You Can Know You Have Eternal Life
#677
Man's Search for Inner Peace (91)
Honorable Citizenship in Jesus Kingdom (13)
by Jim Mettenbrink
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God has planted in each of us the
strong desire to live as long as we are able to do so. Most
people spend a fortune on chemo therapy to outlive the cancer
by just a few more months, maybe a year if fortunate. However,
not many will take the measures to prevent the cancer in the
first place. All of us have these radical
cells in our body which can become cancerous. Sugar feeds
cancer cells, but how many will reduce or eliminate sugar from
their diet? What will it take to change?
In the same way, the cigarette
pack gives stark warning, smoking causes cancer! Yet folks
smoke. Pay for the pack now and pay again later (cancer)!
Is that rational? No. What is it about us humans
that we act irrationally? Seems cancer is largely a result
of a contradictory diet and behavior.
The first, actually the second,
is the human weakness to deny reality (psychologists soften
it with a fancy term - normalcy bias). The
reality is we deceive ourselves, thinking what is dangerous is
not. The prophet Jeremiah warned, The heart is deceitful
above all things, and desperately wicked
(Jeremiah 17:9). A person deceives himself first
and foremost.
The first is our own selfishness.
We do what we want to do. The American religion has
become feelism. Self-satisfaction! Exhilaration!
No pain! Ecstasy! Do whatever makes you feel
good at the moment. It is almost a sin not to feel good.
Feelism is self worship, the means of which are emotional
highs by alcohol, drugs, sex, and the various forms of recreation
and entertainment by which a person desires to feel good. Feelism
is an idolatrous religion of selfishness.
Selfishness is sacrificed by citizens
of Jesus kingdom. And must be supplanted with selflessness.
This necessarily means a radical change in thought and
behavior (Romans 12:1-2). This change will be governed
by a discipline, called self control.
Recently we considered eight aspects of the fruit of the Spirit
to be developed in the citizens of Jesus kingdom. The last
aspect of this fruit is self-control, a vital foundation block
to the other eight aspects.
Like todays world, the Greco-Roman
era was licentious, i.e., if it feels good do it! The apostle
Paul made three points in his judicial hearing before Felix,
the Roman governor of Judea - ...he reasoned about righteousness, self-control,
and the judgment to come
(Acts 24:25). That self control was a necessary
topic was highlighted shortly when Paul also testified before
Herod Agrippa II who was committing incest with his sister (widow
of her uncle, also incestuous) (Source: Josephus) (Acts
25:13, 23ff).
Self-control is necessary to conquer
the works of the flesh (which will prevent citizens from going
to heaven) which Paul listed just before revealing the fruit
of the Spirit (Galatians 5:19-21). Chastity was
the almost unique moral introduced to the world. It was
done so by the discipline of self-control by citizens of Jesus
kingdom. Chastity endorsed monogamous lifetime marriage
into the world, which in-turn fostered stable societies.
In his defense of Christianity
to the Caesar Hadrian, Aristides (Christian Athenian philosopher)
wrote regarding Christians ...their wives, O king, are
pure as virgins, and their daughters modest: and their men abstain
from all unlawful wedlock and from all impurity... Self-control
the challenge for the committed citizen of Jesus kingdom!
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