THEME: Understanding Salvation: Inheriting Incorruptible Nature
LESSON: Eight
TOPIC: Obedience unto a Hope that Transcends the Hope of Flesh (Old Man/The Present World) Pt 2
TEXT: Romans 1:5; Hebrews 3:6; 1 Corinthians 15:19; Ephesians 1:17-18; 1 Peter 1:1-3
MEMORY TRACK:
By God’s grace, in our last lessons, we learnt that the faith of Christ is the revealed lifestyle of Christ, which comes at life junctions in the journey of a child of God in becoming a Man in Christ. This Faith is the RHEMA word needed by saints to bear the fruit and life of the gospel. The Faith of Christ (Rhema) reveals the standard of God’s righteousness, and it affects every aspect and phase of our natural lives – it is not a formula or human calculation.
We will continue in our study of Understanding Salvation: Inheriting Incorruptible by looking further into how the doctrine of Christ rewrites the hope of the gospel in the hearts of the heirs of salvation through the invalidating of the hope of flesh via the revelation of the hope of His calling.
Understanding The Hope of His Calling (Eph 1:15-18)
All faith is ratified by the hope it is based upon (Heb 11:1) SELAH! This implies that one’s expression of faith is validated by the hope from which the said faith springs. At the introduction of the faith of the Son/the doctrine of Christ to the saint, via the spirit of wisdom and revelation, the hope of the gospel as understood by the saint comes under review (Heb 7:19). Prior to this notable spiritual encounter, the hope of the believer hardly differs from the hope of the average unsaved natural man with an unregenerated human spirit.
In truth, there is only one Hope for the believer (Eph 4:4), and a major part of the salvation program is to deliver the saint from the many hopes that have tainted our sanctification as children of God.
Purification from the Hope of the Present World (Eph 1:15-18)
Hope could be understood as the perceived gain in pursuit of a venture, usually predicated on a desired expectation or promised reward. The aspiration for financial prosperity, personal comfort, social acceptance, and freedom from any and all kinds of inconvenience and suffering are all examples of the diverse hopes humanity has accepted as key motivators in life.
However, while these may not be wrong in themselves, they are not primarily the hope of the gospel. Even after getting born again, the believer will still need to be healed from judging the faithfulness of God entirely on these natural hopes, especially when they become the basis of our confidence, the yardstick of our obedience or the reason we serve God. A believer may obey God while expecting a particular earthly advantage in return. When that advantage appears threatened, his willingness to obey may also weaken. Such a response indicates a lack of understanding of the hope of the gospel.
The Hope of The Gospel
The Faith of the Son brings to visibility the actual reason for the sacrifice of Jesus. We are born again unto a lively hope only the doctrine of Christ reveals (Rom 1:16-17; 1 Pet 1:3-4). Simply put, it is the hope that in our mortal form, we shall acquire the nature of our Immortal God! Having this aspiration is a level of holiness that only the hope of the gospel can produce in a man.
The Faith of the Son Introduces a Superior Life (Rom 1:16-17; Gal 2:19-20)
The Faith of the Son of God is not simply a means of obtaining things from God. It is a divine provision through which the soul is taught to live by the life of Christ (Gal 2:20). As this faith works in us, it challenges the old man’s understanding of profit, loss, success and failure. It teaches us to surrender our rights, reject ungodly alternatives, and embrace God’s will.
Consequently, obedience may sometimes appear disadvantageous to the natural man. We may have to relinquish a preferred outcome (Heb 11:33-38), endure misunderstanding (Heb 12:3; 1 Pet 4:14-16; 1 Cor 2:14), or refuse an opportunity that contradicts the truth we have received (Heb 11:24-26). These experiences reveal whether our confidence rests in the present world or in the life God is forming within us (1 John 2:15).