Classic Christianity – Book of Romans P29 (01-14-19)
Synopsis
Recall that in Romans, Paul explains the purpose of the law and explains what God did to bring salvation to fallen mankind. He goes on to explain law and grace. In doing so, he anticipates the common questions that man would ask.
Romans 6:1
1 What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?
Romans 6:15 (NASB)
15 What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? May it never be!
Romans 7:7
7 What shall we say, then? Is the law sinful?
Paul answers these questions, explaining the grace of God, the totality of the cross, the resurrection, and how man is made complete in Christ. Still today, there is much confusion on what salvation is. You have numerous denominations out there, and what they could be telling you is true or not true. How would you know?
The Holy Spirit reveals truth to men, and truth is revealed to you through his word. So a lost person cannot discern the things of God because they are spiritually discerned. But the saved person, a person with the Spirit of God living in him, can. But what do people often do today? They rely on their pastor to explain truth to them. They memorize one verse of scripture, often taken out of context, and decide for themselves what it means. Indeed, that is often how denominations get formed. They are leaning on their own understanding.
A very serious error in the world of Christianity today is not understanding what salvation is. There are many pastors today who will call people to come forward to get their sins forgiven. Is that what salvation is, getting your sins forgiven? No. What has God revealed to us through the apostle Paul? Have you read the whole book of Romans, relying on the Holy spirit to reveal truth to you? Then how do you know if what the pastor said is true or not?
Looking at Romans 5 and Romans 8, we come to understand that salvation is not getting your sins forgiven, but the receiving of new life. When Jesus died on a cross, he shed his blood, that according to Hebrews, without which there is no forgiveness of sins. We also read that He will remember our sins no more, and that when He shed His blood on the cross, He did it once and for all, never to be repeated again. He will not shed His blood again. Therefore, salvation is not getting your sins forgiven, for Jesus already did that. He took away the sins of the entire world, back to Adam and forward to anyone yet to be born.
But then, if someone thinks salvation is getting your sins forgiven, then if Jesus took away the sins of the world, then would that not be universal salvation? It is universal provision for sin, preparation for salvation, but not salvation. But there are those who believe in Calvinism, who think that salvation is getting sins forgiven, so they have to come up with an explanation to explain away universal salvation. So what do they do? They came up with a man-made idea that God chose certain people for heaven and other people for hell, predetermined before they were even born. My question to them is, “What love is that?” They have just made God out of their own imagination. Is that not what religion does?
Man comes up with religion to pacify an emptiness in his soul. The Jews turned the law as a means to obtain righteousness. It did not work for them, and it certainly will also not work for anyone living today, who has stolen what was given to the Jews and put themselves under that same legalistic righteousness, which is really no righteousness at all. There is no one who is righteous, no not one. The law can only make one conscious of sin, and condemn you as a sinner.
Man was born dead spiritually, dead to God, but very much alive to this world. Only Adam and Eve were created with the Spirit of God living in them. But when they chose for themselves what is good and evil, then the Spirit of God vacated them. They became spiritually dead. And all people born through them are now born spiritually dead, without the Spirit of God living in them. This explains the emptiness that is in mankind, and necessitates why God sent His Son into the world to restore what was lost in the garden of Eden, mankind lost in sin and death. God so loved the world, everyone, that He gave His only Son so that through Him man might not perish but have eternal life. This is eternal life, to know God and His Son, Jesus Christ.
So salvation is receiving the life that was lost in the garden of Eden. The Spirit of God needs to be placed back into man. What caused the Spirit to leave Adam? Sin. What is the consequence of that sin? Death. The wages of sin is death. So, in order for life to be given to man, his cause of death, which is sin, must be taken away. So what did God do? He sent His Son to first come and die on a cross to eternally take away the cause of death. But if mankind remains dead, then what did the death of Jesus accomplish? Would not man just remain dead?
