The inferior gospel is another gospel which promises liberty but never delivers because it leaves the person always trying to get delivered from something Jesus has already delivered them from!
That inferior gospel message is the old covenant which is based upon man’s vow to God. Such vows can never be kept properly because man is mortal. It is foolish to make any vow but especially to God! At the root of all vow making is delusion – the delusion that I have what it takes to fulfil my vow to God. This is the mind of the flesh which is in angry opposition to God. It is at enmity with God and cannot ever please God. The vow once made sets up a cycle of trying and lying and pretending that leads to death in your spiritual life and even into your soul until finally you wear out and abandon ship…hopefully. Many do not abandon this doomed ship preferring to keep trying until death takes them into the grave where they finally can rest from their striving.
God would have us to know His true gospel so we can enter into His rest here while still in the body. That rest requires us to renounce our vows made to God and repent of it. That repentance means a complete TURNING AWAY from trying to please God by our efforts.
Rom 8:3 For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh, 4 that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
There in Roman’s 8:3 you see the loud declaration(in red) by the Holy Spirit that human flesh cannot keep the law well enough to fulfil it’s righteous requirement. The Law of God is perfect and if man could keep it perfectly that would be a good thing -But God says we all fall short in this regard. Romans 3:23
But people dispute that with God. People refuse to believe that and so continue to try very hard to keep it. All such trying is futile and doomed to fail.
You might say , ” I am a Christian I do not try to keep the Law I simply believe in Jesus through grace and faith”
Yes that is how you came into Christ, you get a tick for that! In reality God saved you by giving you faith to believe in Jesus. Now God wants you to see that it is by faith that you live before Him as well.
The law is holy and just and good but we are not UNTIL we are inhabited by the One Who is! God is after perfection in us and the only way for Him to do that is to PUT US TO DEATH and raise us up again INSIDE of Christ Jesus and Jesus inside of us so that it is now Christ living.
The perfection God is wanting can only be lived by the Perfect One who always pleases the Father. And that perfect One has come into you to be your perfection before God. Do you receive Jesus as your perfection for all your living? Or will you keep trying to produce it apart from Him? That would be to keep living in the flesh.
The flesh – the carnal mind – thinks it can please God by doing. This is rooted in the original fall from grace when Adam deliberately chose AGAINST Life. Paul writes in 1 Timothy 2:14 that “Adam was not deceived.” That original rebellion was God allowing man to try to please Him by his own efforts in order to show us that we cannot. In this way – through failure -we come to learn we NEED INWARDLY the Life of Another Person to LIVE PERFECTLY BEFORE GOD.
This is why we must be born again. Jesus comes into our spirit to be the LIFE that lives before God daily moment by moment. And how does He do that? Through faith. By resting in Father. Through grace.
Jesus does not TRY to please God. He did not try while he walked the earth and He does not try now that He lives in us. It is the flesh that is always trying and failing NOT the Spirit.
5 For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. 6 For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. 7 Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. 8 So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
So we see that there are two ways to live. The old way or the New way.
The old way as I have explained is for the flesh or carnal mind to lead you into trying hard to please God by what you do or don’t do. This is called “sin in the flesh” in Roman’s 8:3 The New way of living is to walk in the Spirit allowing Jesus to be your perfection.
The old way is a mind that sets itself upon itself to produce the fruit God is after. Therefore all pressure that eminates from that carnal flesh mind causes death.
What is death? It is separation from God here and now.
God has come to live in you by joining himself with your spirit….but your natural mind refuses to yield to your spirit and will continue to war against your spirit while you live in this body. It will insist and press you and whine and cry or try to rise up and dominate your spirit in order to get it’s own way. All sorts of things it will do to stay in control. Paul says it sets it’s mind upon the things of the flesh. What it wants – whether physical things or spiritual things or relational things etc EVERYTHING! The flesh desires and cannot obtain. The flesh will attempt to please God in order to get what it is after. Therefore selfish ambition and envying others who are used by God are all signs that the flesh is dominant and is leading the spirit.
