teachmevp

Ephesians 5:30 - Nowhere in the Word of God are we told that we are joined to God, of his flesh, and of his bones, because God’s body is composed of a substance called spirit. We are members of Jesus Christ’s body, because we have been joined to him through the identifying work of God through his energizing power from on high. 
 That energizing power from on high is in all who have taken God at his Word, as to what Christ accomplished when it comes to the resolution of God’s justice where our sins are concerned. It is because of Adam’s transgression, sin entered into the human race, but following right on the heels of sin entering into the human race, death by sin. 
 The issue for life everlasting is not what church you attend or to which denomination you belong or how religious you are or even whether or not you are a good person in the worldly sense of the word “good.” 
 The issue in eternity will not be how many sins you have committed or how many sins you have promised God you will abstain from committing. It will not be whether you have walked an aisle, recited a particular prayer, or asked Jesus into your heart. 
 The issue in eternity will be to which MAN are you related?Do you have your identity in the first Adam, or do you have your identity in the second Adam, Jesus Christ, you cannot be identified in both. When Paul talks about a new creature, old things being past away, all things become new, he is not talking about sin in an individuals life, he is talking about all that we were prior to salvation in the first Adam. 
 Once saved, we are no longer in the first Adam, we are at the initial point of our belief in the second Adam, Jesus Christ. In God’s eyes we are no longer who we once were, we are now the new creation being forever joined to our savior.

Superstition falls under the deception heading of the religion of our last days, Satan has as much a field day with superstition as he does with counterfeit miracles. How do we know what is not so? It’s not so much the things we do not know that get us into trouble, it’s the things we know that just is not so.
 Superstition is all that is required for many people to come to believe that supernatural events are actually taking place, they believe the Holy Spirit is involved. There is a tendency of people’s preconceptions to bias their interpretations of what they see, superstitious mind set can make something out of nothing, in order to validate a belief.
 People will tend to engage in a search for evidence that is bias towards confirmation of their beliefs. They engage in evidence that tends to confirm their previously held belief, not fully utilizing all the information that is out there. Only searching out that which agrees with their cause, avoiding information that might dis-confirm their cause. 
 The tendency of the human mind is to seek out information that supports their belief and attribute a great deal of weight to that when they find it, while they discount or ignore evidence that goes contrary to the belief they hold. If they expect to see Mary make an appearance on a grill cheese sandwich, they will see the outline of Mary; setting their criteria so broadly that their preexisting beliefs is validated no matter what the outcome.
 Colossians 2:8 - Not about to give up their traditions, because previous held beliefs, especially superstitious beliefs, are a most difficult thing to discard. The bias effect of second hand information. “They say” secondary experience, testimonial seasoning of superstition, the story validated the point someone wishes to promote.

The body of doctrine Paul taught renews our thinking, because in this dispensation God is not giving us experiences to look at, he is giving us doctrinal truths to learn. It is the Word of God, that does the work of God, because it contains the living water whereby people have their minds renewed today. 
 The Word of our salvation washes away any notion of self-cleansing for righteousness as an approach to God. Paul’s writings rinses any notion of people’s production as the basis of a right standing before God right down the drain and leaves the believer standing only in the purified state of Christ’s righteousness. 
 Only when the truth of reconciliation achieved through Jesus Christ is believed, does a new creation become a reality as far as that individual is concerned. The new creation hinges upon the acceptance of Christ’s sacrifice, that it accomplished reconciliation. The new creation is who you stand to be in Christ. A new creation is your new identity in Jesus Christ. 
 The new creation is not how you perform in a different way, or make commitments to perform differently, it all has to do with your being placed into Christ, that is the new creation. When a person believes in the reality of reconciliation, that person becomes an instantaneous member of the new creation called the Body of Christ; joined to him. 
 Cease attributing your righteous standing before God to your performance and keep your mind focused solely on how God views you in Christ. That is what grace life is all about, and you will be victorious in that God can now produce his fruit in your life. If your flesh could perform sufficiently, Christ’s sacrifice would never have been a necessity.

