Don't be too hard on yourself

Originally posted by sonship
Every individual post of mine does not exhaustively cover ALL aspects of the Christian life. One day maybe I will devote a thread to the book of James.

I am not asking for a thread. It's a question that requires a yes or no answer and it cites directly the words you used in the post - on this thread - that I was replying to.

Originally posted by sonship
Many tend to think God wants our goodness. God doesn't want our goodness.

Isn't obeying Christ's commands about "goodness" then?

These objections I will try to make relevant to the thread's OP.

He preaches dead faith .. correct.
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No, I am explaining how spiritual life increases in the Body - in the corporate experience of Christ. Life power grows stronger as God's plan is drawn closer to.

And His purpose is a corporate expression of God living in and flowing out of man.
So the Christians is well advised that to be in companionship - ie. together in His name - in His Person - releases more grace and empowerment for all involved.

This is what I have seen. it is not just a doctrinal understanding of things.


He discourages Christians from being a Light of the world and salt of the earth
But these are Christians who are of like mind.
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Two symbols were given by Jesus in Matthew's "preaching on the mount".

One was that the disciples are "the salt of the earth".
The other was that the disciples are a "city on a hill".

One can be taken more individually (perhaps) - the salt of the earth.
But "a city on a hill" is certainly a collective matter. This thread is about the increased grace that comes to Christians by recognizing that "city" nature of the life that is implanted into them. We Christians are part of a corporate expression.

This "city on a hill" is something supernatural. it is not anything that occurs apart from the divine life of God. It is not a good country or a nice community. The "city on the hill" is God dispensed into a corporate group of people, shining out of them, flowing out of them so that they became a corporate expression of Christ.

Each of the local churches in Revelation 2 and 3 is symbolized as a golden lampstand. Gold signifies not the natural nature man is born with but the divine nature of God of which the Christian can partake.

" ... you might become partakers of the divine nature, ... " (See 1 Peter 1:4)

Salt of the earth means that the presence of the kingdom of the heavens people restrain the earth from being totally corrupted and rotten. Salt preserves food from rottenness.
Salt restrains and restricts the progression of spoiling and rottenness.

The presence of Christians in the church age is not to totally heal all the runaway world's problems. But it is to allow a collective light as a city on a hill to testify of God and man united. And the believers in the world act as a preserving agent to slow the process of the moral rotting of the godless society.


The chosen and elect of God will pay him no mind.
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Possibly some chosen and elect will get a wee bit more Christian benefit from this then from reading about how many beers you can boast of drinking in a day, as you did.

Originally posted by sonship
This thread is about the increased grace that comes to Christians by recognizing that "city" nature of the life that is implanted into them.

Does "increased grace" make the "outflow" of "good works" more, or less, likely to occur?

Originally posted by sonship
These objections I will try to make relevant to the thread's OP.

[b] He preaches dead faith .. correct.
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No, I am explaining how spiritual life increases in the Body - in the corporate experience of Christ. Life power grows stronger as God's plan is drawn closer to.

And His purpose is a corp ...[text shortened]... from this then from reading about how many beers you can boast of drinking in a day, as you did.[/b]

I just read the first couple of lines, not interested in your long ranting.

Dead faith is defined as faith without good works and righteous living..

You preach of faith... only.. all the time .. non stop. You encourage faith alone.
You preach nothing of good works and righteousness. You in fact discourage it by referrring to it as legalistic and trying to earn your salvation.

Therefore you are a preacher of dead faith.

Originally posted by sonship
Possibly some chosen and elect will get a wee bit more Christian benefit from this then from reading about how many beers you can boast of drinking in a day, as you did.

You are claiming that Rajk999's post that mentioned beer was him boasting about how many beers he can drink in a day? I don't remember that at all, although I do remember a different post in which he mentioned beer. Which post of his are you referring to?

Originally posted by FMF
Isn't obeying Christ's commands about "goodness" then?

Yes.
Obeying Christ's commands in vital.

This thread is about the empowering to live Christ that seems to increase in the practical experience of the Body of Christ.

I am convinced that God will not allow many of the things that defeat us to be conquered in an isolated and individualistic Christian life. We are defeated in some things because we are apart from His plan to have a corporate Body for Christ.

I think the age of spiritual giants is probably over. Toward the second coming of Christ, I think it is not spiritual giants Jesus seeks. But it is a brotherly love corporate expression He wishes to manifest.

