In the two earlier posts I covered Love, Joy, Peace, and Self Control. Today I write on the last of the fruit of Spirit which are longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and gentleness. As said in the earlier posts, these words have God’s definition and they also have a worldly definition, so it is important not to mix them up by the world’s defined view on them. In the Kingdom, which is Jesus Christ’s Kingship and rule, authority and dominion, the fruit of the Spirit is given to those who were granted a new life.

So let’s examine the last of these fruits briefly.

Longsuffering = God’s patience. This would His type of longsuffering not worldly patience. Probably the closest one will exhibit it is a parent as they raise their children. You don’t expect your 2 year old to act like an adult, or be as knowledgeable by this longsuffering, which is patience. You know the child will grow and mature, just as God knows His children will grow in faith and mature in faith. So with this patience, the restraint of anger and a tolerance is demonstrated because your expectations on another is reasonable according to their maturity. Many churches FAIL this test, because they’ll expect a new creation to be fully mature, but they aren’t, so patience is limited. I can say from a personal testimony, in my former life, I HAD ZERO longsuffering as a fruit. I was extremely impatient. As soon as God made me a new creation, longsuffering was granted, and for the first time in my life I grew in patience. A Christian will always have some form of longsuffering, not only towards their children, but to everyone in their life!

Kindness = The quality of being UNCONDITIONALLY generous, friendly, courteous, and considerate of others. Like love as said in the earlier post, you are kind NOT because you are expecting something in return, but a Godly gracious kindness. As Jesus explained, “don’t let your left hand know what your right hand is doing”, meaning don’t place a condition on being kind to another. A Godly kindness is a giving kindness, and as Scripture teaches in 1 Cor 9:7, “God loves a cheerful giver”. Meaning you give to another NOT out of a grudge or necessity, but it freely flows from your heart. Self-less kindness is Godly fruit!

Goodness = God’s goodness, or truthful goodness. God is a truth teller, be one! Worldly goodness is not Godly goodness, because that type of goodness is temporary, fleeting, and used to manipulate others. Whereas God’s goodness never fades and it never seeks to manipulate others. Part of this goodness is your desire to share the Gospel, which is power of God unto salvation. If saved, you desire ANY and ALL to hear this Good News, to join you in your new Kingdom! You now realize in the Kingdom what is good and what is bad, and seek always the good for not yourself, but for God’s glory as you now represent His name!

Faithfulness = a Godly loyalty which is the fruit of the Spirit. This loyalty is your supreme priority in life if a Christian. You do not seek to dethrone Jesus, but to submit to Him in faith, and faith alone. Like every fruit of the Spirit, faithfulness starts out as a seed and it steadily grows. So if your fruit is not growing, but dying or is dead, that wasn’t a fruit planted by God. In this type of faithfulness, come hell or high water, you will never break! You are a Job of the Bible! The devil could throw as many hardships your way as possible, but this fruit can never be broken, your faithfulness will always prevail!

Gentleness = In the fruit of the Spirit it is defined as being CALM, peaceful. You aren’t an angry person, going on tirades now. Gentleness will exhibit forgiveness of others, the same way God forgave you of your sins. You are gentle realizing what Jesus did for you on the Cross and knowing if God didn’t treat you with this type of gentleness, where would you be? If you had a bad temper before your rebirth, that fruit of gentleness God granted you turned that on its head, it should be fading to non-existence. This fruit for me I would say grew slowly based on the entanglements in my former life, but I realized the growth. In this gentleness, you are no longer a grudge keeper, because that would be the antithesis to the fruit!

Again, this fruit of Spirit GROWS if you were saved. You aren’t going to have perfectly full bloomed fruit upon the rebirth, but the seedling growth begins and will last a lifetime which is called the sanctification of your spirit as God grows you to the image of His Son. So don’t be frustrated if you aren’t perfect in this fruit of the Spirit, you won’t be, but REJOICE in the growth and maturity and IF saved there is no mistaking the growth if you are self-aware.

Lastly, let us humbly and whole heartedly thank God for this fruit of the Spirit! Without it, where would we be?

