Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord.
– Hebrews 12:14
Thoughts on Today’s Verse…
We should pursue purification in believing in God. Only in this way can we enter God’s kingdom. His kingdom is holy and He absolutely forbids any filthy and corrupt people to enter it. But many brothers and sisters believe that after we confess and repent before the Lord, He has forgiven all our sins and we have become holy, then we will be raptured into the heavenly kingdom when the Lord arrives. However, have we already broken away from sin and become holy? Although Jesus has forgiven our sins through His work of redemption, our corrupt satanic disposition such as arrogance, selfishness, deceitfulness is very deeply rooted in us. These are the roots of our sins. If our corrupt satanic disposition is not resolved, we cannot stop ourselves from committing sins, resisting God and betraying Him. Therefore, we all live in the vicious cycle of committing and then confessing our sin. And there’s no way to free ourselves from the bondage and control of sin. We cannot get rid of our sinful nature by ourselves, and nobody can do the work of saving mankind. So, the Lord Jesus predicted, “I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. However, when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will show you things to come” (Jhn 16:12-13). Obviously, we cannot achieve holiness if we only accept Jesus’ work of redemption. We still need Jesus’ return in the last days to express the truth to do the work of cleansing. In this way, we can break free from the bound of sinful nature, achieve purification, be gained by God and receive His promise.
Just as God says, “A sinner such as you, who has just been redeemed, and has not been changed, or been perfected by God, can you be after God’s heart? For you, you who are still of your old self, it is true that you were saved by Jesus, and that you are not counted as a sinner because of the salvation of God, but this does not prove that you are not sinful, and are not impure. How can you be saintly if you have not been changed? Within, you are beset by impurity, selfish and mean, yet you still wish to descend with Jesus—you should be so lucky! You have missed a step in your belief in God: You have merely been redeemed, but have not been changed. For you to be after God’s heart, God must personally do the work of changing and cleansing you; if you are only redeemed, you will be incapable of attaining sanctity. In this way you will be unqualified to share in the good blessings of God, for you have missed out a step in God’s work of managing man, which is the key step of changing and perfecting. And so you, a sinner who has just been redeemed, are incapable of directly inheriting God’s inheritance.” Excerpted from “The Word Appears in the Flesh”
“The sins of man could be forgiven through the sin offering, but as for just how man can be made to sin no more, and how his sinful nature may be extirpated completely and transformed, he has no way of solving this problem. The sins of man were forgiven, and this is because of the work of God’s crucifixion, but man continued to live within his corrupt satanic disposition of old. This being so, man must be completely saved from his corrupt satanic disposition, so that his sinful nature may be completely extirpated, never to develop again, thus enabling the disposition of man to be transformed. This would require man to grasp the path of growth in life, to grasp the way of life, and to grasp the way to change his disposition. Furthermore, it would require man to act in accordance with this path, so that his disposition may gradually be changed and he may live under the shining of the light, so that all that he does may be in accord with the will of God, so that he may cast away his corrupt satanic disposition, and so that he may break free from Satan’s influence of darkness, thereby emerging fully from sin. Only then will man receive complete salvation. … Therefore, after that stage of work was finished, there still remained the work of judgment and chastisement. This stage is to make man pure by means of the word, and thereby give him a path to follow. This stage would not be fruitful or meaningful if it continued with the casting out of demons, for it would fail to extirpate man’s sinful nature, and man would come to a standstill at the forgiveness of his sins. Through the sin offering, man has been forgiven his sins, for the work of the crucifixion has already come to an end and God has prevailed over Satan. But the corrupt disposition of man still remaining within him, man can still sin and resist God, and God has not gained mankind. That is why in this stage of work God uses the word to expose the corrupt disposition of man, causing him to practice in accordance with the right path. This stage is more meaningful than the previous one, as well as more fruitful, for now it is the word that directly supplies man’s life and enables the disposition of man to be completely renewed; it is a much more thorough stage of work. … ” Excerpted from “The Word Appears in the Flesh”