Look at what He told the church in Philadelphia. That is the church in "brotherly love". He told them that they were not so strong. They had a little power. But He has put before them an opened door which no one can shut.

They have "a little power". They are not spiritual giants. But the love binds them together and empowers them and places the opened door of the coming kingdom before them.

" And to the messenger of the church in Philadelphia write: These things says the Holy One, the true One, the One who has the key of David, the One who opens and no one will shut, and shuts and no one opens.

I know your works; behold, I have put before you an opened door which no one can shut, BECAUSE ... you have a little power and have kept My word and have not denied My name." (Rev. 3:7-8)

Originally posted by Rajk999

You preach of faith... only.. all the time .. non stop. You encourage faith alone.

You do know that the writer of Hebrews said that without faith it is impossible to please God. Right ?

"But without faith it is impossible to be well pleasing to Him, for he who comes forward to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him." (Heb. 11:6)

Originally posted by sonship
Yes.
Obeying Christ's commands in vital.

You said "God doesn't want our goodness". And I asked "Isn't obeying Christ's commands about goodness then?" And you say "yes". So your god figure doesn't want goodness or he does want goodness - which is it to be?

Originally posted by sonship
You do know that the writer of Hebrews said that without faith it is impossible to please God. Right ?

Is it impossible to please your god figure without works?

Originally posted by FMF
You said "God doesn't want our goodness". And I asked "Isn't obeying Christ's commands about goodness then?" And you say "yes". So your god figure [b]doesn't want goodness or he does want goodness - which is it to be?[/b]

He is tying up himself in knots. This is the end result of lies and deceit.

Originally posted by FMF
You said "God doesn't want our goodness". And I asked "Isn't obeying Christ's commands about goodness then?" And you say "yes". So your god figure [b]doesn't want goodness or he does want goodness - which is it to be?[/b]

He wants Christ as our goodness.
He wants Christ as our everything.

All we are has been rejected for His eternal purpose.
If all we were had not been rejected then Christ would not have had to go to the cross.

He wants Christ to save us and Christ to live in us and for Christ to be expressed from us. He wants us to "grow up into Him in all things."

That is a process. That is accomplished by the growth over a life time.

To prove that God wants our goodness to BE Christ living in us we see from the epistle to the Corinthians -

" But of Him [God] you are in Christ Jesus, who became wisdom to us from God; both righteousness and sanctification and redemption,

That is as it is written, he who boasts, let him boast in the Lord." (1 Cor. 1:30,31)

For His kingdom God wants not our natural wisdom. He wants us to find Christ as wisdom to us.
He wants Christ to be our righteousness, our sanctification and our redemption.

I was very helped to see this in a book by Watchman Nee which were messages given by him and recorded. The book was entitled "Christ, the Sum of All Spiritual Things"

It was both revelatory and liberating.

But to come forward to God, first you must believe that God is.
This thread is not occupied with debating an Atheist about whether God is real or a figure of imagination.

This thread is about the empowering of grace that occurs in the experience of Christ's Body. Probably the people who get any benefit from it have already settled in their hearts the question of God's existence.

God exists.
God in Christ is richer.
God in Christ living IN us is richer still.
God in Christ living in a corporate Body is richer still.

Originally posted by sonship

You preach of faith... only.. all the time .. non stop. You encourage faith alone.

You do know that the writer of [b] Hebrews said that without faith it is impossible to please God. Right ?

"But without faith it is impossible to be well pleasing to Him, for he who comes forward to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him." (Heb. 11:6)

[/b]

Aha .. glad you went there. I will start a thread on this topic. thanks.

Also I notice that you are justifying your faith alone stance.

Originally posted by sonship
He wants Christ as our goodness.
He wants Christ as our everything.

And, do we have to actually do anything?

Originally posted by Rajk999
Aha .. glad you went there. I will start a thread on this topic. thanks.

Also I notice that you are justifying your faith alone stance.

Then you agree I guess.

Without faith it is impossible to be well pleasing to God.
Faith leaves nothing for man to boast in in himself.

Not just initially He wants faith in Christ.
But all along the way of living Christ and producing the fruit by and for Christ, He wants us to do so through faith in Him.

Paul and his companions had NO CONFIDENCE in the natural flesh - the fallen man. All their confidence for work was in the Spirit of Christ indwelling them, empowering them, spontaneously flowing out of them towards those for whom they labored.

" For we are the circumcision, the ones who serve by the Spirit of God and boast in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh." (Philippians 3:3)

This is where the Christian needs to be.