God's Covenant With Abraham — Major Ian Thomas

The Gospel Preached to Abraham and the Blessing of Christ

I'd like first just to read a few verses to you from the third chapter of the Galatian Epistles. The eighth verse. And the scripture foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all the pams of the earth be dressed.

So then they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham. For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse, for it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the Lord of duty.

But that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, it is evident. For the just shall live by faith, and the law is not of faith. But the man that doeth them shall live in them. Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us.

For it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree, that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.

Now just refer back, would you, to that eighth verse with which we commenced in this third chapter. The scripture foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed.

God preaching gospel, good news. When it says that God first preached the gospel to Abraham, it doesn't mean that God thought it up and the first man that ever heard the good news of the gospel was faithful Abraham.

For as some of us saw last evening, the seeds of God's redemptive and regenerative purpose were planted in the very chapter, the third of the first book in the Bible, Genesis, where the record is given to us of man's fall into sin.

But God chose a man whose name was Abraham, through whom that redemptive purpose was to be consummated in the birth of one of his seeds, the individual, as we are reminded in the sixteenth verse of that third chapter of the epistles of the Galatians, the Lord Jesus.

Do you remember what it says? Yes. To Abraham and his seed singular where the promise is made, he says, not and to seeds plural as of many, but as of one to thy seed, which is Christ. In other words, the covenant that God made, the pledge that he made to faithful Abraham didn't concern a nation or its culture or what as a corporate body it might offer to the world.

But he specifically spoke of one individual seed singular who should be born into this world. We know who that was born on that first Christmas morning, nearly 2000 years ago in the city of David. Bethlehem.

But there was a covenant that God was made between himself and Abraham and the redemptive work of Christ upon the cross that delivers us from the curse of the law that only exposes our sin, stops our mouths and proves us guilty, that he might redeem us from the judgment that must rightly fall upon those who fail to satisfy the minimal demands that a holy God makes upon man made in his likeness.

On the basis of that redemptive transaction, there might be accomplished in you and me what he described in that 14th verse as the blessing of Abraham, Christ, verse 13, hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, the seed who was promised by God in Abraham, being made a curse for us, for it is written, Cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree and comprehended in that 13th verse is the redemptive transaction, the vicarious atoning work of Christ, which God credited him with your guilt and is willing and able to credit us with his righteousness, to whom there has been imputed or credited his death, that there might now be credited to us his life.

The Law Reveals Sin and Humanity's Failure

Now just a brief word in passing concerning the curse of the law. The law in itself of course is not a curse, that is not what it means. It simply means that the law comprehends the minimal demands that a holy God may reasonably make upon man, his creature, made in the absolute unsullied likeness of God his maker.

Sin is variously defined in the word of God. One definition you'll find in the fourth chapter of the first of John's three epistles. No need to turn to it, but the fourth chapter of the first of John's three epistles.

Sin is the transgression of the law. Now that's one definition that is given to us of sin. Sin is the transgression of the law. What law? God's law. A law that was penned with the finger of God upon tables of stone and presented to Moses in Mount Sinai.

And that law simply represented, as it were, a transcription of the righteousness of God described in language that is relevant to you and to me today on earth. There's nothing new about the righteousness of God.

The righteousness of God, which is absolute, timeless, eternal, and unchanging, is as immutable and timeless as God himself. God has never changed. But in all that we men, his creatures, on earth, might know the demands that that righteousness makes upon a man created in God's likeness, it was transcribed for us in terms of the Ten Commandments and such other allied commandments as God from time to time may have been pleased to add.

When the law says, Thou shalt not steal, all that God is saying through the law is this. I, your creator, made you my creature in my image, my likeness. I gave you a physical and a visible body, that in that physical and visible body you might give a physical and a visible expression of an invisible God so that all creation, looking at man, might know what God was like.

So when the law says, Thou shalt not steal, all that God is saying is this. I, as your God creator, made you man, my creature, in my unblemished likeness, and I'm not a thief. When by the law God says, Thou shalt not bear self-witness, don't tell lies, all that God is saying is this.

As your creator, I made you man, my creature, in my perfect likeness, and I'm not a liar. When God, by the law, says, Thou shalt not commit adultery, all that God is simply saying is this. That as your creator God, I made you my creature man, to give an unblemished, absolute expression of my perfect righteousness, and I'm not an adulterer.