What did Jesus do to offer life to mankind? He was raised from the dead so that the life that raised Him from the dead will raise you and me from the dead. Is this universal? A universal offer of life, yes. But not everyone will be saved. Mankind must want the life of God and receive that life by faith, trusting alone in what Jesus accomplished for you, by his death, burial and resurrection. But it is the resurrection of Jesus from the dead that gives you life. You do not come to get forgiveness of sins. You come to receive God, the resurrected life of Christ Jesus. If he was not raised from the dead, then neither would you.
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So man first must realize he is a sinner. That is why the law was added. The purpose of the law was what the apostle Paul went to great lengths to explain. Now, when man recognizes he is a sinner, he sees his wretched condition, and is now ready for new life. If mankind does not recognize his condition of death, then what value does the death of Jesus on a cross mean to him? Nothing. Death is a worse problem than sin.
Now, once knowing he is dead in sin, under the law of sin and death, he has to be taken out from under that law. So when Jesus was raised from the dead, he offers the choice to man to receive the same life of the Spirit that raised him from the dead. Sin certainly caused our death, but getting sins forgiven cannot give you life. The death of Christ Jesus was a necessary preparation for you to be able to receive life, but only life can give you life. That is what salvation is, the receiving of new life. The Spirit of life, placed in you, is what sets you free from the law of sin and death. So, the message of Christ is, “Come to me for life.”
Do we lack the life of God? If you do not have the Spirit of God living in you, then you do not have love, for God is love. Do we allow the love of God to be produced in us and through us? What is in your heart? That is why all of scripture is to know God and His Son Jesus Christ. They will know you are Christians by your love for God, which will be evident in your love for one another. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love. If I can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love then I am nothing.
Transcript
We will pick back up in the book of Romans. Turn to Romans 8. As a matter of review in the book of Romans, what we actually have here, is that at the end of chapter 5, you have a parentheses in chapters 6 and 7. You have questions that people are going to ask in regards to what Paul wrote to the Romans at the end chapter 5.
Romans 5:20-21
20 The law was brought in so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, 21 so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Whenever you hear these type of things, that Paul was teaching, which was foreign to the ears of a legalistic Jew, and certainly foreign to the years of legalistic Gentiles today. It was certainly the same as it was back then.
Back in those days, you would have the Jew, legalistic, trying to follow God, trying to live up according to the law, and then you had the Gentile who cared less, and you had little in between. The only voice on the face of the earth, at that time, for the Triune God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, was the Jew. The rest of the world was just kind of playing around or having no interest at all in anything.
Today is different. Today we have religious people. That is why you have religious sections in the newspaper. If you need comic relief, that is a good page to read. The issue is you have all kinds of religions today. You have your Catholic, Protestant, Muslim religions. You have all kinds of religious people today. There is nothing unusual about being religious. You also have people from all denominations, who have gone over and stolen the law from the Jew, because God never gave the law to the Gentile. The law was given to the Jew. They went over, and said “Well, you Jews did not do very well doing it, so just watch my smoke”. We are trying to live under the law ourselves, as Gentiles.
So, you have got a lot of confusion that has taken place in the Christian world today. On top of that, as we talked bout earlier, you have an agenda of the world that is trying to destroy all of Christianity. That is, they want to take prayer, and any talk of Jesus, out of society altogether. We have a confusing world we are living in today.
This thing of law and grace was a huge subject. It was something that had to be taught by the apostle Paul. He was threatened with his own life, who ultimately died because of this teaching, as well as the other apostles. The subject today of law and grace is as stringent as it was back in those says.
When you tell people today that you are no longer under the law, the first thing that comes to mind is “Should we go on sinning so that grace may increase?” We may not use those words, but those are the questions that are asked. “If we are no longer under the law, under grace, so you just go out and kill people?” That is what they say, “kill people” because not too many people do that. Except if we know what Jesus said, “if you are angry with another person, you are guilty of murder”. But we do not pay any attention to what Jesus said on that any more than we pay attention to the fact that if you look lustfully at a girl in your heart you commit adultery. We do not pay any attention to that either. The issue is is that it was said by the Lord.
