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The law was never given as a standard by which a person could live their life and achieve righteousness, it was given to be a mirror, so that those who were placed under that law might gain a better glimpse of themselves. That is what the law program did, it allowed a person to stand back when looking at the law and see themselves in a proper light. 
 The law was given in order to reflect a perfectly clear picture of how sinful a person really is, we need to see ourselves properly apart from faith in the one who is faithful on our behalf. 
 God knew what it would take to save us, he knew what it would take to have us dwell with him through eternity future and that dwelling with him should require that we would measure up to his degree of rightness, and measuring up to his degree of rightness would only come one way. 
 Our salvation must come from a justification found totally apart from us, totally apart from who we are, totally apart from the things that we do and promise to do, and commit to never do again. The law was a picture and it was a mirror to show us that we needed justification that is given to us, that is credited to us freely, we need a justifier who would justify the ungodly by faith. 
 Justification by grace through faith, what a marvelous thing God has done, and who would have thought of a salvation in the sense that God’s plan would call for him to join a person to his son, therefore, what belongs to the son would now belong to believing people who have been joined to the son. 
 Our human nature being what it is, we automatically rise up and rebel against the truth, but Paul goes to great length to prove beyond any showdown of a doubt, that everyone of us are continually coming short of the standard of God’s perfect righteousness. 
 So when Paul mentions sin, he does so for the purpose of having every individual realize and admit that through out the course of our daily lives, we all miss the mark of God’s perfect rightness. We never measure up anytime in our human live, we never measure up to who God is and with God’s righteous character, he can not dwell with anyone who does not. 
 We could look at the righteousness of God in the sense of righteousness being an attribute of God, his righteous character is part of his glory. God is perfectly righteous in himself, he never deviates from his own perfectly right standard. 
 We know that nothing has ever changed about God’s righteous character, so Paul does not have God’s attribute of righteousness in mind when he says, “But now, the righteousness of God apart from the law is manifested,” God has provided for the human race, what the human race desperately lacks, God’s very own perfect righteousness. 
 What Jesus Christ accomplished for the human race, does not make the human race measure up to God’s rightness, we have to be righteous-ified. God declares unrighteous believers to be righteous, it is a gift, a declaration of rightness with God and this comes totally apart from that unrighteous person’s production, no inherent merit on the part of the one being declared righteous. 
 God’s power from on high joins every believer to Jesus Christ himself. Those who have trusted in what Christ has accomplished where their sins are concerned are made heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Jesus Christ. It is Christ’s faith that righteous-ifies those who take their stand with God when it comes to what God has stated his son accomplished for them. 
 It is Christ faith that is freely credited to the account of the one who believes the good news given to the apostle Paul to proclaim to us in this age of grace. 


There is an element of pride today on the part of many who think God must be looking on them with special favor, because they happen to belong to a particular denominational persuasion. 
 In fact, there are people who take great pride today and elevate themselves above others, because they rightly divide the word of truth, when rightly dividing the word of truth is merely a tool to use so that a person can come out with a proper understanding of scripture. 
 So-called Christendom today fails to rightly divide the word of truth, because they have mixed God’s program with Israel and his program with the Body of Christ and mixed dispensations together; dispensations that do not mix together, and as a result, they think they have taken on Israel’s role from the point where Israel left off. 
The programs have simply been intertwined in the minds of the religious world. Any kind of works at all, even if they appear to be good works in a our minds, that are done for the purpose attaining salvation, or for the purpose of maintaining salvation, and even for the purpose of proving our salvation is a slap in the face of God, who had to provide the gift of salvation, because our righteousness would be totally incapable of meriting it. 
 Our good works must be done solely out of appreciation for what God has already accomplished. God knows whether there’s a hidden motivation even to ourselves, hidden by our pride nature to look good before others, to appear knowledgeable before others, to somehow elevate self in relation to others, to gain the praise of others. God knows the motivations of the human heart. 
 Paul is not telling us to eliminate doing good things once were save, he is telling us to totally and completely once and for all, remove any and all works forever from the criteria in our minds by which God saves us, or the basis by which God keeps us saved. 
 God completely took works out of the equation when it came to gaining or maintaining salvation! Paul has fenced us all in and it is a closed-in pen, in a manner of speaking, of wrath worthiness, therefore, the human race is in need of a Savior, simple as that! 
 Working to maintain a standard, any standard whatsoever while trying that standard in our mind to the acquisition of or the maintenance of our right standing before God is an exercise in futility, it will not work. Works are absolutely excluded as a basis by which God gives the righteous standing Paul has in mind for the human race. 
 What the heart of sinful people do is to humanize God, there is no fear of God when we humanize God. God is our great big buddy in the sky, even Jesus has simply become our best friend. Many think that salvation comes to those who can maintain a sufficient camaraderie with Jesus, their friend. 