The earthly union of husbands and wives today are to be a reflection of the new oneness identification that all believers have with our Savior himself, Jesus Christ. Clearing the slate of the human race, as Christ became sin on behalf of the human race, was an accomplishment of unmeasurable proportions.
 Justification is unfathomable to the earthly mind, that God could judicially consider you just as his perfectly righteous son. We are made to be the righteousness that belongs to God in our union with his perfectly righteous son. God married us to his perfect son, what belongs to Christ then belongs to the believers who are joined to Christ. 
 Marriage the way God planned it to be in the beginning, two become “one flesh” from God’s perspective. As Christ’s legal marriage partner, your name is now entered right along side Christ’s name on his account. By joining us to his son, God sees Christ’s account as being our account also. 
 Christ’s righteousness as God has your name attached to it, his account become you account at the point of your belief. Therefore, his righteousness became your righteousness. That is a phenomenal blessing that belongs to every believer during this age of grace. God is now able to view every believer as though we are as perfectly righteous as Christ himself. 
 The righteous of Christ has our name on it, because we are married to the perfectly righteous Christ, and it was God, through his energizing power from on high that consummated that union the very instant we first believed that Christ, to have resolved God’s justice for our sins. We are now joined to him, what belongs to him now belongs to us.

Grace within a dispensation was one thing; a dispensation characterized solely by grace is something else altogether. How many have heard that the apostle Paul dispensed a message that the 12 apostles had not dispensed, and that message was different, and that message was geared to the Gentiles? 
 If you lump these programs altogether, you are going to be taking from one program and trying to make it apply to another, when Paul clearly tells us that God is working differently today. Reconciliation, God changed the status of the human race when his son, Jesus Christ paid the ransom price necessary to redeem the human race from the market place of sin. 
 Justification and Sanctification are only for believers and believers alone, Satan’s desire is to corrupt people’s minds, not their activities. Satan is trying to corrupt people’s minds as to what Christ accomplished and the source of their righteousness. 
 A person must UNDERSTAND what it is they are being asked to believe, in order to be joined to Jesus Christ. The fact is that Jesus Christ took sinful people’s place, taking the penalty of their sins upon himself, so that those believing this truth could be joined to Jesus Christ. This is what makes Paul’s good news, a glorious gospel that goes far beyond the expected and moves into the realm of the unfathomable. Satan would rather people have their minds “religiously set” on believing something different.

You see, the Law of Moses had a relationship claim on every member of the human race. If the law has a rightful claim on you, God cannot have a rightful claim on you. If Christ has a rightful claim on you, the law has no rightful claim on you whatsoever. 
 To be joined to Christ and joined to the law at the same time would not only be bigamy, it would be adultery according to the apostle Paul. If you want to be joined to Christ, Paul gives the solution: there must be a death! As long as the law has jurisdiction over you in your mind, you are not free to be married to Christ, in your mind. 
 There are many people today who are doing that very thing. On the one hand, they claim to be joined to Jesus Christ, but on the other hand, who do they believe to be their husband? They continue to operate with God as though they were joined to the law, rather than joined to Christ, while claiming to belong to Christ on one hand and claiming to be operating under the dictates of the law on the other hand. 
 To what husband does a person belong is the question? That is what Paul is illustrating for us here at the outset of Romans chapter 7, one has to be dead in order to be married to the other. You cannot be legally bound, legally married to both at the same time, it is totally impossible! Grace and Law are polar opposites and God absolutely refuses to share those who are joined to his son with the law, with the law husband. 
 If you have been maintaining your relationship with the law in connection with your righteousness before God, in your mind, God would have you come out of that realm of thinking. You are either under the jurisdiction of the law, which requires performance for righteousness or you are under the jurisdiction of Jesus Christ and your identity in him is your righteousness, but you can not have it both ways.