So you have people whose initial response to the message of grace is “what you are saying to me is that you can just live however you want to live”. So he has to address those questions, which he did in chapters 6 and 7. So Paul addressed the question, “should we just go on sinning so grace shall increase?”, Then in Romans 6:15, the question is asked, “shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace?’ Then in Romans 7:1, “is the law sin?” So you have all of those questions that Paul felt necessary to answer before moving on to what he had talked about in chapter 5, in regard to the fact that the law was added so the trespass might increase so that you would be able to identify yourself as what you are, a sinner, and turn to Christ for salvation. Paul answered by explaining the purpose of the law. When God gives us something he has a purpose for giving it to us. The purpose of the law was to show us our sinfulness so we would turn to Christ for salvation.
Again, we have this terrific confusion that is taking place in the Christian world, and even by people that I felt were somewhat familiar with the message that we teach in this ministry. We have people who grab a hold of the grace of God. They say they just love it, but do not see what you are freed from, the law and the demands of the law. They believe or else have forgotten, I do not know which that is. They believe that you are saved by the cross, by the death of Christ. Therefore, we have people today that are out teaching that because of the cross of Jesus Christ, that God was in Christ reconciling the whole world unto himself not counting their sins against them, and therefore that the whole world is saved, and no one will be lost. That is being taught by people, who at one time or another, have come to our seminars, have been taught about the grace of God, yet go on in this kind of nonsense.
What is the root of that incorrect thinking and theology? It is the same root you have in hyper-Calvinism, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself not counting sins against us, and the whole world’s sin, so have been saved. Thinking that is salvation, they wonder how that can be, for that would be universal salvation. We know there is no universal salvation. So how are we going to explain that? So they say, then that he must have died just for the elect. That is where you get the five point Calvinism and the hyper-Calvinism being taught, that God’s predestination was that he chose so and so for salvation but he did not choose this other guy. So he condemns some to eternal death and others to eternal life. They believe that kind of God. It is like saying, “I do not like you Paul, so you are a goner. I do not care how good you are. I chose you for that destiny”. They believe that. What kind of love is that?
Where is the root problem of all that? The root problem is believing salvation is getting your sins forgiven. That is where the problem goes. We must study the scriptures, finding ourselves approved by God, studying scriptures in its total context, and not picking certain scriptures out of context, playing hopscotch out of scripture. People ask me to give a verse on the topic, and I say, “No, read the book in its entire context. Quit looking for verses to hopscotch over the bible with. Read the chapter and read the book and you will get the answer to your question”.
That is a problem with these scripture memory verses. Nothing wrong with that. It is no problem memorizing scriptures if you memorize it in context. If you do not memorize it in context then what it means is left up to you, and you do not have a clue what it means. I will just let it mean what I want it to mean. So we have people who say “just let it mean what you want it to mean”. There are a lot of people who have that kind of theology that whatever it means to you is okay.
God has a meaning to everything that he has done. When He wrote the word, He not only wrote what it said but He knew what it meant and He wants us to know what it means. The only problem is that the ones who will know what it means are those relying on the Spirit of God to reveal what it means. For the bible tells us that the Spirit reals truth to men.
1 Corinthians 2:9-10
9 However, as it is written:“What no eye has seen,
what no ear has heard,
and what no human mind has conceived” –
the things God has prepared for those who love him –10 these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit.
The meaning of the word of God is not revealed by understanding Greek or Hebrew or by getting a seminary degree. It is revealed by the Spirit. That is why the most uneducated person in the world, who is relying on the Spirit of God, can understand what wise men absolutely have never understood.
We are dealing with this problem of salvation. In Romans, we read about this.
