Stack of Stuff
Two Truths
Birth Truths or Growth Truths?
Is there a difference and does it matter on which one we focus?
Oct 2023
A summary from: Chapter 1 of “Position to Person” by Miles J Stanford.
NOTE: Birth truths came from Jesus Christ to the 12 Disciples while Growth truths came from Jesus Christ to the Apostle Paul. “Growth” truths are sometimes called “Identification” truths and both words will be used interchangeably in this article.
We can all thank our Lord that Martin Luther allowed God to use him in revealing to the world the Birth truth of “justification by faith alone.” He went against the legal, covenant-oriented theology of Catholicism to explain how our being “born again” was a matter of Grace through Faith, believing in the Gospel of Grace. But this Birth truth was never intended to be a means of spiritual growth.
The most obvious example of Birth without Growth is the Lutheran Church. In general, this produced ritualism, legalism, lack of assurance and liberalism. One other detrimental thing “Birth without Growth” produced was an unscriptural application of the Law as the “Rule of Life” for the believer.
JB Stoney indicated that although, through Luther’s efforts, the bondage to the Pope was eliminated, the bondage to the “Old Man” was not removed. The lack of attention to the “Old Man” being crucified with Christ was and is the weakness of the reformation.
William R Newell indicated that because the Reformed writers and theologians have focused on only the justifying work of Christ, they failed to capitalize on the Growth truth that our history in Adam completely ended through Identification with Christ’s death on the Cross. It is faith in this fact that frees us from the power of sin, the grip of the law, the old Adamic creation and sets us on resurrection ground above, in Christ Jesus.
Lewis Sperry Chaffer indicated that the church has been damaged and confused because of the disregard of Christ’s revelation concerning the body to the Apostle Paul. The Reformation did not recover or capitalize on these important truths which were held by the early 1st Century Church.
Here is a short, simple, time diagram showing when different theologies were in play:
40 – 300 AD Grace Identification truths given to Paul
300 – present Augustine, Constantine & Catholic, Covenant Theology (works)
1520 – present Martin Luther’s “Faith Alone” mixed with Law as a Rule of Life
1850 – present Grace Identification truths given to Paul still mixed with Catholic and Lutheran ideologies.
1875 – 1975 Keswick Conventions teaching pure identification truths started in England and expanded into the USA
So, what happened in 1850? Along came a man named JB Stoney of the Plymouth Brethren movement. He revitalized the original identification truths presented by the Apostle Paul as revealed to him by the risen Lord Jesus.
Now a scoffer might say “Big deal, truth is truth.” Well, let’s look at some of the awesome biblical principles that became available to us through the identification truths:
1 Our full assurance of salvation
2 Unconditional Eternal Security
3 The Church as the Body of Christ
4 Distinction between Israel and the Church
5 Therefore, because of #4, distinction between Law and Grace
6 The basic Dispensations in the Rightly Divided Word
7 Our identification with Christ’s death, burial, resurrection and present life
8 Our deliverance from the reign of sin and the “old man” Romans 6
9 Our Freedom from the Principal of Law
10 Our Position in our Glorified Lord, in Heaven
11 God’s purpose to conform us to the Image of His Son
So, without understanding these Identification truths, you can see the wealth of Biblical knowledge we would not have which is vital for our present day “Life in Christ.”
The Plymouth Brethren, a large part of the Anabaptist Evangelicals in America, were the major contributors to announcing and spreading these renewed Identification truths. Sadly, they emphasized their “gathering together for social fellowship” more than “growing together in fellowship with Christ.” This became a major factor in the decline of their movement.
Thankfully, from 1875 to 1975, the Bible Conferences in Keswick, England, sowed these Growth truths in “hungry hearts” worldwide. Do you have a Hungry Heart? Most Christians have “complacent” hearts. Could you verbally explain to someone the difference between “Jesus gave His life” vs “Jesus is our Life?” That in a nutshell defines the difference between Birth truths and Growth truths.
In conclusion, it does matter on which set of truths we focus. If we want to grow spiritually, and this is a choice, we must focus on the Growth truths Christ has given to us through the Apostle Paul.
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If we are “DEAD TO SIN”, WHY DO WE STILL SIN?
Aug 2023
aka: How to quit sinning, more or less!
A summary from chapter 6 of “Position to Person” by Miles Stanford.
This is always a great question, and often-times, the answer doesn’t convince. Let’s look at the question in detail and start with some facts from scripture. By the way, this lesson applies only to those individuals who have by faith, truly believed the Gospel of Grace and as a result, received the Holy Spirit into their life. When we say “we,” it means “believers.”
