Know That You Know
All men fight the same battle: I have found the enemy and he is me. The world’s man code says, “it’s all about me.” This was devil’s original lie to Eve in the Garden of Eden. He said, “God’s not God, you are. If you eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, ye shall be like God.” God had originally created Adam and Eve without the knowledge of sin. They knew that God is good, but they had no knowledge of good and evil. God gave them only one command: “of the fruit of tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it. For on the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die.” When man sinned by disobeying God’s only command, the knowledge of evil and sin entered into the world. Adam and Eve died spiritually that day. They lost their spiritual connection with God.
All evil is rooted in pride. The most insidious form of pride is self deceit. The devil is the deceiver and the accuser. The religious man does all the right things for all the wrong reasons. He does all for his own gain and not for the Lord Jesus Christ. For all of his external religion, he is deceived in his heart. Jesus said, “not all who call me lord, lord will enter into the kingdom of heaven.” Although the religious man attends church, Jesus said of him, “this people draw near unto me with their mouth and honor me with their lips but their heart is far from me.” Hypocrites serve in the church for their own gain.
Religious people think they are saved but they’re really not. How do you know if they are really saved? Jesus said, “you’ll know them by their fruit.” A good tree produces good fruit. When God told his prophet Samuel to anoint Israel’s next king he said, the man that I’ve called to be king is not the one who you think. Man looks on the outward appearance but God looks on the heart.
The gospel is both bad news and good news. One side is that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. The other side is in John 3:16. The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ his son.
Political correctness says that if you preach Jesus Christ and the truth of the word of God, you’re guilty of hate speech. It takes men of God who know that they have eternal life to speak truth to the lies of this world. God requires men of courage for such a time of as this.
God limits himself according to his word. When we come to him according to his terms, we will be saved. God’s terms for salvation are in Romans 10:9, “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.”
This is the message of salvation. Salvation means to be made whole. When we repent unto salvation, he will make us complete in him, born again of the spirit of life in Christ. Then a man can know that he knows that he is a son of God, saved by grace. This is the gospel of salvation so that we can escape the snares of the devil. Jesus Christ has set us free from the curse of sin and death by his full payment for our sin. For he who was without sin was made the perfect sin sacrifice on our behalf that we may be made the righteousness of God in him.
George Foreman once said, “I used to call myself a believer. One day I had a revelation from God and met my Lord Jesus Christ. The question is “do you know him?” That’s when I stopped calling myself a believer…I became a knower.”
When we were born, we inherited the “Knowledge of good and evil” from Adam’s sin nature. However, when we were born again of the spirit of God in Christ in us, we inherited a new nature: That we may know Jesus Christ and the power of his resurrection.
1 John 5:13 says, These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God.
Jesus also said, “If you continue in my word you shall be my disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.” The truth is Jesus Christ himself. He is the way, the truth and the life.
May we ever live to the praise of the glory of His grace!
Your brother in Christ,
Michael