The new birth is the requirement
Chapter 2
The new birth is the requirement
for true worship
And He gave you life when you were dead in your sins crimes and sins, in which you walked in another time, following the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now works in the children of disobedience, among which we all lived in another time in the desires of our flesh, making the will of the flesh and of the thoughts, and we were by nature children of wrath, just like the others. But God, who he is rich in mercy, because of his great love with which he loved us, even being dead in sins, He gave us life together with Christ (for by grace you are saved), and together with him we he resurrected, and likewise made us sit in heavenly places with Christ Jesus, to show in the coming ages the abundant riches of His grace in His goodness towards us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you are saved through faith; and this is not from you, for it is a gift of God; not by works, so that no one Let him glory. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus. for good works, which God prepared beforehand for that we would walk in them.
Efesios 2:1–10
There are many strange ideas regarding God in our time and for there are all kinds of substitutes for true worship. In many On occasions, I have heard different Christians say: 'I truly believe that I do not...' I know a lot about God." If that confession is true, people they should also be honest enough to make a parallel confession: "I think I really don't know much about the adoration.
Indeed, the basic beliefs regarding the person and nature of God have changed so much that now we find among us men and women who find it easy to boast about blessings that they receive from God, without ever experiencing the desire of to know the true meaning of worship.
I experience an immediate reaction to such an extreme misunderstanding. about the true nature of a holy and sovereign God. The first I believe that the last thing God desires is to have worldly children. with superficial thoughts that boast of Him. My second the reaction is that apparently it is not well recognized that the supreme desire The will of God is that each of His children loves and adores Him so much. that we may continually be in his presence in spirit and in truth. That it is true worship.
When Jesus Christ is asked to take the place that belongs to him, something extraordinary, miraculous, and transformative happens in the soul of the man. That is exactly what God expected to happen when he executed the plan of salvation. He intended to convert rebellious people into worshipers, restore in men and women the value of worship that our first parents knew when they were created.
When we experience this precious reality in our lives, we stopped waiting for Sunday to be able to "go to church" and worship." True worship of God must be a condition constant and consistent or a state of mind of the believer. Always is based on the recognition of love and fervor, which are subjects in this life subject to different degrees of perfection and intensity.
It is important to mention another aspect about the current approach regarding to worship. Unlike what is said and practiced in the Churches, true worship is not something we do with the hope to be merciful. It is undoubted that many people who they have a sincere desire to practice true religion emphasize that It is necessary to faithfully attend worship services.
We need to ask ourselves what Scripture teaches us regarding the communion that exists between God and the children he has redeemed. The truth What we find in the Bible is simple and fills us with hope. Since we have been made in his image, we possess in our within the capacity to know God and the instinct to worship Him. In the same moment when the Spirit grants us his life through the regeneration, our whole being recognizes the similarity we have with God and vibrate full of joy that springs up spontaneously like consequence of this understanding.
That response that occurs within our being, a response to forgiveness and regeneration, it reveals the miracle of birth celestial, without which we cannot see the kingdom of God. We can assert with certainty that God is pleased to communicate with us through of our mind, our will, and our emotions.
The desire that is in the heart of God is manifested in religion. true that teaches the New Testament; it is an exchange continued and without restriction of love and truths between God and the souls of the redeemed. In fact, it is impossible to consider this type of relationship without acknowledging that the main work of the Holy Spirit is to restore the lost souls to an intimate communion with God through the washing of regeneration.
To achieve this, he first reveals Christ to the penitent heart: 'For Therefore, I let you know that no one speaking by the Spirit of God calls anathema to Jesus; and no one can call Jesus Lord, except through the Holy Spirit." (1 Cor. 12:3). Let us also consider the words that Christ expressed to his disciples about the powerful traits of light that they spring from their being and will illuminate the soul of the new creature of God. But the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and will remind you of everything that I I have told you." (John 14:26).
Remember that we come to know Christ only to the extent that Spirit allows us. We should be grateful to discover that
God's desire is to lead every willing heart to the depths and heights of divine knowledge and communion.
As soon as God sends the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, we can say: 'Abba'. And we start to worship. But probably we are not yet doing it in every sense of the word New Testament
God desires to take us to greater levels of depth with Him. We have much to learn in the school of the Spirit, which wants to guide us in our love for the one who loved us first. He wants to cultivate within us the worship and admiration that he is worthy of. He wishes to reveal to each of us the blessed element of fascination. spiritual in true prayer. It wants to teach us the wonder that it arises when we are filled with a moral enthusiasm in our worship, entranced by the revelation of who God is. He wants that let us marvel at the inconceivable greatness, magnitude, and splendor from the Almighty God.