When we think of pouring a foundation for a building, we might think of something like concrete being use as the foundation material. We can relate that to Paul’s job, when it came to dispensing the doctrinal truth pertaining to the age of grace in the minds of grace age saints. 
 It was committed to the apostle Paul to dispense the doctrinal concrete which would become that firm foundation upon which a believer’s growth might take place. Since growth is an important issue, it was essential that the doctrinal concrete Paul would begin to pour would contain the appropriate ingredients and that those ingredients would be in the correct proportions. 
 What happens if concrete’s too thin or too thick, doesn’t have sufficient water or moist with it. So we see these concrete doctrines would have to be prepared properly. They’d have to be spread adequately and smoothly to the point that our minds become set with the truths Paul was commissioned to establish. 
 We can not pour a foundation properly even if we have the proper ingredients for the foundation material apart from preparing the soil properly on which those ingredients are to be poured. If we were preparing to build a structure in which we could dwell, not only would it be the place of our residence, but a structure we could operate in and out of through out our lifetime. 
 We would want the foundation of the structure to be poured in an appropriate manner. If the soil of a person’s mind is not prepared by that which God has revealed about himself, then Grace Age foundational truths such as Justification, Sanctification, Dispensation and Glorification holds no meaning. 
 A person must see themselves for who they truly are apart from God. The truth is, apart from the accomplishments of Jesus Christ and who God makes us to be by joining us to Christ, we are all zeros. Thank God that we were sealed to the praise of his Glory. 
 Salvation does not have to take, it does not have to develop properly in order to become true salvation. Salvation where sins are concerned was fully accomplished by Jesus Christ, and when accepted by the believer, at that very instant that person is sealed until the day of the redemption of this earthly tent in which we dwell. 


When a person uses themselves for the foundation of their righteousness, their efforts, their contributions, what they can merit through performance, whether it be the Israelites under the Law of Moses or whether it be Gentiles who had never been given the Law Contract for righteousness in the first place, they are not only on shaky ground, the ground that a person is standing on is going to give out on them, even all of the self justification people can mustard today, will not afford them an inch of space in the presence of a perfectly righteous God. 
 Just as religion did not save the Israelite during the time of the law contract, religion could not save the Gentiles during that time either; just as it cannot save Israelite or Gentile today. 
 The only Israel God recognized as being true Israel were the Israelites who did indeed perform according to the rules and the rituals of the law program, but in addition to that, they had to recognize their failure if they were considered to be “of faith.” 
 They had to be people of faith in light of the fact that they would never be able to merit a righteous standing in the eyes of God. They had to recognize their failure under that law program to perform perfectly and consistently and they had to confess that failure, then they would be considered true Israel. 
 Today, the instance we take our stand with God, we are not only saved, but sealed until the day of redemption. If God thinks what Jesus Christ accomplished on our behalf where all of our sin debt is concerned, and God is satisfied that all of that sin has already been judged on his son, leaving no judgement for us where our sin is concerned, then we can take God at his word. 
 If God believes it, why can’t we stand with God on what he believes. THAT’S FAITH. Our very best efforts come shockingly short of God’s glory, the law was not given to make the Israelites righteous or anyone else righteous. 
 God was trying to show the Israelites, to prove to them something through that law program, what God wanted the Israelites to see was their shortcoming, their sin. If a religious Israelite was sinful, what does that say about the rest of the world; the law was given to Israel and that condemned the entire world. 
 The law was given to manifest or to bring to light the indisputable reality of sin; the undeniable truth of the existence of sin. God cannot accept anything that comes short of his flawless standard of perfection, his justice would not permit it. 
 Within the law program was a sacrificial system whereby, when exercised properly, Israel’s sins would be covered over, hidden from view. Forgiveness simply means that a person’s sins are no longer being held against that person. Forgiveness, by no means makes a person perfect, so a person having forgiveness in time past was still lacking. 
 The blood that Jesus Christ shed would now give God just cause to put that debt away, to settle that debt, to put those sins away forever, thus putting an end to a person’s legal obligation to serve that law contract, but the Gentile living during the time of the law, the sacrificial system was of no benefit to them at all. 
 In time past, there was an issue of sins not being cleared totally out of the way, not being taken completely off the table of God’s justice, the sinner was forgiven, but their sin was still a matter of record in the mind of God. Now all people’s sin debt was cancelled with Jesus Christ’s sacrifice. 


As to the “seven lamp-stands”, ought not this expression at once to send our thoughts back to the one golden lamp-stand of the Tabernacle, one lamp-stand with seven lamps, indicative of Israel’s unity in the Land and in the City. 
 Here, the scattered condition of the nation is just as distinctly indicated by the fact that the seven lamps are no longer united in one lamp-stand. The nation is no longer in the Land, for Jerusalem is not now the center, but the people are scattered in separate communities in various cities in Gentile lands. 
 So that just as the one lamp-stand represents Israel in its unity, the seven lamp-stands represent Israel in its dispersion, and tells us that Yahweh is about to make Jerusalem again the center of his dealings with the earth. 
 We find nothing in our Pauline letters that fits into what is said to these seven assemblies. But those readers will be at once be reminded of the various stages of their own past history, and they will find in almost every sentence some allusion to the circumstances in which they will find themselves as described in these seven letters in the Book of Revelation. 
 They are written to the People supposed to be well-versed in the history of the Old Testament, and well-acquainted with all that had happened to their fathers and had been written for their admonition. 
 Instructed in the past history of their nation they will readily understand the relation between the testings and judgments in the past with which they are familiar, and those similar circumstances in which they will find themselves in a yet future day. 
 If these “churches” are future assemblies of Israelite believers on the earth, after the Body of Christ has been caught up to meet Jesus in the air, then all is clear, consistent, and easy to be understood, lets leave the full and final interpretation for those to whom it will specially belong hereafter.

