Our theme for this month: “Understanding Salvation”

Our Bible verse for today: “In him you were also circumcised, in the putting off of the sinful nature, not with a circumcision done by the hands of men, but with the circumcision done by Christ.” Colossians 2:11 (NIV)

Our thought for today: “You need to be circumcised.”

Let’s talk about circumcision. You know, the surgical procedure that involves taking a sharp knife to the male penis and cutting away the excess foreskin surrounding the head. It is bloody and it is painful. However, in addition to the physical and hygienic function it serves, there is also spiritual symbology associated with it.

In yesterday’s devotional we read in Ephesians 5:15 where the Apostle Paul instructed us to “Pay careful attention, then, to how you live – not as unwise people but as wise – making the most of the time …” Then he went on to teach us what it means to be continually filled with the Holy Spirit. In that passage he was telling us that there should be something different and special about how we as the followers of Jesus live our lives. That brings us to the spiritual significance of the symbol of circumcision.

In Genesis chapter 17 God directed Abraham to circumcise all the males in his household as a physical sign of the spiritual covenant He was making with them. It was a symbolic gesture which marked them as belonging to God. Later, in the time of the Exodus, God reconfirmed circumcision as a marker to identify His people. However in Romans 2:25-29, and again in Colossians 2:11, the Apostle Paul explained that true circumcision is circumcision of the heart, not of the flesh. It involves cutting out of our lives anything that does not honor or please God. Physical circumcision is actually unnecessary for New Testament Christians. It is circumcision of the heart that marks us as the people of God.

What does this have to do with our theme for this month of salvation? Just that circumcision of the heart is an important part of the second stage of the salvation process which is known as sanctification. Now that we have been saved (the first stage), we are in the process of being transformed more and more into the likeness of Jesus (the second stage). This will involve spiritual circumcision – cutting out of our lives anything that does not honor and please God.

If you happen to have one of those male appendages, it does not need to be circumcised. But your heart does. So please don’t run out and get physically circumcised – unless you really want to. As a matter of faith it isn’t necessary. But please do circumcise your heart. Cut out of your life anything that does not honor and please God.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

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Our theme for this month: “Understanding Salvation”

Our Bible verse for today: “… but be filled by the Spirit.” Ephesians 5:18b (CSB)

Our thought for today: “Continue being filled with the Spirit.”

Yesterday I made the point that it is crucial for us to maintain a close relationship with Jesus. We considered Jesus’ illustration of the grape vine and the branches from John 15:5 and we thought about some of the attributes of Jesus that should become increasingly evident in the life of the Christian as you grow and mature spiritually. In Galatians 5:22-23 the Apostle Paul referred to that as “The Fruit of the Spirit”.

In today’s Bible verse (Ephesians 5:18b) Paul continues that theme by referring to something known as “being filled with the Spirit”. The fuller passage in which this partial verse appears teaches about consistency in the Christian life. Paul starts the passage out with the command, “Pay careful attention, then, to how you live – not as unwise people but as wise – making the most of the time …” It is within that context that the phrase “but be filled with the Spirit” appears.

In New Testament Greek the term “be filled” is in the present tense. It indicates an ongoing action. It clues us into the fact that although the Holy Spirit came to live in your heart in the moment of conversion, there is something more that is supposed to be going on in your life with respect to the presence and work of the Spirit. In the Amplified Bible the translators help us to understand that a fuller and more accurate translation reads, “… but be filled with the Holy Spirit and constantly guided by Him.”

At the moment you placed your faith in Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins you were “filled” with the Spirit – in that He came to live in your heart 24/7 and forever. But the idea that you are to “continue” being filled with the Spirit on an ongoing basis means that you are to practice the necessary spiritual disciplines every day so that you remain in-tune with His work in your life, and you are fully submitted to His will. “Continuing” to be filled means that you cultivate your relationship with the Holy Spirit so you are sensitive to His presence, you seek His guidance, and then you follow it.

The ongoing daily function of being filled with the Spirit is a moment-by-moment walk of obedience with the Father through the ministry of the Spirit, and it is an important part of this process that is progressively making you more and more like Jesus.

I encourage you to seek to be filled with the Spirit again today. Renew and nurture your relationship with Him.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Our mailing address is:

Our theme for this month: “Understanding Salvation”

Our Bible verse for today: “I am the vine, you are the branches. The one who remains in me and I in him produces much fruit, because you can do nothing without me.” John 15:5 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “It is crucial to maintain a healthy relationship with Jesus.”

