Mbonisi Malaba
What do you see in our fields and communities?
• Just as there are healthy and unhealthy plants, there are healthy and unhealthy Christians and healthy and unhealthy churches, communities, nations. What makes for healthy christians, lives, communities? The Bible tells us in Proverbs 14:34 “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a disgrace to any people.”
• How do we get righteous in our hearts? How do we get a free people, free community and so on. The Bible tells us that God exalts the humble and resists the proud. Luke 4:18 – 19 “The spirit of the Lord is on me, because He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to releae the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”
• Just as there are healthy and unhealthy plants, there are healthy and unhealthy Christians and healthy and unhealthy churches, communities, nations. What makes for healthy christians, lives, communities? The Bible tells us in Proverbs 14:34 “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a disgrace to any people.”
• How do we get righteous in our hearts? How do we get a free people, free community and so on. The Bible tells us that God exalts the humble and resists the proud. Luke 4:18 – 19 “The spirit of the Lord is on me, because He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to releae the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”
Mbonisi Malaba sharing God's word
• How do we get free? The Bible says in Galations 5:1 “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” Jesus wants us to be free.
What does the Bible say to us today?
• Romans 7:1 – 6 “Do you not know, brothers – for I am speaking to men who know the law – that the law has authority over a man only as long as he lives? For example, by law a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of marriage. So then, is she marries another man while her husband is still alive, she is called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is released from that law and is not an adulteress, even though she marries another man. So, my brothers, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God. For when we were controlled by the sinful nature, the sinful passions aroused by the law wer at work in our bodies, so that we bore fruit for death. But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.”
• Good law + sinful people = death
• When we belong to Jesus we serve from the inside out by the spirit, not by the outside in by the law. Not because the law is our master and we have to but because Christ is our husband and we want to. Not because obedience leads to salvation, but because salvation leads to obedience.
How must we live?
• The way to get our fields right is to get our hearts right.
• “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a disgrace to any people.” Proverbs 14:34
• Romans 7:1 – 6 “Do you not know, brothers – for I am speaking to men who know the law – that the law has authority over a man only as long as he lives? For example, by law a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of marriage. So then, is she marries another man while her husband is still alive, she is called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is released from that law and is not an adulteress, even though she marries another man. So, my brothers, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God. For when we were controlled by the sinful nature, the sinful passions aroused by the law wer at work in our bodies, so that we bore fruit for death. But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.”
• Good law + sinful people = death
• When we belong to Jesus we serve from the inside out by the spirit, not by the outside in by the law. Not because the law is our master and we have to but because Christ is our husband and we want to. Not because obedience leads to salvation, but because salvation leads to obedience.
How must we live?
• The way to get our fields right is to get our hearts right.
• “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a disgrace to any people.” Proverbs 14:34
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