Two Adams

Adam was created.  Christ was born of a woman.  Adam had a beginning.  Christ is eternal.  He took on a body in time.

Adam was mortal, fleshly and spiritual.  Christ is Head and Lord over the new creation.  The old creation was sinful and dying because of a sinful and dying Head.  But the new creation is holy and living because of a living Head. 

God gave Adam a job.  He failed.  God gave Christ a job.  He finished it.

Adam was a son of God.  Christ was God's only begotten Son.  Adam was a worshipper of God.  Christ was God to be worshipped.  The breath of God was in Adam.  Christ was God in a human body.  Adam repudiated God's truth.  Christ vindicated God's truth.

Adam was the father of flesh of all men.  Christ was the giver of life to all who believe.

Adam was lower than the angels.  Christ was the Creator of angels.

Adam was tempted and fell.  Christ was tempted and did not fall in any way.  Adam died.  Christ died but came back into his dead body and still lives.  Adam's life was derived.  Christ is still alive forever.

Adam broke God's law and later died.  Christ kept all of God's laws and lives.

By Adam came the curse.  By Christ the curse is removed.  By Adam there are thorns and thistles.  By Christ there will be a new earth with no thorns or thistles.  By Adam Paradise was lost.  By Christ a heavenly Paradise was gained for all believers.

Stand Fast

We are to stand fast in the Lord (Phil. 4:1) as birds in the air, and as fishes are in the sea.  We are to lean on the Lord.

"...that whether I come and see you, or else be absent, I may hear of your affairs, that ye stand fast in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel;" (Phil. 1:27).

Paul was writing to the chuch in Philippi, Greece.  He was urging them to stand together as a church.  They were to stand for the same faith together.  There was to be no division among them over the gospel of Jesus Christ.

In Christendom today there is much division about the gospel.  Some add baptism to the death, burial and resurrection of Christ.  Some add good works to the gospel, and thus change the gospel.

But the gospel is entirely about who Jesus is.  It is in the character of his being.  There is no fault or sin in Christ.  he is the essence of holiness.  Thus he is pure.  Therefore when they preached Christ, they preached a pure gospel, a pure person!

When we accept Christ we believe the purity of God is in the place of our evil.  We accept his holiness to replace our unholiness.

But we are to do more.  Paul wrote the Corinthians to, "Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong," (I Cor. 16:13).

We are to stand fast in the faith.  We are to belive that we stand fast in our faith in Jesus.  There are times when a believer may doubt his faith.  There are times when he may stray.  But, when he returns to his commitment, his faith is that he has Christ's sinlessness in the place of his sinfulness.  This is before God.  This is in his heart.  This is before others.  He is saved and he knows it.

"Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free...." (Gal. 5:1).  We believers are, in Christ, made free from sin, free from the separation of death, free from hell.  We are in the liberty that Christ makes possible for us.  It is not that we are to sin.  It is that we are free from the yoke of bondage.  We are in the liberty of freedom to live for Christ in a sin-sick world.

How Does God Cleanse Us Christians?

When we accept Christ we may have much of this world with us.  That depends upon what we have said before we have been saved.  If we have lived a wicked life God has a lot to remove from us.

But God changes us believers.  God for one thing, prunes us (John 15:1-11).  The word prune means to cut off the vine with pruning hooks.  It depends on how much of the vine is pruned (Isa. 18:5).  For the vine to produce many grapes the vine needs to be pruned.  To prune is to cut off many limbs.

This cleanses us saints healthily.  By that I mean God removes all curse words.  That may take time.  God convicts us that those words are wrong and we need to stop using them.  He may embarrass us before some others and we stop using some words.  Some times we may think some bad words, and God may convict us of those words.  We must cease using them.

God makes us feel guilty when we use those words.  It depends upon how guilty we feel when we use them.  Over time God will remove those words from our vocabulary.

We need to confess our guilt to God when we use bad words.  The more we confess them the more quickly we will stop using them.  That may take some time.  Don't give up.  God will cleanse your vocabulary.

God may just stop the use of some bad words.  Other times God may, as I said above, deal with us so severely that he will purge us of them.  At any rate, God wants to clean our language so clean that we don't have to worry about what we say.  Our vocabulary is going to be clean.