The Whole Christian

“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding.” (Prov. 9:10) “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 in all wisdom and spiritual understanding.” (Col. 1:9) “Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding.” (Prov. 4:7)

Do you think that the Lord is trying to tell us something here, do you believe that this is important to Him, and so should be important, in fact, vital to us? What God offers He does not hold back from any who ask of Him, and I would challenge you to find anything more important in this life than to have the knowledge of God, to understand, as much as He sees fit to allow, His ways, the reason that He does what He does, of who He is.

The entire Old Testament is a history lesson, but far too few spend much time in it, the New Testament is where they like to search for the Lord, but once a man understands by the grace of God the resurrection and redemption, all of the New Testament is, in a sense, a continuance of the Old. We are taught how we are to present ourselves to the world, how we are to submit to the will of the Father, what our actions and words are to portray to others, we are to be God-fearing men and women. Now, did I just describe the Old or New Testament?

The only thing that separates the born-again believers in the Sovereign Lord is the death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and not to downplay the most important and significant moment in all of history, but beyond the adherence to the law, born-again believers are to respond to the Most High the same as all those who served the Lord in the Old Testament did, by faith. “And the scripture was fulfilled which saith, Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness: and he was called the Friend of God.” (James 2:23) Before the law “Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession.” (Heb. 4:14) Just as those in the line of Aaron were a foreshadow of the Lord Jesus, “The LORD hath sworn, and will not repent, Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek.” (Psalm 110:4)

There are those who believe that the God of the Old Testament was different than the God of the New Testament, that everything in each of them is relevant only to those who were, and are, living in a particular time. I like to ask them when I have the opportunity, what Jesus would think of David, asking the Lord to kill his enemies, (Psalm 69:22-24) asking Him to make their children fatherless, (Psalm 109:9) that He would destroy them all. These individuals are, in a way, the cause for the great falling away that we are in, (2 Thess. 2:3) for they see Jesus as nothing but love, and they see the Father as full of wrath, and all of their reasonings fall apart when they understand that Jesus is God.

I believe, in part, it is due to one singular verse, “Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert.” (Isaiah 43:19) It is the best that they can come up with, these are those that have decided we should never judge anyone, not even with the Word of God, they believe that love is always the answer.

But their conversations come to an abrupt end when 1 Corinthians 5:5 is mentioned, “To deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.” When Jude 1:23 is brought to their attention, “And others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire; hating even the garment spotted by the flesh.” And of course, mentioning when the Lord made a whip (John 2:15) is almost always when they will inform you that they have someplace they need to be. I have never brought up this part of Ecclesiastes 3:8, “A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.” But I am going to presume there will be excuses, or as they would call them, Old Testament verses New Testament reasonings that they would attempt to apply.

This is not a “some are called one way, and some are called another” issue, this is the complete servant of Christ, this is what it means to be Christ-like, and not to pick and choose the attributes that make one “feel better” about themselves, that is the way of designing your own god, and that is not what a servant is to do, he is to serve fully, in whatever way that the Lord bids him to. Not one eye is a hand, but no eye should ever tell the hand that they need to learn to be an eye. (1 Cor. 12:21)