Dial Daily Bread

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread":

Sent in by a Thoughtful Reader:

 

“When you say the new covenant is summarized best in ‘Believe and live,’ are you not opening your words to a big misunderstanding? This sounds exactly like the mantra of superficial Evangelicalism, which focuses on grace as divine pardon without an equal emphasis on grace as divine power to enable us to overcome sin.”

 

Thank you for a thoughtful observation!

 

If we believe in the papal/pagan doctrine of natural immortality (which is popular), we cannot truly appreciate the sacrifice that Christ made on His cross, or believe that He truly died. And if we cannot believe that, we cannot appreciate “the width and length and depth and height” of the love [agape] revealed there that “passes knowledge” (Eph. 3:18, 19).

 

The inevitable result: faith is limited, circumscribed, paralyzed, because faith is a heart response to the love demonstrated in the sacrifice of Christ. When faith is devitalized, so then is our spiritual life.

 

The death which Jesus died for us was the equivalent of “the second death.” Thus His commitment to the cross meant to die the very death of hell—not a measure of physical pain in decibels, but the total abandonment of Himself to the eternal “curse of God” (cf. Deut. 21:22, 23; Gal. 3:13). His cry on the cross was not superficial, “Why have You forsaken Me?” Jesus endured in His own soul what the lost will have to endure in the final judgment at the end of the 1000 years (Rev. 20:11-15). Thus He was “made to be sin for us, who knew no sin” (2 Cor. 5:21). That’s the Bible definition of love (agape).

 

When faith is a melted-heart “believe and live” rather than an ego-motivated “obey and live,” we are tapping into the message that will lighten the earth with glory (Rev. 18:1-4). This understanding is implicit in Hebrews 2:9: Christ “tasted death for every man,” that is, the real thing. To understand that truth is what we mean by “believe and live.” The “living” from then on is in obedience to all the commandments of God, heartfelt, beyond fear of hell or thought of reward. Such love “constrains” us to that total heart obedience (2 Cor. 5:14).

Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.

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