Romans 5:10
10 For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!
While we were enemies, lost, we were reconciled. There is not a man who has been or will ever be born into this world, whose sins have not been reconciled to God at the cross. Universal. All men’s sins have been taken away at the cross. Is that salvation? No. It goes ahead to say that how much more, that being an accomplished fact, shall we be saved by His what? His life.
1 Corinthians 15:19-20
19 If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.20 But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.
That is why the apostle Paul is able to say without the resurrection we are to be pitied of all people, and are still in our sins, knowing full well that a cross had occurred (Colossians 1:20), but that cross is meaningless apart from the resurrection (Romans 6:4).
Colossians 1:20 (TLB)
20 It was through what his Son did that God cleared a path for everything to come to him – all things in heaven and on earth – for Christ’s death on the cross has made peace with God for all by his blood.
Romans 6:4
4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.
What the cross did was clear the deck for the divine action of bringing life to the dead. We are streaming people by the thousands in our evangelistic work to come forward to get their sins forgiven, which is a lie, because your sins were already forgiven. You come forward, if you are going to come forward, to get life. You come forward to get Jesus, not what he did for you, but for Him.
Ephesians 1:7
7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace
Where is the forgiveness, that was provided for the whole world, received? In Him. In His resurrected life. That is why the key to the Christian life is resurrection! That is why they got crucified, for preaching the resurrection from the dead. When you teach resurrection, you are teaching a subject people know about historically, but do not have a clue as to what it means. What it means is, is that life that raised him from the dead is the life that raised you from the dead (Romans 6:4), because you were born dead (Romans 5:12), and the only thing a dead man needs is life and until you receive life, you remain dead (John 3:18).
Romans 5:12
12 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned
John 3:18
18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.
The issue in salvation is not how bad you are, but how dead you are. You have heard people say, “that if you keep on this sinning, you will go to hell. You will go to hell because of your sins”. That is a lie. No man will ever go to hell because of sins (John 3:18, John 16:9).
John 16:9 (TLB)
9 The world’ sin is unbelief in me
Those sins have been placed on Christ two thousand years ago. You go to hell because of your refusal to come to the man who did that for you, to the one who was raised from the dead to give life to you and me.
John 5:36-40
36 “I have testimony weightier than that of John. For the works that the Father has given me to finish – the very works that I am doing – testify that the Father has sent me. 37 And the Father who sent me has himself testified concerning me. You have never heard his voice nor seen his form, 38 nor does his word dwell in you, for you do not believe the one he sent. 39 You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, 40 yet you refuse to come to me to have life.
We stumble down the aisles to get forgiveness, and return back to our pews just as dead as we came to the alter. That is why they call them pews because of so many dead people sitting in them.
People come down and say, “Well, can’t you have life?” I do not know. What I do know is that the bible tells me that I am saved by his life. Well, can’t you just say “Jesus, thank you for dying for my sins”, or can’t you say “Please forgive me, my sin?” I do not know. What I do know is the bible says you are saved by His life. I do know that a half gospel does not save anybody. Jesus loves us too much to give us a half gospel. It is the fullness of the gospel that brings people into a full relationship with Christ Jesus. You come to Him for Him. Come to what? For His forgiveness? No. “Come unto me to have life.”
Matthew 11:28
28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”
God says to us, “All of you who labor and are heavy laden, I will give you rest and peace for your soul.” That is the call of God, “Come unto me”.
John 1:11-13
11 He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. 12 Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God – 13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.
Notice that Jesus did not say “to as many as received his forgiveness”. To as many as received who? Him. He gave the right to what? He gave the right to become a child of God.
So it is vitally important that we understand these things. That is why Paul stressed in Romans 6 and 7, answering all of these questions that come into people’s minds when they hear it has been done. It has been accomplished. Come unto Him by faith.
We are going to pick up today. I will read that last verse in chapter 5 and then continue in chapter 8, for that is the continuation of thought, in regards to the subject of salvation, in chapter 8.
Romans 5:20-21
20 The law was brought in so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, 21 so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
How did sin reign? Because the wages of sin is death.
