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Suffer it to Be So Now
by Greg Robbins Matthew 3:13-15 "Then comes Jesus from Galilee to Jordan unto John, to be baptized of him. But John forbade him saying, I have need to be baptized of you, and come you to me? And Jesus answering said unto him, Suffer it to be so now: for thus it becomes us to fulfill all righteousness. Then he suffered him." Look at the humility of Jesus! He being God humbled himself to be baptized by a man. Even greater humility he demonstrated by submitting himself to do the will of God and to obey his commands. John also humbled himself to obey the command of Jesus. That in brief is one of the major doctrines of Christ. Be humble and submit yourself to obey God's will by obeying his commands. John well knew that Jesus was greater than he, so he forbade Jesus from being baptized by himself. What was Jesus' response? "Suffer it to be so now." There will always be suffering involved in obeying God's will. The flesh doesn't want to submit itself to obey God's commands. So as an act of our will we must force ourselves to obey God. This is may be the main reason why so many professing Christians do not obey the commands of Jesus. They don't want to obey and they don't want to suffer. Well I have news for you. I don't want to obey God or suffer either. That is until the love for God in me desires to obey Jesus, and the fear of God shows me what will be the end result of my rebellion. I have discovered that every single time that I obey God, I later experience peace, contentment, and joy. These are the steps to obedience to God's will. Number 1: The knowledge of what God commands me to do is revealed to me. Number 2: I am allowed a period of time in which I may question God about it. Like John forbade Jesus, and how Jesus questioned his Father in the garden on the night he was betrayed. Number 3: Make a decision to obey God's command. Number 4: As an act of your will FORCE yourself to do it. You will experience resistance and suffering as you follow these four steps. Suffering is part of being a Christian. You cannot escape it unless you refuse to obey God. However there will be much greater suffering later on as a result of your rebellion against God's commands. Jesus said, "Thus it becomes us to fulfill all righteousness." So many times I have heard that we are already made righteous and do not need to do anything. That is not what Jesus said. Did you ever stop to notice that John the Baptist, Jesus, and the disciples, were all very busy people? They had already left houses, lands, family, friends, and creature comforts to work for God. And that is just the point. They were very busy doing good works of obedience to the will of God. These are the examples that the Bible presents for us to imitate and to follow. Thank God that the Bible didn't give us lazy people to be our examples. That would steal my zeal from me and be like a bucket of ice water being thrown on my head. So my counsel to you is to follow the four steps mentioned above, obey what Jesus commanded in the scripture, bear the suffering involved, and fulfill all righteousness. The rewards that you will receive in heaven for doing this will be great! And they are ETERNAL blessings and rewards. http://jesuswordsonly.org My books on Amazon/Kindle https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Gregory+Robbins Article Source: http://www.faithwriters.com |