“To the angel of the church in Laodicea write: The Amen, the faithful and true Witness, the Beginning of the creation of God, says this: I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot; I wish that you were cold or hot. So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will vomit you out of My mouth. Because you say, “I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing,” and you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked,I advise you to buy from Me gold refined by fire so that you may become rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself, and that the shame of your nakedness will not be revealed; and eye salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see. Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline; therefore be zealous and repent,” Revelation 3:14-19 NASB1995.
There are two creations. The first creation was of Adam in the Garden of Eden. He was made in the image of God. He disobeyed God, and was exiled from the Garden of Eden, and placed on a cursed earth. Every descendent of Adam down to this very day was conceived in sin, and brought forth in iniquity. This is because when Adam disobeyed God, sin became a part of him, and dwelt within him from that day forward. Each one of us, whether Christian or not, have sin dwelling in our mortal bodies; thus the reason for a death of our sinful body, a resurrection, and a new creation.
The second creation came about because the last Adam, Jesus, became a life-giving spirit after He was raised from the dead. The Spirit He gives is placed within all who believe He is the Son of God and that He was raised from the dead. This new Spirit given by Him formed a new creation, the body of Christ, which is called the church.
The first creation is of the earth, earthy; the second creation is of heaven. “So also it is written, ‘The first man, Adam, became a living soul.’ The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural; then the spiritual. The first man is from the earth, earthy; the second man is from heaven,” 1 Corinthians 15:45-47 NASB1995.
We, the church, are that second man from heaven. We have been crucified with Christ, and born anew, a new creation, the body of the living Christ. As long as we abide in Him, we are a part of His body, and the evil one cannot touch us. If we resurrect the old creation that was crucified with Jesus, we become vulnerable to the wiles of the devil.
If we walk according to the Spirit one minute, and according to our sinful flesh the next, we are neither cold nor hot, we are lukewarm. We are essentially double-minded, and cannot expect to receive anything from the Lord. We are hypocrites. (Do your prayers go unanswered?)
As Jesus told the lukewarm Laodiceans, Because you say, “I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing,” and you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked,I advise you to buy from Me gold refined by fire…
Many today believe Christians will sin until the day they die. They teach one another that all their sins, past, present, and future, are covered by the blood of Jesus, and when God looks at them, He sees only the righteousness of His Son. They rest in this belief and become complacent, thinking they have need of nothing, just like the Laodiceans. And the whole time the Lord sees them as wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked.
Those who continue in this double-minded lukewarmness will one day find themselves on the ground, having been vomited out of the mouth of Jesus. And woe even more to those who teach others the doctrine of it being impossible to overcome sin. They are insinuating there are things impossible with God. The word of God says He provides a way of escape from every temptation that is common to man, but these people teach this is not true. They say we’re all going to sin, regardless of what God says.
“By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious: anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother,” 1 John 3:10 NASB1995. If we are this obvious to one another, surely the God who gave us eyes can see what we really are. His word verifies this.
Dear ones, when God looks at us He does not see the righteousness of His Son as some erroneously teach; He sees us the same as the Son sees us, which is in whatever state we are in at the moment. If we are lukewarm, He sees us as wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked. If we are righteous, He sees us as righteous.
Again, there are two creations, and we are allowed to choose which creation we want to live in, the sinful flesh, or the holy body of Christ. We can even bounce from one to the other, and tell ourselves it’s okay because everybody sins, Christians and heathen alike. But the Lord won’t overlook this for long. He will vomit us out of His mouth if we don’t repent.
May the Lord give us eyes to see, and ears to hear.
Jon David Banks, God’s most unworthy servant
P.S. People often use 1 John 2:8 to in an effort to counter what I am saying, “If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”
I am not saying we have no sin. Sin constantly dwells in us because we are creatures of sin. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. I am saying that Jesus appeared to take away sins; and in Him there is no sin. No one who abides in Him sins (1 John 3:5, 6). Abiding in Him we are freed from sin (Romans 6:18); our body of sin has been crucified with Him (Romans 6:5-7), and we are now in a new body, the body of the risen Christ, in which there is no sin.
In Christ, God provides a way of escape from every temptation common to man. We need only follow the Way. We need only believe in Jesus, and consider ourselves dead to sin through Him, and alive to God in Him. He does the rest through His Holy Spirit, as we walk in obedience to Him. He is a perfect Savior.
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“For the Law, since it has only a shadow of the good things to come and not the very form of things, can never, by the same sacrifices which they offer continually year by year, make perfect those who draw near. Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered, because the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have had consciousness of sins? But in those sacrifices there is a reminder of sins year by year. For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins,” Hebrews 10:1-4 NASB1995.
“You know that He appeared in order to take away sins; and in Him there is no sin,” 1 John 3:5 NASB1995
Jesus takes away our sins by giving us new life in His Spirit, wherein we follow His earthly example of learning obedience from the things which He suffered, and became obedient unto death.
The Father passed over our sins previously committed by nailing our sinful flesh to the cross, as well as the certficate of debt consisting of decrees against us and which was hostile to us. After accomplishing this, He raised us up with Jesus from the dead, and placed us in heavenlies, where our life now is, Romans 3:25; Colossians 2:13, 14; Ephesians 2:4-7.
Our fleshly bodies remain behind on this earth, full of sin, and Jesus takes it away by the power of His Spirit, who shows us ways to escape every temptation known to man. We suffer through it, and learn obedience, as did Jesus.
This is the true gospel of Christ.
jondavidbanks.com 