Galatains 5:22 tells us that love, joy, and peace are the fruit of the Spirit. Now this love, joy, and peace is NOT worldly love, or joy, or peace, they have totally different meanings. It does seem as if the devil honed in on some common words humans use, and pervert their definitions into secular meaningless and subjectivity so as to take away from their real meanings.

So let’s examine each one briefly.

Love – The fruit of the Spirit is God’s love, meaning completely unconditional self-lessness. Fallen man produces conditional strings on everything and desires SIN, so the perverted “love” you hear and see so much is actually LUST. Now lust does not only mean something sexual, it is a self-seeking conditional desire which some think is love, but it is just lust. With love comes TRUTHFULNESS! God is completely TRUTHFUL in His love. He doesn’t try to protect fallen human feelings, He always told the truth. So if you are exhibiting this fruit, you are a truth teller, not a liar, not a fibber. Example, you don’t tell someone they are on their way to heaven, when you KNOW they aren’t based on their unbelief. Love seeks the highest standard for another, and again, without condition! You don’t seek a “thank you”, because you love that person unconditionally. You seek absolutely nothing in return. You grant gifts because of this love without self affirmation. You hold absolutely NOTHING over the person you love. You freely forgive without the slightest condition to be met! This is God’s love!

Joy – There is worldly joy such as your team winning a game, the birth of a child, getting accolades from a career, a joke someone told, etc. And there is Godly joy! The joy of being in Christ, being part of His family for an eternity. It is an often inexpressible joy since it encompasses a peace without always understanding. The joy of Jesus knowing you personally, caring about you, walking with you! And this joy naturally exudes from you if you possess this fruit of the Spirit. You are JOYFUL because you are God’s child now, JOYFUL because He granted you repentance, JOYFUL to being led by the Spirit, JOYFUL to be in the fellowship of other Christians, JOYFUL BECAUSE YOUR ETERNAL HOME IS HEAVEN NOW!

Peace – There is worldly peace such as an end to a war, an end to a conflict with another, an end to an addiction or problem. Notice what the common word “an end”? Now the fruit of the Spirit of peace is a BEGINNING, not an end. It is KNOWING that whether good, bad, sad, indifferent, or ugly, God is sovereign. It is KNOWING God has granted you eternal life in Jesus, and nothing will separate you from the love you have in Him! (Ref Romans 8:38-39). It is a total calm in your spirit as you are led by the Spirit! You don’t need to understand the whys now because of this peace, you know and trust in God’s will and purposes. That WHATEVER the case or circumstance may be, God has it under His control, a peace without always understanding. The calm grows as your seed of this awesome fruit grows.

Now with all love, joy, peace being a fruit of the Spirit, the fruit GROWS. It isn’t in full bloom when one becomes a Christian, it starts as a growing seed. Meaning, one won’t be fully perfect in any of them, but the fruit should be growing, not dying, not staying stagnant. How do the fruit grow? By the literal watering of God’s word! The saved sinner being completely engrossed in this word, will see this fruit grow faster or slower depending on how disciplined they are by God’s will and purpose. Some will experience faster growth in love, some with peace, some with joy, some with all 3 or just 2 while some of the fruit growth will grow slower. Again it is all part of God’s purpose. The growth is called sanctification!

So to those who believe one can be sanctified without being fully justified, I ask why would God plant the seeds of the fruit of the Spirit if they didn’t grow? And to those who believe salvation can be lost, why would God plant the seeds of the Spirit if they just died eventually, and do you really believe God would plant defective and powerless seeds?

A fruit listed by Paul in Galatians 5:22 is self control. Before one is indwelled with the Holy Spirit, there is a facade of self-control. Being fallen in nature, totally depraved, we pursue sin, we seek ways to get away with sin.

Our desires in a fallen nature will only have an accountability to our fellow man, not to God, so our self-control will only encompass this. It is easy to deceive man, but not God. We might believe we have self-control, but in our thoughts, yes thoughts of which God knows intimately, our self-control is non-existent. We might not proceed to the sinful action, but we thought about doing it, thus we sinned.

