The Christian Must Die! Part 2

The soul who sins shall die! Eze 18:20

So the question is how can a just and perfect God allow the soul who has sinned not to die? He can’t…now notice the word soul, this is not talking about the body dying but the soul. The soul is the inner you whereas the body is the outer you. The soul consist of your mind, your emotions and your will and remember what Jesus said about the value of a soul…


Mar 8:36 For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?

Now we know that God is always consistent in His dealings and must punish the soul that has sinned. We were made to live completely off of God and yet each of us has turned our own ways, desiring the things of our flesh and the world and thus shunning God in the process and as such our wages will be given and our soul is required in death. Never forget that God is fully just and fully loving and one of the great quandaries of thought is how can he be both…how can he love the sinner, hate the sin and be totally just in dealing with ALL of humanity. It goes back to the verse in Ezekiel that the soul who sins shall die.

Eph 2:4 But God, who is rich in mercy, because of his great love for us
Eph 2:5 even when we were dead because of our offenses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved),
Eph 2:6 raised us up with him, and seated us with him in the heavenly realm in Christ Jesus,

Do you see it here? It is so important to look at the verb tense and not just quickly read it. God raised us up with him and seated us with him…past tense. Let me go back just a little and explain this incredible and freeing doctrine.

2Co 5:14 For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died;

All HAVE died! God put all of mankind, the world into Jesus on the cross. All of our sin, all of our perverted personality, all of our wickedness in thought, word and deed and it was all crucified on the cross and we have been crucified with Christ. We were made new because for our sake our sins were laid upon Him and through this cosmic miracle we are freed from the law of sin and death because we were crucified with Him. This is a fact that we can now believe not based on our great minds but based on the Word of God and the character of Christ.

2Co 5:17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

2Co 5:21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

In the next post we will look at what actually happened and how we can live in victory because of what has already taken place.

The Christian Must Die! Part 1

The soul who sins shall die! Eze 18:20

If you have committed even one sin, in thought, word or deed the Bible declares the death penalty on you. The New Testament in the book of Romans brings this same point across

For the wages of sin is death…Rom 6:23

God is just and merciful and not a respecter of men and as such it is good and right that sin must be punished and the punishment is death. Sin is a rebellion against the very God that gives us everything we know and love. Sin is usurping the throne of the king and placing yourself upon that throne and declaring that: I will do as I will do no matter the cost! And as a result of sin judgment has come into this world stating the soul who sins shall die.

When one comes to the understanding that their life of sins deserves punishment and that pronounced sentence is death they soon come to a realization that they need mercy. Just as the people celebrating Pentecost…

Act 2:37 When they heard this, they were pierced to the heart. They asked Peter and the other apostles, "Brothers, what should we do?"

But God does not change, Hebrews tells us in the thirteenth chapter the Jesus is the same yesterday and today and forever. Thus we live under the pronounced death sentence just like the prisoner on death row but with a nice blue roof.

So the question is how can a just and perfect God allow the soul who has sinned not to die? He can’t…hold on one minute…I smell heresy…put down the stones and let me explain what the Bible says about the death of those that trust in Christ…but you will have to wait until tomorrow

Some inspriational testimonies

Here are two very different but very good testimonies...they are well worth your time to watch. God is continuously doing miracles in peoples lives right in front of us...the empirical proof is overwhelming.

I can't wait to hear (or maybe even see) the testimonies of the saints that God has so blessed me to minister to.




And here is one from Ray Comfort...

Knowing the power of Co-Eternal Life

I am not one for devotionals but this year I have been going through "My Utmost for His Highest" from Oswald Chambers. I endeavored so that my wife and I would have a launching point to discuss and to pray about, I also have been making notes in the hopes that one day my kids will read them and understand where Daddy was in 2009.

On Easter the devotional was so profound I wanted to share it with those that view this blog. My notes will be in blue. If you want to read the devotionals they are free on-line at http://www.rbc.org/utmost/index.php

April 12, 2009

Death no longer has dominion over Him. . . . the life that He lives, He lives to God. Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God . . . —Romans 6:9-11

Co-Eternal Life. Eternal life is the life which Jesus Christ exhibited on the human level. And it is this same life, not simply a copy of it, which is made evident in our mortal flesh when we are born again. Eternal life is not a gift from God; eternal life is the gift of God (This is such a profound and wonderful truth). The energy and the power which was so very evident in Jesus will be exhibited in us by an act of the absolute sovereign grace of God, once we have made that complete and effective decision about sin.