Galatians 6:7 - Believers need not ever fear separation from God, our everlasting life with him is an absolute certainty. Physical death will not halt it, or hinder it in any way. The second death is never a threat or a possibility. Paul simply refused to allow things which were not expedient or wise to take control of him, he had the clear option to choose otherwise.
 Believers need not ever fear a change in attitude from God toward us. The improper choices we make do not change the direction of God’s mind toward those who have been joined to his son, because he sees those believers IN his son. Never make the mistake when it comes to improper choices, that you can continue to make improper choices and face no consequences. 
 We all too often plant one crop and then before we know it, the crop we have planted is growing up all around us to the extent that what we have planted can begin to get a strangle-hold on us. It happens to those who are believers and it happens to those who are unbelievers, if something comes up, it is because we have planted an improper choice somewhere, in many cases. 
 Your relationship with God is not contingent upon the crops you plant and the choices you make. How much more secure could you be than to be joined to God’s son, that’s reigning in life, whether you realize it or appreciate it. Reigning in life means much more than the ability to make correct choices in our lives. 
 As important as it is that we make correct choices, reigning in life over sin means much, much, more than making proper choices. Paul was reigning in life from a practical perspective, because those who receive the gift of God, do in fact, reign in life. But, that does not mean that improper choices have no earthly consequences, they certainly do. While they will not affect your salvation, they can indeed wreak havoc in your life.

Do you awake every morning of your life with the security you have in Christ, in your identity in him, having believed Paul’s good news? You see why Paul could say “We are complete in HIM,” everything that belongs to Christ now belongs to you.
 Do you awake every morning contemplating God’s presence inside you through his energizing power from on high, and that inter-strength empowerment that God will give you, it should never be about the degree of difficulty for any grace age believer, it should always be about the extent of the supply. 
 What a supply we have, but very few stop to ponder, stop worrying long enough to ponder that supply, much less do we ponder it on a daily bases in our lives, so it becomes a state of mind. A labor of love, because Christian living is not about doing, it is about believing something, and when we believe something and we continue to take in God’s Word, it should change who we are, not change what we are trying to do and trying to become. 
 The Christian life, it is trying to understand something and then work with that understanding. Romans 6:14 - Paul is not telling us that we will no longer be inclined to do wrong things or to think wrong things, or even that believers will more often than not always choose to do the right thing. Sin shall not have dominion over you, because you are not living under the law program, you are living under grace. 
 You do not have to know all the theological terms involved, this is not difficult. This is simply saying, God said what his son did for you was sufficient to absolve you of your sin debt! Past, present, future, it is gone, Christ did it all, there is nothing left for you to do, God did all the giving, you do only all the receiving.

Know who you are from fleshly perspective? God has kept the fingerprints of the guilt worthy, off of the righteousness he designed for the guilt worthy. Know who God counts you to be once you have trusted what Christ accomplished where your sins are concerned? 
 When self-righteous moralizers harden their hearts and remain impenitent concerning their goodness, they are storing up to themselves wrath to be visited upon them in the day of wrath. They will one day stand at the Great White Throne Judgment where the merited righteousness they think they have will be put on display. 
 Will you accept that God’s son paid for your sins, and that Christ’s payment has completely satisfied God’s justice where all of those sins are concerned, or will you continue to hold on to the notion that you have insufficient sins to warrant Christ’s death in the first place. 
 Or equally as dangerous, the religious notion that Christ’s shed blood was insufficient to have fully satisfied God where your sins are concerned, thus the continual need for something further required of you to keep God’s justice up to date.
 The only reason God could say through Paul, “Grace and Peace be unto you” is because his son fully paid the price. Faith does not come in gallons and tons, faith is not something “do I have enough faith, have I believed firmly enough?” Faith is simply taking your stand where God takes his stand. 
 There are many who will spend an eternity apart from Christ, because they refuse to accept what Christ accomplished on their behalf. The choice is theirs, God’s given people the choice to reject or just to stand where God does. If you want to know that you have faith, just simply take your stand where God takes his.

