A strange vicious circle.

Scripture Read: Romans 9:25-33 As He says also in Hosea, “I will call those who were not My people, ‘My people,’ And her who was not beloved, ‘beloved.’ ”26 “And it shall be that in the place where it was said to them, ‘you are not My people,’ There they shall be called sons of the living God.” 27 Isaiah cries out concerning Israel, “Though the number of the sons of Israel be like the sand of the sea, it is the remnant that will be saved; 28 for the Lord will execute His word on the earth, thoroughly and quickly.” 29 And just as Isaiah foretold, “Unless the Lord of Sabaoth had left to us a posterity, We would have become like Sodom, and would have resembled Gomorrah.” 30 What shall we say then? That Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, attained righteousness, even the righteousness which is by faith; 31 but Israel, pursuing a law of righteousness, did not arrive at that law. 32 Why? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as though it were by works. They stumbled over the stumbling stone, 33 just as it is written, “Behold, I lay in Zion a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense, And he who believes in Him will not be disappointed.”

 

Application: Why was Christ the stumbling stone – and why do we feel it was so easy to receive Him. Why did we get it? Or are we deceiving ourselves and possibly not really saved? We can intellectually understand why He is a stumbling block – because the flesh wants to have something to boast about and Christ removes all that. So either we deceived ourselves and prayed because we are lazy and wanted an easy salvation or we really saw how sinful we were and knew there was no way to save ourselves. Many of us thought that Lord – we knew we were sinful and could not meet Your standards – yet we still struggle with the sin that remains in us. Because I am a missionary and travel so much I have met so many believers all over the world. We all call ourselves Christian yet I see for the most part we all have the same struggle even though the specific sins are different. Even the ones I meet who as I get to know them, seem to have such a deep life with You, but when I get to see behind the surface I find so much failing. This is a truth the enemy uses to turn Christ into being much more a stumbling block concerning sanctification than salvation. That sounds terrible and it is, but it is one of the tactics the enemy uses. By grace we have been saved – and eternally we have been delivered from the penalty of sin – but not it’s presence. Until we go home we will struggle with it and as we grow through sanctification we begin to experience a certain dilemma – the more we get to know Him the more sinful we see ourselves. This is where the enemy tries to deceive us. We begin to push in the flesh to be more like Him and not sin – but in the end we become defeated because while we are in the flesh the struggle will never end. When we convince ourselves that we can be perfect in the flesh, it exposes that we have not yet learned to really depend wholly on Christ to sanctify us – this still means sweat but not the same as works based sanctification. Lord help us to work through this – perhaps a word study on sanctify!