green apple with the red one standing out from the crowd – over a white background with reflection

Where there is no vision, the people are unrestrained, But happy is he who keeps the law.

Proverbs 29:18

Probably no topic is more fraught with ‘divisiveness’ than the subject of ‘separation’.  The idea of being separate from another has with it the connotation of doing something better, or, by many people’s estimation, ‘being better’, than someone else.  But, that simply is what it is.

Paul pointed this out himself, even while explaining that we should be unified.  He said,

For there must also be factions among you, so that those who are approved may become evident among you.

1 Corinthians 11:19

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Which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

1 Corinthians 2:13-14

Hence lies the mystery of Jesus’ words regarding the Gospel.  As the Kingdom lies wholly within the realm of the Holy Spirit, and does not exist outside of the context of it, Jesus came as one teaching on a subject that no one could understand.

Think about it.  The natural man, the one without His Spirit, cannot receive spiritual truths.  They are utterly foreign to him, and he simply cannot discern them.  But, for the man with the Spirit, they speak of spiritual things using spiritual words.

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He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.

John 3:36 NASB

Martin Luther restored to the church at large the understanding of justification by faith alone with the divine inspiration of the verse, “the just shall live by faith” (Romans 1:17).  Man was broken, and completely incapable of pleasing a perfect God, and needed the divine to descend and make a demarkation, an end of man’s corruption, and remake him anew.

It was faith, and faith alone, that Paul wrote about, that connected us to the saving Grace made available by Christ.  By faith Abel had made a better offering, and by faith, Abraham was counted righteous when he believed, not wavering with unbelief.

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Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

John 14:6

As Truth is a person, so is The Way.  As surely as any understanding of who He was and what He taught could be expressed, it cannot be understood outside of the person of Who He Is, What He Did and Why He Did It.  The Path of Life therefore, as it were, is following Jesus.  For the original twelve apostles, this was through both observing who Him directly, as well as by hearing Him teach.  Today, while we do not see exactly how He lived the words He preached, we have His Spirit within us to guide us into all truth.

But, most assuredly, His Words are to be obeyed.  None of His Words can be fully embraced without the provision of His Spirit, but through Him, and His enabling power, we are able to overcome through faith.

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Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.

2 Corinthians 5:17

Something fundamentally changes when you accept Christ.  Something profound and New takes place, that cannot have any part with the old (2 Corinthians 6:14).

Now for many, this is unrealized in this life, unless they are taught.  A Christian might live their whole life, and never realize what all Christ has bought for them.  But, as Jesus said, when a man believes, he is born again of a spiritual seed (John 3:3-5), and the old things are “passed away”.

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We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words. The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual man makes judgments about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man’s judgment:

1 Corinthians 2:12-15

We must be clear.  We are not to judge those outside of the church, but we are called to judge those inside it (1 Corinthians 5:12).  Those outside are sinners, and we expect them to act like sinners.  If they sin, it is their nature to sin, and we do not do well if we point fingers at the unregenerate, just as we do well not to fit into them, for there is no fellowship between light and dark.  Likewise, when we enter into soulish, or carnal, judgement against a brother, failing to discern the Lord’s body, we do sin.  Jesus said, “I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me.” (John 5:30).  He did not use His own mind or understanding to judge, but He judged according to the Spirit, and was right when He prophesied judgement on the Pharisees, on Jerusalem, and on the cities that would not hear His Gospel.

Yet, Paul made it clear that the man of the flesh cannot receive the things of God, for they are spiritually discerned.  Not will not, cannot.  Jesus said it this way, that those who are not born again cannot see nor enter the Kingdom of Heaven (John 3:3-5).

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Verily I say unto you, Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist: notwithstanding he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.

Matthew 11:11

He prophesied of Jesus’ coming, saying,

Truly, I give baptism with water to those of you whose hearts are changed; but he who comes after me is greater than I, whose shoes I am not good enough to take up: he will give you baptism with the Holy Spirit and with fire:

John 3:11

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The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.

John 1:9

Man, the carnal man, lives in darkness.  All mankind has turned aside from the truth, the true light, and has gone to corruption.  There is nothing wholesome about man, and nothing good in what he can do.  Ever.

The Spiritual Man, however, as Paul described, has died to it.  He has died to himself, to the world with all its desires, and has died to himself.  The case is so edged that Paul states that he is crucified to the world and the world is crucified to himself (Galatians 6:14).

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And of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace.

John 1:16

But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.

Matthew 7:14

We understand that it is by God’s grace that we are saved.  It is not our own efforts, but is His efforts.  It is only by coming with no merit of our own, but as sinners who sin, with no excuse or righteousness of our own merit, and by coming to the bloody cross with our own souls, that we enter into Christ’s life within.  It is only in the fullness of that finished work that we have any life whatsoever.  Paul called any efforts besides simple faith in the cross to be “dead works” (Hebrews 6:1).

On the other side of this is Jesus’ Words, saying, that unless our righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and Sadducees, we will in no way ever enter the Kingdom.  He said that the gate was small, and the the road to life was hard and narrow.  Only a few find it.

Between these two places on either side, which we could call ditches, we find the road.  Narrow as it is, it is still the road, and it must be traveled.

When we learn to preach the fullness of His Grace hand in hand with the narrowness of the road, we will have begun to understand the finished works of the cross.

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So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more.

Ephesians 4:17-19

The light of the Lord permeates everything we touch and do as a believer.  The light of the glory of the Lord so permeated Moses that, when the man of God died, the angel Michael contested with the devil over what they would do with the bones (Jude 1:9).  The glory so filled Elisha, that even when his bones were long dead and dry, a dead man falling against them returned to life (2 Kings 13:21).

When we approach God’s Word, we must realize that it is Spiritual.  The world we understand and see is physical, and while it has a bearing on the spiritual, it in itself is not spiritual.  What we see and what man thinks of as being spiritual is plainly not (John 3:3-5).

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