Was it your body or was it Christ’s body that freed humankind from the law’s jurisdiction? It was Christ’s body. The law will never work to accomplish our sanctification. How many do you suppose there are today who are working under the false assumption that they must curry God’s favor through personal behavior, if they are going to merit God’s blessings?
 The human race is dead to law keeping for righteousness, they are dead to a law keeping for righteousness relationship and that relationship is gone forever, Christ took it out of the way. When Israel’s New Covenant comes into play, they will be caused to know Christ, they will all know him to the least to the greatest. 
 Paul was striving to know Christ and know him intimately, not as Israel’s messiah, but to know him in the power of his resurrection and in the fellowship of his suffering, Paul wanted Christ’s life to be manifest in his own life. 
 God’s blessing and God’s favor are there for in no way based upon how well any person conforms to a standard today; that is being married to two partners. Paul desired to be found in Christ, not with a righteous record that could be gauged as having come from Paul as the source, but with righteousness that had God at it’s source, a gift declaration of rightness before God.
 No longer are we striving under a performance based merit system for righteousness before God that will never work, we can never be married to Christ that way. There are believers out there who know Christ in his resurrection power, because they are acquainted to one degree or another with the fellowship of his sufferings, one does not come apart from the other.

You have got your good times, and your joyous times, but you have your sad times, and your bad times. You have got times when you are very low emotionally, when you seem like you are on the bottom and you do not know where to turn or what is happening next; the whole creation is suffering while we are under the curse. 
 The reality is, no believer is immune from the suffering circumstances that come our way. All believers suffer, we just suffer in different ways and to different degrees and at different times in our lives, but we continue to suffer. You see, it is not health, wealth, and prosperity in THIS life, as the popular money-mongering ministers of righteousness would have us believe today, it is just the opposite. 
 God’s purpose was to allow us to suffer, so that we can put our hope on display to those who know nothing about our hope. Romans 8:21 - So, being freed up fem all these suffering circumstances is not just liberty, it is a glorious liberty! 
 You see, it is not God causing bad things to happen to bad people and good things to happen to good people. God is not raining down suffering circumstances to BRING bad people in line, and he is not raining down similar adverse circumstances on good people that have gone bad to KEEP those people in line. 
 If we could pray these circumstances away, what hope would we need? Our hope would reside right here in praying them away. The deliverance would come now, instead of later when Christ returns in the air to catch us up to be with him, our suffering situations will forever be a thing of the past.

God has only held people accountable to believe that which he was revealing to them at the time, nothing more. Justification has always been based on taking God at his Word, nothing more. We would call that faith, it’s just that the message of faith has changed. 
 It’s not been the same message, because things have been added and things have been changed throughout the course of human history. If you are asking God to forgive you for your sins today, what are you saying you believe about what Christ accomplished, where those sins are concerned?
 See how subtle the message is today, and how many people in the world miss it, because they think God is still looking at them and judging them and evaluating them on the bases of their performance. God wants believers to all think the same way, when it comes to what is happening in this Age of Grace, what God is doing today and how he is doing it. 
 Paul could never preach and never preached the Gospel of the Kingdom, because the kingdom was no longer at hand. When Israel’s leadership rejected the King, that kingdom was placed on the shelf to be reserved for a future fulfillment. Peter was still operating in accordance with the earthly kingdom program, before he was made aware of the secret committed to Paul’s trust. 
 Jesus gave Peter the “keys” to the Kingdom. Peter had the ability to “unlock” and “open the door” to the Kingdom, he proclaimed the message they had to believe. Peter knew about remission of sins for the world, but he knew about the remission of sins for the world in relation to Israel’s royal priesthood, that Israel was to be a holy nation, a kingdom of priests, and as that holy nation and royal priesthood, a light unto the Gentiles.