When indwelled by the Spirit, self-control actually becomes realized. Now it is not only your actions which are restrained but the THOUGHTS on those actions have changed. Your desire for sin has a disdain now, so you seek the opposite which is holiness. Your thoughts coincide. Thus why it is always perplexing to me when a professed Christian man will say he is still addicted to porn or became addicted to porn for example. I would say he was deceived, and most likely not a Christian because the Holy Spirit would have changed that desire.

Now I am not saying self-control comes upon you in a perfect manner, like a lightswitch and BOOM when you are born-again, you will have perfect control. No! But this grows like a seed! The constant conviction in thoughts, words, deeds, actions, an inaction is felt by your core, and that is the indwelling Holy Spirit who is growing your fruit of self-control.

Lastly, a form of self-control in a fallen state is also under God’s sovereign hand! He is restraining evil actions, and the evils of a fallen heart as well. If not for that restraint, the evils of the world would be on a level never witnessed! So we must always thank God for self-control, it truly IS A FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT!

Romans 8:23 “Not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body.“

Galatians 5:22-23 teaches us that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,  gentleness, self-control. If born from above and saved, this fruit is GIVEN to you by God by grace alone. You might have thought before this point, you possessed these fruits, but did you? Or were they unnaturaly imitations based on conditions, meaning you imitated kindness for example with expectations of gaining something in return.

The FIRSTfruits of the Holy Spirit is something not to yawn at. Again if saved, God granted you this awesome fruit! And each, as a fruit, GROWS, the fruit of God never dies, it doesn’t stay stagnant or get moldy. You won’t be perfect in this lifetime, but the steady growth of the fruit God grants should be evident if saved.

And as God commanded the Israelites in the OT, the firstfuits are given to God. You do this naturally, not as a chore. You aren’t exhibiting self control and are miserable for example.

Examine the fruit of the Spirit in your life, can you see them in yourself? Or is peace missing, or is joy missing, because they are the two fruits which will always evade the imitators, the false converts. You can play act all the other fruit in an unregenerate state, but peace and joy will always be missing!

Make a practice to give your firstfruit to God each day! Start each day in worship to Him. If He isn’t your first priority, your faith is discerned. Not just here and there or when times are good or when you feel like it, but each day this practice must be naturally exhibited. Again, if true PEACE and true JOY are missing, you have been deceived and must repent and believe the Gospel, because you have not been granted that fruit.

If there couldn’t be false and aren’t conversions, the devil would be out of business!

If you read and study Scripture carefully, you’d know that there is a repeated warning that goes out from God, and that is to the sinners who think they are saved, but are actually false converts. The misnomer is that the devil and his demons are working on the atheist, the wiccan, the unbeliever. If we use logic, this would be a waste of their time because there is nothing they really to do.

So who are they busy working on? These would be those who are convicted by guilt of their sins, they know there is going to be a judgment. They would like the sinner to believe they are saved, when they are not, so they lead these sinners into false gospels and to false teachers. The devil is a master at understanding the fallen nature of man, and our humanistic pride, and this is what he feeds upon and utilizes.

How do we discern from being a false convert and true convert? The key here is repentance and the CHANGE in desires. If you are a true convert, God made you into a NEW creation. There is no longer an inner tussle going on with Him, you aren’t trying to get away with your sins, you confess and understand who you are in light of Him. Now it doesn’t mean you are perfect in the flesh, it means you are being perfected in Christ who is perfect. The only way God sees you as “perfect” is by seeing you are IN Jesus Christ. Meaning His righteousness, obedience, perfection are credited to you by your faith alone in Jesus.

Some believe they have been saved or being saved, but will NOT place their faith alone in Jesus. They fight this notion, and add that humanistic pride to God’s work. So they believe their inherent self-righteousness is the key, the deserving factor, of which God will judge them. This is the devil’s ploy! The devil builds up by that pride the notion of “I can’t just believe in Jesus, I must DO something to be saved”.