"You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you . . ." (Acts 1:8)— not power as a gift from the Holy Spirit; the power is the Holy Spirit, not something that He gives us. The life that was in Jesus becomes ours because of His Cross, once we make the decision (Are willing) to be identified with Him. If it is difficult to get right with God, it is because we refuse to make this moral decision about sin (Because we are not willing to do away once and for all with sin, we make provision for it and hold back a little for ourselves, we want to continue being our own god, we are not willing to be fully consecrated or set apart for and to God). But once we do decide, the full life of God comes in immediately. Jesus came to give us an endless supply of life— ". . . that you may be filled with all the fullness of God" ( Eph 3:1). Eternal life has nothing to do with time. It is the life which Jesus lived when He was down here, and the only Source of life is the Lord Jesus Christ.(all other sources are just frauds and deception by Satan, the father of lies, to keep our eyes off of the risen Christ and that is why the Bible says satan has blinded the eyes lest they see the glorious gospel of Christ)

Even the weakest saint can experience the power of the deity of the Son of God, when he is willing to "let go."(like the trapped monkey, see the story below***) But any effort to "hang on" to the least bit of our own power will only diminish the life of Jesus in us. We have to keep letting go, and slowly, but surely, the great full life of God will invade us, penetrating every part. Then Jesus will have complete and effective dominion in us, and people will take notice that we have been with Him (I think about the man with the shining face or Moses coming down from the mountain top so that his face had to be veiled and they knew he had been with God).

***In order to catch spider monkeys, hunters in South America simply walk through the jungle and drop heavy containers on the ground. These containers have very a narrow top and a wider bottom. Inside the containers the hunters drop a special kind of nut which is particularly attractive to the monkeys. Sometime later, the spider monkeys come down from the tops of the trees, smell the nut, but the tops of the containers are so narrow they have a tight squeeze to get their hands inside. Once they grab the nut at the bottom, their fist is too large to remove if through the opening. And the container is too heavy for them to carry.

So instead of letting go of the nut, the monkeys just sit there until the hunters come back, pick them up, and throw them in a bag.

The spider monkeys are not prepared to let go of a small nut in order to gain their freedom.

How would you answer these questions?

The video below is from the TV show "ER" and is a real life situation that happens everyday. The Chaplain (Reiko Aylesworth) is a "inclusionist" as seen later in a different clip (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RA-JzVxGTg) and when asked for real answers cannot come up with them.

This is a great teaching clip for those that are in Christ but it is also a great video to share with people. It is a way to move from the natural to the spiritual. Let me know if you have any comments or thoughts...Dave

What is the value of a soul?

One of the demonic tools most used today is distraction. Satan tempts us in every area of our life to take our eyes off of Jesus and to put it on something temporal. Satan tempts us to take our eyes off of other people and instead attach them to something superficial and fading. Oh, that we would see the value of a soul and live accordingly.

The value which God attaches to the soul appears from the fact that He gave His only begotten Son to save it. Would he bear so patiently with our ingratitude, our hardness of heart, and our rejection of Jesus, if He did not see the excellency of our souls and earnestly desire to snatch them from eternal burnings? Would he not leave us to sink into perdition? Would He so pathetically cry, "How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? how shall I deliver thee, Israel? how shall I make thee as Admah? how shall I set thee as Zeboim?" How earnestly God pleads with us to be saved. Has he not warned us by the horrors of hell, and allured us by the happiness of heaven? Has He not said He takes no pleasure in our death? Has He not brought every motive from the universe, from Himself, to bear upon our minds, in urging the value of the soul? ES Taylor

Do you know the 10 Commandments?

Here is what some of the great men of God had to say about the use of the law (10 commandments) in evangelism.

Jonathan Edwards: “The only way we can know whether we are sinning is by knowing His Moral Law.”

John Newton (wrote "Amazing Grace"): “Ignorance of the nature and design of the Law is at the bottom of most religious mistakes.”

D. L. Moody: “Ask Paul why [the Law] was given. Here is his answer, ‘That every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God’ (Romans 3:19). The Law stops every man’s mouth. I can always tell a man who is near the kingdom of God; his mouth is stopped. This, then, is why God gives us the Law—to show us ourselves in our true colors.”

Charles Finney: “Ever more the Law must prepare the way for the Gospel. To overlook this in instructing souls, is almost certain to result in false hope, the introduction of a false standard of Christian experience, and to fill the Church with false converts... time will make this plain.”

Please know them and memorize them. I will leave you with what Paul said about the Law and Christ

Gal 3:24 Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.