We could look at the righteousness of God, in the sense of righteousness being an attribute of God, God’s righteous character is part of God’s glory. BUT NOW the righteousness of God, apart from the law is manifested; God has provided for people what people desperately lacks, God’s very own perfect righteousness. 
 Christendom today are praying in the hope of making their will, God’s will. Some are even claiming the power to direct God’s will today, by way of demand. Some would say if they request with enough faith, not doubting, God will grant their request. Pray was not given for the purpose of gaining God’s attention. God’s attention was there all the time.
 When we pray, how many of us can be totally content to rest solely in the fact that God knows what is best for us, and then trust him in doing that very thing, even in difficult circumstances, even when we rather things turn out differently, even in the complete absence of what we often call material or physical blessing. 
 God actually desires that we take our cares and concerns to him. It is the avenue that God has given us believers that we might express our trust in him, but he DID NOT give us prayer as an avenue by which we can direct his hand or shape his will. 
 God gave us prayer as an avenue for the expression of our trusting him no matter the circumstance, no matter the outcome of that circumstance. God gave us prayer for the purpose of our peace, he knew how disparate a human mind would need peace. Through prayer a believer is able to release to God their fears, desires, inter-most anxieties while at the same time acknowledging to God that they trust God no matter the outcome of those situations.

Grace - God is now dealing with the believer totally apart from human merit or demerit. God deals with a believer now according to Christ’s merit and God calls that complete. That is a very huge, vital, a fundamental aspect of the Grace of God, we are complete, being in Christ. 
 Before the foundation of the world, God chose everyone who would believe in what his son accomplished on their behalf; to be in Christ, that is an accomplishment of God’s Grace, the glory of God’s Grace. The inevitable result of God’s Grace to the believer is true peace, because God sees us in Christ, and Christ was blameless. 
 Our right standing with God comes only through identification with a savior who is alive from among the dead. Paul never claimed to be a sinless saint, he claimed to be a saved saint. If you see yourself without sin, you have a sinful pride condition that is obvious to everyone but yourself. 
 Paul did not see himself as faultless, he saw himself as forgiven. Joy for a believer is a state of mind independent of surrounding circumstances. Rejoicing is the exhibit of that inter-state of mind, so the believers attitude need not to become victim to uncertainty or adversity. 
 There is a certain stability unwavering trust in God from an acknowledgment understanding and appreciation of what he tells you is true for you. A lot of people trust in God to alter the circumstances for the moment; sowing one thing and praying for another is foreign to the mind of the Apostle Paul.

You have to know something, to count up the facts before you can come to an appropriate conclusion based upon what you know to be true. That is why knowledge is absolutely essential. If you have drawn an improper conclusion, Paul would say it is because you have failed to properly consider all of the facts. 
 Paul goes to great lengths in Romans chapter 6 to make his case, that people who fail to conduct themselves properly, fail to understand properly. When it comes to grace behavior, Paul places the emphasis on helping us to perceive ourselves in the new identity that is ours right now, being in Jesus Christ. 
 Paul wants us to see ourselves as God already sees us, we need to be focusing on our new identity. Anyone who teaches that God accepts you or blesses you on the basis of how well you dress up the old man in Christian clothing, or on how well you make the old man perform, that person fails to properly understand that the old man no longer exists in the eyes of God. 
 Paul wants us to consider ourselves to be now and forevermore alive unto God, we can not lose it. Behavior did not put us there, behavior can not take us out of there. Christ will never again have to die for our sins and likewise, we can count on the fact that we will need die for our sins. 
 When Paul tells us to put on the new man, he is not asking us to dress up the old man. He is not asking us to do anything with the old man at all, except crucify it. Paul is simply asking us to recognize that the old man no longer exists in the eyes of God, see yourselves as God sees you.