The Image of God and the Loss of Moral Competence

Now the curse of the law is simply this. That God having not only made us in his image, but imparted to us by his divine presence through the Holy Spirit, the moral competence that made it possible for man to discharge that responsibility, man of his own free will repudiated the moral relationship that lets God in a man, be all that God is to that man, providing him by the presence of deity within man in his humanity, with the moral competence to discharge the office which God made him, he repudiated that relationship, he lost God, and now no longer can discharge that office.

So that although the law of God reasonably says to man, Thou shalt not steal, men, thieves. So that although the law of God, which is a reasonable demand that a holy God can make upon a man his creature in his own likeness, Thou shalt not bear false witness, men, lies.

All down the record. In other words, man created in normality to give a valid expression of God's likeness is no longer telling the truth about God. He's a caricature of God. He gives only a shabby, cheap imitation of the real thing, and that is the controversy that God has with man.

That's why in defining sin another way, in the epistle to the Romans, the apostle Paul chapter 3 and verse 23 says this, there is no difference. There is no difference. All have sinned, in that all have transgressed the minimal demands that God makes upon a man according to the law.

And having sinned, all have come short of the glory. What's the glory? Not heaven, though heaven is glorious. The glory is simply God's likeness. God's likeness. God's image. A valid reflection of God's absolute, utter, unchanging holiness.

That's the glory. And because man, in repudiating the relationship that lets God be God in the man, is no longer morally competent to satisfy the demands that he as creator makes upon man, his creature, we have fallen short of the glory.

In other words, instead of, as God created you to do, telling the truth about God, by what we do and say and are, we constantly tell lies about God. How did man lose his moral competence so that he no longer is capable of satisfying the demands that the law makes upon a man?

What actually happens? Because until we understand that, we shall not be able to understand adequately what happens when, on the grounds of redemption, there takes place a spiritual regeneration. Now we don't have time to major too long upon this, but it's absolutely vital as the essential premise upon which we may safely build our understanding of God's purpose and plan in sending his son into this world.

Body, Soul, and Spirit in Humanity's Creation

There are three orders of physical life on this earth. There's what we call the vegetable kingdom. There is also the animal kingdom. And physiologically, man, of course, is included in that group, because we feed, breathe, bleed, and breed the animal way.

But God, as we shall see, has lifted man out of the animal kingdom and made man, man, by unique creation. Not by a process of evolution, of course, that's for the birds. But by a unique act of creation, God created man, though physiologically an animal, in such a way that he can have a moral relationship to God his maker.

And it's the capacity that is built into man to have a moral relationship with God his maker that lifts man out of the animal kingdom and makes man, man. Now in common with all forms of physical life, vegetable and animal, man possesses a body.

Of this we're in no doubt, whatever. Most of us have said it within the last couple of hours. And some of us have washed it since we got up this morning. And being mostly adults, I suppose that's everybody.

It's that part of you that gets toothache and corns. It's the body. It's the house you live in. But in common with all forms of animal life, you and I possess a soul. And the soul is that behavior mechanism that is built into you and to me that enables us to behave in a way that a plant can't behave.

There has been given to you and to me in common with all forms of animal life a mental capacity and emotional capacity and abolitional capacity. In other words, a capacity to think on occasion, a capacity to react emotionally and on the basis of the way you react emotionally and think mentally, you decide volitionally.

Mind, emotion and will. Whoever teaches the mind, whoever teaches the emotions, directs the will. And whoever directs the will ultimately governs behavior. Mind, emotion and will. That's the soul. Try part in character.

And more often than not, in the Bible described as the heart, it comes as quite a surprise to some folks to know that animals in common with man possess a soul. But again, without enlarging upon that, because we don't have time, if you care to do so, if you're making notes, you can note the 30th verse of the first chapter of the book of Genesis and you can relate that to the 7th verse of the second chapter of the book of Genesis and you can relate that to an occasion throughout the 9th chapter of the book of Genesis where God commands Noah to take two of every creature, because you'll discover that the words used in each case, as represented in the 7th verse of the second chapter of the book of Genesis, translated from the same original words.

Living soul. Living soul, which is common to beast, bird, insect, fish and man. Your mind, your emotions and your will. Whoever controls mind, whoever controls emotions, controls will, whoever directs the will governs behavior.

So the fact that you have got a soul doesn't distinguish you as man from animal. It simply proves that you're not a vegetable. And that's encouraging. What then is it that distinguishes man from the animal kingdom?

