An excerpt from New Old Sayings by Dr. Robert Owens March 2, 2023
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Good doesn’t become bad, wrong doesn’t become right, and truth doesn’t become a lie just because a majority of people want them to.
All We Need to Know March 1, 2023
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The Bible tells us Adam sold us down the river of sin. His first sin, disobedience was followed by death; spiritual death or separation from God and then physical death. The Bible also tells us no one gets a free pass. Every one of us descended from Adam is born in sin and subject to death. Because that first sin of Adam’s broke humanity’s relationship with God in every way.
However, the far-reaching extent of this wasn’t apparent till God made it crystal clear to Moses. Here’s what we learned from God’s detailed and explicit law: Sin is a yawning chasm separating us from God that leads to death. We also learned that even those who don’t sin in the same way Adam did, by disobeying a specific command of God, sin in one way or another. Consequently, we all experience both the spiritual and the physical end of life which is separation from God not just as an inheritance but as something each of us earns on our own.
But God didn’t leave us hopeless. When God cursed the serpent for tempting Eve to sin which is what dragged Adam into choosing fellowship with his wife over fellowship with his Creator, He also made a promise that from woman would come a Savior. From the moment of the fall comes the hope of resurrection pointing ahead to the One chosen before the foundation of the world to get us off this one-way conveyor belt to hell.
To maintain God’s absolute justice sin had to be paid for. The penalty of separation and death had to be fulfilled. All humanity could ever do was continue the cycle over and over since everyone sinned and added to the burden of the verdict. Then Jesus Christ, God Himself, came to bear the burden and pay the price becoming a sinless sacrifice, the just for the unjust. His death foreshadowed by every sacrifice ever offered up under the Law.
However, the blood of goats, bulls, sheep, and other animals could never cleanse from sin. The best they could do was cover symptoms of sin through obedience to the commands of God. They couldn’t deal with the root cause, separation from God because no human ever lived a sinless life after offering one sacrifice so another was always needed and death flowed like a river of sewage through the lives of all.
Just as Adam’s sin brought death into the world one person condemning many the sacrifice of Jesus brings life into the world One person making the way open for many. Though one foreshadowed the other and one fulfilled the other the gift of Jesus is not perfectly parallel to the death-dealing sin of Adam. You see if Adam’s sin put all of humanity in the well-deserved black hole of separation from God, imagine what God’s undeserved gift poured out through Jesus Christ’s sinless sacrifice can do. How can we possibly compare Adam’s death-dealing sin and Jesus’ life-giving gift? The righteous verdict on Adam’s sin was the death sentence on everyone born of Adam. The gracious verdict on the sacrifice of Jesus is this life restoring sentence on everyone born of Jesus, the second Adam.
Here it is in a nutshell: Death which is separation from God gained the upper hand through Adam’s sin. Now the astounding recovery of life, real life, life in union with God explodes in our spirit as soon as we’re born-again out of the descending line of Adam and into the ascending line of Jesus. Since the price has been paid and an acceptable sacrifice made the just for the unjust everyone who accepts this undeserved and free life-gift sees reality flow back into the mold God initially wanted for humanity: Living, loving, and praising in union with Him.
That’s the back story now for all you need to know:
If we confess Jesus as the head of our life and if we believe in our hearts God raised Him from the dead, we will be saved.
It just that easy and it’s yours if you want it.
This is an excerpt from the book Hope by Dr. Robert Owens. This and all his books are available from Amazon in paperback or kindle at Amazon.
The Newest Book from Dr. Robert Owens is now available! February 28, 2023
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New Old Sayings Volume Three
The offerings in this book, the third in the New Old Sayings series are quips and quotes from hundreds of songs, poems, essays, articles and more than thirty books of both fiction and non-fiction published and unpublished offered to highlight how gracious God is in revealing Himself to us in so many ways. Inspired by the book of Proverbs the books included in the New Old Sayings series presents the collected wisdom and insights gained from more than sixty years of study, contemplation, and life.