Paul did not say the law was written in our hearts, he said the works of the law are written in the hearts of the Gentiles. God knows whether or not a person has placed their faith in what his son accomplished for us, or whether that person is still holding onto the notion that his good works will somehow merit them a position of righteousness in the eyes of God. 
 God knows the motivation that resides in the human heart that underlies all the works that we call good. It is the changed thinking that comes, as God transforms us by his word. In a day yet future, God is going to cause Israel to walk in his ways, because God is going to write his law into their hearts according to Jeremiah. 
 God knows whether there is a hidden motivation even to ourselves, hidden by our pride nature to look good before others; to appear knowledgeable before others; to somehow elevate self in relation to others to gain the praise of others, God knows the motivations of the human heart. 
 Any kind of works at all, even if they appear to be good works in our mind, that are done for the purpose attaining salvation or for the purpose of maintaining salvation, even for the purpose of proving one’s salvation is a slap in the face of God, who had to provide the gift of salvation, because people’s righteousness would be totally incapable of meriting it. 
 Our good works must be done solely out of appreciation for what God has already accomplished. We need to place our faith in Christ’s faithfulness and that alone. We can thank God for justification, because every one of us from a practical stand point do indeed merit being judged worthy of being on the receiving end of God’s wrath. 
 When judgment is according to truth, there had better be a way for God to consider us righteous apart from our own production, merit and performance, because none of us can continually and consistently measure up to the perfect standard of a perfectly righteous God. 
 Paul knew the pride of the human heart would quickly jump to defend it’s self when accused of being unjust and therefore worthy of God’s wrath, he wants us to own up to the fact that in a practical sense we are indeed unrighteous. 
 How does it make us feel personally when someone points a finger at us and says guilty? Not a very comfortable feeling is it for another person to finger the finger at us and call us guilty. None of us like to admit our short comings much less have them pointed out to us by others, we do not like to be told that we are wrong, we rebel against being confronted in our very core. 
 Paul went to great length to convince us into a realization of our desperate need to be justified in the first place. Whether it be confidence in religion, confidence in the flesh, nothing Israel could do could afford Israel an escape route from the wrath worthy status Paul is proving to be true of all the human race, Israelite and Gentile alike. 
 Paul’s preparing the soil of the human mind in the beginning chapters of Romans prior to getting into the reality and the necessity of a justification that would come totally apart from anything people could do. God would have to accomplish our justification for us, true of the Israelite and true of the Gentile. 


Paul set out to prove to the human race that nothing we do and nothing we promise to do will have anything whatsoever to do with our righteous standing before a perfectly righteous God. 
 When Paul mentions sin, he does so for the purpose of having every individual realize and admit that through out the course of our daily lives, we all miss the mark of God’s perfect rightness. 
 So it is not a thing we do here or a thing we do there, we never measure up anytime in our human live, we never measure up to who God is, and with God’s righteous character. 
 We should not think just because God is not judging sin on the world today, that he detests it, he is outraged at it, but the judgment for it has been pasted. Yet, because God is not holding the sins against the human race, that does not make us as righteous as God. 
 Just because God is not counting our coming short against us, that does not make us as right as he is. God did not take away the sin, he took away the debt of the sinner. 
 Sin is still here and sin still reaps it’s consequences. Death comes in a myriad of forms, death of a relationship, conscience, there are a lot of ways that sin can bring death. 
 The circumstances that are occurring in our world today come as a natural result of the sin-cursed world in which we live, not from special judgments from God, they come from choices people make. 
 God is not trying to get even with people today because of their sins and he is not calling down some special bad thing; some adverse situation in order to teach certain individuals a lesson. 
 God does not teach through special judgments during the dispensation of grace, he teaches us through his written word today. 


As long as we REFUSE to prefer others over self, seems this is what brought down the way. They turned the prefer others, into work, working for the reward, is their a reward in it for me?

There are avoidable suffering circumstances and there are unavoidable suffering circumstances that come our way. Avoidable suffering has to do with the choices we make in our lives. When we sow an inappropriate choice, we can count on the fact that sooner or later, we are going to be faced with an unfortunate circumstance. 
 Most of the problems we face continue to be problems only as long as we refuse to prefer others over self, and we continue to insist upon our right to be positioned on the top shelf. Many problems come our way simply because of our insistence upon having our way, whether it be on the job, in the home, whether it be with a spouse, with family members, or with friends. 
 In such cases each of us hold the power to the resolution of our problem. How many problems would disappear if we could all conduct ourselves in a more Christ-like manner when it comes to the sacrifice of self in preferring others over self? 
 Many believers are living unfulfilled lives because they continue to hold a grudge against another individual, and that grudge has been affecting that relationship, whether that grudge be for a day or for years upon years. 
 Understanding our completeness in Jesus Christ should motivate us to make wise choices. God has given us the freedom to make our own choices, he wants us to apply scripture where scripture can be applied, and where no scriptural principle can be applied, to make the choices that we desire and then take responsibility for choices we made. 
 If we cannot find doctrine in Paul’s epistles directly related to our situation and there are no scriptural principles we can find to apply, then God has given us the freedom to personal preference. Paul also warned as this age of grace whines to a close, that those who allow emotion to trump doctrine, that this would be the character of the religiously minded. 