Well God in his wisdom has been pleased to protect the animal kingdom in its behavior patterns by a built-in computerized program. And for the sake of convenience we call it instinct, so that we recognize that each form of the animal kingdom within its species will behave in a certain characteristic way on a repetitive basis, generation after generation, century after century, and yet it never goes to school.

It doesn't have a textbook, but by this means God has preserved it and provided for its reproduction. So in the animal kingdom you recognize feeding habits, mating seasons, migratory paths, building skills, all of which are carried out within the animal kingdom with meticulous mathematical accuracy in such a way that the species is not only preserved but reproduced.

And I only wish that we had time to examine that more fully and to discover some of the marvelous illustrations to which we can so easily turn in the world around us. Now if God can control the animal kingdom in their behavior patterns in such a marvelous way by a built-in instinctive trust so that they will on a repetitive basis again and again fulfill their responsibilities, don't you think it would have been possible for God to create a man whose behavior patterns would be governed by a built-in instinctive trust, a computerized program, so that with meticulous mathematical accuracy in everything he ever did, said, or was, he would give a complete, unsullied, unblemished expression of God's total life?

Well of course he could. If God by instinct can govern the behavior patterns of the salmon and bring them years after their being hatched back to the place where they were hatched to reproduce, if God by built-in instinctive trust can take a bird hundreds and hundreds of miles across a trackless ocean and bring it to its final winter destination, if God by a built-in instinctive trust can determine that a bee once gathering its raw materials from one species of plant will never under any circumstances go to another so that cross-pollination will take place, then God could have produced a man who with the same mathematical accuracy would have given a valid expression of God's total life.

And all creation would have seen a man governed by instinct showing what God was like. Now why didn't he do that? For a very good and simple reason. Because when an instinct, when an insect, or a bird, or a beast, or a fish, governed by an instinctive trust behaves in a certain way, it's not saying anything to God.

It's not adopting an attitude. It isn't adopting a disposition towards its maker. It isn't God-conscious. It's impersonal. The bee which makes a honeycomb to an exact mathematical specification, maximum cubic capacity, maximum tensile strength, minimum materials used because wax in the manufacture of the honeycomb is so expensive to the bee, when the bee behaves that way that bee isn't looking into God's face, its creator, and saying, I'm a bee and you're my creator, and as my creator you made me to be the kind of bee you wanted me to be, and I, because I love you, want to be that kind of bee.

See? Is that what a bee is saying? No. It's not God-conscious. So God created man differently, for in man uniquely God, of all his creations, wanted to have a creature that could reciprocate his love for man by man's love for God.

In other words, man was created to have a moral relationship, capable of adopting an attitude, exercising a disposition towards his maker. When the animal kingdom behaves, it's not saying, God, I love you, or God, I hate you, or God, I couldn't care less.

But God created man in such a way that no matter what he does, 24 hours every day, whether he knows it or whether he doesn't, whether he likes it or whether he doesn't, by everything he does and says and is, he's saying something to God.

That's why, whether you like it or whether you don't, since you got up this morning and before you sleep tonight, by everything you've done, thought, or been, you will have been saying something to God.

You either will have been saying to God, I love you, and this is the way I want to demonstrate that fact, or you may, I trust not, have been saying to God, I hate you, and this is the way I'm demonstrating that fact, or tragically enough, more often than not, by what you've been doing, saying, and being today, you've adopted an attitude that says this, God, so far as what I'm doing at this moment, so far as the decision that I'm making at this moment, so far as the way I'm spending my money at this moment, so far as the plans I'm cherishing at this moment, so far as my ambitions are concerned, you might just as well be dead.

I couldn't care less, whether you like it or whether you don't. By everything you do and say and are, by the way you run your business, by your activities around the home, by the way you play football, by the quality of the work that you hand in if you're a school kid to your teacher, by the way the wife replies to her husband, by the way the boy talks to his dad, you're saying something to God.

You're saying, God, I love you, or God, I hate you, or God, quite frankly, I couldn't care less, you might just as well be dead. This is what lifts man out of the animal kingdom, and makes man, man. Because God created man to love God back.

And love cannot be compelled. Only love can satisfy love, and only to be befriended can satisfy friendship. And neither can be compelled. Neither can be demanded. And that's why God built into man the moral capacity to choose, to say yes or no.