There is no human experience that can replace this kind of adoration and this type of response produced by the Spirit before the God who created us, redeemed us, and governs us. However, we find in many parts a clear and continuous substitution of the worship. I am referring to the irresistible temptation that believers have. of constantly being occupied, every hour of the day, in activities religious. We cannot deny that this is definitely an idea. ecclesial of service. Many of our sermons and a large part of our contemporary ecclesiastical teaching rests on the idea of that with all certainty the plan of God for us is that we be busy, busy and more busy because it is the best cause in the world in which we can get involved.
Could we dare to ask ourselves how it was possible that would we reach this state? If you are willing to ask yourself that question, I am willing to try to answer it. In fact, I will answer it. asking another obvious question. How can our approach to the adoration is to be more vital than it is, when many of those of us who
guidance, both from the pulpit and from the seats, gives us a such a poor indication that communion with God is even more delightful beyond what can be expressed?
Think for a moment about the knowledge you have about the New Will and will agree that this is exactly the teaching. about the true worship that Jesus was communicating to them inflexible Pharisees who considered themselves righteous in their own opinion. They were religious in their daily life. They had an appearance of piety and they were well aware of the forms of worship but within their inner being existed bad attitudes, faults and hypocrisies, which made Jesus them described as 'whited sepulchers'.
The only justice they knew and understood was their external form of justice that was based on maintaining a high level of external morality. Since they saw God as such a strict, austere being, merciless as they were, their concept of worship was necessarily low and undignified. For a Pharisee, service to God was a burden that was not loved but from which one could not escape without suffering a loss too great to bear. God, in the Pharisaical perspective, he was not a God with whom it was easy to live. so, their daily religion became rigorous and harsh, without any trace of true love in her.
It can be said that humans try to resemble our God. If we conceive him as someone rigorous, relentless and hard, that's how we will become. But the blessed and hopeful truth is that God is the most pleasant of all beings and we should to experience an ineffable pleasure in our worship.
The living God has been willing to reveal Himself to our needy. hearts and he wants us to know and understand that it is all love, and that those who trust in Him need to know nothing more than that love. God wants us to know that He is just and certainly not He will forgive the sin. He has communicated with us with overwhelming clarity. that through the blood of the eternal covenant can act in favor of we as if we had never sinned.
What a Pharisee did not understand is that God relates to those who have... redeemed through a simple and uninhibited communion that produces rest and health to the soul. The God who has redeemed us in love, through the merits of his eternal Son, is not irrational nor selfish. He is not temperamental either. As he is today, he will be tomorrow. and the next day and the following year.
The God who desires our communion and friendship is not difficult to to please, although it can be difficult to satisfy. Just wait for we what He has supplied Himself. He is very willing to accept any simple effort we make to please him is equally willing to overlook our imperfections when he knows that we are looking to do your will.
It is true that the God we love sometimes disciplines us. But even that, she does with a smile; the tender and proud smile of a father who pours his satisfaction over an imperfect son but promising one who comes to Him every day to resemble more and more whose son he is. We should delight in the joy of believing that God is the sum of all patience and the true essence of goodness. and good will. The way we please Him the most is not by trying frenetically of being good, but throwing ourselves into his arms with all our imperfections and believing that He understands everything and still accepts us but.
The gratifying part of all this is the relationship between God and the soul. redeemed is revealed to us through a personal consciousness; that consciousness does not come through the body of believers but is given to them granted to the individual, and to the body through the individuals who component. It is something conscious; it does not stay below the threshold of the awareness to act in an unknown way in the soul.
This communication, this awareness is not an end but a beginning. It is the point of reality where we began our communion, friendship, and intimacy with God. But the point at which we stop is still not it has been discovered by no man, for there is no limit or end in the mysterious depths of the triumphant God who has saved us.
When we arrived at this sweet relationship, we began to learn what it is an amazing reverence, an incomparable worship, a incredible fascination, a noble admiration of God's attributes and an inevitable silence that occurs when we know that God is search.
Perhaps you have never noticed this before, but all these elements in our perception and consciousness of the divine presence are part of what the Bible calls the fear of God. We can have a million fears in our hours of pain or in the threats of danger or in the face of the expectation of punishment or death. What we need to fully recognize that the fear of God that the The Bible teaches that one can never be induced by any kind of threats or punishments.
