conceived between the Law of Moses
and the Gospel of Christ. On the one hand the true law of God naturally is noticed as our moments of experience transpire,
and makes way for and points us to, the Gospel. On the other hand, the Gospel continually leads us to a more spirited personal
fulfilling of the law in Christ.
The law as written in Scripture, for example, requires us to love God, to love our spouse and household thereof, to
love our neighbor, to be honest, respectful, and not to steal. In our worldly wisdom, we know that we are not sufficient for
these things. When we believe we are, we usually cast the blame for our own insufficiency onto others to hide our own inadequacies
in measuring up to the power of God.
Social health and vitality, that ‘with man this is impossible’ is, and always is, in the able Hands of
God. We see in our daily expectations (whether we realize or not what it is) a promise of and from God to give us that love
we are seeking; to display integrity and respect for a man and woman in marriage; to rely in the strength of honesty based
in family privacy; to respect the views and ongoing struggles of consideration for faith-action of ourselves and our neighbors;
to be thankful to God for what we do have to build upon in faith by not taking what belongs to others.
If our Father in heaven were the task master of rules, as self-focused people are, He would defend His Authority in
Christ to force everybody into compliance with His standards of being. But, in His ever enduring love for genuinely being
loved, He gives to us all the freedoms to obey His leading, for His Name sake, by treating those we love (and those we think
we cannot love) the way He treats us.
Laying hold of this Gospel of these glad tidings is done unto us according to our trust in faith in Who Christ is through
interaction with our spouses, children, families, neighbors, etc. – always in that order, for who they are in Him. And,
the ‘righteousness of the law is fulfilled in us,’ through faith which is active in Christ Jesus through us.
“When traveling remember not to prey as you come
and go. Remember, rather, to go and come as you pray.”
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