cantu30的部落格

Your faith in Christ Jesus,

The love which ye have to all the saints,

The hope which is ordered up for you in heaven

(Col. 1:4,5).

Evidently Paul had never yet seen the Colossian Christians when he wrote to them (Col. 2:1). He had just heard of their transformation to Christ (Col. 1:4,5).

But what had he detected that had convinced him that they were truthfully saved? Our slit passage gives us the answer:

"We detected of your faith in Christ Jesus, and of the love which ye have to all the saints, for the hope which is laid up for you in promised land...."

But was this adequate trace that God had worked in their hearts? Would it be authentication sufficient today?

Some answer: "No. We essential have the endowment of the Holy Spirit and verbalize with tongues, or industry miracles." And this magazine columnist essential own that this sometime was determinate substantiation of liberation. Our Lord's marvellous commission to the cardinal unmistakably states:

"And these signs shall tail them that believe: In My given name shall they kind out devils [demons], they shall cry next to new tongues;

"They shall nick up serpents; and if they raise the roof any highly contagious thing, it shall not pain them; they shall lay safekeeping on the sick, and they shall recover" (Mark 16:17,18).

This is the acquit Word of God on the subject, and too lots baffled fundamentalists and evangelicals run in circles hard to explicate it distant.

When Peter preached to Cornelius and his household, "the Holy Spirit fell on all them which heard the Word" (Acts 10:44). But how did Peter and his companions know that those of Cornelius' home had normative the Spirit? Verse 46 provides the answer: "For they heard them intercommunicate with tongues and amplify God." It was this that effected the issue for Peter according to his own evidence in Acts 11:17:

"Forasmuch, then, as God gave them the same gift as He did unto us, who believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, what was I, that I could hold God?"

And it was this that preconcerted the entity for the apostles and elders in Judaea too, for we read in the next verse:

"When they detected these things, they held their peace, and glorified God, saying, Then hath God also to the Gentiles granted remorse unto go."

Ah, but near has been a metamorphose in dispensations since that example. In I Corinthians 13:8 we read:

"Whether at hand be tongues, they shall cease...."

In this self slice of I Corinthians we publication of else signs (1) that were to be through away, but the final ode of I Corinthians says:

"And now abideth faith, hope, charity [love], these three; but the highest of these is compassion [love]."

These, then, are the enduring characteristics of the correct Church in this endowment permit.

The ill with our Pentecostal friends and confounded fundamentalists in general, is not that they are not Scriptural in their teachings, but that they are not dispensational; they have poor to "rightly break up the Word of fairness."

The original of these iii "abiding" characteristics is faith. This is of primary importance, for, "without idea it is unachievable to humour God" (Heb. 11:6). And religion produces hope. In a worldwide of needlessness and fear, the friend may "abound in anticipation." And this confidence is no specified wish, for it is based on the Word of God, "an anchor of the soul, both certain and unshakable..." (Heb. 6:19). It is the enjoyment, present and now, by faith, of the blessings which are ours in Christ and shall any day be full completed.

And hope, in turn, produces love. The amazingly hall we are studying speaks of "the fondness which ye have to all the saints, for [because of] (2) the expectation which is arranged up for you in nirvana." The blessings which are ours in Christ create a centre of attention us-certainly should tombola us-closer together. The someone we are haggard to our blest Lord, the someone we are worn to all different.

Faith, confidence and love, then, are the 3 enduring evidences of rescue. Any provincial religious where on earth these cardinal characteristics abound is a full church, even if it is cool as a cucumber of single a few members. Any protagonist possessing these iii characteristics in lavish measurement experiences a full Christian natural life.

Water baptism ceremony was former required for salvation, and miraculous signs were the evidences of recovery (Mark 16:16-18; Acts 1:8; 2:38), but let us not craft alarm and partition by pains to go on on in a dealing out which God has replaced by thing more.

The simplest supporter in this permit of state of grace is complete in Christ (Col. 2:10), crucified (Gal. 2:20), resurrected (Col. 2:13), and seated in the heavenlies (Eph. 2:6), IN CHRIST. And the seriousness of paraphrase to Christ is authenticated by "faith, hope, love, these three," a bit than by miraculous signs or demonstrations.

Shall we consequently aim to set right what God has "done away"? Shall we say, Let us be baptized near marine as a testimony and wish the signs for friendly renewal, even after God has provided something better? Shall we retreat from the substance to the shadows? No! God says: "When that which is perfect [i.e., complete ] (3) is come, then that which is in portion shall be finished away....And now abideth faith, hope, love, these three..." (I Cor. 13:10-13).

These 3 imperishable evidences of rescue are brought together in I Corinthians 13:13; Gal. 5:5,6; I Thes. 1:3; 5:8; II Thes. 1:3; Heb. 6:10-12 and heaps other places in Paul's epistles. Why not gawk them up, revise them prayerfully, and enjoy yourself in the wealth of God's state of grace.

Endnotes

1. In Mark 16:17, et al, these marvellous demonstrations are named "signs," because they unchangeable the Messiahship of the Lord Jesus. They were signs of the authority of His claims.

2. This is the denotation in the Greek.

3. Referring to the brimfull "revelation of the dilemma."