CHILDREN OF THE FLESH OR CHILDREN OF THE PROMISE
BY J. FARRELL FISHER, OCTOBER 2, 2014
Please, with all of your mental and spiritual feelings and faith, read Romans 9:1-5 with an alert mind and heart! It will reveal where one truly is in his/her faith walk of compassion for others or a lack of it. In Romans 9:1-5 it’s as if my aged Bible has been drenched again and again with tears of sadness. Paul wrote:
“I tell the truth in Christ, I am not lying, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit, that I have great sorrow and continual grief in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my countrymen according to the flesh,…
Who are Israelites, to whom pertain the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service of God, and the promises; of whom are the fathers and from whom, according to the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, the eternally blessed God. Amen.”
Christ Jesus, our Lord and Savior, came through the “seed of Abraham,” but not all of Abraham’s descendants became “children of promise”, but only children of flesh, because that was their level of commitment, living only with a desire to be “religious” apart from surrender to obedience to God’s Holy Word!
In Romans 10:1-4 Paul went on to write: “Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they may be saved. For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge…
For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.”
Paul clearly understood, was spiritually heart-broken over the Israelites who had a “zeal for God,” but not according to the revelation-Truth of the life, death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of the True, Eternal, and Historic Christ that they never saw with spiritual eyes, understood, or comprehended, but willfully rejected Him, ignored Him, and, yes, willingly had Him crucified!
Most Israelites denied Jesus Christ, deplored His presence in their Holy Book, denounced His preaching, and declared His worthiness only of the Cross. They had no sorrow, but in the prophetic passage of Isaiah 53:3 we learn of Christ Jesus, “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.”
I recently found a writing by Harriet Beecher Stowe that speaks of sorrow: “Sorrow is divine. Sorrow is reigning on all the thrones of the universe, and the crown of all crowns has been one of thorns. There have been many books that treat of the sympathy of sorrow, but only one that bids us glory in tribulation, and count it all joy when we fall into divers afflictions, that so we may be associated with that great fellowship of suffering of which the incarnate Son of God is the head, and through which He is carrying a redemptive conflict to a glorious victory over evil. If we suffer with Him, we shall also reign with Him.”
Do you see and sense Paul’s sorrow over the Israelites denial of Jesus to be “that great fellowship of suffering” that you as a true believer in Christ Jesus share in? I have no hesitation in saying to you that grief, sadness, or sorrow are but the shadow of God’s Holy Presence over and around your life! It was Edwin Hubbell Chapin who said, “Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seamed with scars; martyrs have put on their coronation robes glittering with fire, and through their tears have the sorrowful first seen the gates of heaven.” Glory!!
And we’re examining “children of the flesh” or “children of the Promise” with Paul as a child of the Promise willing to forego His place “in Christ” if His Israelite “family” could take his place! But it doesn’t happen, can’t happen – before Holy God every man stands alone before Him to answer for himself – “What then did YOU Do with Jesus called the Christ?”
Listen to Romans 9:30-33! “What shall we say then? That Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have attained to righteousness, even the righteousness of faith; but Israel, pursuing the law of righteousness, has not attained to the law of righteousness. Why? Because they did not seek it by faith, but as it were, by the works of the law. For they stumbled at that stumbling stone…
As it is written: “Behold, I lay in Zion a stumbling stone and rock of offense, and whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame.”
The unbelieving Israelites “stumbled at the stumbling stone and stumbled over the rock of offense” [whose name is Jesus, the Promised Messiah] because they substituted self-effort for the Savior and Lord, and, yes, attempted self-improvement by trying to keep the Law given to expose their need of a Savior, and revealed by their disobedience to God’s revelation that they would establish their own righteousness and crucify God’s righteousness – and things haven’t changed thousands of years later!!
Have you forgotten or omitted what Isaiah had to say at least 700 years before the birth of Jesus Christ? It’s reported by Paul in Romans 10:16-17, “But they [Israel] have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, ‘Lord, who has believed our report?’ So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”
Yes, the majority of Israel, then and now, have rejected God’s compassionate heart and redemptive Way, going about to establish their own worthiness and ability to “do right”, failing to understand from Adam and Eve onward, God determined all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and are unworthy, taking us all, yes, ALL, and CRUCIFYING US ALL WITH CHRIST!!
What did Paul tell us in Galatians 2:20? “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. Verse 27, I do not set aside the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died in vain.”
Jesus did not die in vain – He died in “VICTORY”!! Yes, He was then raised, by God, from the dead three days later, continuing to live in and through repentant, trusting, surrendered, believing “sinners” who by their repentance are now declared “saints,” servants of Christ, ambassadors of our Lord and Savior, messengers, earthly “point-men” of the Resurrected Christ, witnesses of His winning Way that in “death” there is the new reality of “Life in Christ” alone! In Galatians 3:26 Paul tells us, “For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.”
And, having been crucified with Christ, birthed into the Kingdom as babes in Christ, indwelt by His Resurrection Life, it doesn’t mean that “babes in Christ” attain to instant adulthood in the faith, but we learn! It is why in Galatians 5:1 Paul wrote to us, “Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage.”
Have you ignored the Word in your daily walk? I remind you that Jesus tells us, “Man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.” I’ll guarantee you that most men eat physically three meals a day with snacks in between – but, please, tell me how spiritually the Word of God sits on a table and you only occasionally open it? You “LIVE” by the Word of God, you are to “HUNGER” for the Word of God, you “MATURE IN FAITH” by the Word of God!
Look at Colossians 2:9-10! “For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; and you are complete in Him…” Oswald Chambers made a statement that aroused concern in me for “believers” who take lightly the importance of “studying to show yourselves approved unto God, a workman that needs not to be ashamed.” He said: “Disobedience in mind to the heavenly vision will make you a slave to points of view that are alien to Jesus Christ.”