A moral option, the exercise of which must always be his own personal responsibility, and a responsibility that God will never, under any circumstances, relieve a man of exercising. You've got to choose.

This is what gives to man the capacity to love God. You see, between the instinctive thrust and the animal soul there's a rigid interlock which is unbreakable, so that within very limited boundaries, its behaviour patterns are totally regimented.

Cannot escape. Not so with man. For God gave to man what he didn't give to any other form of created life. Not only a body, not only a soul, but a human spirit. And the human spirit is that unique capacity that God gave to man, and did not give to any other form of created life, that allows God as creator actually to take up residence and inhabit man, his creature.

So that the God who inhabits eternity, the prophet Isaiah tells us, is a God who is prepared to take up residence within the spirit of the humble and the contrite one, lest his purpose in creating the souls of men should be frustrated.

So when God first made man, having given him a body, and having given him a soul, having built into him a human spirit, as creator God he took up residence by the Holy Spirit. Within the human spirit.

That from within the human spirit he might have access to the human soul. That God himself, by the Holy Spirit, might play the role in man's soul that the instinctive thrust plays in that of the animal.

Teaching his mind, controlling his emotions, directing his will, and thereby governing his behavior. And it was the presence of God by the Holy Spirit from within the human spirit with access to the human soul to teach his mind, control his emotions, direct his will, and govern his behavior that provided for man as creature the moral competence to reproduce the likeness of God his creator.

Yes. Because God by the Holy Spirit from within the human spirit was to teach his mind, control his emotions, direct his will, govern his behavior, and therefore God himself within the man was the origin of his own image.

God himself within the man was the source of his own activity. God himself within the man was the cause of his own effect. And God himself within the man was himself the dynamic of all his own demands.

And that's why the Bible says faithful is he that calleth, he will also do it. 1 Thessalonians 5, 24. That's why the Bible says Philippians 2, 13 that it is God who works in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.

And that's why the Apostle Paul speaking to those who had newly been converted of the Christian faith who had repudiated their paganism and in humble repentance toward God had claimed redemption through the shed blood of the Lord Jesus and they themselves becoming the recipients of the Holy Spirit says Paul to them work out your own salvation because everything that God ever gave me he's given you.

And the day that I was converted on the road to Damascus claiming Christ as my Redeemer he risen from the dead came by the Holy Spirit to invade my humanity so that he from within my human spirit might once more have access to my human soul so now to me to live is Christ.

He teaches my mind, he controls my emotions, he directs my will, he governs my behavior. I am crucified with Christ nevertheless I live but don't get me wrong not I, Christ lives in me and the life that I'm now living in this body that you recognize by its physical features as that that once belonged to Saul of Tartus now belongs to a man called Paul the Apostle because I live by faith that lets Jesus Christ as God be God in me who gave himself for me and who's given himself to me so now I can do all things.

I've been restored to my moral competence I can do all things through Christ who is my strength but the difference was this apart from the fact that God by the Holy Spirit was to play the role within man's soul that instinct was to play within the animal soul as opposed to the rigid unbreakable interlock between the instinctive thrust and the animal soul there was to be a moral interlock between God by his Holy Spirit and the human soul.

And that moral interlock would derive from man's love for God expressed in man's dependence on God evidenced exclusively by man's obedience to God. Love for depends on obedience to and God would never under any circumstances violate that moral relationship.

So that when God first made man having given him a body having given him a soul having built within him the human spirit that he God by the Holy Spirit might inhabit his human spirit said in so many words to man so long as you're prepared out of your love for me and dependence on me to yield obedience to me you will share my life and not only that your life deriving from me you will exercise a derived authority over all the works of my hand but I will never violate the moral option that I've built into you.

No creature in eternity could be more wealthy than you are. You share the life of your creator and you've been given the fantastic privilege of yielding your members now so that he God behaving through your members can give in terms of your physical and visible body a physical and a visible expression of his invisible self.

But in the day that you repudiate the moral relationship that allows out of your love for me me to be God in you and the moment you repudiate your dependence on me by disobedience to me in that day you'll die.

You'll die. You'll die not physically for the animal part of you will survive your physical body and your human soul. But I will withdraw my presence and God the Holy Spirit in coality with co-equality with the Father and the Son will be absent from the human spirit.

Then you'll be physically alive. You'll be soulishly active. Your mind will still function your emotions will still function. Your will will still function. But you'll be spiritually destitute. You'll be empty of God.