Now think about it! It would be like a fireman standing outside your burning home, and the devil puts in your head, “the fireman won’t come in here, unless I do something”. You wouldn’t think much about that coward egocentric fireman would you? Or a doctor before a major surgery you needed, saying “I can’t work on this patient, he or she does fit not my type of goodness”. But surely this is the mentality that MANY have with Jesus. That He is some egocentric coward of a Savior who won’t do as He promised, that He sits on the sideline watching you perish unless you make yourself DESERVING enough!

Now the devil knows there is NOTHING you could do to make yourself deserving enough, but you don’t know that, so he puts that in your head. So then you work work work, always uncertain, always insecure, and in the end you end up in hell with him! You seek churches which abide by this lunacy of the God/human cooperative in salvation, and the devil rejoices while he says “strive harder in your ‘free-will’, I am sure God will save you”. If you go that route, you bought the devil’s LIE.

Again the devil knows your self-righteous humanistic pride perfectly. He manipulates this to a tee! So in the end, you are left with Jesus saying “I never knew you, be gone from Me you worker of lawlessness” (Matt 7:23).

Roman Catholics for example pervert Matthew 25:31-45 to mean if they clothe the naked, feed the poor, visit people in prison, that Jesus will save them. But was that what He meant? NO! You see, God demands absolute perfection, so unless you are doing those things PERFECTLY since birth and all of your life, you have come up short by the law. And the false convert believes they can be saved BY THE LAW instead of by Jesus. So the passage is meant to CONVICT the sinner, not as a viable template to be saved! The saved sinner will confess, “I DID NOTHING OF THOSE THINGS and Jesus saved me”. The false convert will say “I did some of those things or tried to, so God should save me”.

Proverbs 11:1 Dishonest scales are an abomination to the Lord, But a just weight is His delight. ² When pride comes, then comes shame; But with the humble is wisdom.

What is a discernment point of one who has been born-again by God and one who is masquerading as a Christian? That would be honesty in your sins and who you are, and the reaction to that type of honest witness.

Before one is born-again, dishonesty and concealment REIGNS throughout our entire being. We don’t like admitting our faults, our sins, or shotcomings. And if there is any doubt in what I said, social media exposed this clearly!

Upon my rebirth, God showed me my sins, and just how dark, evil, and decrepit I truly was. Before that point, I tended to hide that shame and the external “goodness” was all that one saw. So I wrote a tell all portion in a book called “The Roman Catholic Problem” which disclosed the final days leading up to my rebirth and the debauchery I was involved in. There would be NO WAY I would have admitted to these things before God changed my heart! Not for a second!

But discernment came in when I listened to some of the reactions from that honest witness. Roman Catholics who are dead in their sins and trespasses, scoffed and mocked me. “How could you be so stupid” and “sorry you were so sinful” is what I heard, as IF they were perfect. But this is how one is before a rebirth, we look down our noses at the honest witness very well knowing we are equally if not more degenerate in our behavior.

The honest witness KNOWS what Jesus paid on their behalf, so it is beyond reasoning to hide that reason of His sacrifice if born again. The humility is engrained with this realization of who Jesus is, what He did, and what YOU did to CAUSE it all. There is no more hiding your sins from others! It would be like someone paying all your credit card bills off in one full swoop without any help from you, and you denying that you had any debt? Again, that would BEYOND reasoning!

So one way to KNOW you are dealing with a Christian and not a poser, examine their witness. How do they react to honest witnesses, and what if anything are they hiding. We know one thing for certain! Every human being is FALLEN in nature, and has sinned! Failure to disclose this would demonstrate one is not born-again, but still concealing themselves as Adam and Eve tried to conceal themselves from God after their sin.

And remember this if anything! You might be able to FOOL your fellow mankind, but you NEVER fool God! He knows! So don’t be a fool!

Galatians 5:1, “Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage.“

Until you are born-again and realize the salvation you received from Jesus Christ, your yoke of bondage will be to your sins. It is Christ which has set you free, if saved! Thus the battle cry of FREEDOM is the Gospel of Jesus Christ, His Good News!

