148 HERITAGE
148 HERITAGE
Rom 5:18 Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life.
We are a very independent people, today. We grow up and work to leave our parents home as soon as possible so we can make our own mark in the world. Most everything we do is for ourselves or our name.
We want to be recognized and rewarded for our accomplishments and actions. We frown when someone comments ‘they’re just a chip off the old block’ or ‘their just like their father [or mother]’.
God wants us to associate with His son, Jesus, and, in fact, will accept no other response, on our part, to be accepted by Him.
We call ourselves ‘Christian’ meaning that we have accepted Jesus as our Lord and Master; the total controller of ALL that we are and do. By associating ourselves with Jesus, we are accepting our heritage of God’s kingdom through the price that Jesus had to pay to give us this heritage.
We had no say in Jesus paying this price; just as we had no say in Adam accepting sin, for all mankind, in God’s garden. Said sin became our heritage because Adam chose it for us and God accepted his decision for mankind and only saw us as sinners.
When He saw that everyone was a sinner, and He cannot associate with sinners because He is without sin and doesn’t want to lower Himself to our despicable level, He set about making a way for us to redeem ourselves. He asked His Son, Jesus, to pay the price for our redemption and die, by our hand, and fulfill the requirement of sin. Jesus accepted and performed the task so that all that will accept it and make Jesus their inheritance, for eternity, can have a place in God’s kingdom.
Unlike family heritage that passes down from generation to generation, God’s heritage has to come down through Jesus only and has to be personally lived out with Him. In other words, it has to be a heart or love relationship with Jesus to be real.
God tried the physical heritage relationship with Abraham, which included the law through Moses, but mankind would keep going back to their natural heritage of sin almost every time, so it didn’t work.
Just like our natural heritage that has two parts, our physical and our intellectual; our Christian heritage has two parts, our acceptance and our obedience.
Our natural heritage has physical benefits that we have no say in getting but can be thrown away by our choices, or intellectual self. We can damage our heritage given bodies by harmful choices that we use them for; self pleasure can destroy our health and kill our bodies before they should be worn out.
The same is true of our Godly heritage; our acceptance of Jesus as our Lord [the physical] can be destroyed by our lack of obedience. [the intellectual]
By keeping the intellectual part of our Christian heritage active and healthy, we can keep the physical parts of our heritage healthier. This is true for our Godly AND human heritage. God wants 100% of us and will work to improve 100% of us, if we let Him.
It’s called pure love and it works; accept your inheritance and you’ll see.
