The Poisonous Premise

John the Baptist came preaching that the Kingdom of God is coming. The Lord Jesus came preaching that the Kingdom of God is coming. The Apostles preached that the Kingdom of God is coming. We preach today that we are saved so we can go to Heaven when we die. Why did we leave the original Gospel?

(11/5/2006) Whatever happened to the original Gospel, the message preached by the Apostles? There may have been instances through Church history when the original Gospel was preached, I don't know. But it is obvious that the coming of the Kingdom of God is not being preached in our day.

I don't believe that the Kingdom of God is so much as mentioned in the Statement of Faith of our denomination. Is it in yours?

I notice that the term "Kingdom" is being used a bit more. But it seems to be saying that we all ought to try to do better. The idea of a kingdom coming from Heaven and establishing the will of God on the earth by force, and that we should repent because of this, may not be presented as often as we might wish.

There are many aspects of the Kingdom that we could discuss. The one I wish to emphasize this morning is the aspect of ruling. Our traditional concept of going to Heaven when we die seems to be that we are going to do nothing but rest for eternity. Even a brief review in our mind of what this would mean is enough to assure us that a residence in the spirit world where there were no challenges or responsibilities, and we did nothing but praise God continually, would not please the typical believer of our day.

The truth is, the Kingdom of God is not a place. It is a system of government. The Lord Jesus and His saints are going to be ruling people. To be in a position of rulership means that we are able to govern our own circumstances and the circumstances of others.

When the Book of Revelation says there will be no more sea on the new earth, it is speaking symbolically of ungoverned people. Every saved person in the world of the future will either be in a position of rulership or else will be being ruled by someone else. We may not have given much thought to that.

The laws of God shall be kept forever, in the world that is at hand. No lawlessness shall be permitted. This is possible because every individual will be under rulership of some sort. The reason sin occurred in the Garden of Eden is that there was no government, no kingdom to compel Adam and Eve to obey God.

The purpose of the Church Age has been to develop rulers—individuals who have been able to conquer through the Lord Jesus Christ that which has come against them. The general salvation of mankind shall come later, as described in the Book of Isaiah.

If we are to be one of the Lord's rulers, we must live victoriously in this world. "If we suffer we will rule with Him," Paul states.

What is it we are to overcome? We are to overcome our willingness to find survival, security, and satisfaction in the world spirit; we are to overcome the various lusts and passions of our flesh and spirit; and we are to overcome our habit of making our decisions apart from Christ. Unless we prove to be a conqueror in each of these three areas we are neither qualified nor competent to return with Christ and force the will of God on the people of the earth.

The conquerors will govern with "the rod of iron." The rod of iron is formed in us as we, through Christ, overcome in the three areas I have mentioned: worldliness, lust, and self-will.

The authority, wisdom, and power to rule comes from the Holy Spirit. Those with more of the Holy Spirit will govern those with less of the Holy Spirit. Some will have thirtyfold, some sixtyfold, and some a hundredfold of the Life of God in them.

The Holy Spirit is our eternal life, the Life of God. The Lord Jesus Christ is filled with the Life of God and serves as the highest Priest by means of the indestructible Life of God.

Paul commanded Timothy to lay hold on eternal life. We receive more of the Holy Spirit every time we turn away from the world, lust, and self-will, and obey God. God gives His Spirit to those who obey Him.

The New Testament has quite a bit to say about crowns and the rulership of the saints. Christ told us that if we overcome as He also overcame, we will sit on His throne with Him. He warns us to be careful that someone does not steal our crown.

Thus the Kingdom of God is not a place but a system of rulership. We are heading toward a government, not a place in the spirit world in which we have no responsibility, no challenges, and no one telling us what we must do. The Gospel of the Kingdom is a whole different vision than that to which most of us have been accustomed.

The Kingdom of God is within us, as Jesus pointed out, referring to the fact that it is born in us when Christ is born in us. Then it is to grow as a seed.

However, the Kingdom also can be seen as an entity. Jesus said some of the subjects of the Kingdom would be able to see the people in the Kingdom while they themselves were driven into the outer darkness.

Let us prepare ourselves for the coming government of God. His will shall be done in the earth, and we are to pray to this end. Hopefully God's leaders will begin to announce the coming of the Kingdom of God to the earth, just as did John, Jesus, and the early Apostles.

In the evening we discussed congruence and inheritance.

The first topic, that of congruence, has to do with Galatians 5:19-21. In this passage Paul declares that if the believer lives in the bondages of the flesh he or she will not inherit the Kingdom of God.

However, in the early chapters of Romans, and in other places, Paul says we are saved by grace through faith and not by works of righteousness we have done.

There appears to be a lack of congruence. On the one hand we are told if we behave unrighteously we will not inherit the Kingdom of God. On the other hand we are told that our behavior is not at issue, we are saved by forgiveness through our faith.

It is a marvel to me that Christian people have not wondered more about this lack of congruence.

The resolution of the problem is as follows: in the early chapters of Romans, where most of the discussion regarding faith and works is found, Paul is speaking to Jews. In Galatians, and in the other epistles, Paul is speaking to Gentiles.

Most of us are not Jews, so we cannot appreciate how thoroughly Paul's Jewish audience was filled with the concept that righteousness and life come only through obeying the works of the Law of Moses. Paul used various passages from the Old Testament to prove that righteousness is possible apart from the works of the Law of Moses.

