Thursday – April 7, 2016
Greetings in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Now it is time to choose the Word of God with great enthusiasm, praying that it burn within us and remove the dross (junk) in our lives.
Colossians 2:6-7 (KJV)
6 As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him:
7 Rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving.
We received Jesus, were saved by confessing Him as our Lord and believing that the Father had raised Him from the dead.
Romans 10:9-10 (KJV)
9 That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.
10 For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.
Notice in both verses that we must confess with our mouth and we must believe in our heart. These statements of the necessary elements of salvation are joined by the conjunctive ‘and’. The conjunctive ‘and’ means the statements before and after are of equal value and therefore the sequence of the statements is irrelevant. The word heart in both verses comes from the same Greek word transliterated ‘kardia’. The ‘kardia’ is part of our spirit man and can be thought of as the door to our soul or conscious part of our spirit (living being). It is the area where we make the decision about all things. Right now as you read down through this you are making decisions about whether you think this is important, whether you believe it, and whether you are going to choose too allow this Word of God to change you.
In our verses from Romans the phrase to “believeth unto righteousness” and “unto salvation” are equivalent. In one case it is taking about something going on in the spirit man, the soul, and the other is talking about a physical manifestation of what has been going on in the spirit realm. Righteousness is right standing with God and a commitment to do things Gods way and salvation is to be rescued and brought to safety by God, spirit, soul, and body, upon our exercise of faith. Once again a ‘living being’ but now in Jesus. Before we move on in our study let me point out something about the words ‘righteousness’ and ‘salvation’ from the 10th verse. By the way the number ten is the number of law and responsibility. In other words this way to salvation is a law of God, there are not many ways, there is this way and it is our responsibility to put this law into action. The words righteousness and salvation are both singular in number and feminine in gender. This means that just as with a women, with the right seed, in this case the Word of God, there will be a harvest. Finally, the word confess or confession in these verses is the Greek word ‘homologia’ which means to say the same thing as, in this case God, and it is our entry into The Blood Covenant.
Colossians 2:6-7 (KJV)
6 As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him:
7 Rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving.
I will now pick up with verse seven and the concept of being rooted. In this verse we see ourselves as rooted and built up in Him and in in the following verse from Ephesians we find we are rooted and grounded in love. God is love.
Ephesians 3:17 (KJV)
17 That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love,
In the preceding passage who is dwelling in our hearts? The verse tells us that ‘Christ’ is dwelling in our hearts and He is dwelling there by faith. In this case the word ‘Christ’ is referring to The Holy Spirit. If we truly believe, have faith, the Holy Spirit is resident within us. He is not resident within us because we said a prayer, He is within us because we believed. We commonly hear that we have Jesus in our heart but that is inaccurate. To the extent that we have engrafted the Word of God He is in us but the One spiritually present within us is the Holy Spirit, the Anointing. Jesus is spiritually and physically seated in Heaven at the right hand of Majesty on High in a flesh and bone body reminding the Father of the blood, His blood, and the Covenant present at the Mercy Seat of Heaven.
By Pastor David R. Wood
