The Advent Part 61
By understanding that everything Peter is reiterating from the sixteenth psalm is in reference to Jesus, we likewise understand the life of hope that the Son of God lived while He walked the earth. Every time thoughts of his subsequent death would arise in Him, Jesus did not keep them secret, but shared them with His disciples. Each time He spoke of His death however, He was also quick to mention His resurrection and that He would not see corruption. This knowledge that Christ possessed, that His soul would not be left in Hades, and that He would not see corruption was a constant and permanent hope that resided in His heart.
Even though Jesus carried our sins on the cross, He never ceased being the Holy One of God, nor did He ever cease being sinless and perfect. He died for our sins, but not as a sinner, He paid the price for our redemption and reconciliation unto the Father, and because He continued to remain the Holy One of God, death could not hold Him.
Death is the penalty for sin, and it was the only time that death stretched its hand out toward that which was forbidden, toward the Holy One of God, toward the One in which there was no sin, and as such death found its own death, and has been defeated.
As saints of God, as those who have been redeemed and reconciled unto Him, we have no less a hope than that which Christ had while He walked the earth. No, God will not allow us to see corruption, no God will not leave our souls in Hades, for we have been born again in Christ, and just as He rose, we will likewise rise, just as He did not see corruption we will likewise not see corruption.
We do not walk in fear, we do not walk in doubt, we do not walk in ignorance, we walk in hope and in faith and in peace knowing that God will not abandon His saints, but rather that they have been born into life, and will one day stand before His glory and receive their just reward.
We are made holy because we have been made one with the Holy One of God, having died to this world, and the sins of this world, and having been born anew, born again in Him.
Romans 6:4-11, “Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. For he who has died has been freed from sin. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
We are likewise made holy, sanctified and set apart because we live His life. We walk as He walked, we live as He lived, and we are in continual obedience toward the Father just as Jesus was. We cannot claim to be sanctified, set apart or holy and not live the life of Christ, we cannot claim to be redeemed and born again, yet continue to pursue the things of this world, succumb to the pleasures of this world, and live as those of the world live.
1 John 2:6, “He who says he abides in Him ought himself also walk just as He walked.”
Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me, and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.”
Now I realize full well that these scriptures fly in the face of the ‘Jesus did it all so I don’t have to do anything’ mentality that has wormed its way into the household of faith, but it is the Bible that we must contend with when it comes to choosing the doctrines that we receive and believe.
It is one thing to say we abide in Christ it is another to truly abide in Him, for if we truly abide in Him, then we must walk just as He walked. If we truly abide in Christ, then we will live our lives accordingly, we will live lives of obedience, and self-renunciation, we will live lives of humility and repentance, we will live holy lives, and righteous lives, that the world might see we indeed live by faith in the Son of God, who loved us and gave Himself for us.
If we cannot reconcile modern doctrines with the Word of God, then we must do away with the doctrine rather than the Word, because it is the Word that is a lamp unto our feet, and a light for our path.
When we stand before the Almighty on that day of days, we will have to answer for that which we believed, as well as that which we chose not to believe even though it was in the Word of God. On that day, attempting to excuse our disobedience and rebellion toward the Word by saying we followed the crowd, or that we chose the path of least resistance will not do, for God is a righteous judge, and a holy judge, and He will render to each one according to his deeds.
Matthew 16:27, “For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward each according to his works.”
With love in Christ,
Michael Boldea Jr.
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