A. Don’t blame God for the pain in the world.  Blame Satan.  There was no pain before Adam and Eve sinned.  Nor will there be any in the New Jerusalem after the Rapture.

“He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” (Rev. 21:4)

Pain is a consequence of evil having come into the world and as long as it’s here there will be pain.  But Jesus took up our sickness and carried our pain when He went to the cross.  Because of the punishment He took on our behalf we can be healed from our pain (Isaiah 53:4-5).  That means we can pray for healing from the sickness and pain we periodically feel and be encouraged to know there’s a day coming when it will all end forever.

A. In 1 Cor. 5:1-5 Paul advised the Corinthians to expel an immoral man from the fellowship. This wasn’t a decision undertaken lightly, since we’re all sinners.  But Paul said this particular sin was shocking even among pagans. Delivering him to Satan was telling him his behavior might be acceptable among those who are perishing, but in the Church a higher standard is expected.

Doing this would allow the man to be convicted of his sin, discontinue his immoral behavior, and gain victory over his sin nature (destruction of the flesh).  I believe this is what happened and that he’s the man Paul told them to forgive and welcome back in 2 Cor. 2:5-11.

In 1 Cor. 5:9-11 Paul repeated what appears to be a previous teaching, admonishing us not to associate with those who are called “brother” (or who call themselves a brother) who are known to be sexually immoral, or who are greedy, idolaters, slanderers, drunkards or swindlers.   Even Paul admitted that he couldn’t completely stop sinning, but he said there’s no place for flagrantly sinful behavior in a fellowship of believers.

A. Our salvation is based on belief, not behavior, but I don’t know of any truly born again believers who think they now have a license to sin.  What we have is the security of knowing that when we do sin (and as long as we’re in our natural states we will) we’re not risking the loss of our salvation.

Over and over we’re admonished to follow the guidance of the Holy Spirit and change our behavior as a sign of our gratitude for what we’ve been freely given. This is what Paul meant by encouraging us to live up to what we’ve already attained (Phil 3:16).

Our behavioral changes please the Lord and so He blesses us with His favor and gifts of all kinds.  If we don’t follow the Spirit’s guidance we’re both communicating our ingratitude and disqualifying ourselves for these additional blessings.  This explains why so many Christians live defeated fruitless lives.  But since our salvation was extended as a free gift conditioned only on our faith to receive it (Ephes. 2:8-9), we’re saved either way.

A. Man was originally created in the image of God.  The sin nature came about as part of the judgment when Adam and Eve disobeyed God (Gen. 3) .

About the time after their fall into sin, the Bible says:

When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image; and he named him Seth. (Genesis 5:3)

This tells us Adam’s children inherited his fallen nature.  But it wasn’t just the children born to him.  Later David would write:

Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me (Psalm 51:5).

Paul also spoke of this in Romans 7:18 when he said, “I know nothing good lives in me, that is in my sinful nature.”

All of mankind has inherited the sin nature. It’s part of our make up.  That’s why we can’t save ourselves and would be hopelessly lost without our Savior, the Lord Jesus.

A.  2 Corinthians 2:5-11 refers to the incident in 1 Corinthians 5 where Paul admonished the people to put a man out of the fellowship for an inappropriate sexual relationship. Although Paul didn’t come right out and say the sinner repented, the fact that he  advised them to forgive him and welcome him back leads most commentators to conclude that’s what happened.   The man must have repented and sought their forgiveness. Otherwise Paul would have simply been reversing his former position for no reason.

A.  When Adam and Eve sinned they lost their immortality because as Paul wrote, the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23).  Because of this, all their descendants were born as mortals with a sin nature, and were subject to death.

At the rapture our bodies will be changed from mortal to immortal (1 Cor. 15:52-53). This means we will no longer have a sin nature, and no longer have any desire to sin.   Since there will be no death in the New Jerusalem where we will live (Rev. 21:4), we can safely conclude that we will not sin in heaven.

A. In the Jubilee year three major things happened.  All debts were forgiven, all slaves went free, and all land reverted to its original owner.   Forgiveness of debt and freedom for slaves actually happened every Sabbath (7th) Year (Deut. 15).  This portion of the Jubilee year promise was partially fulfilled at the cross.  Because of the Lord’s shed blood our debt of sin was forgiven and we were freed from our bondage to sin, although we still sin.  The rest will happen at the resurrection / rapture because our new bodies will not have a sin nature, making us totally free.

The return of land to its original owner was unique to the Jubilee, which came in conjunction with every 7th Sabbath year.  The prophetic fulfillment will happen at the 2nd Coming, when the Lord will become King of the whole Earth (Zechariah 14:9).  Until then, the whole world is under control of the Evil One (1 John 5:19).

A.  Revelation 15:5-8 speaks a Temple in Heaven, which John called the Tabernacle of the Testimony. My claim that Jesus entered the temple there to sprinkle His blood on the mercy seat comes from Hebrews 9:11-12.

But when Christ came as high priest of the good things that are now already here, he went through the greater and more perfect tabernacle that is not made with human hands, that is to say, is not a part of this creation.  He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption.

This is also consistent with the Yom Kippur ceremony which required the High Priest to sprinkle the blood of the sacrifice on the mercy seat to complete the process of atonement for the sins of the people. The idea was that when God looked down upon the Ark and saw the tablets containing the Law the people had broken, He would be looking through the blood of the sacrifice and His hand of judgment would be stayed.

A. When Satan rebelled many angels chose to follow him. (Rev. 12:4)  Other angels left their assigned order, took on human form and married human women, producing hybrid offspring we call Nephilim. (Gen. 6:1-4)  From this we learn that even angels have the freedom to choose their behavior.  To me that means we will still have this freedom of choice in our perfected states.  However, having been freed from our sin nature, and having first hand knowledge of sin’s awful consequences, I don’t believe we’ll have any desire to sin, but will think of sin as a terrible disease of which we’ve been cured.

A.  For the most part, people who don’t think they have cancer are not motivated to take the cure.  Once they discover they have it, then the cure becomes important.  But the ones I’ve talked with say they didn’t fully comprehend their condition until they came out of the treatment and realized how close they were to dying.

I think it’s the same with our salvation. People who don’t understand sin and its consequences aren’t motivated to be saved.  They have to become aware of their sinfulness, even if it’s only in some abstract sense, before they can admit their need for a Savior.  But they don’t begin to fully comprehend the nature of their predicament until after they’re saved and the Holy Spirit has revealed the truth to them.  That’s when the hard reality of what Hell is and how close they were to going there usually hits them.

Paul wrote that the man without the Spirit cannot comprehend the things that come from the Spirit of God (1 Cor. 2:14) and we don’t get the Holy Spirit until after we’re saved.