Freedom In Christ

➡ Paul, the voiceover for a ministry called Your Daily Bread, discusses the importance of understanding religious teachings to live a good life. He emphasizes that our actions should reflect our beliefs, using examples from various books of the Bible. He encourages us to seek wisdom from God’s teachings, just as people search for gold and silver. Paul believes that understanding these teachings is crucial to living a life that aligns with our faith.
➡ Paul emphasizes the importance of understanding God’s will and wisdom to live a worthy life. He believes teaching God’s principles, rather than focusing on emotional stories, helps people live these principles. He warns that without understanding these principles, emotional reactions will fade and leave no lasting impact. He encourages listeners to keep faith, stay strong, and shine their light in the world.

Hello, my name is Paul, and I am the voiceover for a ministry provided to you by Jim Pugh at God Is Government, called Your Daily Bread, taken from Christ’s teaching of the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6.11. This is a daily devotion ministry focused not only on uplifting Scripture, but Scripture that will grow your spiritual connection with Christ. We hope that you receive these devotions to uplift you, encourage you, but most importantly, advance your knowledge base of the Holy Scriptures. Today’s focused discussion will be on freedom in Christ. Now listen to me, in chapter 12 you have the first practical instruction of the book of Romans.

The first 11 chapters are theology. Before he ever says anything about what you’re to do, he gives you 11 chapters of doctrine. Notice what he says. The saving power of faith, peace with God, standing in grace, the promise of glory, the gift of love, the indwelling Spirit, adoption, reconciliation, union, slavery to Christ, deliverance from sin, freedom from judgment, sanctification, justification, glorification, security, unfailing promises on the basis of all of these great mercies of God dispensed to sinful man. Therefore, brethren, I beseech you, present your bodies. See, it’s always that. Duty is always a response to doctrines.

Behavior is always a response to precept. Life is always a response to theology. And I want you to know this because I want you to know why we teach doctrine. People say, well, you know, you get into such heavy teaching. You’re teaching doctrine. Listen, I have to do that. That’s what God has called me to do, to teach you the principles of life so that you can live life. The therefore is there for a reason. Look at Galatians chapter five, and I’ll give you another illustration. And we could go to any of Paul’s epistles, really, to do it, but I’ll pick out a couple here.

Galatians. In the first four chapters of Galatians, Paul is discussing the liberty of the believer. He is free from circumcision. He is free from the mosaic code as a way of salvation. He is free from the ceremonial law. It doesn’t mean that God’s righteous moral law has changed at all. But he’s not to look at law as a way of salvation. He’s free from that. He’s free from circumcision. He’s free from having to keep ceremonies. And he said all of this. He said that we have freedom in Christ. That’s all the first four chapters, heavy on that.

In fact, he closes out chapter four. So then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free. He gives that great allegory of Sarah and Hagar. And then he closes with this great statement, we are free. Great thing. Liberated for life. Free. And then immediately, his therefore comes in verse one. And I’ll read you the way the Greek renders it. For freedom, Christ has set us free. That’s the summary of the first four chapters. For freedom, Christ has set us free. Now the next word, therefore, stand fast and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.

You see, the therefore is based on the theology of freedom. Therefore, don’t go back to legalism. Don’t go back to that and get tangled up again. And then in chapters five and six, he discusses the practical aspects of the life of freedom. Look at Philippians chapter two, verse one. And don’t worry about the time. We’re not going to get anywhere anyway. So we’ll just, it’s like link sausage. You whack it off anywhere and get the whole thing. Philippians two, one. If there be therefore, there’s that therefore. He’s given some great, great theological truths in the first chapter.

Great realities about Christ and what he’s done in his life, about Christ’s consolation, about Christ’s love, all of these things. And now he says, if there be therefore any consolation in Christ, any comfort of love, any fellowship of the spirit, any tender mercies and compassion, fulfill you my joy, that you be like-minded, having the same love, being of one accord and of one mind. In other words, he says, look, if our theology is this, then beloved, our behavior has got to be this. See, we’ve got to have a therefore based on theology and doctrine to live by.

Look at Colossians chapter three, verse five. Well, actually, well, let’s look at verse five. The first two chapters of Colossians, boy, one of the most exalted presentations of Jesus Christ and the truth of the gospel anywhere in the Bible. Fabulous statement. The end of chapter one is absolutely unparalleled as a statement of the glory of Christ. The only one that can rival it perhaps is Hebrews chapter one. Tremendous statement about Christ. And then he goes on to the, into the great truth of how Christ is all in all in chapter two.