Romans 6:23
23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 8:1
1 Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,
What is the “therefore” there for. Because of what he just got through saying.
Do you believe that? How much condemnation is left for you and me from God? None. You mean He is not going to get you? Is He or not? Is He going to get you? Is He going to put you into the woodshed? What did He say? There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. There is nothing left that God is going to condemn you for. What if you keep sinning after you are saved? There is no condemnation awaiting those who belong to Christ Jesus. What if I keep repeating it? What if I do it twice? There is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus. Do you believe that? How many of you said to God, “Oh God, I did it again”. Do you know what God said? Did what again? I took that away at the cross. Do we believe that?
Now, are we that way with each other? No, we got record books. We have an accounting list. We keep records. What does He say about love?
1 Corinthians 13:4-6
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
In this list of characteristics of God, what does He say about love? Among other things, He says love keeps no record of wrongs. We walk around thinking we are doing so well in our Christian experience, and we are violating everything He says in the love chapter.
Galatians 5:6b
The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.
We think we are doing good. The issue is I do not think any of us are doing good. I do not say that I did not think you are doing good. I said that all of us are not doing good. I do not think any of us are doing that good. I think we are all in the process of learning what it is to know Jesus.
Mark 10:18
18 “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good – except God alone.”
I was telling some people the other day, “If you talked to me ten years ago, my knowledge of scripture was way out here. Today it is down here. It is getting narrower and narrower. It is focusing more and more on just Jesus. Up here you got this theology and everything else, but it comes down to nothingness when you are left with Jesus and Jesus alone”. When you and I leave this body and go into the presence of God, we are not going into theology, we are going to the presence of Jesus. Now we need the theology to get to know who that Jesus is, that we are going into His presence, and who He is that lives in us today. But in the final analysis, the only thing that matters is faith expressing itself through love. Do you believe that? Then all this other stuff is just superfluous, isn’t it? If that is true, how important is the rest of the stuff, that we get so hung up on? The only thing that matters is faith that expresses itself through love for Him and one another. How are we doing in the love department?
2 Corinthians 10:12
12 We do not dare to classify or compare ourselves with some who commend themselves. When they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves, they are not wise.
If we are going to sit around and compare ourselves, how wise is that? If you compare yourself by yourself, you are a fool. If I compare myself by me, then only two things can happen. One, I think I am better than you, and that is pride. The other is to think I am worse than you, and that is self condemnation. Both of those are out of the pit of hell. I am not there to compare and neither are you. The issue is he teaching us is that the only thing that matters is faith expressing itself through love.
1 Corinthians 13:1
1 If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.
The whole goal of this bible is to bring you down to that logical conclusion that the only thing that matters is faith expressing itself through love. If that is not evident then you do not have anything. We put emphasis on babbling in tongues. If you could speak in the language of men and angels, and do not have love, then you are nothing but a noisy gong and a clanging cymbal. People say that is a sign you are Spirit-filled. Can you imagine calling yourself a Spirit-filled noisy gong?
John 13:34-35
34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
Then we get hung up on healing, church attendance, or something else. We get hung up on everything except what the bible says. The only thing that matters is faith expressing itself through love. That is all that matters. The world will know you are my disciples by your love for one another, not your tithing records. If you do not have it, they will not know you are My disciples. That is very clear, isn’t it?
So there is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus. What should that do for us? In our own experience, what should that do for us? If I am going to walk by faith in that truth, then I am going to be thanking God when I blow it, that there is no condemnation for me. That is one of my prayers, “Lord, thank you for what you did for me at the cross. Thank you that there is no condemnation for me for what I just did”. Is that right or wrong? If I walk by faith, then that is what we are going to have to do.
1 Peter 1:22
22 Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for each other, love one another deeply, from the heart.
