Estudo | Glenio Fonseca Paranaguá - ABC from faith
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ABC from faith
We were born dead spiritually and we need to be born from the spirit – How can this be? Asked Nicodemus, master of the Jew religion and PhD in Bible. Jesus showed
that it is a miracle from the wind blowing or a tremendous action of the Holy Spirit.
Lazarus was dead on the physical plan. Jesus proclaimed his word, calling him: Lazarus, come out! He was made alive, he heard the voice of Jesus and he left the grave as if he were a rolled up cigar. The word of Jesus gave him life and Lazarus was able to listen the order. Vivification is an effect of the preaching of the word of God. “I am soreley afflicted; give me life, o Lord, according to Thy word!” (Psalm 119:107).
The spiritually dead can not listen spiritually the word of God. They need, before anything else, to be vivified by the preaching of the Gospel. The foolishness of the preaching to the dead ones in sin is the insanity that activates the germinator agent of the zoe life that is in Christ, and, therefore, the author of faith generates confidence on the listener. “So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes by the preaching of Christ”. (Romans 10:17).
Christ Jesus is the zoe life and the author of faith. To preach Christ crucified and resurrected is to promote the action of the vivification of the spiritually dead and his reacting in faith. Kéruxon tòn logon – (kerúkson ton logon, II Timothy 4:2) this means,
Preach the word, but the word of the gospel, that is the only vivifier operation of the dead ones in sin, and, at the same time, the seed that makes faith grow.
The dead ones in delicts and sins only can be born again, spiritually speaking, by the preaching of the gospel. The resurrected Christ was emphatic with his disciples and said to them: “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation.” Mark 16:15. He did not send them to teach the unbelievers, but to teach them the gospel. Preaching comes before discipleship.
We can teach doctrines to the children of Adam through a good Didactis, but we can not Give them life, if not by the preaching of Christ. See this argument from the apostle Paul: “For thou you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel”. (I Corinthians 4:15).
Before to teach the sinner the words of Christ, we need to proclaim Him as Savior and Lord, in order that the unbeliever may be vivified and made able to answer to the message by faith and with repentance. Regeneration comes before discipleship. The problem is that many agree to the belief, but do not truly believe, as they were not vivified by the preaching that gives life. One thing is to believe, another very different is to trust in Christ. To believe is to know that the airplane flies. To trust is to enter in the airplane and to fly. Many believe in Christ but do not trust themselves totally to him.
The foolishness of the preaching of the gospel inoculates the zoe life on the spiritual dead, who was worked, previously by the grace, in spurring the faith that was donated by God, carrying the believer to an active and permanent repentance. The word of God generates spiritual life and a correspondent reaction of faith and change of life. “Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures”. (James 1:18)
The natural man does not posses spiritual life and does not have faith in Christ. He can become a good religious, practicing of good works and pious, with large knowledge regarding God, but he never will trust himself totally to Christ for his salvation. One of the main things about a religious is that he always will have something to do to be accepted in front of God.
To sin is to live on one´s own account, separated of Christ. Salvation from sin is to live trusting only in Christ. As we all were born in sin, we all live on our own account. So, we became Christian religious, saying that we trust in Christ.
To live by faith is to give up of oneself and to depend only on Christ for acceptance before the Father and men. When we receive the word of God as word of God, we gain the life of the resurrection of Christ that regenerates us and the faith that comes through Jesus, rendering possible to us to answer with confidence in everything that Christ did and does in our favor.
The abc of faith is a series of studies turned to the life of certainty in Christ. We are going to analyze faith as a gift of God´s grace, in opposition to sin, and its development in our new life, shared through Christ. Anything that is not donated by God deserves credit. So, “Beloved, being eager to write to you of our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints”. Jude 1:3 . Halleluya.