The spirit is yielded and at peace – resting inside the Lord. The flesh can never rest because it believes that it itself is God…and that it MUST act or nothing will save it. It must do or nothing will be done. So you hear it say things like that…”No one is coming to save you.” — “You have to look out for number one! ”
Or the Flesh can pretend to be humble and submitted….
Psalm 81:15The haters of the Lord would pretend submission to Him, But their fate would endure forever.
כָּחַשׁka.chashH:Vto deceive) to deceive, lie, fail, grow lean, be disappointing, be untrue, be insufficient, be found liars, belie, deny, dissemble, deal falsely
1a) to become lean
1b) to cringe, feign obedience
1c) (Piel)
1c1) to deceive, deny falsely
1c2) to act deceptively
1c3) to cringe
1c4) to disappoint, fail
1d) to cringe, feign obedienceכּחשׁ kâchash
kaw-khash’
A primitive root; to be untrue, in word (to lie, feign, disown) or deed (to disappoint, fail, cringe)
- The flesh is a deceiver and following it will always disappoint.
- We will grow lean spiritually.
- We will know failure.
- We live in a lie when we follow the flesh.
- We deny the truth of our real condition and deal falsely with ourself and others.
- We will always be dissembling from others to allow our Flesh to remain as boss.
- And we will always be insufficient for any God given task.
- We will not deliver the needy in his hour of need for we are in the flesh and not connected with the Spirit.
- We will be found out to be liars and deceivers -calling ourselves by His great name but having NO POWER.
- Others will be disappointed by our help – for it is not coming from the S/spirit but the flesh.
- We will always be acting deceptively – having hidden motives which eminate from the Flesh mind.
- When the S/pirit tries to give a direction or command to the mind and body the flesh CRINGES and draws back so we do not do it.
- We wear the uniform of a soldier in God’s army but we are in rebellion and are absent without on leave. AWOL.
Psalm 81 PAINTS A GOOD PICTURE
“Hear, O My people, and I will admonish you!
O Israel, if you will listen to Me!
9 There shall be no foreign god among you;
Nor shall you worship any foreign god.
10 I am the Lord your God,
Who brought you out of the land of Egypt;
Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it.
11 “But My people would not heed My voice,
And Israel would have none of Me.
12 So I gave them over to their own stubborn heart,
To walk in their own counsels.
13 “Oh, that My people would listen to Me,
That Israel would walk in My ways!
14 I would soon subdue their enemies,
And turn My hand against their adversaries.
15 The haters of the Lord would pretend submission to Him,
But their fate would endure forever.
16 He would have fed them also with the finest of wheat;
And with honey from the rock I would have satisfied you.”
If we refuse to heed the Spirit’s voice -hardening our hearts then God will give us over to our stubborn heart to walk in our own counsels!
So I gave them over to their own stubborn heart, To walk in their own counsels.
The word translated as “gave them over”
שָׁלַח
sha.lach
to send1) to send, send away, let go, stretch out
1a) (Qal)
1a1) to send
1a2) to stretch out, extend, direct
1a3) to send away
1a4) to let loose
1b) (Niphal) to be sent
1c) (Piel)
1c1) to send off or away or out or forth, dismiss, give over, cast out
1c2) to let go, set free
1c3) to shoot forth (of branches)
1c4) to let down
1c5) to shoot
1d) (Pual) to be sent off, be put away, be divorced, be impelled
1e) (Hiphil) to send
How tragic is this!?
You will see here that when God sends those who are pretending to submit to Him away they may be “sent forth” on some mission THINKING that they are in the blessing and favour of God when in REALITY they are being judged and will enter into a time of spiritual leanness as we saw above with the Hebrew word kakach(feign/pretend submission). They have been “sent forth” or “shot forth as an arrow” to their time of chastening! They have been impelled and sent off from the Spirit of God -even been divorced from him and let loose to go their own way. They may feel a sense of freedom and relief from being ‘let go” by the Lord but this will turn to weariness and toil as once again they find themselves in the wilderness of dreariness and wasted years.
