II Corinthians 13: 5 – 7 5) Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates? 6) But I trust that ye shall know that we are not reprobates. 7) Now I pray to God that ye do no evil; not that we should appear approved, but the ye should do that which is honest, though we be as reprobates.
Reprobate here means to be rejected or castaways.
As Christians, one of these days our bodies are going to give out on us, and our spirit will leave this old body and ascend into heaven. We’ll look around and see all the grandeur and beauty of God’s creation, and marvel at the pure love for everyone and everything around us. We’ll know that when the time has come, God will give us new bodies designed to live eternally. God will wipe all tears from our eyes. I believe that as we look up and realize the wonder of God’s creation and what lies ahead for us, we’ll look back on our lives and weep knowing that we deserve none of it. We’ll behold the beautiful pearly gates and we’ll know the only reason we can enter those gates are because of what God’s son did on the cross. As the old hymn states, we’ll be given white robes and we’ll be washed in the blood of the Lamb.
Romans 12: 1 - 3 1) I Beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. 2) And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God. 3) For I say through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith.
We live under two absolutes. Without faith it is impossible to please God (Hebrews 11:6), and without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin(Hebrews 9:22). God knows we could never be good enough on our own to warrant our entering his Kingdom. Therefore he sent his only son, that if we should believe in him, we can have eternal life. God’s grace is sufficient for us. Because we live under grace and not law, and that doesn’t mean we now have license to sin, but quite the contrary. As the above scripture mentions, we now present our bodies as a living sacrifice to God, by faith. We grow to love God and our Lord Jesus Christ for what has been done for us. And as with anyone you love, your main objective should be to do what is pleasing to them. They come first.
I Corinthians 11: 23 – 30 23) For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, That the Lord Jesus the same night in which he was betrayed took bread: 24) And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me. 25) After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me. 26) For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord’s death till he come. 27) Wherefore whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. 28) But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup. 29) For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body. 30) For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep.
One of my favorite hymns, is “just as I am.” That is how we all come to God sinful, lacking of love and full of self centeredness. All we need to do is believe and let God do the rest. Let your bible become your most trusted friend. Let your studies center around the books of Paul (Romans thru Philemon.) This is where we are taught our new walk in the resurrected Christ. Memorize the gifts of the Spirit and began to practice them in your own life. In the above scripture, the new Corinthian believers hadn’t learned to love their brethren. The intensity of the love that Christ showed us by allowing him to be publicly humiliated and murdered in the most painful and slow torturous way of execution there was. That kind of love is extended to us as sinners. Christ didn’t die for the just, for there were no just. The world was sinful and corrupt just as it is today. Even the man dying next to Christ proclaim that they deserved to die for what they did, but Christ did nothing to deserve death. Then by faith he ask the Lord to remember him in the next life. Christ is all his pain and suffering still reached out to this man deserving his death sentence and proclaimed, “Today, you shall be with me in paradise.”
I know there are a lot of people who consider turning over their lives to Christ, but want to wait until they are less sinful, or are finished doing the sins they love so much. None of us ever know when our time on this earth is up. None of us would ever be able to become Christians if we tried to clean ourselves to enough to be acceptable to God. We come to him as we are, and let God clean us. Then we are truly clean and forgiven all our previous iniquities. All Christ is waiting on is you.
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