Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: Merciful (07/25/24)
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TITLE: Getting What We Don’t Deserve | Previous Challenge Entry
By Doug Laird
07/30/24 -
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How so? (A) We have all sinned (1). (B) “… the wages (divine pay-back) for sin is (spiritual) death (Rom.6: 23a NASB2020).”
James 2:10 points out that when we break even one of God’s laws, we stand as guilty as the one who has broken them all! This pretty much puts all of us in the same stinking, sinking boat.
No amount of religious activity, good conduct, repentance, penance, or good deeds can generate one second of eternal life needed to enter the kingdom of God.
As members of a fallen race, Man was, and is, at God’s undeserved mercy.
Eternal life is a gift that God bestows on believers.
Ezekiel 18: 4b NASB2020 clearly states that the soul who sins will die, but it must be understood that this verse is talking about spiritual death.
The human soul is created by God, not by our biological parents (2).
The natural life span of our natural body had a beginning and has an ending.
The life span of our soul had a beginning, but will never have an end.
Every human soul, created by God in His never-ending likeness, has everlasting life, and will live on throughout all of Eternity, either in or out of fellowship with God.
It is the soul with its everlasting life, that receives the gift of eternal life,that will spend Eternity future in fellowship with God.
The soul with its everlasting life, that does not receive God’s gift of eternal life, will spend all of Eternity future in what the Bible calls the lake of fire (3).
Physical death of the body is not the end of the soul’s existence.
As of the physical death of the body, the soul experiences an immediate change in location, be it resting in Heaven in an interim body (4) awaiting the Rapture, or in the torments in Hades dreading the comimg Rev. 20: 13,15 event.
There is not one soul in a corpse, casket, urn, morgue, funeral parlor, or cemetery.
The only connection between the bodily remains of a departed believer and eternity future, is that it will be raised in resurrection form at the Rapture (5), replacing his or her interim body.
Spiritual death is not the end of existence, but existing while separated from God.
It was spiritual death that Adam and the woman, later named Eve, suffered on the day they sinned (6).
Blinding humans to the difference between physical death of the body and spiritual death of the soul has been one of the devil’s objectives from the very beginning (7).
Adam lived on physically after the day he sinned, and died at the Age of 930 (8). Some traditions say Eve died shortly after Adam.
But both Adam and Eve died spiritually on the day they sinned, not only impacting their own relationship with the Lord, but that of their descendants, as well.
The spiritually-dead condition that they received is passed down at conception (9) through the male partner to the next incoming generation.
It is this spiritually-dead condition that MUST (10) be addressed, if the spiritually-dead (incoming) individual is going to receive a Titus 3: 5 regenerated spirit, a Eph. 4: 30 sealing, and the unearned, undeserved, gift of eternal life (11).
In His mercy God does not give us what we deserve, but gave us the means to receive forgiveness and the unearned gift (12) of eternal life.
But before God could do so, divine justice required that each and every sin committed throughout the course of human history, be accounted for, and that the payable sin debt be paid in full (13).
The problem was, and is, that since the Fall of Man in the Garden of Eden, Adam, Eve, and their spiritually-dead descendants, could do nothing about their spiritually-dead condition.
The eternal future of the human race was dependent on God’s mercy.
The only part that believers have in the salvation or edification of others is to communicate the unadulterated Gospel Message for salvation, and to communicate accurate principles of Bible Doctrine for the development of post salvation discipleship (14).
The John 16: 8 convicting, the John 16: 13 guidance, the Titus 3: 5 spiritual regeneration and the Eph. 4:30 sealing (baptism) is the work of God.
In His mercy, the bestowment of the unearned, undeserved, permanent, gift of eternal life takes place the moment one is born-again.
(1) Rom. 3:23 (2) John 3: 6 (3) Rev. 20: 15 (4) 2Cor. 5: 1 (5) 1Thess. 4: 16, 17 (6) Gen. 2: 17 (7) Gen. 3: 4 (8) Gen. 5: 5 (9) Psalms 51: 5 (10) John 3: 5 (11) Eph. 2: 8 (12) Rom. 6: 23b (13) 1John 2: 2 (14) 1Cor. 3: 7
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