You will be bankrupt. And you will neither be protected by instinct nor will you be governed by God. So you won't know how to behave like an animal. And you won't have what it takes to behave like a man.

And all that can produce is chaos and anarchy with every individual human being oriented around his own ego with all the fratricidal strife that has blighted damned and stained society all down the centuries of man's mad experiment of human self-sufficiency who believed at Satan's behest that a man can be man without God and in the absence of God invaded by sin principle called the spirit that now worketh and the children of disobedience that has its origin in Satan himself from the day that he fell into sin.

Embarking upon this tragic experiment of human self-sufficiency man's humanity has been abused misused and prostituted. The flesh profiteth nothing. No flesh will ever glory in God's presence. A sin principle of satanic origin that is essentially hostile to God.

It's described in the eighth chapter of the epistle to the Romans as the carnal mind that is not subject to the Lord God. Neither indeed can be because it has its roots in Satan himself the arch enemy of our creator God and the arch enemy of man who was created in that creators likeness.

So when man fell into sin he lost God. Nothing more complicated than that. And he lost God by the withdrawal of the Holy Spirit from the human spirit leaving him physically functional soulishly functional spiritually destitute still possessing a human spirit.

But a human spirit totally empty of the Holy Spirit death. That's a dead soul. Would you imagine God would have in mind in seeking to remedy the situation. Let me put it in the simplest way possible supposing.

You were sitting in your room tonight after dark reading a book or writing a letter and suddenly the light went out. You thought that's strange. You feel in the dark for the switch and you find it. This will still switch on.

Well yes there must be a fuse. But you look under the door and under the crack of the door you can see the light is on next room. Doesn't a fuse valve must have broken. So you open the door let the light in from the adjoining room screw the bulb out of the socket take it into the light and examine it.

And it isn't broken. Well you say it's funny currents flowing. No fuse bulb isn't broken. Switches on no light. Then you examine the terminals on the end of the bulb and you discover that they're dirty.

And there's been such an accumulation of dirt and rust now that although screwed into socket there's no contact with the flow of electricity. So your diagnosis is very simple. Dirty in life out light off that very complicated dirty in life out light off.

Redemption Restores the Life of God

All right. What happened when man fell into sin. We're told in the first chapter the John's gospel in the beginning was the word. The word was with God. The word was God by him all things were made without him was not anything made that was made in him.

The creative word the word that was made flesh and dwelt among us of whom says John we beheld his glory as of the only begotten of the father in him was life. And this life that was in him was the light of men.

It was only his presence by the Holy Spirit within the soul of man that gave to man the moral competence teaching his mind control his emotions directing his will and governing his behavior by what he doesn't says it is to give a valid expression of the likeness of God is maker in him was life.

This life was the light of men. But in the day that Adam fell into sin the Holy Spirit was withdrawn through whom man shared the life of Jesus Christ. And when the light went out the light went out dirty in sin.

Life out the withdrawal of the Holy Spirit. Light off. Man no longer morally competent to give a valid expression of God is maker the plaything of the devil himself whose humanity could only be prostituted by a simple principle of satanic origin that is hostile to the creator of the universe.

All right. What would you do about it. What. Inside. Get some sandpaper and I clean the terminals and get the dirt out. Okay you do that. And so now you've got a nice clean lamp and you go into the room again shut the door and put your nice clean lamp on the table and say I've got a nice clean lamp.

I can get on reading I can get on writing my letter. Tell me this. How much more light would you get from a nice clean lamp on your desk than from a dirty lamp in the socket. Would you get any more like.

Of course not if when the dirt came in the life went out and the light went off. The only purpose of getting the dirt out would be to let the light in to switch the light on. Right now you're beginning to understand what God was at in sending his son into this world not as so many supposed in the last.

So often the impression is given in the preaching of the gospel that Jesus died 2 ,000 years ago to to his to do his thing as it were so that men could get out of hell and into heaven. That's purely incidental gloriously true but purely incidental the purpose which the Lord Jesus died upon the cross and his blood was shed that you and I might be cleansed and reconciled to a holy God was not just to get us out of hell and into heaven but supremely to get God back out of heaven into man dirt out life in light on.

Because that's why the whole epistle to the Galatians was written because they missed the point they claim dirt out by the redemptive work of Christ upon the cross. But they've never intelligently understood that the whole purpose of getting the dirt out was to get the life in.