And you don’t need anything but Christ. Christ is everything. Tremendous. And then at the beginning of chapter three, he says, look, you are risen with this Christ. What a great doctrine that is. You are risen with Christ. You are seated at the right hand of God. When Christ shall appear, you’re going to appear with him in glory. Do you realize you’ve been exalted to the heavenlies? You have been given a citizenship that is trans earthly, that is up there in the heaven of God in the heavenlies, as Paul calls them. Do you realize you have ascended beyond? Your life is hid with Christ in God.

And then he says in verse five, kill therefore your members, which are on the earth. Do you see the point? Clear through chapter three, verse four, it’s doctrine, doctrine, doctrine. Finally, therefore, here’s the duty. Now, beloved, you need to know this. This is a constant principle of the New Testament. It’s everywhere, basic to teaching principles for living. We are to walk worthy of our calling. We know what he’s done for us. We know who we are. We know the principles. We are to walk worthy. First Thessalonians chapter four, verse one says this.

Furthermore, then we beseech you, brethren, and exhort you by the Lord Jesus, that as you have received of us how you ought to walk and to please God, so you would abound more and more. Now, do you get the point? We have taught you how to walk, and oh, I exhort you now to do it. To do it. You see, first, there has to be the teaching. You can’t expect the believer to function on what he doesn’t know. You can’t live a principle you don’t know. You can’t behave in a way you don’t understand.

And you must search the word of God to know the principles. Proverbs tells us that you’ll know the wisdom of God when you desire that wisdom, like you desire gold, like people search for silver. When you search to know God’s wisdom, you’ll know it. The 28th chapter of Job, I was reading yesterday, it describes, the first part of the chapter describes how men will work to mine out treasures. And it talks about the fact that they will go to any length conceivable to get treasure out of the ground. In fact, let me show it to you.

Look at Job chapter 28. He says here, surely there is a vein for the silver and a place for gold where they refine it. Iron is taken out of the earth and bronze is smelted out of the stone. He set an end to darkness and search without all perfection, the stones of darkness and the shadow and the shadow of death. What Job is saying here is it’s incredible that man will literally go down into the pits to find treasure, to find gold. He’ll uncover the stones of darkness, he’ll go into the shadow of death.

He searches out everything to find silver, to find iron, to find bronze. He talks about verse 6, the stones are in the other place of sapphires and it has dust of gold. And there is a path which no fowl knows, which no bird knows, and which the falcon’s eye has never seen, and the lion’s whelps have never trod, nor the fierce lion passed by. In other words, this stuff, these sapphires and diamonds and rubies and gold and silver, are hidden in places that the animals don’t know and the birds don’t know, in dark places, in deep places, and man will go to find them there.

And he puts forth his hand, verse 9, on the rocks and overturns the mountains by the roots. He cuts the rivers among the rocks and his eye sees every precious thing. He binds the floods from overflowing, he sets up a dam, and then he pans for gold. Man will do anything. And Job says that when it’s all said and done, you know what he never finds. He never finds the wisdom of God. And then, when you come to Proverbs chapter 2, you hear the writer of Proverbs say this. When you put as much effort to know the wisdom of God as men will do to find gold and silver, then you’ll know God’s wisdom.

And listen, until you know God’s wisdom, until the basis of doctrine is there, you don’t know how to live. You have to know God’s wisdom. Back to Colossians for a minute, verse 1, or chapter 1, verse 9. For this cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that ye might be filled with the knowledge of his will. Now listen, in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, Paul says, oh, I want you to be filled with the knowledge of his will. That’s in your mind.

All wisdom, all understanding. The result, verse 10, in order that ye might walk, what’s the next word? Worthy. You see, again, the worthy walk is predicated on knowledge, being fruitful in every good work, predicated on knowledge, strengthened with might predicated on knowledge, giving thanks predicated on knowledge. That’s why we teach the word of God, beloved. That’s why week after week after week I stand here and teach principles of the word of God. I don’t spend a lot of time telling stories. I don’t spend a lot of time just trying to whip you into emotional frenzies.

I just want to teach you the principles of the word of God so you can live them out. Now we could do that. We could have sanctified pep talks, and I could come in here and pull out some of my oldies but goodies, and we could tell you all the jokes I know, and we could laugh and scratch the whole time, and we could get all traumatized emotionally, and I could tell you tear-jerking stories, and we could just really have a real emotional bath. And you know what? You’d get all emotionalized, and then 15 minutes later you’d forget everything you ever heard.

There wouldn’t be any principles there. Thank you for joining us in this exploration of freedom in Christ. Until next time, remember to keep the faith, stay strong, and continue to shine your light in the world. To hear these daily devotions of your daily bread, please log on to goddessgovernment.com. Goodbye, and may your faith always lead the way. [tr:trw].