The fear of God is a 'wonderful reverence' of which he wrote the great Faber. I would say it can be anywhere in its range. more basic: the terror of the guilty soul before a holy God, up to the fascinating self-absorption of a saint prostrated in adoration. There is there are very few absolute things in our lives but I believe that fear reverence for God mixed with love, fascination, wonder, admiration and devotion is the most delightful state and the most purifying that the human soul can come to know.
I know from personal experience that I couldn't live for long as Cristiano without this inner awareness of the presence and closeness of God. I imagine there are people who are strong enough. to live day by day based on ethics, without any kind of intimate spiritual experience. They say that Benjamin Franklin was that kind of person. of man.
He was not a Christian but a deist. Whitefield prayed for him and told him that he I was doing. But Franklin replied to him: 'I don't think it is' serving no purpose because I am still not saved.
Franklin did the following. He kept a daily record in a series of square graphs that represented virtues such as honesty,
faithfulness, charity, and probably a dozen more of these. The I was in a kind of calendar and when I had violated one of the virtues, I took note. When a day or a month passed without having broken none of his own commandments, he considered that he was acting very good as a human.
A great sense of ethics? Yes. Any sense of the divine? No. There isn't. no trace of anything spiritual. There is no worship or reverence. No there is fear of God before their eyes; all this according to their own testimony. I do not belong to that kind of men. I can only be fair. keeping the fear of God in my soul and delighting in the fascinating moment of worship. Aside from that, I don't know any other type of rules.
I deeply regret that this powerful sense of pious fear causes so much lack in today's churches; its absence is a sign. The fear of God it should be over us like the cloud was over Israel. It should falling over us like a sweet and invisible mantle. It should be a force that will condition our inner lives. It should provide meaning to each text of the Scriptures and converting each day of the week On a holy day. We should turn every place we step on into holy ground.
We tremble with many kinds of fears: fear of Communism, fear of the collapse of civilization and even fear of being invaded by beings from another planet. Men believe they know what it means fear. But what I am talking about is the amazement and the reverence before a loving and holy God. That kind of fear can only to be produced by the presence of God.
When the Holy Spirit descended at Pentecost, there was great fear. in the entire crowd; however, they felt no fear of anything. A son of God who has been perfected in love has no fear, because he perfect love casts out fear. Still, among so many people that There are, someone like that is the kind of person who fears God the most.
Let's observe the apostle John as an example. When Jesus was arrested in Getsemaní, Juan was one of those who ran away.
He was probably afraid of being arrested and taken to prison. He had fear of danger, fear of punishment, and fear of being humiliated. But, time Later, the same John, exiled in Patmos because of the testimony of Jesus Christ, saw an amazing man standing in the midst of some gold lamps. The man was dressed in a white tunic and girded with a golden belt. His feet were like polished bronze and a sword came out of his mouth. His hair was white like snow and her face shone like the sun in its splendor. The astonishment, the reverence, fascination, and fear suddenly converged with such force in the person of Juan that he simply fell to the floor unconscious.
Then, this holy Priest, whom John later understood was Jesus Christ Himself, with the keys of death and hell in His hand, wine and lifted Juan, and gave him life again. Then, Juan no longer had fear or felt threatened. He experienced a kind of fear different: a divine fear. It was something holy and John felt it.
We really need to experience the presence of today. God among us to produce a sense of fear and divine reverence. It is impossible to induce that fear through the peaceful music from an instrument and lights that shine through some stained glass with beautiful designs. It cannot be induced either holding a bread in hand and asserting that this is God; much less through a frenzied state of emotional ecstasy. What people feel in the presence of that kind of paganism is not the true fear of God; it is only an experience that generates a fear superstitious.
The true fear of God is something beautiful because it is worship, love, veneration. It is a very high moral happiness for what God is. It is such a great delight that if God did not exist, the worshiper would not either. I would like to exist. He could easily pray: 'My God, remain like' You are or make me die. I can't think of another God outside of you.
True worship must be done personally in hope and love for God in such a way that the idea of changing our
affection never exists, not even remotely. That is the meaning. of the fear of God. Since worship is so absent today, we must ask ourselves, then, what are we doing? We are doing our utmost to reconstruct the veil of the temple. We use artificial means to try to induce some kind of worship.
I think the devil must be laughing in hell and I believe that God He must feel very sad, for there is no fear of God in our eyes.