Are you familiar with the term “life verse”? A “life verse” is a Bible verse that speaks to you personally in a deep way, and which plays an important role in helping you to live the Christian life. There are 31,102 verses in the Bible (23,145 in the Old Testament and 7,957 in the New Testament). And as Paul tells us in 2 Timothy 3:16-17, they are all given to us by God and they are all important and helpful.

A “life verse” is one that is particularly special and helpful to you personally. I have six life verses (John 15:5, Galatians 5:22-23, Jeremiah 29:11-13, Joshua 14:11, Hebrews 6:10, and Isaiah 46:4). Over the next few days, as we continue to consider the process of sanctification, I will refer to a few of them and tell you why they are so special to me.

In John 15:5 Jesus used a grape vine and the branches that grow off of it to help us understand the spiritual reality of Him living His life in us and through us. The grape vine lives its life and produces its fruit through the branches that grow off of it. The life of the vine flows through the branches, and the branches then produce the fruit of the vine. As long as the branch stays attached to the vine it will produce the fruit of the vine. But if the connection between the vine and the branch is broken, the fruit will no longer be produced through the branch.

Likewise, by means of the Holy Spirit living in our hearts the life of Jesus flows in and through us. The fruit of Jesus is then produced in our lives. Some of that fruit is described for us by the Apostle Paul in Galatians 5:22-23. He called it “the fruit of the Spirit”: “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” Those are attributes of Jesus and He wants them to be present in your life. He wants you to experience and enjoy those things in increasing measure, and He wants the world to experience those fruits as a result being in contact with you. His fruit produced through your life.

As you maintain a close relationship with Jesus day-by-day, the fruit of the Spirit becomes more and more a reality in your life. That is a natural result of the ongoing process of sanctification, and it is progressively making you more and more like Jesus. This is part of your salvation and it is why it is crucial to maintain a healthy relationship with Jesus. We will explore this idea a little further tomorrow.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Our mailing address is:

Our theme for this month: “Understanding Salvation”

Our Bible verse for today: “I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” Galatians 2:20 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “Christ lives in you and through you.”

The language Paul uses in Galatians 2:20 is more than just symbolic, it is literally true. It is also profoundly important. When he writes, “I have been crucified with Christ”, it is literally true. On the cross Jesus was crucified for your sins and mine. It was your sin being nailed to that cross. In that sense, it was you being crucified. Likewise when he writes, “and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me …” that is also literally true. By His Spirit in your heart, Christ lives in you (1 Corinthians 6:19).

The name “Christian” means “like Christ”. When you take the name of Christian for yourself you are claiming to be like Christ. However, becoming more and more like Christ is a transformation that occurs over time. At the time of our conversion we received the “life” of Jesus in us, but the “likeness” wasn’t there yet.

Instead, at that time, sin was still very much present in our lives. The sins were forgiven, but the residual effects were still there, as were the habits caused by sin. At that time sin still had power over you – strong power. In most cases breaking free from the bonds of those sinful habits occurs progressively over time as we train ourselves to behave differently.

The second stage of the salvation process (sanctification) is the time during which we move further and further away from who we were, and closer and closer to who God wants us to be (like Christ). This requires daily surrender to Jesus. It is an intentional decision on your part to submit to Jesus and to allow the Holy Spirit to have His way in you. This is what Paul meant when he wrote, “The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” It’s all about faith in Jesus and continuous surrender to Him as you subordinate your will for His, and allow Him to live His life through you.

Tomorrow we will consider what this surrender looks like in actual practice, and what the benefits are in this lifetime.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Our mailing address is:

Our theme for this month: “Understanding Salvation”

Our Bible verse for today: “The Holy Spirit is the down payment of our inheritance, until the redemption of the possession, to the praise of his glory.” Ephesians 1:14 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “The Holy Spirit is the down payment of what is to come.”

In his great little book, “The Doctrine of Salvation”, Dr. Darrell Robinson explains, “Salvation encompasses the total life of the believer – past, present, and future. It may be viewed as three stages: as an instantaneous act, a continuing process, and a glorious consummation. The believer can say, “I have been saved” (see Romans 10:9-10), “I am being saved”, (see 1 Corinthians 1:18), and “I will be saved” (see Romans 13:11).

In Ephesians 1:14 the Apostle Paul writes that the Holy Spirit was given to us as a down payment of our inheritance. A down payment is a first payment that is made to initiate a transaction, and it comes with the promise that more payments will be made, and will continue to be made, until the full transaction has been completed.

