/ Perfection? on: November 23, 2005, 05:57:06 PM Quote cc: I thought the quote from Gene was interesting in that he seemed to capture the spirit of Romans 6:13 - Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness. - and the practical imperative that comes with it. (A statement that may cost me that "awesome" Patrick gave me.) The whole theology of Paul in the romans 678 is that we are identified with Christ in His death, burial and resurrection and so we have been changed with a whole new set of desires. He is not saying that we as it were have a bad dog and a good dog and we choose between them. Rather he is saying that we have a totally new reality that reins in us and we need to understand that life.

We are sanctified completely and the power of sin has been cut off it no longer reins in us. But we still have the remnants of the body of sin in our members. It affects both our physical and spiritual as if it were a person living inside of us. Righteousness reigns but sin is still nipping at us. Just like this above verse, we are intrinsically righteous but we still must mortify sin because its remains are still in us. 9951 Forums / Main Forum / Perfection? on: November 23, 2005, 02:30:55 PM

 Ok here is the heart of the issue as i see it in the American church. Look we have been fed object theology for many years and it is taking its toll on the state of the worshiper. The heart is not balance of mans responsibility and Gods sovereignty. Its the difference between the state of the soul and the importance of the object. Our problems are not hyper Calvinism but are Arminius related. Calvinist are not preaching Calvinism but a learned object oriented Calvinism. Whats your object today? Selling books? the function of the church? the social gospel? Beating people over the head with moral persuasion? Word of mouth faith? Social engineering? Professorship? College education?

When ever the gospel goes out it goes out under these to paradigms. Object worship, or spiritual worship. We have focus on church buildings, programs, human relational worship, multi-cultural religious crossovers, business run churches and a plethora of other objects. Why because there is not much spirit focused worship and we focus on the object orientation. We really need to start from the beginning of supernatural gospel and get back to free grace and God sovereign preaching until everyone is offended. Then and only then will the message be more important than the system of object worship that plagues the minds of that Egypt generation of promise land seekers.

 Look Calvinism focuses on the souls of men. All the directions toward worship teaching is to get to the condition of the soul of man. Its not even just conviction and moral but a real concern for each of man in body and spirit. We are so ingrained with the object worship mentality that we have over looked the clear historical difference in this area. Our message needs to focus on the soul of man both in a moral call and a meeting his needs in the historical sense. Unless we get back to this detailed teaching of Calvin we will just raise a generation of confused arminist. Look it is very simple, there is no pragmatism in choice. There is no in-between agency to each choice. We either rely on the supernatural work of Christ or we rely on our own abilities. The object has no power. When we start preaching Calvinism there will be an automatic change in society. The message has a built in generator to affect the heart and regenerate it. Lets start with justification by faith, and the need for Christ rule, and the real concern for the soul of man and the grace of God and the supernatural need for regeneration. Lets get single hear-ted with the confession!