We see that we need to die to self, although our salvation is not dependent upon how well we accomplish this. Yet, as ambassadors of the ministry of reconciliation, our witness is dependent upon how well we accomplish this. 
 Dying to self, is never portrayed as something optional, it is the reality of being born anew; unless we are willing to see our old lives crucified with Christ and begin to live anew in obedience to him. Dying to self is something you can take very literal; you will die in every way possible in order to be someone you are not. 
 This does not mean that when we “die to self” we become inactive or insensible, nor do we feel ourselves to be dead. The entire concept seems a bit strange to our natural eyes. Rather, dying to self means that the things of the old life are put to death, most especially the sinful ways and lifestyles we once engaged in. 
 Dying to self is not fun or easy, but what is particularly difficult about fighting this tendency is that it is not exactly a behavior or action. It can certainly manifest itself in those forms, but underneath them is an attitude. Dying to self is a real change of mind and attitude towards sin itself and the cause of it. 
 Dying to self is a change in our principle action from what is by nature the exact opposite. Seeing that our old lives are being crucified with Christ is an experience of every one who is the subject of the grace of God. 


As we read the letters which are addressed to us through the Apostle Paul, and on turning to the Book of Revelation, in chapters two and three, we are at once conscious of a striking change. We find letters suddenly removed from the ground of “Grace” to the ground of “Works”. 
 The Book of Revelation contains a record of the events which shall happen in the Day of Yahweh, after the Body of Christ shall have been removed from the earth. The whole Book of Revelation is concerned with the Israelite, the Gentile, and the earth, but not with the Body of Christ. 
 There will be a people for Yahweh on the earth during those eventful years, who are believing in Jesus as the Messiah, who know nothing of as the Savior. Will not these need special instruction? 
 The Pauline letters will of course be of use as an historical record of what will then be past, just as we have the record of Israel’s history in the Old Testament now. Yahweh indeed has provided for their instruction, and warning, and encouragement in the second and third chapters of the Book of Revelation. 
 As we read these seven letters, the references to the Old Testament in the seven letters correspond with the historical order of the events, so it is with respect to the promises contained in these letters. 
 While the historical events connected with the rebukes are carried down from Exodus to the period of the Minor Prophets, the promises cover a different period, commencing with the period of Eden, and ending with the period of Solomon. 
 The subjects of the rebukes follow the order of the departure of the People from Yahweh. Their decline and apostasy is traced out in the historical references contained in these letters. But when we turn to the promises, then all is different. 
 They proceed in the opposite direction. The order, instead of descending from Israel’s highest ground of privilege (Exodus) to the lowest stage of destitution (Minor Prophets), the order ascends from tending a garden to sharing his throne. 
 The seven promises are all intensely individual, there is no corporate existence recognized as such. Each one of the seven promises commences with the same words, “to him that overcomes”. Such phraseology is foreign to the Pauline letters. 



We can set ourselves apart all we like, behaviorally speaking, we can start any number of things and cease doing any number of things in order to gain holiness before God, but we will do no better at reaching that goal than the foolish Galatians, who were themselves flirting with the idea of progressive sanctification. 
 Setting oneself apart for holiness is one thing, setting oneself apart because of the holy standing God has already given that individual in Christ, is something altogether different. We can do great wonders, when it comes to relative righteousness, but measuring up to God’s standard of righteousness?
 None of us will ever do so apart from God decreeing that to be so, freely, a gift, the righteousness required to dwell with God or for God to dwell with us. Justification is a gift declaration of perfect righteousness, the very righteousness that belongs to Jesus Christ, given to the ungodly who simply take God at his word, concerning what Christ accomplished for them. 
 Justification and Sanctification are “much more” assurance doctrines that Paul is giving us as to the security that we as believers have being placed into Christ. Paul wants to establish our minds in the “much more” assurance that we have, so we can have that stability of mind and stability of emotions, if the will is the governor of the emotions, and it is. 
 We are called “saints” today, “set apart ones,” that is the word God uses for those who have placed their faith in the all-sufficiency of the sin-resolving sacrifice of his son, Jesus Christ. Saint is God’s word for a believer, he sets us apart, sanctification depends upon the one who is doing the setting apart. 
 Paul even called the carnal believers at Corinth saints or set apart ones, because even though they were carnal, they had believed Paul’s good news. In fact, our sanctification and being in Christ are one and the same, but the sin nature does not disappear. 
 If sanctification is not the gradual removal or even the total eradication of the sin nature, if it is not a second work of grace that takes place at or after salvation, we need to look at God’s Word in light of these generally taught misconceptions. So that, we can see if they are correct, and then come to understand what sanctification really is, so that we are not fooled by what sanctification is not!


