Cut free

Paul writes, “That is, that I may be comforted together with you by the mutual faith both of you and me.”

Jordan explains, “Paul says, ‘To be established means you and I share the same mutual faith.’ Christ gives it to Paul, and through Paul’s epistles, it’s given to you.  When you believe and understand the same thing Paul believes and understands, you have that mutual faith. You know, like Mutual of Omaha, where you share it together. That is spiritual establishment.

“You don’t need a college education to get that. You don’t need to know anything about Greek or Hebrew to get that.  You don’t need a preacher with a seminary degree to get that. In fact, those might be a hindrance to you getting it.

“What you need is that Book, a King James Bible, and to study it the way Paul (the way God) tells you to study it. Then it can be Christ in you, living out through you for His glory.

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“One of the things I’ve noticed is before you get to Romans 6 you had to read five chapters. Did you ever notice that? It’s strange how Bible study can be complicated.

“Where I find most Christian people who I deal with as a pastor . . . most of the time when someone comes with a problem, you have to go back and start with the first five chapters of Romans, because the first five establishes you in the finality of the Cross. God has completely and totally dealt with your failure and your sin at Calvary.

“Paul says, ‘That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.’ It’s the righteousness provided for you through the Lord Jesus Christ. Not your actions but His!

“The whole issue in you having that right-standing with God is so that you can have His life flowing and controlling your life, reigning, being the controlling factor and influence in your thinking, your actions, your attitudes. How does that happen? It happens through righteousness.

“Your consciousness and understanding of the righteousness of God, the righteousness of faith, is the mechanism that God’s grace uses to control and bring the flow of the life of Christ through you. Without understanding that issue, your Christian life has no basis.

“If believing had to be hard, then there would be merit in the believing. And Paul says, ‘Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? of works? Nay: but by the law of faith.’

“Where is the boasting? Somebody comes along and says, ‘Well, if you believe, then you did something that is merit.’ Paul says, ‘No, that’s not true!’

“You can believe a Calvinist or you can believe your Bible, but if you believe your Bible, Romans 3:27 says there’s no merit in your faith because your faith is trusting the merit of someone else. You see that flies in the face of all kind of theology.

“You ever hear the question, ‘Did Adam have a belly button?’ Well, he didn’t because he wasn’t born. He was a new creature. In Christ, you’re a new species of humanity. With the glorious future God has for you out there. That’s why he says you’re buried with Him by baptism into death. When you died with Him . . . ‘I’m crucified with Christ nevertheless I live,’ Paul said. ‘You're circumcised with the circumcision made without hands and the putting off of the body with the sins of the flesh through the circumcision of Christ.’

“You have an experience there that cuts you free from all that stuff in the past. Death is a liberating experience because the only answer to sin is death. Just like the answer to your sins was Christ dying, the answer for your sin, your nature, is you dying with Him. Then you’re buried with Him.

“The gospel of I Corinthians 15 is that Christ died for our sins and was buried and raised again the third day and that He was seen.

“First time anybody in the Bible was ever buried, Abraham took his wife Sarah, bought a little piece of ground, and he said, ‘I want that piece of ground so I can bury my dead out of my sight.’ The burial with Him is you taking that old corrupt man and putting him away. God’s put him away.

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“I recently talked with a man my age who was raised in the same religion I was raised in and taught the same way I was taught that ‘what you do is you grow into it.’ Methodists, we were. He was old enough to have heard about Aldersgate.

“John Wesley came to Savannah, Georgia (in 1735) and was a missionary to the Indians for eight years as an Anglican priest—a lost man. The church called him back home, he got on a boat and is going back to England when a great storm came.

“In fact, when he came to America by boat there was a great storm. There were some Moravian missionaries going to go the missionaries in Pennsylvania on that storm (back to London).

“Wesley is scared to death he’s going to be blown away and destroyed and the Moravians are just having a good time, praying to the Lord and not worried at all, just happy. And he couldn’t understand how he a priest, with all the sanction of the church, could be so miserable and scared and they’re a bunch of dudes over here with no religion at all (perceivably) and yet they’re just rejoicing.

“He couldn’t understand that. He spent eight years on the mission field. He went home troubled by that. And he didn’t get an answer until one night he went down to the little Moravian mission in London on a little street called Aldersgate and went in and there was a Moravian preacher standing there and he was reading the preface to the Book of Romans written by Martin Luther.

“And if you’ve ever read it, there’s a tremendous passage in it about salvation being Luther’s experience of learning that it’s ‘by justification alone.’ It’s by faith alone in Christ that justification comes. And Wesley’s testimony is that ‘that night my heart was strangely warmed.’

“All through Methodist history that expression has wafted down. That was Wesley’s way of saying, ‘That night I trusted Jesus Christ personally as my Savior and all the fear and all the doubt and all the confusion was gone.’ You don’t grow into it, folks; it comes when you trust Jesus Christ.”