Accepting and Receiving Believers in Christ

[OBW]

Originally Posted by NeitherFirstnorLast

Amen brother, and to walk according to the Spirit you first need His indwelling presence - without which you cannot possibly hope to fulfill the righteousness of the Law.

....And that is no excuse. Christ came to heal the sick, and not for the 'righteous' Pharisees, who by their own estimation needed no physician - because they were the very best of all the theologians.

And where do we get his indwelling presence? Do we have to do spiritual things for it? The answers I find in scripture are at two levels. First, there is the kind of indwelling that comes with belief. We receive the Holy Spirit at that time. The second is the kind that is linked to obedience. And in the kind of scenario that Paul describes in Romans 8, the obedience and indwelling occur together. Paul does not say to wait for indwelling that will enable you to do it. He effectively says to trust in the one who will enable you, agree that it is true, and step out to do it with the understanding that you have his aid for the job. It is not wait for it to fall on you. Neither is it simply do it and hope he eventually comes along and helps you out. It is step out in the assurance that He is helping you as you take that first step.

And as I have recently said in another place, if you are busy doing spiritual/mystical things without obedience you are not engaged in a Christian/scriptural endeavor. If you are seeking the truth to set you free so that you will then obey, you will not find the truth. If you are seeking to abide in Christ so that you can eventually obey, then you are not abiding. Read the verses. John 8, John 14, Romans 8. Read Peter. We have what is needed for godliness. If you seek something more before you act in obedience, then you are seeking something that is not of God. It may look like it is of God. It may be described in the terms of scripture. But it is not truly of God because He says that you only get there the other way around.

Don't think that this is old-hat to me. I am just coming to realize this. And I cannot say that I am succeeding at it in all ways. Far form it. But I see where 38 years of wrong thinking dies hard. That wrong thinking was put in my by the LRC. 14.5 years of it. But it didn't just go away over the next 23.5 years. I see in another post where you mention some LRC theology as being wrong. So I have a little idea that you are outside of that system. But even after all these years, that system is still lurking in me. How is it still lurking in you? I am not entirely sure that I see what I am now speaking about clearly enough to say it is obviously true. But it is looking more and more that way to me.

And hearing those old LRC phrases like "the 10 commandments were never intended to be obeyed" are just plain wrong. (You did not say that.) It is obvious that we are not, in ourselves, able to truly obey them. But we were given that yardstick for more than just to prove we could not. We were expected to try, fail, and repent to God. Then, after Jesus came, we were expected to believe into Christ and get the source of power to actually fulfill them. And a lot more. Like don't even look on another woman with lust (as an example that is stated clearly in scripture).

With so much power at our disposal to live God's righteousness, why do we continue to say we cannot and sit around in defeat, seeking after alternate sources of power? It is, in part, because snake oil salesmen have convinced us that we need the truth that sets us free first, then we will be able to obey. But scripture says otherwise. It says that if we obey, then the truth that sets us free is ours. Doing it the other way around is to search the scriptures to find God, but ignore God standing in front of you.