It was Paul's responsibility to convince Jewish people that they could turn away from Moses and look to Jesus Christ for righteousness. Such a transition was very difficult for many of his listeners.

This was the reason Paul stressed that we are righteous and are saved by grace and not by works, meaning the works of the Law of Moses.

But in the Epistles, Paul stressed that we must walk in the Spirit of God with the resulting change of our moral behavior, or else we shall not inherit the Kingdom of God.

We do not go from the Law of Moses to no law. We go from the Law of Moses to the Law of the Spirit of Life, a far stricter law in that it governs every moment of every day of our life. We are required to present our body as a living sacrifice to God, rather than a dead animal. Far stricter!

Christian scholars, with their misunderstanding of Paul, have developed a fundamental premise. It is a poisonous tree that bears all sorts of poisonous fruit, such as once we are saved we cannot be lost, and it is our belief system that is important, not how we behave.

The fundamental premise is that God, seeing that human beings cannot keep His commandments, has given us a covenant of "grace." God's covenant of grace blinds God to our behavior. God sees us only through Christ. God's purpose in doing so is that He may now regard us as righteous, regardless of our behavior, and admit us to Heaven where we will dwell in bliss forever.

This means that if we behave in all the ways Paul describes in Galatians 5:19-21, it does not matter. When we practice immorality, for example, God sees only the moral purity of Christ.

There is a teaching that this dispensation of grace will last until Christ returns. At that time Christ will remove all unrighteousness from our personality and we will be in the image of God.

But if such were the case, Paul would not have told the believers in Galatia that if they practice the sins of the flesh they will not inherit the Kingdom of God.

The reason God trains and tests us in the wilderness of this life is so we will be able to govern in righteousness in the next world. Why would such training be necessary if we suddenly are going to be made righteous? Also, if God were able to produce righteous behavior in an individual by speaking a word, why does He bring us through such painful experiences?

Those who are teaching that we are made righteous at the coming of the Lord are forgetting the parable of the man who wasted his talent. The Lord called him a wicked, lazy servant. The Lord did not remove the man's wickedness and laziness, He sent him into the outer darkness.

So those who are teach that we can ignore Paul's several admonitions concerning the penalty for unrighteous behavior are leading themselves and their followers to destruction.

There is no problem with congruence between the early chapters of the Book of Romans and the statements Paul makes in other places (even in the sixth chapter of Romans) concerning the fact that spiritual death follows sinful behavior on the part of the Christian believer. If we as a believer practice the desires of our sinful nature we will not inherit the Kingdom of God.

But let us think about the term "inherit." There are many believers who have been and yet are in the Kingdom of God. This means they have been born again of Christ and have a portion of God's Spirit in them. This is what it means to be in the Spirit of God.

But if they do not nourish this new life by putting to death, through the Spirit, the deeds of their sinful nature, they will have this life removed from them and they will be sent into the outer darkness. From there they will be able to see the Kingdom of light and glory, but they will not inherit it.

Consider the following:

When Jesus heard this, he was astonished and said to those following him, "I tell you the truth, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith. I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." (Matthew 8:10-12)

Notice that they were "the subjects of the kingdom." This means they were in the Kingdom. But they were thrown outside because they did not please the Lord.

The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. (Matthew 13:41)

Those who hold to the poisonous premise of which I spoke will declare it is impossible to be in the Kingdom of God and then thrown out. But the Scripture says otherwise.

I have been accused of preaching works, of saying that we have to earn our salvation by doing good works. I do not teach this.

It is true rather that the Kingdom of God itself is found in righteous behavior. The rule of God produces righteous behavior. We are not redeemed because we behave righteously, it is the power of the Divine redemption that produces righteous behavior.

To not be transformed morally means we are not living as we should in the Holy Spirit.

There is one fact we must understand: In order for redemption to take place, God must act and we must act. Redemption never is one-sided, in which God does everything or we do everything.

A careful reading of the New Testament will reveal the sovereign work that God does, and the works that we must do in order to benefit from the sovereign work of God. God simply will not permit us to be passive while He "saves" us. This is not scriptural.

Would we be Christ's disciple? We must deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Jesus. We must do this. God will help us if we ask Him; but if we do not deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Jesus at all times we are not a disciple.

The poisonous premise, that God sees we are unable to keep His commandments and therefore must be brought to Heaven by forgiveness (grace), ignores the help that God is offering the believer who will set out to overcome the world, the flesh, and his own self-will. It ignores the power of the new covenant, the power that produces new creations of righteous behavior and holy personality.

The poisonous premise is at the heart of much of today's theology, If is found in the footnotes of today's translations of the Bible. Without doubt it is the supreme deception presented by Satan, and may be the greatest misunderstanding in the history of mankind.

Shall we stand together and put the axe to this poison vine whenever we encounter its poisonous tentacles. It has brought about the destruction of the moral character of numerous believers in the United States. Many pastors look at pornography on the Internet. Many of their members practice the behaviors condemned so strongly by the Apostle Paul. The result shall be fierce judgment upon our country.

The new covenant forgives, and then transforms the individual into the image of the Lord Jesus Christ. Forgiveness based on belief, apart from character transformation, is not the Gospel of the Kingdom of God, but the evidence of the influence of the philosophy of Gnosticism on Christian thinking.