I Say Our

I say our lives are the greatest testimony for Christ. Joseph- Anthony a son of Jehovah

Christ Our Propitiation

Please don’t let that title scare you off. That is a beautiful and profound word.

Christ’s death turns away the wrath of God. The apostle Paul said Christ is our propitiation. He is a propitiatory sacrifice. It refers to what Christ did on our behalf before God.

We are “justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption, which is in Christ Jesus; whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith” (Romans 3:24-25).

God gave His Son as the means of the propitiation, “and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world” (1 John 2:2). “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10). A. T. Robertson said, “God could not let sin go as if a mere slip. God demanded the atonement and provided it.” It was “by the grace of God He might taste death for everyone” (Heb. 2:9).

The word “propitiate” in its classical form was used of the act of appeasing the Greek gods by a sacrifice, of rendering them favorable toward the worshipper. The sacrifice was offered by the pagan worshiper to buy off the anger of the god and buy his love. Note very carefully that this idea is not brought over into the New Testament. The LORD God does not need to be appeased nor is His love for sale.

In the New Testament it refers to the act of getting rid of sin which has come between God and man. The word hilasterion is used in the Greek translation of Leviticus 16:14 to refer to the golden cover on top of the Ark of the Covenant. In the Ark, below this lid, were placed the tablets of stone upon which were written the Ten Commandments, which Israel had violated. On the Day of Atonement before the Ark stood the High Priest representing the people who had sinned. When the sacrificial blood is sprinkled on this cover, it ceases to be a place of judgment and becomes a place of mercy. The blood comes between the violated law and the violators, the people. The blood of Jesus satisfies the just requirements of God’s holy law which mankind broke, pays the penalty for man, and thus removes that which had separated between a holy God and sinful man, sin, its guilt and penalty. This is far removed from the pagan idea of propitiation. Jesus Christ is God’s High Priest who was both the Mercy Seat and the Sacrifice, which transforms the former from a judgment seat to one where mercy is offered a sinner on the basis of justice satisfied.

Bengel observed that God, “’placed before the eyes of all’ unlike the ark of the covenant which was veiled and approached only by the high priest.”

The LORD God set forth His Son, the Lord Jesus, as the One who would be the satisfaction for our sins. Because God is satisfied with the payment of the sin debt, His wrath is turned aside, away from the believing sinner. Christ absorbed the wrath of God on our behalf. He bore our punishment as our substitute.

When God looked down upon the sacrifice He judged man guilty, the payment was paid in full, and in His righteousness could therefore acquit the believing sinner who put His trust in the Lamb of God. That mercy seat is the place were God met man in His grace since the sacrifice turned away the wrath of God because His righteousness was satisfied. The guilty sinner is spared because of the death of Christ in our place. When God looks down upon the believing sinner He sees not our sins and guilt, but the blood of Jesus. He is our expiatory sacrifice that satisfied the righteousness of God. His death paid our debt in full and a holy God was satisfied.

All of the lambs in the sacrifices in the Old Testament pointed to God’s perfect Lamb who would wholly remove our death penalty.

How do we know this is all true? We know we can trust God because a holy and righteous God tore the veil in the temple from top to the bottom. The moment Christ died it was like God the Father reached in and took hold of His outer garment and tore it from the top to the bottom in His mourning for His only Son. God tore the veil in two to open the way into His presence for all who believe on His Son as their sinless sacrifice who died as their propitiation. Bloody sacrifices came to an end in the temple because the death of Christ alone met all the holy demands of a thrice-holy God.

Have you placed your trust in God’s Lamb?

Am Ever More Grateful That

I am grateful for the Lords discipline but am ever more grateful that I do not experience His anger. Joseph- Anthony a son of Jehovah

Charge it to My Account

“Charge it.” “Charge it to my account.” Those are words we hear every day in the business world.

But did you know that those words have eternal significance, too?

“Imputation” (logizomai) is a word the apostle Paul used meaning, “to reckon,” “to charge to one’s account.”

In Philemon 18 the apostle asked Philemon to have Onesimus’ debts transferred to Paul. “If he has wronged you,” Paul said, “charge that to my account.” One who has something imputed to him is accountable under the law.

In the New Testament the believer in Christ receives the “alien righteousness” of God as a “free gift in the grace of that one man Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:15). God reckoned Abraham as righteousness on the basis of Abraham’s faith alone (Gen. 15:6; Rom. 4:3). Similarly, God does not impute the iniquity of the believer who trusts in Christ’s death (Rom 4:7-8). This act of God is based, not on our human merit, but on God’s love and saving grace (Rom. 5:6-8). We stand in the need of God’s grace (Rom. 3:23; 6:23).

In Adam, God judged the entire human race guilty, but only in Jesus is this fact fully understood (Isa. 53:4-6). But not only has humanity been declared guilty; it has acted out its personal guilt.