And so although the dirt being out God had put the life in they were ignoring the life that God put in. You remember Galatians chapter 3. Let me read these few verses to you beginning with the first verse from the Amplified New Testament which simply gives you more adequately from the original in Amplified English language what God had in mind when by the Holy Spirit he authored these words through his Apostle Paul.

Third chapter. Galatians. Oh you poor silly thoughtless unreflecting and senseless Galatians who is fascinated or bewitched or cast a spell over you under whom right before your very eyes Jesus Christ the Messiah was openly and graphically set forth portrayed as crucified you were there some of you when it happened.

And long since you've heard the story how that God incarnate in the person of his sinless son accomplished on the cross your redemption he shed his blood that your sins might be forgiven. Let me ask you this one question.

He goes on the second verse. Did you receive the Holy Spirit life in as a result of obeying the law and doing its works. Or was it by hearing the message of the gospel and believing in other words if God the Holy Spirit has been restored to you so that by his presence you can share the life of Jesus Christ.

Was it as a consequence of your performance in satisfying the demands of the law. Or was it in consequence in God's faithfulness of your faith that hearing the gospel that Jesus died that you might be forgiven that he risen from the dead might come and inhabit your humanity.

That was a rhetorical question. Because they knew exactly the answer. They knew perfectly well that nobody receives God the Holy Spirit as a reward because of their good performance in satisfying the demands of God's law.

Because there is none righteous no not one and all of sin and come short of that glory. Sin is the transgression of the law. There's no boy girl man a woman that's ever been morally competent from the day they were born to satisfy to God's holy satisfaction the demands that he makes through the law upon his creature made in his likeness.

So Paul says. Are you trying to persuade me that you receive God the Holy Spirit as a reward for your good works in satisfying the demands of God's law. You know better than that. Or he says was it in response to your faith in hearing the gospel and believing it that God in faithfulness accepted you back as forgiven sinners and restored to you the person of God the Holy Spirit who was lost in Adam.

Are you so foolish. There's three. Are you so senseless. Are you so silly having begun your new life spiritually with the Holy Spirit. Are you now reaching perfection by dependence on the flesh on the grounds of redemption because Jesus died for you the Holy Spirit has come back to live within you and share with you the life of God your creator and his son Jesus Christ so that he might teach your mind control your emotions and direct your will.

And he says you're so stupid. You're so silly. You're so senseless. You're so unthinking that in spite of having had the life of God restored to you by the gift to you of the Holy Spirit you ignore his presence.

And you're still trying to be made perfect in the old Adamic nature that couldn't before you were redeemed and now that you're ready now. That was the stupidity. That was the folly of the Galatians. But of course as most of us recognize it's the folly that most of us have perpetrated at one time or another and maybe are still so doing in our own Christian life.

Tell me this. If the person before redemption and the energy and enthusiasm of that old Adam nature tried quite sincerely to live the Christian life would they succeed or would they fail. Given any boy any girl any man any woman who's never claimed Christ as Redeemer who's not yet forgiven who hasn't enjoyed a spiritual new birth who only has the old Adam nature to play with.

Given that boy that girl that man that woman admiring maybe the life of a genuine Christian saying I'm gonna be a Christian like that. But they're not born again. They're not redeemed they're not saved they're not converted.

Tell me this. No matter how hard they try no matter how sincerely will they fail or succeed they'll fail. Well given a boy girl man a woman who has been converted who genuinely has received Christ as Redeemer who is born again to whom the Holy Spirit has been given but who in ignorance of that fact or in defiance of that fact ignores the Holy Spirit and in the same old Adam nature after redemption tries to live the Christian life.

Will that boy that girl that woman that man fail or succeed. They'll fail. What then is the essential difference between a person who tries before redemption to live the Christian life in the image of the flesh and the person who after redemption tries to live the Christian life in the image of the flesh.

What's the difference. What. One will fail on the way to hell and the other will fail on the way to heaven. That's the only difference. The only difference will be destination because there will be no more light from a clean lamp on the table than from a dirty lamp screwed into the sun.

Now this is the tragic fallacy that permeates a pragmatic evangelical society that has long since repudiated the imperative presence of God the Holy Ghost to give the spiritual dynamic to the Christian life.

So now we're all projecting patterns on each other to which we conform. And our conformity to those patterns are now equated is now equated with our spirituality in our relationship to God. Nothing could be farther from the truth.