A visual evidence given and a visual evidence rejected! Well, this is the case with Israel’s religious leadership, people were getting healed, people were coming to belief and many people were added to that earthly kingdom in that day, but God was looking for the leadership, the representatives of that nation to make their confession. 
 It was a national promise and it is a national rejection as far as God is concerned. Acts 3:2 - Acts 4:18, here was a visual sign they could not refute, a visual manifestation opportunity God was giving Israel’s religious leaders, to solicit from that religious leadership a change of thinking. 
Jesus Christ was no military giant in their eyes, much less a military genius, and that is what they were looking for. Israel’s leadership did not want a suffering servant as a messiah, they wanted a conquering hero as their messiah. 
 The issue with God in his plan and program with Israel and their promised land was an issue concerning their need of, and acknowledgment of the source of their righteousness. Israel would need a righteousness that God could recognize. 
 They had a righteousness that they could recognize as far as they were seeing things, but they did not have a righteousness that God could recognize. A God recognized righteousness would be an absolute necessity for that nation, if they were to acquire and remain in the land promised to their fathers. 
 The prayer of faith, leaves no doubt about the power of prayer in Israel’s program, they walked by sight, God allowed their prayer life to work in connection with sight as that earthly kingdom was on their doorstep. When it came to the earthly program, God’s glory was magnified through seeing, and the prayer of faith was the catalyst. Is God utilizing the prayer of faith during this present dispensation of grace, that we might see our deliverance? No.

The beginning of Israel’s last days of her program, they were being equipped for the upcoming time of tribulation right on their horizon. God used the physical senses in every respect, in connection with his sign nation at Israel’s high holy feast day called Pentecost. So this was not a secret, it was exactly what the Bible had foretold would take place, when it came to the sign nation. God gave his sign nation things to SEE and to HEAR and to SPEAK, the physical senses were used by God, so that Israel might WITNESS their deliverance. 
 The secret had not been revealed yet, in Act chapter 6? God offers the religious leadership of the sign nation a special sign, a sign designed to PROVE to them that Jesus of Nazareth was indeed who he had been proclaimed to be, Israel’s promised earthly messiah. 
 The nation Israel was given every visual opportunity to change their thinking about the identity of their messiah and their ability to perform up to the standard of God’s righteousness, when it came to the law contract. God proved how obstinate the hearts of Israel’s political/religious leadership were, in spite of all the visual evidences God placed before them. 
 We are told by most of religiondom today, that Pentecost was the beginning of the Body of Christ, not so, because in Acts chapter 6, the issue was still Israel’s religious leadership? The Body of Christ did not begin on Israel’s High Holy Feast Day of Pentecost.
 We are the saints of a brand new program, we have a new apostle through whom we have been given God’s completed instruction. While Israel walked by sight, we walk NOT by sight, but by faith. The focus today is no longer on the outward, but on the inward.

When you are living with Israel’s program in your mind, do you know what you are going to be fixated on? The fix, and you are going to be hoping that someone is praying for you for “the fix.” It is not about the fix, it is about your future hope. 
 If you get the fix, what are you hoping for? God cease dealing with “the outer man” in connection with God’s program with Israel and prophecy concerning their promised earthly kingdom, and then began dealing with “the inner man” in connection with his program concerning the saints of his heavenly calling. 
 But, what is our hope? Is it the fix of these old bodies? Or, is it the new body, the body that will be fashioned like unto Christ’s glorious body. Is our deliverance the repair and the escape of the problems of the old, or is it the hope of the new? 
 When we get our new bodies, we will be delivered from the suffering circumstances that adversely affect this old body in which we must dwell. Your patient endurance through suffering is a way of demonstrating your hope, and when your hope is put on display in the midst of your suffering, that brings glory to God. 
 The grace and strength God gives a person to endure that suffering, is the strength of God he wants others to see in that person’s life. That is when God’s strength is perfected in your life. While we seek deliverance FROM suffering, God seeks devotion THROUGH suffering. 
 Prayer was never given to change God’s perspective of your greater preference. Prayer was given to change your perspective of God’s greater purpose. God’s greater purpose was not to strengthen our faith by altering our circumstances. God’s greater purpose is to allow us to demonstrate our faith as we remain strong in spite of our circumstances.