Jesus said charge it to My account. The apostle Paul wrote, “He [God] made Him [Jesus Christ] who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

“God made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin.” God took all of our sins and “imputed” them to His Son, put them on Him, i.e., put them to His account. He charged them to Jesus’ account. That is the meaning of “imputation.”

When you charge to someone’s account you take something that belongs to one person and you put it to the account of another. If someone owes you a debt you take it out of his page in your ledger and put it to the page belonging to another person in the ledger. Therefore, you have “imputed” the debt to another. That is what God has done with our sins. He has imputed our sins to His Son, and He has punished them in His substitutionary death on the cross (Rom. 5:6, 8).

Moreover, that is not all God does. We need something else. Just to take away my sins is not enough because before I can stand in the presence of God I must be positively holy. I need to be positively righteous. The Bible teaches us that God is righteous, just and holy. “God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all” (1 Jn. 1:5). Now anything less that His standard of righteousness cannot stand in His presence. I need to be positively righteous. God does something marvelous out of His grace. The moment you and I believe on God’s Son and His work for us He “imputes” His righteousness to us, He imputes that perfect observance of the law to us. We stand guilty before God because we have not kept the law. However, Christ has kept it perfectly and He is righteous before the law. God “put to my account,” i.e. “imputes to me” righteousness of His own Son.

When we stand before a righteous and holy God we are clothed in the righteousness of Christ. He clothes us with it. He puts it all to our account. Therefore, when the believer stands in the presence of God, God does not see you, He sees the righteousness of His Son covering you, clothing you completely and absolutely. That is grace! That is something only God can do.

This is one of the most important doctrines in the Christian faith. The imputed righteousness is Christ’s perfect righteousness attributed to me. It is imputed to me or put upon me by God. When God looks at me clothed in the righteousness of Christ, God pronounces me to be a just man, a righteous man, and the Law cannot touch me!

No wonder the apostle Paul declared, “There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ” (Romans 8:1). As a believer in Jesus Christ you are covered by this perfect spotless righteousness of the Son of God Himself, and have on the “breastplate of righteousness.”

Depend Upon His Strength To

Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Ephesians 6:10 The Holy Bible, The New Living Translation

To be strong in the Lord means to make Him your power source.

Depend upon His strength to get you through the day when you feel like you do not have the strength to blow your nose.

Depend upon His power to stand up and speak with wisdom and grace when you see or hear something morally wrong.

Depend upon His power when someone is annoying you so bad you want to strangle them.

Depend upon His strength when you see someone intentionally doing something that will hurt them and they ignore your warning. Especially, if this is a repeated habit ( I have learned to just walk away and tell them their is a reward for their arrogance and stupidity . I do not want to see the disaster or hear them blame everyone but themselves ).

Depend upon His strength and power when temptation is overwhelming you.

Can you think of any other times to call upon the Lord?

Prayer: Thank you Jehovah Elohe Mauzi (Psalms 43:2 GOD of My Strength ) for blessing me with Your Divine power and strength to stand up and defend the weak and to defeat the tempter. I praise You in the name of He who had the strength to suffer on that bloody cross and the power to resist the tempter, Jesus Christ. Amen

May you have a grateful heart towards He who has given so much to you. indeovi vas ( may you live with Jesus in Latin )

Seleh- stop and think about it.

This photo and article @ Joseph- Anthony a son of Jehovah 2023 Anyone is free to use this material and distribute it but it may not be sold without authors consent

Than All My

Wonderful grace of Jesus, greater than all my sin. Haldor Lillenas

Flee From Those That

[We must] pray constantly for His enabling grace to say no to temptation, of choosing to take all practical steps to avoid known areas of temptation and flee from those that surprise us.
Jerry Bridges

Blessed Assurance Jesus is Mine

God does not intend for His saved child to live the Christian life without the blessed assurance of eternal life.

The apostle Paul had a profound conviction that nothing will be able to separate the believer from the love of Christ (Rom. 8:31-39).

Jesus spoke of double assurance or security for the believer when He said to His disciples: “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; and I give eternal life to them, and they shall never perish; and no one shall snatch them out of My hand . . . and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one” (John 10:27-30).

We have “been born anew to a living hope” (1 Pet. 1:3-5). We are guarded by God’s power through faith for salvation. Because the new birth has taken place in our lives, we have the presence of the Holy Spirit within us (Rom. 8:23). He is called the “first fruits,” the initial promise and pledge of a greater harvest to follow. The Holy Spirit does a work in our lives producing His fruit that is characteristically different from our human nature. The Holy Spirit is evidence of assurance because “we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His own Spirit” (1 Jn. 4:13).

