Finding Our Way

From the transcript...

There’s no more. The in and out and us and them is gone. Yes. You know, you think about what you were talking about—being in Him and incarnation and all that. Listen to this verse. It says,

Through His creative inspiration, this living expression made all things. For nothing has existence apart from Him. A fountain of life was in Him, for His life is light for all humanity.

But Jesus, the God-man that walked the planet, is the same one that spoke and brought it into existence. And in Him it is held together. And in Him, we have existed. There is nothing separated from Him. There’s nothing apart from Him.

Can you imagine? You see Jesus, this man walking the shores of Galilee, and He’s holding everything together. That’s what it says. That’s what it says. He’s got it all. And so the One through whom the Father created the world became a man, and now He’s recreating it. Yes. A new humanity,

From the transcript...

in Christ as he died for us all, with us all, as us all. There was such an inescapable union when the Word became flesh. And we all died.

And then when He got up out of the tomb, He put to death everything that wasn’t right. And He brought to life all that has eternally been true of us—that we were deceived and confused and blinded and doubtful of—so that now everything we are is a new creation, and everything that, in the news of God from God, it is right, it is good, it is eternal, and that we now have life.

And what I find amazing about the passage is He’s basically telling people, if you’re alive, you’re alive because you’re alive in Jesus. And if you ever get that, then you’ll take your one earthly life that is joined to Jesus now and begin to live it with Him, unto Him, for Him, as He lived His life.

Yeah, you can live life and enjoy it. Yes. You mean what you’re saying is we don’t have to die and go to heaven? Oh, heaven has come—to enter into that.

Well, see, that’s the problem. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And somewhere along the way, we begin to, at the church house, say it’s about heaven or hell when you die. Yeah. And we went from heaven and earth to heaven and hell. Yeah. Okay? And there’s a big difference. There’s hell on earth, boy, in the world you live in. I’ve seen this stuff right here. Hell is a human construct.

And what happened was God made heaven and earth. He says it’s good. Then sin entered. Yeah. Okay. By Adam, sin entered, and death by sin. Okay.

From the transcript...

Nor your ethnicity, education, nor economic status.

They matter nothing. For it is Christ that means everything. As He lives in every one of us. So what he’s saying is, it’s not these physical things that we look at out here—where you come from, what kind of money you’ve got, or anything. It’s the Christ that’s in you. Yeah. That’s everything.

Well, I think in the outworking of the gospel, I think everybody has difficulty as it works its way out into practical life, because we do live in a world where your nationality, your gender, your economics matter. In this world system, who you are, where you’re born, what you have—all that affects your status in this world system, because the kingdom hasn’t affected it.

Yes, but in the kingdom of God, where God rules and reigns and how He relates and sees, it has no bearing. That’s right. It’s Christ. It is Christ, yes. Christ is all. And as this leaven of the true kingdom gets down in us and starts working its way out into the world, these worldly system distinctions start getting less and less over time, because we are slow of heart to believe.

Well, I was going to say, because our belief affects the world in which we live.

From the transcript...

He was a judge, all this kind of stuff. And Jesus says, yeah. He said, you've heard that. That's conclusion of the Old Testament. Then he said, but I say to you. He establishes a new order. The king steps up and says, yeah, that's what you've heard. That's where you've been until now. But now I'm just going to tell you how it really is. Then he says, I say to you, love your enemies. Bless those who curse you. Do good to those who hate you. Yeah. Yeah. And pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his son rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust. Okay. Totally different. I like God blessing everybody. Yeah, and then he says, because then you'll be like your father. Because here's what the Father was doing. He's blessing everybody.

Look at it like this, he says. If you love those who love you, do you expect a special reward? Even tax collectors do that, don't they? Yeah.

There's nothing special about you if you're loving somebody that loves you. Are you loving your enemy? Well, yes. It's easy to love those who are easy to love. But is that real love? I mean, that's the thing. Is it real love? It's love in its purest form, which is what you find in Jesus.

From the transcript...

Myself, in particular, I feel like my theology and beliefs—not just biblical, but beliefs in life in general—I’ve always been in a flux, you know, because I’m experiencing life and hopefully I’m learning better. Yeah, that’s… but that’s always been the way.

I think sometimes we think when we’re children going to school and we’re learning, there’s an illusion that when I get to be an adult, learning’s over. But then you realize, no, it’s not. It’s really just the beginning.

And you’re learning how to be a good father as you raise your kids. That’s why you’re such a good grandfather—because you’ve already got one round under your belt, your children. But you’re learning all kinds of things.

I guess this is kind of what I was thinking about when I was saying that. But when we get down to the church house, it’s cut and dried. It’s rigid. This is it. Yeah, we figured it out. This is it. Shut up and believe it. Don’t question it.

