Mar 11
17
Purpose of Despisers, Purpose of God
The whole purpose of Satan and the message preached in the synagogues of Satan are to keep men in ignorance to the liberty that is in Christ Jesus. It is not those who are being bewitched that I reject but those who have heard the gospel and yet teach the law. By pointing sinners to the law, and away from Christ, they turn men to darkness. They make a work of acceptance out of the gospel ordinances. Despisers bind sinners with heavy burdens saying that reward or punishment by God is according to something the believer does or does not do. This is the surest way to keep a sinner unsettled, ungodly, and full of filthy religious, immoral sin in every aspect of his life.
The whole purpose of God is to settle God’s people in Christ through the gospel. Beholding Christ our complete and perfect holiness, our acceptance with God, the believer is settled in this life because he knows that God who spared not his own Son has justified him from all things from which he could not be justified (or sanctified or redeemed) by the law of Moses or by his own wisdom. God who delivered up his own Son will also provide every temporal need we have so we do not have to live by the sword of our own hand between our fellow man. Also, the believer is settled concerning the life to come because as Christ is, so are we in this present evil world. He is risen never again to see death—the believer is likewise; Christ is no longer under the law–the believer is delivered likewise; Christ Jesus is free from the sin he was made on behalf of his people–likewise the believer; Christ is seated at God’s right hand–the believer is likewise. Eternal life is not something we shall have it is something the believer has right now. Acceptance is not something we are striving for it is a present reality in Christ our Beloved. Clay Curtis
—
THE KILLING LETTER-NOT THE FOUNTAIN OF LIFE
A fountain is supplied from its own spring, yields its contents to supply the poor and needy when they seek water and there is none elsewhere, and their tongue faileth for thirst, that they may drink and not famish, or die by famishing. So this law of the wise is a fountain of life, to depart from the snares of death. Can this law of the wise be the ten commandments, which are affirmed by some to be the believer’s only rule of life? I trow not. Paul tells us the letter killeth, 2 Cor. 3:6; that it is the law of death, Rom. 7:2; that the law worketh wrath, (Rom. 4:15); and is the ministration of death and condemnation, (2 Cor: 4:7,9) nor does our faith in Christ alter the nature of the law, or make it to us what it was not before. It is the yoke of bondage, and gendereth to bondage still; hence we are exhorted to stand fast in our liberty, and not be entangled again with that yoke of bondage, Gal. 5:1. It still retains its binding nature, even to the believer, and will entangle him again if he looks to it for help.
This rule of life, as some term it, is still a killing letter, hence God declares that, “we are delivered from the law, that being dead, wherein we were held, that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter,” Rom. 7:6. If the law be a killing letter, and the law of death, it cannot be a fountain of life; by which the wise man departs from the snares of death. We know that sin is a transgression of the law, and that where there is no law there is no transgression; and that death is the sentence of the law; if so, the commandments are the snares that hold the sinner in the arms of death. The first snare that entangles a thief is the law; and if he is left to the mercy of that, it will serve him as the spider does the fly in the web, never let him go till it has killed him; it is a killing letter, and so all will find it that weave the spider’s web, no web can be woven that will cover the soul on that loom; the commandment is exceeding broad. Nor can we suppose that our calling the ministration of condemnation the rule of life will alter this matter, or turn a killing letter into a living fountain; for that law gives no life, therefore it can be no part of this law of the wise. “Had there been a law given that could have given life, verily righteousness should have come by the law.” This law of the wise, that is, a fountain of life, to depart from the snares of death, is what Paul calls the ministration of the Spirit opposed to the ministration of death, 2 Cor. 3:9. Solomon’s fountain of life is Paul’s ministration of the Spirit; and what Solomon calls the snares of death is Paul’s law of death. The wise man’s law of life is the same as the living water that the Savior gives, that is in the believer as a well of water springing up into everlasting life. (Jn. 4:14)
Blessed be God forever, it is a fountain of life indeed by which the poor believing sinner departs from the snares of death, and that for ever more; or, to speak in the apostle’s language, “The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death;” that is, the law of the Spirit of life in Christ has made me free from the law of sin that works in my members, and to the law of Moses, which is the ministration of death. We may call this law of the wise the believer’s only rule of life, without talking nonsense.
William Huntington – extract from ‘The believer’s rule of life’.
—
God Sees No Sin In His People
“He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither hath he seen
perverseness in Israel.” Numbers 23:21
These words do not suggest that there was no sin or perverseness in Israel. There was an abundance of perverseness among them; but the Lord God did not mark the sins of His people against them. He did not impute sin to His chosen. He did not look upon their sins with the eye of His justice, but hid His face from them and forgave them. That which God did for His elect among the children of Israel, He has done for all His elect in Christ, His true Israel, “the Israel of God.”
Though there is much sin in us and done by us, as every true believer readily acknowledges and confesses (1 John 1:8, 10), yet God sees no sin in His people. The Lord Jesus Christ came into the world to destroy, purge, remove, and take away the sins of His people; and He has done it (John 1:29; Hebrews 1:3; 9:26; 1 John 3:5). All the sins of God’s elect were laid upon Christ. He bore them in His own body on the tree, endured and satisfied the wrath of God for them, and bore them away. The Son of God redeemed us from the curse of the law, made an end of our sins, and justified and sanctified us by His blood. God almighty has, through the effectual atonement of Christ, so thoroughly blotted out our sins that He does not behold them. He has cast our sins into the blessed, deep sea of Divine forgetfulness. He has cast our sins behind His back. He has removed them from us as far as the east is from the west, and remembers them no more. Therefore, God sees no sin in His people!
I am fully aware that this doctrine is commonly rejected and despised by men. It has been described by some as “a freak doctrine of perverted minds that leads to licentiousness and sin.” Why? I simply do not know. I cannot imagine anyone, who has tasted the bitterness of his own depravity and sin and has experienced the blessed forgiveness of sin by the grace of God through the blood of Christ, objecting to the fact that God “hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither hath he seen perverseness in Israel.” The fact that God sees no sin in His people is a most glorious, comforting doctrine of the Gospel, “without which,” John Gill appropriately declared, “the gospel must cease to be good news and glad tidings to the sons of men.
Would you have this forgiveness? What would you give to go to bed tonight knowing that God almighty does not behold sin in you and will never charge sin to you, to lay your head upon your pillow tonight with these words ringing in your heart: — “Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin”? If you are a sinner in need of such forgiveness, come now to the Son of God. Confess your sin to God, trusting Christ, and go your way, like the publican of old, justified. It is written in the Scriptures, “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). Both God’s faithfulness and his justice demand the forgiveness of all who believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Don Fortner