Will people accept or reject the payment Jesus Christ made for their redemption? God offers the gift of redemption, it is up to those of the world to either accept or reject their redeemer, but that does no less make Jesus Christ their redeemer. 
 When we accept our redeemer, and the price he paid, the ransom he paid, then we are joined to Christ, and we have his righteousness attributed to our account. Those who reject the gift, are thumbing their noses at the one who died to paid that price for their redemption. 
 The sin issue needs to be resolved in our minds, not in God’s. God wants people to look at the sacrifice his son made, and have their minds aligned with his. God wants people to view that sacrifice and say, “If God is satisfied, then I am going to be satisfied with what Christ accomplished for me.” 
 God wants people to believe the gospel Paul calls the ministry of reconciliation. Paul tells us that those who accept the redeemer, accept the gift of redemption are sealed unto the day of the redemption of that earthly tent in which they dwell, and placed into - at the point of their belief - their savior. 
 Thereby becoming the recipient of all that belongs to Christ, that includes his righteousness. Now you are worthy. Many people continue in their thinking that their sin is separating them from God, Paul’s gospel is hid from those people, they do not understand his gospel, they do not understand what reconciliation is all about. 
 So they think that new sin, needs a new measure of reconciliation, they seek forgiveness on the installment plan, is that not the golden thread woven through every denomination out there? The truth is they could not obtain an ounce of forgiveness if they tried, because God has already forgiven them all, God designed it, he provided the means by which it could be accomplished.
 That is why Christ’s ambassadors have the responsibility and privilege of making the reality of what the reconciliation Christ’s sacrifice accomplished, known to those who know nothing of it.


To accept the gift, is to receive the gift according to scripture, and to receive it simply means to take it to ones self, or acknowledge something as being true, to believe it. So believe and receive are one in the same thing, when it comes to this gift of salvation. 
 The fact that Christ did died for all, proves without a doubt that all were indeed dead in trespasses and sins. Paul’s good news must be accepted, it must be believed, understanding the grace of God is an intricate part of the joy, that should really be a part of every believer’s life. 
 God’s grace has abounded and therefore, the gift has abounded unto the many who were affected by Adam’s sin, Adam’s sin brought sin and death to all, Christ’s righteousness brings the gift of grace to all. 
 God provided the free gift of justification, because that one sin, provoked the many sins of the human race, but God provided a sufficient gift to solve the dilemma of humankind. To be justified means to receive that gift that came to all; by the one sin, to condemnation, but the free gift is of many offenses, unto justification. 
 The receiving that must be done as Paul goes on to say, God’s grace has abounded and therefore, the gift has abounded unto the many who were affected by the first Adam’s sin. Being placed into the second Adam, Jesus Christ, joined to Christ is the method whereby God justifies us. 
 The issue at the Great White Throne Judgment will be those standing there in their own righteousness, and not in God’s righteousness. Many will believe Satan’s message that righteousness comes by way of a person’s efforts, what they merit, what they desire through their performance. 
 The reality of our reign in life results in the joy, rejoice in hope of the glory of God, consequently, not everyone will end up with the benefits of this gift, because the gift is contingent upon receiving the good news message Paul was delivering. 
 Satan’s minions today, unknowingly in many cases, are having a hay-day, because they are keeping the issue of sins on the table of God’s justice, when they are no longer on the table of God’s justice. 
 Everybody believes or supposed to believe in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That is not the message that saves, it is understanding the meaning of that message that saves today. 


Dealing with Satan and his devil spirits is not a power encounter, it is a truth encounter. When we expose their lie with God’s truth, their power is broken. By preparing our minds for action, we must be transformed by the renewing of our mind, by filling it with God’s truth, as we continue to stockpile our mind with his truth, we will equip ourselves to recognize the lie and take it captive. 
 We need to practice threshold, first-frame thinking, evaluate every thought by the truth, and do not give place to the lie. People may not always live what they profess, but they will always live what they believe. If our behavior is off, we need to correct what we believe, because our misbehavior is the result of our disbelief. 
 We can know on a moment-by-moment basis if our ambassadorship is properly aligned with his truth. God has established a feedback system which is designed to grab our attention, so we can examine the validity of our goal. 
 That system is our emotions. When an experience leaves us feeling angry, anxious, or depressed, those emotional signposts are there to alert us that we may be cherishing a faulty goal. When our activity results in feelings of anger, it is usually because someone or something has blocked our goal. 
 Any goal which can be blocked by forces we cannot control (other then God’s goal) is not a healthy goal, because our success in that arena is out of our hands. Feelings of anger should prompt us to reexamine our ambassadorship, and the mental goals we have formulated to accomplish God’s message of reconciliation. 
 When we feel anxious in a task, our anxiety may be signaling the uncertainty of a goal we have chosen. We are wishing something will happen, but we have no guarantee that it will. We can control some of the factors, but not all of them. 
 When we base our future success on something that can never happen, we have an impossible goal. Our depression is a signal that our goal, no matter how noble, may never be reached. Depression often signals that we are desperately clinging to a goal we have little or no chance of achieving, and that is not a healthy goal. Achieving God’s goals for our ambassadorship is learning to distinguish his goal, from his desire. It is a critical distinction, because it can spell the difference between success and failure. His goal is any specific result reflecting his purposes for our ambassadorship, that does not depend on people or circumstances beyond our ability. 
 The only person who can block his goal or render it uncertain or impossible is us, and if we adopt the attitude of cooperation with his goals, his goal can be reached. His desire is any specific result that depends on the cooperation of other people or the success of events or favorable circumstances we cannot control. 
 We cannot base our self-worth or our personal success on our desires, no matter how godly they may be, because we cannot control their fulfillment. When a desire is wrongly elevated to a goal, and that goal is frustrated, we must deal with all the anger, anxiety, and depression which may accompany that failure. 
 Dealing with the disappointments of unmet desires is a lot easier then dealing with the anger, anxiety, and depression of goals, we would do well to distinguish goals from desires. When we begin to align our goals with God’s goals for our ambassadorship, and our desires with his desires, we will rid our life of a lot of anger, anxiety, and depression. 
 God’s basic goal for our life, is character development. The tribulations we face are actually a means of achieving our supreme goal of maturity, because persevering tribulations is the doorway to proven character, which is his goal for us. 
 Perhaps the greatest service performed by trails and tribulations in our lives is to reveal wrong goals. We need occasional mountaintop experiences, but the fertile soil for growth is alway down in the valleys of tribulation, not on the mountaintops. 
 It is during these times of pressure that our emotions raise their warning flags signaling blocked goals, uncertain goals and impossible goals which are based on our desires, instead of God’s goal for our ambassadorship. His plan is for us to hang in there and grow up, and tribulation just happens to be one of the primary stepping stones on the pathway. 


