theblackdostoyevsky

“My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge, for thou hast rejected knowledge,” (Hosea 4:6).

The second arrow stuck in the flesh of the church, keeping it asleep, was ignorance. I am still floored at how pleased people are with not knowing. They are anti-intellectual, flatly refusing to gird up the loins of their pure minds. This, too, is a product of the slothfulness wrought by prosperity. As long as there is money, there is no need for knowledge. When the money runs low, we learn what we need in order to make up for the shortfall.

People’s faith comes cheap. They will believe, in word, anything that “feels” or “seems” right, though they may not have the evidence, intelligence, or character to uphold that belief. The enemy’s spiritual attack is against God’s Word, which is His righteousness, which is the scepter, or authority, of His kingdom. It is the law of God, now lived and exemplified through His son, our Lord Jesus Christ, upon which all of His flawless judgments rest. God’s Word is God’s character. God’s law, the Spirit of it, and His people’s knowledge and obedience of it is how we go from empty belief to faith-producing fruit. “The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul.” It is what impresses our minds what is right to think, our hearts what is right to feel, our hands what is just to do. Without it we are “clouds without rain.” Go and read Matthew 5:17-20, again.

We are obsessed with gracious election, but we refuse to read. We are quick to claim His promises, but we forsake our responsibility in the covenant of salvation: the duties of service and habits of devotion. Yes, the children of Israel were given the land of Canaan by God’s elective grace. Still, for five long years were they required to fight to obtain it, against the most fearsome enemies on God’s earth.

The Lord’s church seems in a schism between the doctrine of grace and the doctrine of truth when, in fact, they are complements. We cannot possess one without the other. Jesus came to atone and still exemplified how to perform the law in the Holy Spirit in which it was given. Before, man had only tried to imitate the authority of God by the giving and practicing of it. But they forsook the love, joy, peace, longsuffering, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, meekness and self-control. They became legalists, bloodthirsty and merciless against the transgressor, and in so approaching became transgressors themselves.

Jesus lived by the Holy Spirit in truth. We have cast holiness aside for cheap grace, claiming Canaan without battling for it by the mortification of our flesh through growing in the knowledge of God, whereby grace and peace shall be multiplied. We have regenerated spirits sitting idle inside unregenerated minds, daily grieving and quenching the Holy Spirit in ignorance of how to walk by Him.

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