Those entrapped and entangled in world religions are led to believe there is a freedom carrot in front of their nose, and if they strive hard enough, one day they’ll obtain it. That somehow if you do enough good works, and are moral and religious enough, you will be deemed worthy enough, deserving enough to be saved by Jesus. And sadly, they’ll perish without ever reaching that carrot, never experiencing the true peace and rest in Jesus.

John 8:32 “And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

If saved by Jesus, you won’t be asking as Pilate asked Jesus “what is truth?”, because as Jesus said you shall KNOW the truth. And that truth is He alone is the Redeemer the promised Messiah, and no one will be saved outside of Him. That He died for you, He was your substitute on the Cross, and PAID IN FULL your sin debt. And by this simple truth, it has made you FREE!

Now freedom doesn’t mean you can go and sin up a storm, because that would be again entangling yourself in bondage to sin. Salvation isn’t some license to sin without ramifications. It is a freedom from the PENALTY of sin, which is the wrath of God. And by that grace and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, your new natural desire is a disdain, a true hatred of sin. Does it mean you will never stumble? No! It means you will repent and do this naturally, not unnaturally, because you naturally LOVE the freedom Christ has granted you and thus naturally HATE the bondage to sin.

John 8:36 “Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.“

When Jesus speaks, LISTEN! He said if He makes you free, you ARE free! This means He alone “makes freedom” for the sinner. Not your church, not you by cooperation, not by religiousity, not by sacraments, not by your deeds, it is He who made you free by what He did alone on the Cross!

Those who shirk the battle cry of freedom are not just the atheists and agnostics, there are many who consider themselves “Christians” who do so with zeal and vigor. If you reject that battle cry, you are still in rebellion to God and His Kingdom, the Son has NOT set you free! You are still in very much bondage to evil, to sin, to the world.

Salvation is by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone to God’s glory alone! This is the battle cry of freedom!

Exodus 32:7 “And the Lord said to Moses, “Go, get down! For your people whom you brought out of the land of Egypt have corrupted themselves. ⁸ They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them. They have made themselves a molded calf, and worshiped it and sacrificed to it, and said, ‘This is your god, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt!’ ” ⁹ And the Lord said to Moses, “I have seen this people, and indeed it is a stiff-necked people! ¹⁰ Now therefore, let Me alone, that My wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them. And I will make of you a great nation.”

If you don’t believe the fallen nature is the total depravity of man, you will never understand why one needs to be born-again (John 3:3). The above account should be a WAKE UP call for those who think man is merely wounded, but not totally depraved, that Pelagian heresy which says man possesses the ABILITY to believe in Jesus. And make no mistake, it was the preincarnate Jesus who led the Israelites out of Egypt (Jude 1:5).

Remember the Israelites who for 40 years were in bondage, living in squalor and misery in Egypt, was just saved out of their slavery. They witnessed the Red Sea part before their eyes. They witnessed the POWER of God as the sea consumed the Egyptians pursuing them. Before this, they witnessed the power of God that Moses told Pharaoah of events that were about to happen, to the exact extent.

And yet, in the Wilderness just after this, they made themselves a golden calf and started worshipping it, almost immediately after their redemption from bondage. So not even the signs and wonders of God Himself could make them believe! This is a lesson in total depravity. Man left to the heart they are born with, will naturally reject the things of God, they are spiritually discerned (1 Cor 2:14).

Another example is the miracles of Jesus in the NT. He opened the eyes of the blind, cured the sick, cured the deaf, walked on water, calmed the sea, turned water into wine, and brought back the dead to life. Including Lazarus, who He brought back to life after 4 days of being in a tomb. These events were witnessed by the Pharisees and other religious leaders and the people of Israel in real time. They weren’t tales, but miracles right before their eyes. Now let’s look at total depravity with two examples.

Peter and Judas, called Apostles of Jesus were eye witnesses to all of Jesus’ miracles. No one could deny the most powerful miracle, Jesus brought back the dead to life, and they were right there witnessing these powerful events! An event only God could do. Then Peter went onto deny Jesus, 3 times just as Jesus prophesied, EVEN when Jesus told Peter he would deny Him. Judas went onto betray Jesus just as He prophesied, and disclosed to the Apostles including Judas. Both were fallen in nature, so their natural desire was to reject God EVEN UPON this witness they had!

