What I am saying in these weekly blog postings may not be what you are
hearing at church, and I recognize it may even fly in the face of much accepted Christian teaching today.
For example, Jill just heard a popular Christian leader say that one gets closer to God in their Christian walk by “more carefully obeying God’s law.” One of my staples is “Our efforts to obey the law of God is deadly legalism, and true, biblical obedience is always only the natural, spontaneous, unconscious result of us leaving obedience entirely to Jesus living in us.”
Even more shocking is that I truly believe this means that God is actually doing what He says He will do when He tells us in Philippians 2:13 that he is, “changing our want-tos” to conform to His, so we actually can do God’s will for us by “doing what we want to do!” I believe this is the “Law of God applied by the grace of God, which is the TRUTH OF GOD!” (John 1:17).
This is the foundation of our series of courses, “Theology for Dummies,” we have been investigating. We are currently mid-way through the final course, “Why Am I Here?” We studied (A.) how our commission to reflect the image of God, white we are ruling over the earth with our wives, will be accomplished. It is by (B.) the internal tools God has given us, individually (last week), and by (C.) the external weapons we possess, corporately as His people (this week).
As I am learning more and more about these ideas, I am simply sharing them with you for your consideration, as we are enjoined to do in Scripture. I welcome all comments, disagreements, etc. (1 Corinthians 14:26). That is the church in action!
So, let’s look at (C.), the external weapons God has given us to empower us as His children to complete our commission to rule over the earth. Seeing how God tells us to use them is absolutely essential if we are to ever be effective in battle.
C. EXTERNAL WEAPONS – God has given us His only ordained institutions—the Family, the Church, the Civil Government—as our weapons to use in our task. These are so powerful that, when activated as God has instructed us in His word, Satan and his minions are powerless to stop our attack (Matthew 16:18)!
It is important to realize that Satan lost his legal authority to rule over the earth at the cross. There he became a legal murderer in the court of divine justice for the first time, when he killed Jesus. In a blind fit of rage after he could not trick Him as he did Adam and Eve, he killed Jesus on the cross, an innocent, virgin-born man who was not Adam’s descendant. Therefore, Satan had no authority over Him. Satan killed an innocent man! The cross was a divine sting operation!
Thus, Jesus was not born as Satan’s slave, as are all other humans. Since the cross, Satan is a legal murderer himself, a guilty, defeated, toothless tiger. He no longer has divine ruling authority and is desperately trying to hold onto his lost kingdom with lying, deceit and trickery. We will biblically apply the weapons we are investigating to finally defeat Satan’s guerilla resistance. I owe my understanding of this truth to Paul Billheimer in his book, Destined for the Throne. The first weapon at our disposal is:
1. The Family. This is the initial weapon, and in many ways, the most crucial. Both Church and Civil Government depend totally on the family to supply young warriors with a kingdom vision, to lead those institutions. Men are loving their wives with unconditional, without-reason, agape love “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her…So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself (Ephesians 5:25, 28), and then leading them with strong, firm decision-making.
In turn, wives are submitting to that leadership:; “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord, For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church; and He is the Savior of the body. Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything” (Ephesians 5:22-24),
Together, they will see that reproducing, then nurturing and training their offspring with biblical child-training is foundational to the kingdom of God. It is a third of our divine commission to rule. Without this we have no Kingdom—with the family functioning, the “Kingdom is coming,” now!
2. The Church. The church’s unique, primary job when its members meet together is not to have fellowship (though they most assuredly will), or evangelize visitors (which will also happen) or even to worship God (which will wondrously occur). “He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, FOR THE EQUIPPING OF THE SAINTS FOR THE WORK OF THE MINISTRY, for the edifying of the body of Christ” (Ephesians 4:11, 12)
Thus, it is the diligent efforts of us church members, waking in the light together, and exercising our varied gifts (not just the elders, i.e., “the leaders”), to accomplish our primary goal. This goal, the goal of the entire church as it meets together, is to equip ourselves to minister to the world around us, every day, wherever we go, and with whomever we meet! Most importantly, this will occur at home with our children (How can we parents, if we were not trained ourselves as children, have a clue how to train our children)? Help!
As we absorb this equipping, naturally, spontaneously, and unconsciously, ministry will occur, wherever we go and with whomever we touch. We are ruling! We are building a cathedral, and God says we cannot be stopped (Matthew 16:18)!
The church is equipping us, as well, to function in the civil government. We will conclude our coure on “Why Am I Here?” next week by looking at how and why it is vital that the church be involved in government.