Why so much confusion over Romans 8:1? Most of it has to with ignoring the context of the prior two chapters where Paul has been dealing with the issue of the believer’s identity in Christ. But, since the word “walk” and the word “flesh” were added to this opening sentence, and the idea of condemnation is added to the mix. 
 Where do most people’s minds immediately take them? The conduct of the Christian, people think Paul has left his context here and he is moving into the area of practice. Not so! The remainder of this chapter has to do with identity, not practice. 
 The more that we believe in the reality of our identity and focus on that identity, the more God is free to affect our practice, and he will by producing his fruit in our lives. The flesh is incapable of producing fruit acceptable to God. Believers who try to produce that fruit themselves through whatever religious system, through whatever legal practice of do’s and don’ts will only find themselves fruitless in their efforts. 
 Believer’s who strive to perfect their practice in an attempt to achieve or maintain a particular status with God is what Paul tells us he tried to do back in Romans chapter 7, how did that work for our apostle? The more Paul tried to make his flesh perform, the less his flesh was willing to conform. 
 The flesh cannot be perfected, it cannot be changed, and it cannot be Christianized, so render it dead. The more we focus on perfecting the flesh, the more we will end up minding the things of the flesh, and Paul wants us to put the flesh behind us. 
 Thank God, that in his perspective we are not in the flesh, but we are safe and secure in Christ. Whose righteousness? Christ’s righteousness freely attributed to the account of the one who takes God at his Word concerning what Christ accomplished for our sins.

If Satan’s desire is to be just like the most high God, and in that attempt Satan used false prophets to deceive people in time past, and he is using ministers of righteousness to deceive people during this age of grace, and since we know that he will be using a false Christ to deceive people in the age to follow this age of grace, why should we have difficulty understanding Satan’s counterfeiting efforts when it comes to the work of God’s energizing power from on high in this dispensation? What will cause God to bring a halt to this present dispensation, and return Israel as his channel of blessing to the earth? A continual downward slide concerning human behavior, things will have progressed to a heightened or elevated state just prior to God pulling the plug on this present day program. 
 We have not been given a pass where tribulation is concerned. It certainly can get much worse than it is today for believers. It is just an Age of Grace tribulation and the Time of Jacob’s tribulation are entirely two different things. Persecution and suffering troubling circumstances in a wide variety of ways will very likely increase as this Age of Grace winds onward towards its culmination. 
 Satan will be overtly manifesting himself as the power behind the miraculous during the tribulation period. Right now, he is covertly manifesting himself as the power source behind the miracles. Satan distracts from the truth through the miraculous. Satan’s miracles will never stand on Paul’s message, because they want to distract from this message. Satan is an angel of light, a messenger of goodness of righteousness, law righteousness. He is sitting on your shoulder and trying to convince you that you do not have to sin.

To be dead IN sin, is to be identified with the first Adam, Adam in rebellion. To be dead TO sin, all believers have been given a new dead to sin status, a dead to sin identity with the second Adam, Jesus Christ, given to us at the very point of our belief of Paul’s good news. 
 Why continue to consider your relationship with God to be based on your former identity? Why not consider your relationship with God to be based solely on your new identity and that alone being joined to God’s son.
 God gave you a brand new identity. God can no longer view you according to your former identity. God views you the only way he can view you since you believed the good news of your salvation. What security we have IN our union with the Savior. 
 You are the Body of Christ! Why not come to the understanding that God now relates to you the only way he can relate to you, and that is according to your new identity in his son. God cannot relate to you, he will not relate to you according to your former identity in Adam, Adam in rebellion. 
 This is the reason for Romans Chapter 6, understanding identity is key. So, what does it mean to die in your sins? It means to die with your identity in Adam, Adam in rebellion; to die with that identification intact. Reconciliation and Sanctification, two different judicial transactions. 
 God is no longer imputing the sins of the world unto the world, because he imputed those sins to his son. Now, a person needs to be placed into God’s son, so that they can have God’s son’s righteousness attributed freely to their account.