We’ve already learned that in the first stage of the salvation process (Forgiveness), you were given the Holy Spirit as a gift from God. When Paul tells us that the Holy Spirit is the down payment of what we will inherit from our heavenly Father as a result of being His adopted children, he means that the gift of the Spirit was just the first step as you now begin to receive your full inheritance as a child of God. From that point forward there will continue to be installments paid out to you as you continue to receive more and more of your inheritance. Those installments come to you mostly during the second phase of the salvation process, the phase we call sanctification. The final installment will be given to you once you arrive in heaven. Then you will have received your full inheritance.

The sad part is that some people are not allowing God to give them their full inheritance. They did receive the down payment of the Spirit, but since then they have not been open to receiving more from God. They have essentially closed the account and are not allowing Him to make additional deposits into their life.

An important part of the sanctification process is to continue to place yourself in a position before God everyday whereby He can deposit into your life all He wants you to have. This is accomplished by practicing the basic disciplines of the Christian life which include prayer, Bible study, worship, fellowship with other Christians, acts of service in the name of Jesus, etc.

The gift of the Spirit was only the down payment. There is much more you are entitled to as a child of God, and which your heavenly Father wants to give you. Are you receiving your full inheritance?

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Our mailing address is:

Our theme for this month: “Understanding Salvation”

Our Bible verse for today: “I am sure of this, that he who started a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” Philippians 1:6 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “God is changing you into the person He wants you to be.”

Yesterday I told you the story of how at one point in my life I had an image of myself as a bodybuilder. I never got there. Actually, I never even came close, but I did have a picture in my head of what it would look like if it ever did happen.

It’s pretty common for people to have goals regarding what they want to achieve and the kind of person they want to become. That’s not a bad thing. But God also has an image of the kind of person He wants us to become, and He is in the process of bringing that to pass. And (here’s the really good news), God’s image of you is better than your image of you, and His plan is better than yours. This is what the sanctification process is all about. It’s about God changing you into the person He wants you to become.

In Philippians 1:6 Paul informs us that the One who started a good work in you will carry it on until it is completed in the day of Christ Jesus. The “good work” that He started in you began on the day you placed your faith in Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins. That’s when He started changing you. The “carry it on” part is the process of sanctification. The “completion” happens on that day in eternity when your spirit is united with your resurrection body and you are finally the completed person you will be for the rest of eternity (we will talk more about that at the end of this series).

In Jeremiah 29:11 God assures us, “For I know the plans I have for you – this is the Lord’s declaration – plans for your well-being, not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.” That good and perfect plan God is referring to works itself out over the course of your life and leads you to become the person He wants you to be.

Another image God frequently uses to help us understand what He is doing in our lives is the image of a potter forming clay into the shape he wants it to be. There are over 100 Bible verses that make reference to a potter shaping clay. Isaiah 64:8 is a good example, “Yet Lord, you are our Father, we are the clay and you are our potter; we all are the work of your hands.”

Sanctification is a very important part of your salvation. So much so, that we will spend a large part of the rest of this month exploring it. God will do His part to bring about your sanctification but you also must do your part. You have to cooperate with him. Again I recommend to you Richard Foster’s very helpful book “The Celebration of Discipline”. There’s a lot we can do in our daily lives to cooperate with God as He molds us and shapes us into the people He wants us to be.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Our mailing address is:

Our theme for this month: “Understanding Salvation”

Our Bible verse for today: “Therefore, my dear friends, just as you have always obeyed, so now, not only in my presence but even more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling.” Philippians 2:12 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “You have to work out your salvation.”

In my twenties and thirties I was a big fan of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Not “The Terminator” Arnold, but the “Mr. America” Arnold, the body builder. I wanted to be a body builder too. I wanted to have 20 inch biceps and be able to bench press small automobiles.

I had a copy of Arnold’s book “The Education of a Body Builder”. It was filled with suggested workout routines and lots of pictures. I had an image in my mind of what I wanted to be like, and I had a plan to follow to help me get there. Well, I never even came close to Arnold’s stature but for about ten years I was kind of pumped-up and muscular. (Linda tells me I was more of a muscle-head than a muscle-man but sometimes she gets mean like that.)

In Philippians 2:12 the Apostle Paul uses the metaphor of working out and building up, and he applies it to the process of sanctification. Here Paul tells us that we have to “work-out” our salvation. He does not say that we have to “work for” our salvation, we’ve already addressed that issue – salvation is by grace not by works. But he does say we must “work out” our salvation. By that Paul means the same thing Arnold did. If you want big muscles, a big physical stature, you have to do your exercises. Likewise, if you want a big spiritual stature you have to do your exercises – you have to do the things that will help you to grow.

