“GOOD SOULS UNREDEEMED OR GODLY SPIRITS WASHED IN CHRIST’S BLOOD?”
By J.Farrell Fisher
July 6-8, 2017
There’s an interesting question Jesus asked while here in His earthly body in Luke 18:8b, “…when the Son of Man comes, will He really find faith on the earth?” I’m sure, as a student of the Word, that you’re familiar with Jesus’ words about Old Testament Judaism coming to a close, and how there would be times of great deception, times of great open sin, but it would be foolish to say that Jesus wasn’t concerned about anytime but then when He asked that question!
“Will Jesus, when He comes again, find faith on the earth?” In our time period of human history, are there “good souls unredeemed”? Are there those who’ve never been confronted with why they’re here and why Christ died for them particularly? But we certainly know there are billions of people through history up until now who by His grace, mercy, and love, and through their repentance toward God and faith in Christ’s finished work at the Cross, have been “born again”, becoming a child of the King, “Godly spirits washed in Christ’s blood”!
Unredeemed souls or Godly spirits washed in Christ’s blood? Flesh-bent or Spirit-birthed? Here-and-now citizens of their fleshly kingdoms or the born-again into the Eternal kingdom of Christ? Devotees of the ancient who live in unbelief or the cherished sons and daughters of faith who live in the “washing”? Devotees of the ancient fallen world loving it more than God or the “renewed spirits” of grace and mercy living, yes, in the eternal in, with, and through the Resurrected Christ and Reigning God Almighty on His Throne? The ‘self-serving’ of the immediate present or the “selfless, crucified with Christ” and living to His glory in the here-and-now, AND to celebrate after earthly death in His eternal Presence around the Throne of God?
Unredeemed souls? Good souls as well as evil souls? “Flesh-achievers” who see no value in you as a believer looking to “Another”? “I believe in the supremacy of my existence without any concern about ‘His supposed plan for my life’?” It’s not a ‘modern-movement’ but birthed when Adam and Eve listened to Satan more than to the God who birthed them! Look through human history – you’ll be shocked by the number of people who lived “dreamless existences” apart from the “dreams of God-blessed, eternal meaning and reality, through the “blood-sacrifice” of the Son of God”!
Unredeemed souls? God-less existence? Masters-of-science but void of THE Master of life? Atheistic and atoned for but an believing one content to live ‘life’ apart from Holy God’s intent? It’s amazing to me what I read in Genesis 9:12-17! And God said: “This is the sign of the covenant which I make between Me and you, and every living creature that is with you, for the perpetual generations: I set My rainbow in the cloud, and it shall be for the sign of the covenant between Me and the earth. It shall be, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the rainbow shall be seen in the cloud; and I will remember My covenant which is between Me and you and every living creature of all flesh; the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.
The rainbow shall be in the cloud, and I will look on it to remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth. And God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant (the rainbow) which I have established between Me and all flesh that is on the earth.”
Yet how many godless souls are there who never consider the Sovereignty of God and His mercy toward them, yes, “drowning’ in the flood waters of sin and unbelief? How many? Merciful God is ignored, denied, cursed, and unbelievers live in carnal, self-composed, self-centered, self-absorbed thoughts about their ‘fleshly existence’ without a concern at all for the love, grace, and mercy of God! Godless souls, many of them, will live their lives in ‘fleshly, respectable goodness’, while also there are the evil, the morally wrong and shameless, like many known by “their evil dispositions”, unaware of the extent Satan will go to destroy them and all around them who need “blood redemption”! There ARE the “extremists”, yes, even of loyalty to their fallen sin natures!
Unredeemed souls? Some live with an attitude of despicable meanness while others live ‘peaceably’ with their absence of faith; some live, so at peace, with their ‘self-intent’ that they easily develop a ‘fetish’ and ‘worship’ and ‘allegiance’ to their ‘godless ways’! Unredeemed souls seldom, if ever, have any thoughts or inspirations about ‘reliance upon God?’- why, they’ll ask! “You don’t know me or my natural instincts, my incredible virtues, my self-centered personal impulses and incredible inner strengths – who needs your God?”