Do not be too discouraged as you watch the times unfold and the worries come, they just bring us ever closer to what we would call “our blessed hope.” Satan, in his attempt to be like God, also, wants a world wide governmental system, but without Christ. 
 The one world government architects of our day are steering us ever closer and at an ever more rapid pace toward that time, when the entire world will need an answer man. Rest assured, an answer man will arrive on the scene once God has called his ambassadors of the age of grace home.
 But, as the world will learn when the answer man comes along, he will not really have the answers at all, he will be the false fixer. The only fix planet earth will ever have, will only come from the return of the rightful Monarch of this planet, Jesus Christ. 
 The kingdom of heaven is not referring to a kingdom IN heaven, it is not a kingdom located in heaven, it is referring to a kingdom to be set up here on this planet with the son of God ruling and reigning as King. Israel had not been made aware of what God had in mind, concerning his rulership in the heavenly realm. 
 God kept those truths hidden until he later revealed them to the apostle Paul for us. Israel, on the other hand, expected an earthly kingdom. They were promised a piece of real estate on this planet as an everlasting possession and they expected an earthly king to come and rule and reign in that earthly kingdom. 
 Of course, there would be one step remaining before Israel’s kingdom could be realized. Israel would have to accept the king that God had in mind to reign in that kingdom. Should Israel reject God’s anointed King, God could certainly place that kingdom on hold, which the Bible tells us is precisely what God did. 
 
But, God could not do away with that kingdom altogether, because he had already promised it to the nation Israel. Israel’s identity crisis and it was not her identity that she had a crisis over, it was the identity of Jesus. God knew they would accept their king in a future time, that is what the tribulation period is all about; bringing them to their knees, and bringing those who will believe, to believe.

Salvation, justification unto eternal life is a gift of God, how could we enhance or add to that gift by our righteous works? Justification unto eternal life is entirely a work of God for the believer, not a work of the believer for God. No effort of our flesh could accomplish it. No effort of the saint can add to it!
 This is itself is the motivation for a believer to bring the body into subjection to what God had done freely for the ungodly as we place our faith in what Christ accomplished for our sin debt, when he died for those sins. 1 Corinthians 9:27, is Paul talking about Christianizing the flesh and making it better flesh, capable of doing more things? 
 Paul was motivated in that sense to bring the body into subjection, to keep those desires of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life, to keep it at bay and not let that reign supreme, when it came to his activities and his actions. 
 Paul had all the motivation that Paul needed to bring his body into subjection to whatever degree possible for Paul, not allowing it to reign supreme, when it came to his actions. But, had Paul arrived when it came to the sacrifice of himself for the sake of those to whom he had been sent? That was Paul’s prayer, that was his great desire. 
 Paul prayed that he might be made conformable unto Christ’s death. Christ sacrificed himself for the sake of his Father’s enemies, Paul wanted to be made conformable to Christ’s selflessness. But, Paul had not arrived at Christ’s selflessness, Philippians 3:12.
 You see, even with the proper motivation, the flesh is incapable of removing self from our service. Paul was not able to divorce self from his service, when it came to what he did on behalf of others. We have been motivated to serve, but thank God that our destiny, our blessings are not dependent on our serving.

If you remove the motivation to live Godly, people are just going to go out and live any old way they please. People have such a hard time when their motivation is based on the false assumption that God gave to Israel a law contract in order to provide for them the motivation necessary for them to live righteously. 
 God designed the law to make sin show its hand, to make sin abound, so that they could look at that picture of the law and look at themselves and say, “These pictures do not match up,” so that they could see that their sin was exceedingly sinful. 
 But even with the proper motivation, even with grace as our motivating agent, the flesh is never capable of performing to the standard necessary for righteousness, when righteousness before God is linked to people’s performance. 
 People must rid themselves of the tendency to think that God is dealing with people as he has dealt in time past, when the law program was the order of the day. Paul wants us to understand and understand fully that motivation to do righteousness is the exact opposite of what our natural minds suppose it to be. 
 God did not design the law to enable Israel to live righteously unto him or to give them the motivation to do it. Take away the law Paul and you have taken away the motivation people need to do good and to avoid evil, that is the way the natural mind works. 
 That is really the heart and soul of the argument Paul faced when he preached: you are not under the law, but under grace! Romans 6:14