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See that vintage cap I got? That thing had to be made in the ’80s. Zach got two big old bags of caps that this guy from Cotton Valley had collected over the years. That was one of them.

I don’t like the way this cap wears.

Yeah?

But that’s not the reason I’m wearing it. You’re just rubbing it in—2019 national champions.

You’re just rubbing it in.

It gets kind of flat on your head.

Well, it’s this curvature of the bill. I just don’t like it much. I’m gonna try that one later, but it clashes with this shirt.

Yeah.

Which might be good—just to clash. I don’t know. That might be a good way. I don’t say I want to view myself that way, but—an individual that clashes with the norm. Because people don’t know how to respond when you just love them.

Well, the One who did that perfectly—they just killed Him.

Yeah… saying I might want to reconsider my choice to clash.

Well, no. Just don’t get shocked when it happens, I guess, is my point.

Oh, I won’t. I’m learning, though, to not let it bother me—the response. Because that’s not why I’m doing it. I’m not doing it for a good response.

I think we all want to be loved.

From the transcript...

Here’s your text with all timestamps and markers removed:

Is the spiritual union another union? A union in addition to our carnal union with Christ? Or is it a sharing in the one and only union between God and man brought out in Jesus Christ?

This is a very important question, for if the spiritual union is an additional union, then our salvation depends not only on the finished work of Christ but upon something else as well, which has later to be added on to it before it is real for us.

That was, in fact, the idea taught by Roman Catholics, for example, in their doctrine of baptismal regeneration and ex opere operato sacramental incorporation into Christ. But it is the same idea that is taught also by Protestants in their doctrine of a union with Christ which is effected by faith or by conversion, through which alone what Christ has done for us becomes real for us.

Both these forms of the same error lead to a doctrine of man's cooperation in his own salvation, and so involve a doctrine of conditional grace.

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In Ephesians 1 and 7, since we're now joined to Christ, we've been given the treasures of redemption by His blood—the total cancellation of our sins—all because of the cascading riches of His grace.

Okay, the total cancellation of sins. Sounds like John the Baptist: “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” Well, you know John preached that, but do we really believe that? No. “Oh, you’ve got to do something.” Well, even then, they don’t even believe when they do something, James.

Okay, you may have to edit this out. No.

I have pastored churches for almost 40 years. And for 40 years, I have continually had to counsel people about the forgiveness of sins. I have preached the total, complete forgiveness of sins through Christ and His shed blood—the finished work of the cross—that you are forgiven.

And I’m telling you, James, even the people who would declare themselves as saved, born again, believers, baptized, active, faithful in church, tithers, Bible readers, and prayers do not experience the freedom from the guilt of their sins like they should.

From the transcript...

Yeah, I was taught that He chose those whom He foreknew. He knew who was going to believe—that was His foreknowledge. Therefore, He chose those. I’m just telling you what I was taught.

I’ve heard that before. Yeah, that’s an Arminian view of it.

Yeah, it was a twisted Arminian view. But that’s so skewed.

Well, I’m just saying—the whole conversation was that it’s because of His grace, but you’ve got to choose it.

Yeah, I had to choose it. If you choose it, He foreknows you’re going to.

The more Calvinist view was that He just made an arbitrary choice.

Yeah—out of the masses, He picked. Out of His love, He picked these. So He had this arbitrary—I call it an arbitrary—choice.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And those were the only two ways to look at it.

Yeah. And then you realize that, no, He’s chosen all of us in Christ. You know, when I’m coming to it with the thought of who’s in and who’s out, I’m not looking at it right—because that’s not what He did. He chose us all in Him.

Now, this goes back to what you were teasing me about earlier. You’ve got to understand—He’s writing to a local church, and He’s only talking to those who have been chosen. So He’s not talking about everybody.

From the transcript...

It’s like—we read through all these translations. We started with the New King James, of course, and I was raised on the old King James. That language, and the discussions I heard about these verses, shaped a whole lot of my original belief system.

But as time has gone on, and I’ve studied and followed the Lord, I began to change what I was originally taught or believed about those things.

By the time we get to the Passion Translation, it encompasses more of what I now think about those verses that I used to read in the King James. How I think about them now is much closer to what I’m reading in the Passion Translation than what I used to believe.

And I say that because I want to promote another brother’s book here. That’s not the cover, I know—but James is in the process of writing a second book called The Gospel I Grew Up On. It’s still in its editing stages; this is just an early copy to work through and edit.

The idea behind the book—and a little behind the conversations that we have, even in Finding Our Way—is that we’ve realized we have had a similar, shared journey of following the Lord. How we used to think about the Bible, the gospel, Jesus, and salvation has changed, grown, and gotten better and better over our lifetime.