The ascension of Christ to heaven to be our advocate is another great assurance for the believer who has been saved by grace. Jesus “ever lives to make intercession on our behalf” (Rom. 8:34; 1 Jn. 2:2). He is our great God and “He is able for all time to save those who draw near to God through Him” (Heb. 7:25). Do you have an intimate love relationship with your Savior? Are you abiding in Him and He in you? Spend time with Him every day. Learn to go into His presence throughout the day and make yourself available to Him all day long.

God’s sovereignty gives assurance to the sinner saved by grace that “all that the Father gives Me will come to Me; and him who comes to Me I will not cast out” (Jn. 6:37). Have you taken these words of Jesus to heart and believed on Him alone for your salvation? God’s eternal purpose of salvation is such that He will accept and forgive all who trust Him for salvation.

Have you taken John 3:16 seriously? “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” Every person who hears His voice and follows Him will never perish or can ever be snatched out of His hand. And they can never fall out of His hands because Christ has His hands securely around the believer and God the Father has His hands around His Son! “My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all” (Jn. 10:29). How big is you God? Is He as big as Jesus claimed His Father to be? A God that big can provide eternal assurance for the weakest believer who is acutely aware of his sins and weaknesses. Have you confessed your need for Him to save you and keep you saved? Have you asked Him to save you? Are you trusting in Him alone for salvation?

If you are trusting in your good works to save you, then you should be filled with anxiety regarding your salvation. How can you ever have assurance that you have done enough good works, or are good enough, or perfect enough to be saved? Such presumptive pride should cause you to tremble before the Lord God (Matt. 7:21-23; Heb. 3:12).

Salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone (Eph. 2:8-9). Will you now put your faith and trust in the finished and all-sufficient work of Jesus Christ to save you for all eternity? When you do you can find eternal security. “He who begin a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:6).

SELAH! Pause – reflect- just think of that!

Message by Wil Pounds (c) 2006 Anyone is free to use this material and distribute it, but it may not be sold under any circumstances whatsoever without the author’s written consent.

Behold, What Manner of Love

Jesus wept at the tomb of His friend Lazarus. The Jewish people who saw Him responded to one another, “Behold, how He loved him” (John 11:35-36).

C. H. Spurgeon said to his congregation in London, “Most of us here, I trust, are not mere onlookers, but we have a share in the special love of Jesus. We see evidences of that love, not in the tears, but in the precious blood that He so freely shed for us. . . . Behold how He loves us!”

Have you ever asked yourself where or when He first loved you? With fullness of heart we can say, “See, how He loves me!” Is the beginning of that great love when we first believed? Could it have begun when He died for us? As we reflect back on our lives and His love for us there is no time when He did not love us.

When we ponder the beginning of His love for us, it takes us beyond our creation into past eternity.

In eternity past Jesus so identified Himself with us and covenanted to redeem us.

From past eternity Jesus looked down the distant future in His divine perspective and saw the disastrous ruin of sin in our lives and chose to do something about it. In past eternity Jesus Christ took up our cause and pledged to be the guarantee of God’s eternal covenant. Jesus knew that sinful man could never fulfill the demands of the covenant with the LORD God. Therefore, Jesus pledged to fulfill man’s part of the covenant. He did so on our behalf long before we were able to have any part of it.

Jesus pledged to die for us by giving His life as a ransom for our sins. It was a unilateral covenant through His own blood for it is sealed “through the blood of the eternal covenant” (Heb. 13:20).

It was not bilateral because He did it in past eternity by Himself without our asking. It is eternal, and because it is by His grace it is undeserved. Jesus knew that we could never remedy our sin problem so He stepped in, and out of His love and mercy did it for us.

In that great act of love He united Himself with us so that His life became our life, His death became our death, His burial became our burial and His resurrection became our resurrection. What love!

Where did Jesus do that? When He first loved us. Behold, what manner of love He has for you and me! Even before we were born, even before creation, even before the Fall, even before we sinned, His great love was settled for us. Behold, how He loves us!

“When the fullness of time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, in order that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba, Father'” (Gal. 4:4-6).

Again, we can only exclaim, “See what manner of love He has for us!” We can never lose that adoption. It is guaranteed in eternity, purchased by the blood of the Son of God at Calvary, and sealed by the Holy Spirit the moment we believed on Christ as our Redeemer.

What our Redeemer planned in eternity past before the foundation of the world, He accomplished in time, and it is guaranteed by His resurrection for all eternity. Cf. Romans 8:37-39; John 15:13; 3:16; Galatians 4:4-6.

Although our salvation was planned in eternity, and Christ fulfilled that eternal covenant in His own blood at Calvary, it is not automatic.

Jesus calls us personally and persistently until we respond to “the sweet compulsion of His grace.”

Have you responded in sweet surrender to His abounding love and grace? Do you have eyes only for Jesus? Or is the Holy Spirit still pursuing you and pleading with you to put your faith in Jesus Christ?

