Come Lord Jesus

[dave c]

mpletruth #138aw Revisited 20 NOV 10 salicart@msn.com

HOSEA 10:12—Part Forty Nine: Come Lord Jesus

by rev. dave c

Hosea 10:12, Sow for yourselves righteousness; Reap in mercy; Break up your fallow ground, For it is time to seek the LORD, Till He comes and rains righteousness on you (NKJV).

According to Acts 13:38&39, all who call on the name of Jesus have been saved: "Therefore, my brothers, I want you to know that through Jesus the forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you. Through him everyone who believes is justified from everything you could not be justified from by the law of Moses" (NIV). They are being saved: My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified (Jn 17:15-19; NIV). And they are going to be saved: When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory (Co 3:4; NIV).

In Romans 5:1, Paul succinctly outlines the triune nature of salvation, Therefore, since we have been justified through faith [saved as justification], we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand [being saved as sanctification]. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God [going to be saved as glorification] (NIV). Briefly, justification means that we have been saved from the future consequences of our past sins. Glorification means that through the miracle of resurrection we will perfectly reflect the glory of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ—we will finally be made wholly (and holy) in the image and likeness of the Son of God. Justification, then, is a past event that carries present and future ramifications; and glorification began upon receiving Christ’s proffered forgiveness and salvation, but won’t be fully realized until the next life. Sanctification involves all of the earthly life that exists between the First and Second Advents of Jesus Christ...for the individual, and for the Church Universal.

As individuals and as the Church, we know that in this life, even as we strive to surrender more and more of our lives to God and Godliness, we are still subject to failure in the face of all manner of temptation. Paul addresses this issue in Philippians 3:10-16, I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. All of us who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you. Only let us live up to what we have already attained (NIV).

Although my eternal glory in the presence of God has been sealed by the Holy Spirit as an adopted child of the Father, I am currently still living in both the Kingdom of the World and the Kingdom of God. This is a personal reflection of the Church at large. When the Apostle Matthew refers to “the Kingdom of Heaven,” perhaps he is making reference to this temporary state of existence for the family of God. While the Kingdom of God entails all of creation (including you and me) as it is perfected through redemption by the blood of the Lamb, the Kingdom of Heaven (literally, “the kingdom of the heavens”) is the Kingdom of God as it is currently manifested through the Church on, and in, this fallen Earth—the good and the bad, the true and the false. The Kingdom of Heaven is like the sanctification process, it is “a work in progress.” Following are C.I. Scofield’s notes for Matthew 6:33 and 3:2 from the NIV New Scofield Study Bible, Zondervan, 1984.

The expression, "his kingdom," or "the kingdom of God" (Mat 12:28), although used in many cases as synonymous with the kingdom of heaven, is to be distinguished from it in some instances...: (1) The kingdom of God is at times viewed as everlasting and universal, i.e. the rule of the sovereign God over all creatures and things (Ps 103:19; Dan 4:3). In this sense the kingdom of God includes the kingdom of heaven. (2) The kingdom of God is also used to designate the sphere of salvation entered only by the new birth (John 3:5 - 7) in contrast with the kingdom of heaven as the sphere of profession which may be real or false...[e.g., the parables of the field that contains both wheat and tares, which will be later cast out (Mat. 13:41), and the net that contains both good and bad fish to be separated later (Mat. 13:47)]. And (3) since the kingdom of heaven is in the earthly sphere of the universal kingdom of God, the two have many things in common and in some contexts the terms are interchangeable. Like the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God is realized in the rule of God in the present age and will also be fulfilled in the future millennial kingdom. It continues forever in the eternal state (cp. Dan 4:3).

...By faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope (Ga 5:5; NIV). I eagerly await the destruction of all the temptation, sin, and death in this world’s (my) existence—and the life of perfect obedience in the next. Amen.