The essence of all temptation is the invitation to live independent of our ambassadorship. Satan and his devil spirits knows just which buttons to push to tempt us away from our ambassadorship. They have observed our behavior over the years, and they know where we are vulnerable, and that is where they will attack. 
 The moment we are tempted to get our need met in the world, we are at the threshold of a decision. If we do not immediately choose to take that thought captive, we will begin to consider it as an option. And if we begin to mull it over in our mind, immediately our emotions will be affected and the likelihood of yielding to that temptation is increased. 
 We must capture the tempting thought in the first frame or it will probably capture us. Once our consideration of a temptation has triggered an emotional response, we will act upon that choice and own that behavior. 
 We may resent our actions or claim that we are not responsible for what we do, but we are responsible for our actions at this stage, because we failed to take a tempting thought captive when it first appeared at the threshold of our mind. 
 If we continue to repeat an act for more than six weeks, we will form a habit, and if we exercise that habit long enough, a stronghold will be established. Once a stronghold of thought and response is entrenched in our mind, our ability to choose and to act contrary to that pattern is virtually nonexistent, and negative thoughts and actions we cannot control, spring from a stronghold. 
 Somewhere in the past we consciously or unconsciously formed a pattern of thinking and behaving which now controls us. Simply putting on the armor of our Father at this stage will not solve our dilemma, these strongholds are already entrenched and fortified. 
 If the strongholds in our mind are the result of conditioning, then we can be reconditioned by the renewing of our mind. Anything that has been learned, can be unlearned, but we are also up against Satan and his devil spirits who are scheming to fill our mind with thoughts which are opposed to our ambassadorship. 
 Their strategy is to introduce their thoughts and ideas into our mind and deceive us into believing that they are ours. If they can place a thought in our mind-and they can, it is not much more of a trick for them to make us think it is our idea. If we knew that suggestion was theirs, we would reject the thought, but when they disguise their suggestion as our idea, we are more likely to accept it. 
 If they can get us to believe a lie, they can control our life. If we fail to take a thought captive to the obedience of our ambassadorship, but believe it, their power is in the lie. They have no power over us except what we give them by failing to take every thought captive, and thus being deceived into believing their lies, and since their primary weapon is the lie, our defense against them is the truth. 


So why do we still react as if our old identity is still in control of our behavior? Because, while we served under it, our old identity trained and conditioned our actions, reactions, emotional responses, thought patterns, memories and habits in our brain. 
 Our worldly experiences thoroughly programmed our brain with thought patterns, memory traces, responses and habits. Our brain still generates humanistic thoughts and ideas, and our old identity is that part of us which was trained and determined to succeed and survive by our own abilities. 
 When we became born anew, God did not press the “clear” button in our brain, our old identity persists in suggesting ways to live independent of our ambassadorship of God’s reconciliation. The first thing we need to know about the battle for our mind, is that the main targets which must be destroyed are the fortresses in our mind, or called strongholds. 
 Strongholds are negative patters of thought which are burned into our minds, either through repetition over time or through one-time traumatic experiences. The worldly stimulation we were exposed to was both brief and prevailing. 
 Every day we lived in this environment, we were influenced by it and preconditioned to conform to it. Brief stimulation includes individual events, situations, places, and personal encounter’s we experienced. We were influenced by books, movies, music, and traumatic events we experienced or witnessed. 
 We learned a way to cope with these experiences, and resolve the conflicts they produced. Prevailing stimulation consists of long-term exposure to our environment, such as the influence of our family, friends, peers, neighborhood, teachers, and jobs. 
 There are beings active in the world today who have opposed God before the Garden of Eden. Satan and his devil spirits are actively involved on trying to distract us from our ambassadorship, peppering our mind with their thoughts and ideas. 
 They are relentless in their attempts to establish negative, worldly patterns of thought in our mind, which will in turn produce negative, worldly patterns of behavior. Whenever we are stimulated to conform to our old identity, we are experiencing temptation.