“Behold how He loves us,” but as Spurgeon asked, has anyone ever said to you, “Behold how he or she loves Jesus”? Can your friends say of you and me, “See what manner of love he or she has for Jesus”? “Behold how they love Jesus.” Has anyone ever said to you, “Why do you love Him so?” Why do you love and serve Jesus Christ?

And when they do ask you, what will you say to them?

“Behold, what manner of love . . . .”

SELAH! Pause – reflect- just think of that!

Message by Wil Pounds (c) 2006 Anyone is free to use this material and distribute it, but it may not be sold under any circumstances whatsoever without the author’s written consent.

A Zeal for the Righteousness of God

The apostle Paul prayed to God for the salvation of those who “have a zeal for God, but not in accordance with knowledge. For not knowing about God’s righteousness, and seeking to establish their own, they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God” (Romans 10:1-3).

The apostle Paul was making his plea to his own people who in their religious zeal had rejected God’s provision of His own perfect righteousness for their own self-righteousness. They were intensely religious in their own eyes, but not with the true knowledge of God. They were running well but in the wrong direction. They labored to do good deeds, but for the wrong goal. They were religious, sincere, dedicated, but in their anxiety, they would miss their eternal reward.

“They have a zeal for God.” I meet people like that every day. In their religious zeal, they knock on your door, too. Like the apostle Paul, I am not against religious zeal or enthusiasm. However, they are zealous in their religious ceremonies, prayers, observances, holy days, fasts, visitation, teaching, etc., “but not in accordance with knowledge.” There is no use being zealous if you are zealous for the wrong reason. It will not help you if you are going in the wrong direction spiritually.

The apostle Paul was writing from his own personal experience. He had been very zealous for the Law, and in that enthusiasm, he killed men and women who had a different “knowledge” than his. He had a mistaken zeal for God. He believed sincerely, but he was sincerely wrong. He had been zealous, but his zeal was focused on the wrong object.

Then there came a day when he gained true knowledge of the righteousness of God, and he counted all his self-righteousness as dung and received salvation by free grace alone.

Paul’s zeal became refocused “with knowledge” when he met the resurrected Christ on the road to Damascus. Knowledge of what? Before the encounter with Christ he did not know about God’s righteousness and sought to establish his own. In Philippians 3:4-6 he tells about that self-righteousness. He said, “I still count all things to be lost in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. . . that I may gain Christ” (v. 8). He gave up his zeal for self-righteousness by good works “that I may know Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith” (v. 9).

That is Paul’s “knowledge.” “For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes” (Rom. 10:4).

Spurgeon once said, “It is easier to get a sinner out of sin than a self-righteous man out of his self-righteousness.”

Have you tried to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with someone who thinks he can earn or merit a right relationship with God by his religious zeal?

What is the problem? In their zeal they “know nothing about God’s righteousness, and seek to establish their own, they do not subject themselves to the righteousness of God” (v. 3).

Any form of self-righteousness will never save you. In contrast, the Lord God has provided His own perfect righteousness by which He justifies the ungodly. Jesus Christ was obedient to the Law at every point, even to the point of death. God in His righteousness imputes the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ to the believing sinner. He imputes to the believer what Jesus did for you on the cross. God will accept the believing sinner because of what Jesus is and what He did. Jesus Christ shall be your righteousness.

If you say, “No, I will not have His righteousness; I will have a righteousness of my own,” you are ignorant of God’s righteousness, and you shall perish.

God would never have sent His Son to the cross if you could be saved by our religious zeal. The death of Jesus on the cross was needless if you could be saved otherwise (Acts 4:12). If you are trying to have a righteousness of your own by being zealous for God, your church or denomination, baptism, church membership, emotional experiences, etc. then you are in competition with Jesus Christ.

Your eternal salvation lies absolutely outside of yourself, in the person and atoning work of Jesus Christ. Salvation is not in what you do in your religious zeal, but in what Christ Jesus has done on your behalf.

If you try to add anything to that finished work by your own thought, feeling, good works, baptism, church membership, etc., you have spoiled the work of Christ on your behalf. It shall never be Christ plus your _________, regardless of what you may fill in the blank. If you are to be saved, you must get out of the way and let God alone do it. The spiritual birth is all God’s doing, not yours or mine. Sinners saved by grace through faith will glorify Jesus Christ alone. Salvation is all by free grace of God in Jesus Christ.

“Going about to establish their own righteousness, they have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God.” The righteousness of God is salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Sinners are saved by God’s grace. Salvation is through faith in Christ. It is based on grace, and free grace alone through faith alone which is in Jesus Christ alone! It is a gift from God freely received by the sinner.

SELAH! Pause – reflect- just think of that!

Message by Wil Pounds (c) 2006