Available at Amazon
An excerpt from New Old Sayings by Dr. Robert Owens February 26, 2023
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Who we are is just who we are it isn’t who we have to be.
An excerpt from New Old Sayings by Dr. Robert Owens February 25, 2023
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God told us through Jesus that we are worth saving.
An excerpt from New Old Sayings by Dr. Robert Owens February 24, 2023
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We can do what we can do. We can’t do what we can’t do. Wisdom is knowing the difference.
An excerpt from New Old Sayings by Dr. Robert Owens February 23, 2023
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It wasn’t three nails that held Jesus to the cross, it was love.
An excerpt from New Old Sayings by Dr. Robert Owens February 22, 2023
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Forgiveness can’t change the past, but it can change the future.
What is Righteousness and How Do I Get It? February 21, 2023
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The first part is easy. Righteousness is the ability to stand in the presence of God as if we’d never sinned. When we stand in righteousness before God the Father it’s without any sense of fear, condemnation, or inferiority. We have this righteousness because we are now children of God through Christ and as children, we are members of the family and have a rightful place.
Just think of Buckingham Palace as heaven. If you walked up to the gate and said, “Let me in” the guards would turn you away. If Prince William walked up and said, “Let me in” the guards would open the door and bow as he walked past. It’s the same way with heaven. If we show up covered in our sin, we will get turned away. If we show up in Christ, as a member of His body the gates will swing open and glory to God, we will at last be home.
This was promised to us through the prophet Isaiah long ago, “All your children shall be taught by the Lord, and great shall be the peace of your children. In righteousness you shall be established; you shall be far from oppression, for you shall not fear; and from terror, for it shall not come near you.”
As natural men we have a sin consciousness. We inherently know that we’re not worthy to stand in the presence of God. We have knowledge of our own weakness to the sins which so easily overtake us. This has kept us slaves to sin. This consciousness of our own sin and weakness destroys our abilities and short-circuits our ability to live as God intends.
That is why we must be born again. For in our re-birth, our re-creation in Christ we acquire righteousness. Without it we could no more be children of God than an ant could be a man. For without righteousness the Father could take no pleasure in us as His children we’d shrink away from the fire of His love since it would then be the fire of His judgement, for it is the same fire.
This righteousness is the gift of God. It’s not something we could have ever earned for ourselves. Before we’re born again, we were without Christ. We were aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. We were bankrupt, sold out to sin, and without the ability to help ourselves.
This is why God laid our sins upon Christ. This is why Christ died upon the cross. He paid the penalty demanded by justice. The penalty for sin had to be paid before a fallen mankind could be re-created and, in His death, the substitutionary death of the sinless for the sinful the penalty was paid in full. And not only did Christ pay our penalty He descended into Hell, defeated our advisory stripping him of his authority over humanity. Then He rose again to give us the promise of eternal life re-created in union with Him through faith.
In the Old Testament Israel had righteousness reckoned to them but in the new creation it becomes our very nature because Christ Himself is our Righteousness.
He is the vine, and we are the branches. Since the vine is righteous, so are the branches. And so should the fruit of the branches be worthy of the price paid. We should produce the fruit of righteousness in this world and be a blessing as we are blessed. And we can bear a type of fruit that Christ could not when He walked this earth. He could heal the sick, raise the dead, and calm the storm. But He could not lead people to salvation for He had not yet paid the price. He had not yet opened the way for us to be re-united with God erasing the sin debt of Adam’s fall.
So that is righteousness, right standing with God, the ability to stand in God’s presence as if we had never sinned. We get it through confessing with our lips that Jesus is Lord and by believing in our heart that God has raised Him from the dead.
And once we have it, we are tasked by Christ to share our witness so that all mankind has the opportunity to have it too.
This is an excerpt from the book Faith by Dr. Robert Owens. This and all his books are available from Amazon in paperback or kindle at Amazon.
An excerpt from New Old Sayings by Dr. Robert Owens February 18, 2023
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He lived a life of love and perfection. He died a death of hate and rejection. He rose to share joy and perfection. Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior.
Dr. Robert Owens Chronicles the History of the Future 