Faith Baptist Church
4258 Botetourt Road
Fincastle, Virginia 24090
(540) 473-2325
I would like for you to imagine a pipeline running from heaven down to your soul. At the top of the pipeline is the righteousness of God with all of God’s perfect standards of thought and conduct. At the bottom end of the pipeline you see His imputed righteousness which you received at the moment you believed in Jesus Christ. Between God’s righteousness at the top of the pipeline and his imputed righteousness at the bottom of that line is the justice of God. This pipeline is fully insulated from contamination from the world, the flesh and the devil.
The justice of God is rendering blessing in some form or fashion or the justice of God is rendering discipline in some form or fashion at all times within this pipeline. At salvation you are sealed by the Holy Spirit inside this divine capsule, Eph.1:13; 4:30.
Please remember, the justice of God is never sleeping. God is always fully on top of things with regard to the status of your soul.
We cannot hide out on God. We cannot escape God. His eyes run to and fro upon the earth and he sees everything, Zech.4:10.
So, are you positive toward God, or are you negative? If you are positive the blessings keep coming. If you go negative the blessings cease until you repent. And remember you are not being blessed due to who you are; you are being blessed by your association to the imputed righteousness of Christ in you. Do you want his word and his wisdom or not? Do you play “possum” with God and pretend you are not his child, or are you working yourself into a frenzy trying to impress him with your bag of tricks which consists of talents, personality and activities.
Hopefully you are not pretending you are not his child and instead you are living faithful to him. And hopefully you are not trying to impress God because you know you are supposed to be impressed with him, and not yourself.
Fruit Bearing
Hopefully you want to be filled with all the fullness of Christ, Eph.3:19. You want to be the pleroma Christian; the one who lets Christ’s character blossom and bring forth his fruit in your life. And please remember that it is his fruit which is brought to pass in our lives. I think we sometimes forget that we are just the branches, that without the Vine we are nothing. Jn.15:5 “I am the vine, ye are the branches. He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit; for without me ye can do nothing.”
Phil.1:11 “Being filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ, unto the glory and praise of God.”
In asking what the fruits of righteousness are we can first ask as one author suggest... “Is this course of action expedient? Is it popular? Does it make me feel good? However, the Christian must ask, “Is it right?” The fruits of righteousness will never violate God’s word. If we are righteous our actions will always be upright, decent and of the utmost integrity.
The unsaved can live decent moral lives, but the difference for the believer who lives right is his living is that he is empowered for the glory of God and his motives are pure. Our works as believers may not be superior to that of the lost, but the essence of those works is. By being in Christ and he in us he gets the glory, not us. The unsaved are not in Christ thus he does not get the glory because their works are not initiated by Christ.
Col.1:3-6 read...
It is clear that we are here to bear His fruit, not create our own.
If we adjust our thinking and our lives to his righteous standards which are found in his holy word, the Bible, then he will bless us in time and in eternity, and He will bring forth much spiritual fruit through our lives. God’s fruit does not spoil once it is harvested. God puts the rewards for this fruit in a divine escrow account for every believer.
Spiritual Escrow Accounts
God has established a divine escrow for every believer, Rom.8:14-17. An escrow is a written agreement placed in the custody of a third party and it becomes effective upon fulfillment of a stipulated condition. The Father has written the conditions and the escrow to benefit and bless his children. Conformity to the image of Jesus Christ is the condition upon which this escrow of blessings is paid out.
Jesus Christ is the third party that holds the escrow account. The majority of that escrow will be paid out at the Judgment Seat of Christ after the rapture of the Church,
II Cor.5:10. Until then we have to be patient and wait for most of these blessings.
Whether or not we are qualified to make a claim on that escrow is up to us.
1. Are we willing to be lead by the Holy Spirit, Rom.8:14? We know the Holy Spirit leads only through biblical truth.
2. Are we willing to undergo undeserved suffering for his name, Rom.8:17; II Tim.2:12.
Due to our limited earthly capacity to appreciate God who is the Giver of all good gifts, the blessings in time are also limited to our capacity to stay faithful to God when we get these gifts. Spiritual maturity is a must if we expect to make good on earthly and heavenly distributions of these blessings. Please remember that we are to ask God for our blessings in time, but we are to ask in accordance to his divine will. “If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.” Jn.15:7.
The more we mature spiritually the easier it is to be content being with where we are in life. Spiritual maturity blesses us with being less distracted by things temporal, for these are the things that solicit our will to disobey, and destroy our joy and contentment in time.