Unredeemed souls? Their ‘common sense’, besides Satan himself, is their worst enemy! Their ‘common-sense-carelessness’, related to eternal intent, becomes their strong foundation of infidelity, blinding themselves to the fact that their cares of their worldly dreams are as strong and blinding as Satan’s intent to sidetrack them to devotion of the Living God and Loving Savior! Have you ever witnessed in the faithless the despair which erupts when all they’ve worked for becomes meaningless to them? I’ve heard of some of the wealthiest men in the world, when it came time to die, who said, on their deathbeds, “What I worked for, what I gained, what I have now, means nothing to me as I face the grave.”
But it’s more than ‘a grave’ that one has to face! What does Proverbs 11:31 tell us? “If the righteous will be recompensed on the earth, how much more the ungodly and the sinner.” My Holman Study Bible, NKJV, footnote says, “But if God’s impartial judgment begins with the righteous, then the sinner will not escape” his own day before Holy God to give an account of his/her spiritual stupidity! Peter, in 1 Peter 4:18, quoted Proverbs 11:31!
Unredeemed souls? You’ve witnessed it: unredeemed souls walking with a ‘spiritual strut’ in self-pride and arrogance that breaks God’s heart! They major on the ‘common sense of godlessness’, majoring on ‘ordinary wits’, and blinded to the snares of Satan concerning the Lord Jesus’ vicarious intercession at the Cross and His victory over that which keeps unbelievers in their ‘graves of sin and death’!
Unredeemed souls? You are aware that Christ Jesus ‘chose’ the twelve disciples, not because He saw in them superb, ingrained natural abilities able to help Him in His task, but ‘vessels’ to be washed in His blood, crucifying all that they, and us, are in our ‘flesh’, resurrecting “the twelve” and you and me, designating US as “temples” in which His Presence can be manifested, honoring and glorifying His Father!
In Luke 18:31-34 we read, Then Jesus took the twelve aside and said to them (and to you and me?), “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of Man will be accomplished. For He will be delivered to the Gentiles and will be mocked and insulted and spit upon. They will scourge Him and kill Him. And the third day He will rise again.” But they understood none of these things; this saying was hidden from them, and they did not know the things which were spoken. (Oh, really? But modern-day folks? Neither do they know or understand the things which were spoken!
“They understood none of these things”? Oswald Chambers in “My Utmost For His Highest” (p.159) wrote the following: “God called Jesus Christ to what seemed unmitigated disaster. Jesus Christ called His disciples to see Him put to death; He led every one of them to the place where their hearts were broken. Jesus Christ’s life was an absolute failure from every standpoint but God’s. But what seemed failure from man’s standpoint was a tremendous triumph from God’s because God’s purpose is never man’s.
Chambers continued: There comes the baffling call of God in our lives also. The call of God can never be stated explicitly; it is implicit. The call of God is like the call of the sea, no one hears it but the one who has the nature of the sea in him. It cannot be stated definitely what the call of God is to, because His call is to be in comradeship with Himself for His own purposes, and the test is to believe that God knows what He is after. The things that happen do not happen by chance, they happen entirely in the decree of God. God is working out His purposes.”
Yet how many surround you in your modern world who have no grasp at all of what Holy God had planned through their available lives as they lived unavailable to Him for only what “pleases my flesh”! At the same time, are you aware of those who “pump” their flesh-mindedness of “how pleased God must be to have me with all my talents and gifts available to Him”! Really? Or is it, “They understood none of these things”?
I’ve often wondered how many ‘church folk’ live with a true passion and concern about living out their ‘life in Christ’ in such a way that all honor, praise, and thanksgiving goes to Him because they chose death to their old man and rejoice in the miracle of God’s grace that their “new man in Christ” has become His holy tabernacle and temple through which He’s allowed to be Himself in “vessels” of earthly bodies as the faithful take the sentence of death daily unto themselves that His resurrection life will be manifested in and through their mortal flesh – and that has nothing to do with one’s talents, one’s mind, or one’s willful determination to “be a good Christian”.