The difference between the two Adam’s in our history is the need to be sure we are identifying with the right one. Understanding and acting upon who we are in Jesus Christ is the basis for successful growth and maturity. 
 Our daily performance is often marked by personal failure and disobedience, which disappoints us and disrupts the harmony of our ambassadorship of God’s reconciliation. In our attempts to understand the disobedience which so often disturbs our ambassadorship, are we unwitting victims of our old identity?
 Our old identity which we have inherited from the disobedience of the first Adam, is like a big black dog, but through the redemptive work of the second Adam, Jesus Christ, God put his power from on high in us, when we got born anew, and that power is like a big white dog. 
 Whenever we involve ourselves in worldly thoughts or behavior, we are feeding the black dog. Whenever we focus our mind and activities on matters of our ambassadorship, we are feeding the white dog. The dog we feed the most will eventually grow stronger and overpower the other. 
 God has not given us the power to imitate him, he has made us partakers of his righteousness, so that we can actually dwell with him. He did not say, “Here are my standards, now you measure up.” God knows we cannot solve the problem of our old identity, Adam in rebellion, by simply improving our behavior. 
 When we choose to walk according to the old identity, in which we were trained before becoming born anew, such behavior violates our ambassadorship. When this happens, we feel convicted because our behavior is not in keeping with who we really are. 
 In fact, if a person does something which they know is morally wrong, but feels no conviction, we should seriously doubt that that person is part of the Body of Christ. We commit sin when we willfully allow ourselves to act independent of our ambassadorship, as our old identity did as a matter of course. 


Rejoicing is the exhibit of that interstate of mind, because no longer do we have to strive to attain and maintain God’s acceptance on the basis of who we are and what we can do, no longer are our sins held against us, no longer does the death penalty for sin hang over us. 
 Joy is a trust issue; joy in Christ for a believer is that of a state of mind independent of surrounding circumstances. People glorifies themselves by filtering everything they say and everything they do through that screen of self-protection, self-elevation, and self-gratification. 
 Joy comes from an understanding of the grace of God, an understanding and appreciation of the resultant peace with God that we now have because of God’s grace. The insidious reality of the enemies relentless assault of deception on our mind can keep us from experiencing maturity and freedom, because our past has shaped our present belief system and will determine our future unless it is dealt with. 
 We have been tricked into believing that what we do makes us what we are. Our understanding of the identity that Adam had before the fall, that identity has been restored to us, that restored identity is the critical foundation for our belief structure and our behavior patterns. 
 Those who put on the breastplate of righteousness know that we have peace with God, for a person to have to make their own peace with God would be nothing more than an exercise in futility, it could never be done. 
 We could not make peace with God, to say that anyone could make peace with God, would be to limit God to his mercy, because grace is the foundation on which Paul’s entire ministry was built. There is a glory that belongs to God’s grace, and it is to be praised on the bases on what God’s grace has accomplished. 
 The security all believers have in that the indwelling resurrection power of God guarantees that those who have believed Paul’s good news can never be lost, they belong to God. The word translated “sealed” in Ephesians 1:13 means sealed for preservation. 
 The seal is the safeguarding device, the securing device, used to preserve the contents. God’s power is the seal that God uses to secure all who believe in this dispensation of grace. The word translated “earnest” in Ephesians 1:14 means a pledge in the sense that an advance deposit has been made as the security guaranteeing the fulfillment of that which has been promised to those who have been sealed. 
 Like when a person gives earnest money in connection with a purchase, that person is guaranteeing, through that which is given in advance their intention of following through on that which they have promised. According to Paul, the indwelling of God’s power is both God’s seal and his deposited pledge that all believers are forever his and are destined to inherit eternal life. 
 Paul doesn’t tell us that we are filled with God’s power, but instead, Paul is telling us that we should be filled with God’s power. In other words, we should allow God’s power to be in control of our lives. Of course, the degree to which we do that is up to us. 
 God’s power works in us, but only to the degree that we are willing to yield ourselves to God’s use in our ministry of reconciliation.