Romans, chapters 6 and 8 explain in great detail how by faith, we can believe and know that we have died to sin, to the Old Adam we inherited at birth and are now alive to God through Jesus Christ, in Whom we have trusted. We have become “New Creations.” However, for some reason, we “Believers” struggle to “believe” that fact. On the other hand, most all of us have no trouble believing the “miraculous” fact that by grace through faith we received eternal life, when we trusted that 1) Christ died, 2) was buried, 3) rose from the grave and 4) is living right now as we read this. To believe that we are “dead to sin” is exactly the same principle, done by grace through faith.
Here’s the problem: even though we are “in Christ” and no longer “in Adam,” we are still “flesh” until we obtain our new bodies at the next resurrection. Why do you think God left that Adamic fleshly nature in us after we believed the Gospel? Possibly for the same reason he initially allowed Adam’s sin nature to be transferred to us: so that we could choose to participate in our being “in Christ” and our letting “Christ live through us.” Both of these activities involve our choosing.
In looking back, after seeing ourselves as a sinners, faith in the Gospel was a piece of cake😊, especially comparing it to having faith to believe we are dead to sin. That, in the majority of us, is another issue.
But, believe it or not, that old Adamic nature we still have actually plays an essential role in our spiritual growth. It’s almost as if God intentionally designed that indwelling sinful life, which we hate, to turn us from self-centeredness to Christ-centeredness. Wow, what a concept. So, we ask ourself, “Self, how is that going to work?”
One thing we must remember, there is a free-will choice involved. To which man will we listen, Old Adam (our fleshly nature) or the Last Adam, Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit living and working in us? These will be moment by moment decisions. As we naturally will struggle falling into sinful practices, we can see the conflict that Apostle Paul had as he wrote Romans 7. But be sure to read the solution and the conclusion in the 25th verse: Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! He is the only solution to freeing us from the despicable pull of the flesh and to develop within us the spotless new man which we have become.
A second thing to remember as we consider which man motivates us is that God cannot and does not accept anything motivated by our fleshly nature, no matter how bad or good it may be☹. Contrary-wise, He accepts everything done by His Son through us😊.
So, sorry to say, there is a war going on inside us between the promptings of the flesh and the promptings of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. I dare say, the Spirit is much more powerful than the flesh, but if you never communicate with Him or let Him communicate with you, you will rarely be aware of His promptings. The only thing left for assisting your decisions is the Old Adamic flesh and the results are never pretty.
The success of this venture is totally dependent upon your application of what Christ has done for us on the Cross. We have all, as believers, applied Christ’s finished work on the Cross to freely and completely give us freedom from sins, total forgiveness, salvation and eternal life with our Lord. In a similar manner, we must now believe through faith that our Lord Jesus’ death has freed us from sinning and that our fleshly thoughts have no power over us. Apostle Paul in the book of Romans tells us we are no longer in bondage to our fleshly thoughts and actions. These are the promptings from the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus that will come through loud and clear. Our mission, should we choose to accept it, is to believe them and embrace them.
One last thing to ponder directly from Miles Stanford:
“It is a greater testimony to the power of the Father to let that old life remain and give us dominion over it, than to remove it to begin with.” (Emphasis mine)
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Is there more than 1 Gospel?
Dec2020
If you read 2Timothy 2.8, Paul says to Timothy, “my Gospel?” Did Paul think one up by himself? No, of course not. Our ascended Savior told it to him and ‘Oh Boy,’ it changed the instructions for going to heaven.
You realize what the Gospel is, right? The Good News about what exactly we have to ‘believe’ to go to Heaven. Now there are Christians that believe there is only 1 Gospel. But a careful studying of the Bible will show that Jesus proclaimed the Gospel of the Kingdom to the Jewish Nation and to His Disciples when He lived on earth with them. To be a ‘Believer’, the Jews had to, by Faith, only believe that Jesus was their Jewish Messiah. Their King was here and the Kingdom was right around the corner. I believe that is why Jesus and the Disciples kept telling the people to ‘repent’. Repent meant to “change their mind” about who Jesus was. Not just a good Guy, not even a prophet, but He truly was their Messiah and they just had to believe it. And as John the Baptist taught, water baptism quite often went along with this understanding, completing that Jewish ritual. See Mat 4.23 and 4.17.
Then, after Jesus ascended back to Heaven, He instructed Apostle Paul that the Gospel was now, by Faith, to believe that Jesus had died, was buried, arose and is still alive.
