Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: New Patch/New Wine - Old Garment/Bottle (Matthew 9:16-17, Mark 2:21-22, Luke 5:36-39} (01/04/24)
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TITLE: Our Inherent Incompatibility | Previous Challenge Entry
By Doug Laird
01/08/24 -
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Jesus was not conducting a sewing class, nor was it a “do it yourself” project on how to preserve wine. As in the case of most parables, these things are symbolic of something that takes place in the spiritual realm.
We come into this world (1) with a fallen nature that is not only incapable of understanding the things of God (2), it is inherently hostile towards such things (3).
Here in the Church Age, it is the pre-salvation ministry of God the Holy Spirit that enables a spiritually dead individual with a hostile fallen nature, to understand the unadulterated Gospel Message, affording him or her the opportunity to be born-again.
In doing so, God enables the recipient to become the type of “patch” or “wine skin” capable of being used to repair the garment and or to retain (believe) the new wine (the unadulterated Gospel Message).
I say opportunity, because although God the Holy Spirit enables the recipient to understand the unadulterated Gospel Message, He does not violate the recipients free will, by making him or her believe it.
Hearing and understanding the unadulterated Gospel Message does NOT result in salvation if it’s not believed (4).
I say “unadulterated” Gospel Message, because there are many adulterated Gospel Messages that have evolved within the Christian Community.
These adulterated Gospel Messages have been compromised by adding further requirements (to obtain or retain salvation) that are no more than the products and accompanying practices of Man-made religion.
Such unfaithfulness amounts to spiritual adultery, promoting the idea that faith in the finished (5) atoning work of the Lord Jesus Christ is not enough to obtain and retain salvation.
When the unadulterated Gospel Message is believed, the individual soul is permanently sealed (6) and becomes the permanent recipient of eternal life.
One MUST be born-again to enter the Kingdom of God (7).
With the issue of salvation having already been resolved, the believer then begins his or her post salvation spiritual life, here on Earth.
All of one’s “religious” activity is meaningless if one is not born-again.
Advancing disciples will learn soon enough that the fallen nature, with its inherent hostility towards God and the things of God, still remains within the born again believer (8) after he or she has been saved.
Not only does it remain, but it keeps pace and applies equivalent pressure with whatever forward progress the born-again believer makes along the road to spiritual maturity.
As of the moment of salvation, the born again believer can begin to develop the spiritual discernment necessary to understand the things of God.
As the advancing disciple grows in the knowledge (9) and in the application (10) of the Word of the Lord, the devil will appeal to the fallen nature within him or her, in an attempt to thwart any forward progress and any productivity (11).
Discipleship supplies us with suitable “patches” and a “new wine skin” for a successful post salvation spiritual life.
The need for repair patches (correction in doctrines) is made clear to us during 2Cor. 13: 5 self-examinations.
God the Holy Spirit brings to our conscious minds, the accurate doctrines that we (should have) store(d) away in the new wine skin of our edified soul structure (12).
At the same time, Satan brings to our conscious minds all of the garbage and human viewpoint that we have allowed to become a part of our thought processes.
Being presented with opposing viewpoints, one makes daily choices in which he or she sets priorities and makes choices that either glorifies God, or pleases the fallen nature within us.
In the spiritual realm, we are what we choose to be.
Spiritually dead individuals choose to believe or to disbelieve the unadulterated Gospel Message when it is presented to them.
If one is saved, born-again believers choose to become Biblically edified or Biblically ignorant.
After learning Bible doctrine, born-again believers choose to apply (or not to apply) the doctrine they have learned.
A Spirit-filled Church Age believer is no longer an irreparable garment or an old wine skin. He or she has an ongoing opportunity and the ability to learn, retain, and apply the Word of God to all that he or she thinks, says, or does.
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(1) Psalms 51: 5 (2) 1Corinthians 2: 14 (3) Romans 8: 7 (4) John 3: 18 (5) John 19: 30 (6) Ephesians.: 30 (7) John 3: 7 (8) Romans 7: 14 – 19 (9) 2Peter 3: 18 (10) James 1: 22 (11) Mark 4: 20 (12) Matthew 7: 24, 25
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