Because we allow our flesh to rule with all it’s deceptiveness and hidden selfish self glorying motives then God will send His Spirit message to us through the five fold ministry to get in line with Him-through true repentance and obedience. If we refuse and harden our hearts then He gives us over to our own stubborn hearts to walk in our own counsels.
The Flesh is a cruel master which can only ever lead us to failure and disappointment in life and in God.
The first two occurrences of shâlach- are in Genesis 3:22,23
22 Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one to know good and evil. And now, lest he put out his(forth) hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”— 23 therefore the Lord God sent him out of the garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken. 24 So He drove out the man; and He placed cherubim at the east of the garden of Eden, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life.
How very apt this connecting root passage is for us to see how the Flesh is related to the Law and the Tree of the Knowledge of good and evil.
Man put forth his hand to take from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil INSTEAD of the tree of Life.
This impulsive PUTTING FORTH of the hand to TAKE for ONESELF is the Flesh in operation. The hand is connected to the deep mind and sometimes seems to act unconsciously – such is the depth of connection between brain and hand.
The “I WANT THAT…I NEED THAT….I MUST HAVE THAT centre of the brain sends a direct message to the hand to reach out and take it. But it caused mankind a whole lot of trouble ever since!
Adam had become as one knowing good and evil. Not like God but as one knowing good and evil. Who would that be? The serpent!
The original Hebrew does NOT say man has become as one of us knowing good and evil….rather it simply says man has become as one knowing good and evil.
Notice below: The Strong’s number H3045 has been placed over the phrase “of us, to know”.
H3045 is the Hebrew word Yadah which means to know intimately. There is no justification for the translators to have inserted “of us”.
Man had not become as God knowing good and evil but as god knowing good and evil – The Devil.
Here once again we see H3045 used but this time it simply says “doth know”…..the result of eating of the tree would be that “ye shall be as gods”….which is translated from H430.
The KING JAMES TRANSLATION is one of the only versions that has gods…rather than God….and yet the verse starts off with God doth know…..not gods do know….
I believe they are right here in verse 5 both times when they translated h430.
‘ĕlôhı̂ym
1. (plural)
a. rulers, judges
b. divine ones
c. angels
d. gods
2. (plural intensive – singular meaning)
a. god, goddess
b. godlike one
c. works or special possessions of God
d. the (true) God
e. God
Origin: plural of H433
TWOT: 93c
Parts of Speech: Noun Masculine
H433 אלהּ אלוהּ
1. God
2. false god
Origin: probably prolonged (emphat.) from H410
h410
אל
1. god, god-like one, mighty one
a. mighty men, men of rank, mighty heroes
b. angels
c. god, false god, (demons, imaginations)
d. God, the one true God, Jehovah
2. mighty things in nature
3. strength, power
Origin: shortened from H352
H352
איל
1. ram
a. ram (as food)
b. ram (as sacrifice)
c. ram (skin dyed red, for tabernacle)
2. pillar, door post, jambs, pilaster
3. strong man, leader, chief
4. mighty tree, terebinth
Origin: from the same as H193
We see that elohim can definitely be applied to gods, angels and lesser deities as well as to God.
Thus Gen 3:5 God knows is correct not a lie…and ye shall be as gods knowing good and evil is also correct and not a lie.
And that is how it is translated by the venerable King James team of translators. But when they got to verse 22 they disagreed with their own translation work in verse 5!!
They are now saying that God said ‘man has become as one of us knowing good and evil.’…Well make up your mind which is it good fellows?!! Either man has become like lesser gods or man has become like God!
This affects very much how you see God!
The flesh is the result of the man putting forth his hand to take of that tree….making him like the Devil who knows good and evil…because he knows and is ONE WITH good and Evil he is double minded and twin souled….caught between the two able to be good in a twisted way and also able to be evil.
This is the nature of human flesh….good and evil.
So God drove man out of the garden to work and toil the soil in the heat of the day.
And then God put man under the Law of God to further compound the problem of good and evil so that “sin in the flesh” would become exceedingly sinful!!
He did this so that Grace would abound still more and more to the one who believes in Jesus.