Again, Oswald Chambers said: (p.158), “The bravery of God in trusting us! You say – ‘But He has been unwise to choose me, because there is nothing in me; I am not of any value.’ THAT IS WHY HE CHOSE YOU! As long as you think there is something in you, He cannot choose you because you have ends of your own to serve; but if you have let Him bring you to the end of your self-sufficiency then He can choose you to go with Him to Jerusalem, and that will mean the fulfillment of purposes which He does not discuss with you.” (Aren’t you thankful that He only uses ‘empty vessels’ with nothing to brag about but Him?)
“Good Souls Unredeemed Or Godly Spirits Washed In Christ’s Blood”? I’ve always appreciated John Wesley’s writings of great Hymns. One entitled “O For a Thousand Tongues” says in the fourth verse, “He breaks the power of canceled sin, He sets the prisoner free; His blood can make the foulest clean; His blood availed for me.” But you hear the proud unredeemed souls asserting, “Your Savior (?) talks about the power of canceled sin when I don’t have any sin? He sets the prisoner free? I’ve never been in jail! His blood makes the foulest clean? What an insult! His blood was availed for ME? You Christians are mind-warped, brainless, and ‘charmed’ by a charlatan!” That’s many in modern-day America! They have no shame spitting on Christ Jesus, THE Savior and Lord, THE Redeemer, yes, THE ‘restorer’ of men’s souls!
In Psalm 23 David sang: “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside the still waters. He RESTORES MY SOUL; He leads me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake. Yes, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; For You (Lord Jesus) are with me; Your rod and Your staff they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You anoint my head with oil; my cup runs over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”
Do you see, celebrate, rejoice in, rest in, rely upon “The True Shepherd” who restores your soul to eternal intent, with the never-ending promise, “of goodness and mercy following you all the days of your life, assured you’ll dwell in the house of the Lord forever”?
Good souls unredeemed are blinded, by choice, to the declaration of Sovereign Care! Good souls unredeemed are ‘satisfied’ with ‘wilderness wanderings’ rather than “Promised Land Blessings”! Good souls unredeemed are ‘far from Holy God’ constructing their own ‘idols’ of imitation living! Good souls unredeemed make God’s desired plan of heritage an abomination! Good souls unredeemed walk after, live in, invest their lives in that which is actually consuming them with no eternal profit to the honor of God existing for them!
God said, in Jeremiah 2:11-13, “Has a nation (Israel) changed its gods, which are not gods? But My people have changed their Glory for what does not profit. Be astonished, O heavens, at this, and be horribly afraid; be very desolate,” says the Lord. For My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, and hewn themselves cisterns – broken cisterns that can hold no water.”
And how many do you personally know whom “Loving God” led them ‘in the Way’, but they forsook Him and drifted into the wilderness of wickedness, unbelief, and ‘self-idol’ worship – degenerate plants of alien vines, ‘washing themselves in iniquitous soaps thinking they can fool God’, ‘playing the harlot,’ with their backs turned from the only Savior and Lord!
Again, in Jeremiah 2:19-22, God unveils not only Israel, His initial ‘chosen people’, but all men in every nation of the world who live, many, “compromised lives” before Him, and the “many” professing allegiance but are nothing more than “degenerate plants of an alien vine”, so foreign to the nature and character of Christ Jesus!
God’s Word came to Jeremiah saying, “Your own wickedness will correct you, and your backslidings will rebuke you. Know therefore and see that it is an evil and bitter thing that you have forsaken the Lord your God, and the fear of Me is not in you,” says the Lord of hosts.
For of old I have broken your yoke and burst your bonds; and you said, ‘I will not transgress,’ when on every high hill and under every green tree you lay down, playing the harlot. Yet I had planted you a noble vine, a seed of highest quality. How then have you turned before Me into the degenerate plant of an alien vine? For though you wash yourself with lye, and use much soap, yet your iniquity is marked before Me,” says the Lord God.
I want to close this message about “Good Souls Unredeemed Or Godly Spirits washed in Christ’s Blood” with words from Paul the Apostle in 1 Corinthians 1:17-24! The Apostle Paul said: “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written:
‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.’ (Prudent? ‘Self-figuring of what’s important to them from the best of human nature, but void of God’s Presence within them!). Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe (trust in, rely upon, adhere to). For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God AND the wisdom of God.”