Chambers wrote about a half-paragraph later: “We are apt to lie back and bask in the memory of the wonderful experience we have had. If there is one standard in the New Testament revealed by the light of God and you do not come up to it, and do not feel inclined to come up to it, that is the beginning of backsliding, because it means your conscience does not answer to the truth. You can never be the same after the unveiling of a truth. That moment marks you for going on as a more true disciple of Jesus Christ or for going back as a deserter.”
What do we find in John 6:60-68? It’s a startling revelation for some! It says: Therefore many of His disciples, when they heard this, said, ‘This is a hard saying; who can understand it?’ When Jesus knew in Himself that His disciples complained about this, He said to them, “Does this offend you? What then if you should see the Son of Man ascend where He was before? It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life…
But there are some of you who do not believe.” For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were who did not believe, and who would betray Him. And He said, “Therefore I have said to you that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted to him by My Father.”…
From that time many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more. Then Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you also want to go away?” But Simon Peter answered Him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of life.”
Disciples who “went back and walked with Him no more?” Was that “professors” who never fully surrendered to our Lord’s Indwelling Life? Was that “followers” who had never been freed from spiritual bondage? Was that sympathizers with a “cause” who never understood “divine change” from the old man to the new man, from the sinner to the “saint,” from the fleshly to the Spirit-led, from a temporal devotion and not eternal surrender to the Lord of all of life?
Too many ‘church-goers’ are those really who’ve never put their hands to the plow of the Lord in preparing the “fields of their lives” for His seed, fruit, and harvest! Too many so-called “believers” are just like Pharoah on a fleshly pursuit religiously for Moses, but Holy God had removed their ‘chariot wheels’ and Pharoah drowned in the deep waters without a “Life-Preserver” whose name is Jesus! Too many “scribes and Pharisees” impose ‘traditions’ apart from Truth and so burden the people trying to seek that they only are able to talk about their tiredness, their futility, their sadness, their darkness, and not the “Light of the world” whose name is Jesus!
“Children of the flesh” or “Children of the Promise”? What was Paul’s Prayer in Romans 10:1-3? “Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they may be saved. For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God.”
“Children of the flesh”? Without hesitation they are usually led by people who are “ZEALOUSY WRONG – EVEN OPPOSED TO THE REVELATION, UNVEILING, AND ACTUAL PRESENCE OF THE SAVIOR AND REDEEMER, WILLING ONLY THAT HE BE CRUCIFIED!”
That is a world of people who surround you totally indifferent to the Sacrifice of the Lamb of God to cover and wash away their sins by His precious blood! There is a world oblivious to His grace, mercy, and love! Oh, yes, some have a “zeal” FOR GOD, but they don’t even know, understand, or have a true desire to be reconciled to Him!
Have you ever been around those absolutely “zealous” for their church but void of redemptive love and a desire to truly honor the Lord and Savior through a surrendered walk to His Lordship? Have you ever been around those so vocal, so aroused, but off-base in every scriptural truth, and you wonder: ‘how many have bought their lies, misinterpretations, deceptions, and been led astray?’
But what about those who, yes, kill the opposition to their radical, devilish, unsound, ‘screwed-up’ teachings? It was Jesus Himself who said in Matthew 23:34-36, “Therefore, indeed, I send you prophets, wise men, and scribes; some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city, that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. Assuredly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation.”
You are aware that there were those, are those, who are so warped in their “religious minds” that they believe and believed that they were anointed servants doing God’s service killing others! How would you describe those unredeemed “scribes and Pharisees”? Would “self-righteous idiots” even get close? How about “spiritual ignoramuses”?
What was it Paul said in Romans 10:2-3? “For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God.”
Fleshly righteousness or divine righteousness? The sinners’ righteousness or the Savior’s righteousness? Self-righteousness or God’s righteousness? Self-improvement righteousness or Sovereign-declared righteousness? Ignorant righteousness or Spirit-inspired, implanted righteousness? A righteousness that declares one “guilty” before Holy God of a cheap imitation or Jesus’ righteousness that declares one eternally innocent before Holy God? “Fig-leaf righteousness” or “tree of life righteousness”? Head-strong righteousness or the “new Heart” righteousness? “My own estimation” righteousness or God’s robe of righteousness? God-insulting human attempts or God-inspired finished work? Righteousness by hook or by crook or righteousness in and through Christ alone? Feverish attempts tirelessly or the faithful Atonement truthfully, refreshing us without end? Righteousness in what we do or righteousness because of Who Jesus is and what Jesus did 2000 years ago on the Cross? Salvation by man’s grit or salvation by the Master’s grace? Salvation by one’s “best efforts” religiously or salvation by the willingness to rest in the “blood-bought” release from guilt and eternal separation and “death” by the sacrifice of Christ in “my,” “our,” “your,” behalf! DO YOU SEE, UNDERSTAND, RECEIVE, REST IN BEING “A CHILD OF PROMISE”?
I close this teaching with words from Oswald Chambers from his book, “My Utmost For His Highest,” [p.271], “The sign that God is at work in us is that He corrupts confidence in the natural virtues, because they are not promises of what we are going to be, but remnants of what God created man to be. We will cling to the natural virtues, while all the time God is trying to get us into contact with the life of Jesus Christ which can never be described in terms of the natural virtues.” Can I tell you, “Jesus crucified your worst and your best” so that you, as a child of promise could live by the Life of Another, yes, Emmanuel, “God With Us,” “God in us,” and “God through us”!! That’s “children of the Promises!!