We get so hung up on the dirty dozen, the nasty nine, and the terrible twelve, and we forget about these attitudes of the heart, don’t we? We forget about how unloving we can be sometimes. The thing that gets to me more than anything else is the unloving attitude that comes out of me. Sometimes I have them, and when I have them, it hurts inside. Yet it feels good in the flesh at the time, when you have just ripped somebody off and you just told him what you thought about him. The flesh feels so good but that is not love. Those are the things that disturb you the most, the attitudes you fail to exemplify when you go through life.
The only thing you can do if you are going to walk by faith is to be able to say “Lord Jesus, thank you for what you did for me at the cross”. I am not going to ask Him for forgiveness unless I want to hang Him on a cross again.
Hebrews 9:22
22 In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.
Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness. He is not coming back to shed His blood and He is not shedding it now. He did it once. He did it for all. He did it forever.
Hebrews 10:10
10 And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
If I am going to walk by faith, and I do not have to, but if I am going to walk by faith, then I am going to have to walk by faith in what is true from God’s vantage point. I do not walk by faith from what the church teaches me, or not from what makes me feel good, but what is true from God’s vantage point. What is true is that my sins have been placed on the cross and taken away. That is what truth is.
So when you sin, that is when you turn to God and say, “thank you”. “Thank you for taking away my sin at the cross. Thank you that you do not see that. I thank you that there is no condemnation awaiting me, who belongs to you. Thank you for that.” That is a prayer based upon truth. Truth from what? From what we think? No. It is truth from what God did. That is walking by faith.
The only thing that counts is what? Faith expressing itself through what? Love. How much more could you be exercising faith itself through love than to show your love to God for what He did for you two thousand years ago at a cross. So now there is no condemnation. Why is there no condemnation?
Romans 8:2
2 because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you[a] free from the law of sin and death.
You and I were born under the law of sin and death, were we not? What is the wages of sin? Death. How many of us have sinned? All of us. How many of us are under the death penalty? All of us. All of us were born under the death penalty. We had no choice. Adam sinned volitionally. We are born in Adam as dead as he became. So we are born into this world with no choice. You did not choose life. You did not choose death. You were just born dead spiritually.
Genesis 2:7
7 Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
Genesis 2:15-17
15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. 16 And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”
Romans 5:12
12 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned
Let us get into our minds what spiritual death is. Who are you dead to when you are born into the world? You are dead to God. God left Adam. You and I are born without God living in us, just like a light bulb would be if it is put in there with no electricity in it. It had no choice. It is a light bulb. It is finely and wonderfully made. It is plugged in, but there is no electricity in there. So it cannot function. So it must have to function somehow on its own. It has to do something else other than bear light.
We are the same way. We are born into this world dead to God but very much alive to the world. Your human spirit separates you from the animal kingdom. If your human spirit was dead dead, you would be animal. An animal has a soul. A soul is composed of a mind, emotion and a will. Does a dog have a mind? Debatable, but yes. Does he have a will? Yes. Does he have emotion? Absolutely. You can tell by how he wags his tail. But does he have a human spirit? Does a dog sit around able to plan his day? I do not think so. He just sees a car go by and goes out and tries to eat it. So he goes out to chase it. He is not planning his day. Does a dog contemplate God? Not that we know about. The human aspect of man is what separates us from the animal kingdom.
Ecclesiastes 3:11
11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.
So a man, although he is dead to what vacated him, that is the Spirit of God living in him, he is still aware of his emptiness. That is why there truly is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every man that can only be filled by God through His Son, Jesus Christ. That is why the world is incurably religious.
Acts 17:26-27
26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us.
That is why you can go into the most remote areas of the world and people are seeking to know God. Why? They are empty. What are they empty of? What they are supposed to be filled with. What is that? The Spirit of God living in you. God in the man is indispensable to the humanity of the man. You take God out of the man, and you got a man on your hands, but he cannot behave like one. He is not an animal so he cannot behave like an animal. He is not a true man from God’s vantage point, so he cannot behave like a true man. So he behaves like an idiot. That is how we behave apart from God.