This second stage of the salvation process, the stage the Bible and theologians refer to as “sanctification” is a growing period. It is the time when we are supposed to be learning, changing, and slowly becoming more and more like Jesus.

Once upon a time, earlier in life, I wanted to become more and more like Arnold in physical stature. Now I realize it would be much better to become more and more like Jesus in spiritual stature. That’s what the process of sanctification accomplishes for us. Our exercises for this spiritual development include things like daily prayer and Bible study, worship, full participation in a good church family, acts of service to those in need, good stewardship, and the other basic disciplines of the Christian life.

When I was trying to grow physically I relied on Arnold’s book “The Education of a Body Builder” as a guide. If you would like a great book to guide you in learning and applying the basic disciplines of the Christian life I can think of none better (after the Bible itself) than Richard Foster’s classic work “The Celebration of Discipline”. I think you would find it very helpful in guiding and accelerating your spiritual growth.

I encourage you, as part of your daily routine, to “work out” your salvation.

God Bless,

Pastor Jim

Our mailing address is:

Our theme for this month: “Understanding Salvation”

Our Bible verse for today: “To the church of God in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be holy …” 1 Corinthians 1:2 (NIV)

Our thought for today: “Your salvation should change how you live.”

The first stage of the salvation process was the actual moment of placing your faith in Christ and having your sins forgiven. Although that decision may have taken a long time to arrive at, the actual moment of forgiveness, and the consequent new birth, happened in a moment, in a flash.

The second stage involves all the rest of your life and it is the stage of salvation that Christians struggle with the most. This is where you live-out what is already true of you. In 2 Corinthians 5:17 the Apostle Paul wrote about the new birth, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” Now that you are a new creation you should live your life in a new way. What has happened inside of you should cause a change in how you live.

However the change is not instantaneous. Instead it occurs slowly and progressively over a lifetime. This is the part of the salvation process known as “sanctification”. “Sanctification” is a big fifty-cent theological word that simply means “To make holy. To dedicate, consecrate, and set-apart for a divine purpose.”

That’s you. Now that you belong to Christ you have been set-apart, dedicated, and consecrated for His divine purposes. You are in the process of being transformed from the person you were into someone who is holy and who reflects the attributes of Christ. This is what Paul was referring to in 1 Corinthians 1:2 when he reminded the Corinthians that as Christians they had been sanctified – they had been set-apart, dedicated, and consecrated, and then they were called to live holy lives.

That was true of them and it is to be true of us too. Your salvation will be perfected and complete in eternity. But between the moment of forgiveness, when you placed your faith in Christ, and your eventual perfection, once you are in heaven and you are the person you will be for eternity, there is this long process of transformation as you progressively become more and more like Jesus. That’s the life of the Christian.

In the days to come we will talk more about what the actual process of sanctification consists of, and why it is so important.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Our mailing address is:

Our theme for this month: “Understanding Salvation”

Our Bible verse for today: “What should we say then? Should we continue in sin so that grace may multiply?” Romans 6:1 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “Don’t live in cheap grace.”

In one of his songs the singer Jimmy Buffett has a lyric that has become famous over the years. It goes, “Oh there’s a fine line between Saturday night and Sunday morning!” He’s referring to those who live like the devil all week long but then sing like a saint on Sunday morning. Unfortunately, we all know the type. In fact far too many Christians are the type.

In 1937 the great German theologian Dietrich Bonheoffer published one of the most important Christian books of that era. The title was “The Cost of Discipleship”. In that work Bonheoffer introduced us to the concept of “cheap grace.” He wrote:

“Cheap grace is preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession … Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ ….”

“Grace” is the undeserved blessings of God freely bestowed upon us by a loving and merciful God. Applied to salvation the grace of God is what saves us even though we don’t deserve to be saved. Salvation is the ultimate expression of God’s grace, and it is also by God’s grace that we remain saved no matter what. “Once saved always saved” is true only because of the grace of God.

But that truth often creates a problem, this is where “cheap grace” comes from. Cheap grace is what Paul was writing about in Romans chapter six. People can be tempted to conclude that since they are saved, and since they can never lose their salvation, they can live any way they want and still go to heaven. That’s a gross cheapening of grace and it’s the problem both Paul and Bonheoffer attempted to correct. It’s also an issue that we will address in our consideration of this second stage of the salvation process.

Now that you are saved, and since you can never lose your salvation, are you therefore free to just party hearty for the rest of your life? Does it really matter how you live?

The answer is “yes” it sure does, and we will now spend a few days exploring the issue of why it does matter so very much.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Our mailing address is: