His word says:

“And I, brethren, if I still preach circumcision, why do I still suffer persecution? Then the offense of the cross has ceased. I could wish that those who trouble you would even cut themselves off! For you, brethren, have been called to liberty; only do not use liberty as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself” Galatians 5:11 to 14

Let’s read verse 11 again.

“And I, brethren, if I still preach circumcision, why do I still suffer persecution? Then the offense of the cross has ceased” Galatians 5:11

In this passage the apostle Paul speaks that if He preached the law. Why then suffered persecution?  We know that the law is by works. When a Christian, after believing in the Lord Jesus continues to live according to his thoughts and the dictates of his heart, suffers no persecution of evil that is in the flesh, because it makes the will of his mind and is in opposition to works by grace, God does in us. Paul says that if preached by works: Why suffer persecution? This shows that it was not what was said, but what he spoke, not to according to the law that is by works, but after the Spirit. Then Paul says:

“Then the offense of the cross has ceased”

This is what every Christian needs to understand, to give up the old life, by the knowledge that the Word of God brings us that we have died with Christ and born again to walk in newness of life, we will suffer persecution because of evil in the feel of the flesh.

That’s why, when those who believe in this new life in Christ Jesus and decide to live, despite wanting to obey God and do His will, things happen that often lead him to believe that they can never achieve and do not realize that by choosing to do the will of God, pursues them evil.

Because of this some people have a constant and ongoing struggle against the appetites and desires of the flesh, but there is something that we understand and that Paul quotes this same passage we have read, he says:

“Then the offense of the cross has ceased”

Here we see that the cross makes slip and should ask yourself: Who? When Christ died on the cross, overcome evil, but overcome evil and overcomes death, none of these enemies has passed the cross. However, Christ died without sin, descended from the cross to the grave, and God raised him from the dead, raising him as proof that his sacrifice was accepted before Him. So also, each of which have believed and consider ourselves crucified with Christ, we died with Him, we were buried in the likeness of his death and raised to live a new life.

“Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore, we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life” Romans 6:3-4

Evil and all his works they failed the cross, therefore despite chasing us, let us go back never achieve, whether we believe that we have died and born again. Paul says:

 “Then the offense of the cross has ceased”

The reality is that has not been removed. The word stumbling means: Put loop or trap in the way to someone falls on it and do not move on.

Thus, the cross where Christ defeated evil stumble makes everything that has to do with the desires and appetites of the flesh and all influence by the deception of this world system, so Satan and all his demons were defeated and displayed as defeated at the cross when Christ died on it without sin.

“Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it” Colossians 2:15

We talked about these things with the only wish and desire that all believers who reads this literature, is affirmed in faith, without moving from the hope we have in Christ Jesus concerning the improvement of the life we ​​have received.

Evil pursues us and haunt us, but it will never reach. Does not have power over those who have been born again because the spiritual man, who we are today, is who defeated him on the cross.

Now we see, the offense can be a bad thing against someone or can also be good against evil, in this case the cross is a stumbling block to all that is wrong according to God.

Does the church bear before or after the Cross?

Many ministers believe that God has given the church solving the sin problem. However, the church was born after the cross, that is, at Pentecost, when God through His Holy Spirit came to dwell in man. This shows that when the church was born, the sin problem had already been solved by God on the cross with Christ.

However, despite this glorious truth of the Word of God, multitudes of Christians confess to be sinners. Ministers assured the members of his congregation who are sinners. But we see that those who make up the body of Christ here on earth, that is the church, are men and women who died and were born again by faith, giving up his old life, to seize and develop the new life in Christ receiving.

Dose who teaches the faithful who believe that they are still sinners, they shut the sky like the Pharisees in Jesus’ time, from seeing the exaltation of the faith which God has led them.

Those who have believed, to understand that evil does not pass the cross, we should be glad and rejoice before the Lord, to God knowing that evil will never be able to enslave. Now, make the development of this life depends on the provision that every believer has in his attitude toward God, if someone intends to achieve it must be assured that: “He who began a good work will complete it” Philippians 1:6

We cannot, we have received the knowledge of the exaltation of life to which God has led us in Christ, follow degrade further ourselves confessing that we are sinners, because the sin lost the power over us because we have died for the faith to all that we are and we believe that God has given us the life of His Son, which knows no limits in its perfection. Today’s Christians really do not know what this is. Many still live the old life, because they have not tasted what they have in Christ.

However, the view that by faith we spent the cross, we descended to the grave and rise with Christ, we have to take to explode with joy in our hearts and taxed perpetual adoration to Him who in His infinite love for us on the cross bought this life of excitement. l that we think we died and born again, we must find ways and means of making this precious life of Christ develops in us. If we believe that we can do, in the letters of Paul (the apostle of the church) are all ways and means, to practice them, this life is developed in us. So, work on the grace of God to reach knowledge of all the good that is in us by Christ. The apostle Paul told the Ephesians 1:15 to 17.

“Therefore, I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers: that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him…”

To receive thespirit of revelation, the apostlePaul teaches thatwe must have faithin the LordJesus, and love forall thatbelongsto Him. This is whatleads manyChristiansto fail, because they are unawarethat the Gospelis a revelationof Godand seek tounderstandby studyingtheology. Theologyis based onhuman intellectanddepends on the abilitythat everyone hasto learn, but the revelationby the Holy Spiritmakes thebelieverknow and understandthe mysteriesof God. By faithIreceiveitby faithandpractice. This leads him to understand that the will of the Lord is good and acceptable and perfect.

The revelation of the Word by the Spirit of God, has to carry the true believers to practice what God has established as a way of life, so that those who yearn for the development of this life, a reality. The longing and desire to reach the believer to take practice and in turn, discover that the love of God is shed abroad in their hearts by the Holy Spirit, would encourage him to always do good (Romans 5:5) and when you practice more, wanted to do more, to reach the spiritual stature to drive you wish to seek the good of others before your own.

If a believer could look in and see the endless flow of spiritual riches in Christ Jesus that God has given him, his attitude toward God and toward his brother, would be completely different. The apostle Paul, who received it by revelation tells us in Galatians 6:14: “But God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world”

For him, the world was crucified to him and he to the world. The world did not exist for him, nor he to the world. His longing and desire were to finish the race with joy, to be like Christ in everything, even in his death and resurrection.

“… that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death” Philippians 3:10

The apostle Paul, that by revelation he received all these things and wanted to be like Christ in everything wanted to have the same experience that Christ had, dying and rising.

That is tremendous when the revelation God has given us, leads us to have the same mind that was in Christ Jesus, to strip us of all that we were and to be clothed with the new man!

“Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus” Philippians 2:5

“… and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him” Colossians 3:10

Beloved, do you have any idea what it means to achieve full knowledge?

The apostle Paul speaking of us, says we can do it. Upon receiving the light of this knowledge, how not to strive in the grace that is in Christ to come to understand the dimension of the inexhaustible riches of the glory that God has given us?

For this reason, we should not pass out at any adversity that comes against us, if we know that these spiritual riches in us and that God has given us, we must also understand that neither the devil, nor the world, nor the flesh can deprive that this is a reality in us, if by faith, we believe we can achieve it.

So beloved brethren, be joyful always believing that God will take us in Christ Jesus to the end, to present us holy and blameless before Him; “… who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for Himself His own special people, zealous for good works” Titus 2:14

Therefore, we must give up all worldly desires and wishes, struggling to not believe and not takes us all these wonderful things God in His Word and by His Holy Spirit has revealed. Dear Brothers, how not to strive to live righteous, holy and godly in the midst of this world convulsed by evil and manifest Christ’s work in us before their eyes?

Our mission is to exhibit Christ with our behavior, and given us the privilege of expressing his life and death.

“… always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body” 2 Corinthians 4:10

Therefore, we must practice what God teaches us, through knowledge, about how their children should live. On the cross, evil was exhibited. The devil and death were defeated by Christ, so we need not fear them.

God for his great love wherewith he loved us, take us to his grace, to achieve all that He prepared before the foundation of the world for us. Why fight against those who have been defeated?

They persecute us because they want to deceive, but are powerless against what we believed, and therefore will not we fear, but we endure all fighting for Christ’s sake come and will come to us, knowing that suffering and suffering with Christ and in Christ, take us to reign with Him, when He appears.

“If we endure, we shall also reign with Him. If we deny Him, He also will deny us” 2 Timothy 2:12

We must understand that freedom beloved brethren were called so we should love one another, help each other, to reach the spiritual stature of loving our neighbor as ourselves.

If we were born after the cross, and evil does not pass the cross, you cannot make those who have been born again not achieve the development of this wonderful life, free from all evil, this is the gift that God has given us.

Therefore, we must strive in the grace that is in Christ Jesus and exhort one another, all having the same desire that no one is left without success because we are free, let us use each other for love.

Belovedbrethren, stand fast in the faith, fighting and defendingthis glorious truthinHis WordGod has revealed, for spiritual growthin whichwe believed. My hopeand prayerare thatall who readthis literature, knowledgeisenrichedby the lightof the Holy Spiritandthisconvince youwhoisbefore Godandthat He haschosen youin this final time, to displayallrichesingloryin Christ.

I love and embrace in the love of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Pastor: Juan Avellaneda