Escaping temptation is to apprehend every thought as soon as it steps through the doorway of our mind. Every temptation is first a thought introduced to our mind by our own carnality or the enemy themselves. Once we have halted a penetration thought, we need to evaluate it on the basis of Paul’s criterion for what we should think about. 
 When we learn to respond to tempting thoughts by stopping them at the door of our mind, evaluating them on the basis of God’s word, we have found the way of escape that Paul talks about. When we do not understand the doctrinal truths Paul taught pertaining to our sealed position in Christ, we have no ground for success in the practical arena. 
 The most dangerous and harmful detriments to our growth is passivity, putting our mind in neutral and coasting, sitting back and waiting for God to do everything is not God’s way to maturity. Our old pattern for thinking and responding to our sin-trained flesh must be transformed by the renewing of our mind, it is our responsibility to change our behavior by putting to death the deeds of the body. 
 If the enemy can deceive us into believing a lie, they can control our life in that area. We are saints whom God has declared righteous, believing the enemies lie will lock us into a defeated, fruitless life, but believing God’s truth about who we are will set us free. 
 It is imperative to our growth and maturity that we believe God’s truth about who we are. We must learn how to resolve previous conflicts or the emotional baggage will accumulate as we continue to withdraw from life, the past will control our life as our options for handling it continue to decrease. 
 Perceiving those events from the perspective of our new identity, which God sealed in Christ, is what starts the process of healing those damaged emotions, because we have the privilege of evaluating our past experience in the light of who we are now, as opposed to who we were then. 
 When we put on the armor of God, we are really putting on Christ, and when we put on Christ, we take ourselves out of the realm of the flesh, where we are vulnerable to attack, it is not wise for us to live on the enemies level. 
 Since their primary weapon is the lie, our belt of truth is continually being attacked. If they can disable us in the area of truth, we become an easy target for their other attacks. We stand firm in the truth by relating everything we do to the truth of God’s word, and when we learn to live in the truth on a daily basis, we will grow to love the truth because we will have nothing to hide. 


The shield of faith does not create reality; the shield of faith responds to reality, because forgiveness is a crisis of the will, a conscious choice to let the other person off the hook and free ourselves, though we may not fell like making this decision, but this is a crises of the will. 
 We put on the shoes of peace, because we are to forgive as we have been forgiven, and we must base our relationships with others on the same criteria on which God bases his relationship with us: love, acceptance, and forgiveness. 
 Satan and his forces use unforgiveness more than any other human deficiency to stop our growth and our ministry of reconciliation, unforgiveness toward other believers is the most widespread stronghold they enjoy. 
 Many of the body of Christ, instead of recognizing that their minds are being peppered by the fiery darts of the enemy, they think the problem is their own fault. “If those foul thoughts are mine, what kind of person am I?” they wonder. 
 So they end up condemning themselves while the enemy continues their attack unchecked; it is a gradual process of deception and yielding to their subtle influence. By observing us the enemy can pretty well tell what we are thinking, but they do not know what we are going to do before we do it. 
 They can put thoughts into our mind, and they will know whether we buy their lie by how we behave. If we are gong to resist the enemy, we must do so outwardly so they can understand us and be put to flight. The enemy will invite us to fulfill our physical needs in ways that outside the boundary of God’s will for us. 
 We cannot expect God to protect us from their influences if we do not take an active part in God’s prepared strategy. Whenever we feel enticed to meet a legitimate physical need by acting independently of God, we are being tempted though the lust of the flesh. 
 The lust of the eyes subtly draws us away from God and eats away at our confidence in God. We see what the world has to offer and we begin to place more credence in our own perspective of life. The temptation of the pride of life is intended to destroy our obedience to our ministry of reconciliation by urging us to take charge of our own lives. 


Relationally, forgiveness is crucial to our maturity, it is the glue that holds the body of Christ together. Instead of insisting on the unity of the mind, we need to preserve the unity by taking the initiative to be the peacemaker in our relationships. 
 Forgiveness is difficult for us, because it pulls against our concept of justice; we want revenge for offenses suffered, but if we do not let offenders off our hook, we are hooked to them. We need to let go, because the unforgiving believer is yoked to the past or to a person and is not free. 
 We should not try to rationalize or explain the believer’s behavior, forgiveness deals with our pain, not another’s behavior. Forgiveness is agreeing to live with the consequences of another believer’s wrong, our only choice is whether we will do so in the bitterness of unforgiveness or the freedom of forgiveness. 
 Forgiveness is a choice, forgetting may be a result of forgiveness, but it is never the means of forgiveness, and when we bring up the past against other, we have not forgiven them. Forgiveness does not mean that we must be a doormat to their continual wrongdoing, it is okay to forgive another’s past wrong, and at the same time, take a stand against future wrongdoing.

Could Calaphas's prophecy be about the Romans? It would be better for the Romans to kill one person, than to have the Romans kill the nation.

A ransom for all - was not testified until Paul proclaimed it, the revelation of the secret, which was kept secret since the world began. If a person believes Jesus Christ died for their sins, but does not believe that God’s justice was satisfied when Christ died for those sins, that person has not believed Christ died for their sins according to the scriptures, Christ’s death was pictured in the scapegoat sacrifice of the Israelites program. 
 Leviticus 16:21-22, Christ was made to be sin for us, the issue is not that of sinners making God’s son become their Savior through the avenue of a present-day forgiveness of sins, but in believing that the son of God became their Savior the day he took their sins, the entirely of that sin debt upon himself. 
 Those who believe God’s message to us through Paul, are now ambassadors of this wonderful news which our apostle calls the glorious gospel of the grace of God.

The program that God set aside, yes Calaphas's Prophecy came true, but this is age of grace, once this age is over with, God will go back to the program he established with the nation of the Israelites. By the way, Jesus's blood fell on God's Ark, the one Moses had built, not on wood! The blood of the passover had to be put on the Ark of God.