1Corinthians 15.1-5 Now I make known to you, brothers and sisters, the gospel which I preached to you, which you also received, in which you also stand, by which you also are saved, if you hold firmly to the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I handed down to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.
That is why Paul calls it ‘my Gospel’ because Jesus had given it to him to tell this new Good News to Gentiles and Jews everywhere. This new Gospel could now be proclaimed because Christ had accomplished those 3 events and was still alive and well.
So, we can see a big change took place after Christ finished His work on the cross, including a special Gospel of Grace to all people, everywhere.
So, why is this important to know as we study God’s Word? When we choose to believe the message God gave the Apostle Paul (“my gospel”), that Jesus was raised from the dead and is living today, we are placing our faith in a work that has already been done, the work of the Cross. That frees us from any self-effort and works of our own. All we do is believe. The Holy Spirit then produces fruit and good works.
Only the Apostle Paul’s letters give this message of grace through faith alone, with “Not I, but Christ.” The more we understand this, the more we appreciate Jesus Christ and are grateful for all He’s done for us, forgiving our sin and making available for us a day by day walk, with Him living through us. No matter what our circumstances, we can enjoy a full life of forgiveness and freedom, walking in the Spirit. The Apostle Paul’s letters tell us what this looks like!
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Today’s ‘Watered Down’ Church
Jun2016
After Dr Lewis Speery Chafer’s death in 1952, Dallas Theological Seminary began to soften and blur the sharp Pauline distinctions of the rightly-divided Word. The inevitable result has been that the Church is deprived of her heavenly identity. She begins to take on the earthly characteristics of Israel: Israel’s New Covenant, Israel’s Sermon on the Mount, Israel’s Law and Israel’s Kingdom.
Way back in 1875, JB Stoney said “I fear there is a tendency to make little difference between the Church and Israel, and thus the heavenly distinctiveness is weakened and lost. Once heaven as a present position and portion is surrendered, the great privilege and position of the Church, the Body of Christ, is drained away.”
If you find your pastor often mentions “Kingdom”, this may indicate the Church is a phase of Israel’s future millennial kingdom or indicates the Church is a present form of the theocratic kingdom, saying phrases like “now/not yet”, they have swallowed the deception. No wonder the Church is being flattened out and bound to the horizontal plane of Israel’s kingdom! Little wonder believers are being deprived of the knowledge and benefits of their vertical heavenly position in the Son at the Father’s right hand. This is not grace teaching and therefore not Church teaching. One of the leading factors to the kingdomization of the Church is the breakdown of the distinction between the “kingdom of God” and the “kingdom of heaven.”
WR Newell in the early 1900’s predicted, “Failure to rightly divide between Kingdom and Church will lead to a wrong conception of the Bible, a false interpretation of its truth and incorrect application of its promises. One of the first things that will happen will be to spiritualize the kingdom promises of the OT and attempt to make them apply to the Church of this dispensation. This only results in confusion and conflict.”
You might say, “What’s the big deal?” or “So what!” You need to figure out who would want the Church, Christ’s born-again believers, to not identify with their position in heaven, with Christ at the Father’s right hand? The answer would be none but Satan himself. If he can dumb down the Christian to believe he is hopelessly under the legality of the past ages (Law for Israel) or hopelessly obligated to fulfill the impossible world transforming program of the future (Israel’s coming Kingdom), he has succeeded in his mission of making Christ’s Body ineffective. The Church has lost the liberty for which Jesus died.
Take the Kingdom Quiz (see separate tab) to learn more about the differences between these two great kingdoms.
Partially from “Pauline Dispensationalism” by Miles J Stanford
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Just how many of our Sins were actually reconciled at the Cross?
Aug2014
Most believers would ‘say’ all, but would they actually believe and embrace that fact? I see too many times where it doesn’t happen. Can you actually believe that you have been forgiven for every wrong deed, act, sin & thought that you have had – and, actually, will have? If so, why do we always think we must ‘ask’ forgiveness from Jesus before He will forgive us? If we really believe He has forgiven us, shouldn’t we ‘thank’ Him for that wonderful privilege?
Keep in mind, sinning against our neighbor (aka: moving the Lot Line stakes to make our property bigger) is a different thing. Our neighbor is not Jesus and confessing and righting the wrong is a necessary thing with him.
Separating our Relationship with Christ and our Relationship with Society is a must. They are actually two completely separate issues. With Christ, we are no longer under the Law because He fulfilled it. With our neighbors and friends (including relatives), we are still under the law and must abide by the rules of government and society OR pay the consequences.
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