So it is beyond reasoning when some claim that man doesn’t need to be regenerated/born-again FIRST in order have actual faith in Jesus. You simply would be like Peter before his regeneration, and Judas in his fallen nature if you claimed to follow Jesus without being born-again. It won’t take much for you to REJECT Him when pressed for your self-preservation!

The fact is Jesus could manifest His incarnation once again, perform many POWERFUL miracles in person, and He’d be swept aside by fallen man just as the Israelites did. This is the lesson of total depravity, which is the innate desire to REJECT the things of God, not to accept them, not to actually believe in Him.

I put it this way in the past, if the incarnate Jesus showed up at your door and said “follow Me”, meaning you’d leave your family, relationships, and career, sell everything, could you? If you weren’t born-again, you’d ask for more time, you’d ask question after question, you’d doubt Him, because this is NATURAL to the fallen nature. Don’t be deceived, many are merely just FANS of Jesus and I’d sadly say without equivocation that Elvis Presley has more devoted diehard fans than He does, again because of the TOTALLY DEPRAVED fallen nature of man and the lust for idolatry.

This is why Jesus said in John 3:3 that you cannot see the Kingdom UNLESS you are born-again. Some think they saw the Kingdom before that point, you are mistaken! Again, Peter and Judas ate with, slept with, traveled with Jesus in person, in real time, and they both rejected Jesus. Peter was then born-again, and only THEN he saw the Kingdom! Judas killed himself. So what makes you think you are somehow or were somehow more special? That you believed BEFORE God regenerated your heart? Or that man is not truly and totally depraved in that now man is not like mankind as I described in those Scriptural accounts?

If you get total depravity wrong, you will get the Gospel wrong, and you will unwittingly as well plant tares instead of seeds which lead to growth!

Satan, by his influence in the modern church has greatly confused the masses, and so-called Christians, and even some who are Christians as to when salvation took place. So instead of beating around the bush, I will answer the question, it took place on the Cross 2,000 years ago, when Jesus died and rose again 3 days later. When Jesus made the sacrifice, that is WHEN salvation took place, when He rose again that is WHEN the confirmation of His sacrifice was realized.

God is omniscient, all-knowing. Salvation then cannot be an on-going ideology or a process, it is was event which happened! This is VERY IMPORTANT to understand, because many have this idea that God has some sort of list and by your choice, you decide to be saved or not. Or that God is deciding like the ideology of Santa Clause who is “naughty or nice”. No! If saved, you were saved 2,000 years ago, that is WHEN Jesus paid your sin debt!

Roman Catholicism for example perverts this Gospel greatly by saying the sacrifice is still on-going, and by their blood-less sacrifice of the Mass, Catholics are gradually being saved. Others believe their salvation came at their desired point in time, “it was Janaury 1, 1991”, or some other date they believe their salvation took place and use this in their testimony. Or “it was when I was baptized on (such and such date)”. They are sadly mistaken! Now they MAY have been saved, but got the time frame wrong by either a humanistic approach or a preacher who led them to believe something different.

It is when God gives a rebirth, when you are born-again, that is WHEN you realize what Jesus did for you 2,000 years ago, that He saved you at that point in time. Your heart being turned on by God finally is made to understand the gravity of this. Your salvation happened on the CROSS, not sometime you chose, it was when God chose to save you from all eternity, paid for by Jesus, fully redeemed, and when the Holy Spirit came upon you, it is THEN you realized your salvation, that you were SAVED (past tense).

When God gives a rebirth, a regeneration, your heart and mind is changed, it is regenerated. And THEN you place your faith alone in Jesus, again realizing what Jesus did for you 2,000 years ago. If you aren’t placing your faith alone in Him, most likely you aren’t born-again and/or forgiven by what He did! Why? Because an unregenerated heart won’t have any faith in Jesus or place their faith alone in Him. Romans 8:7-11 is clear, one who has not been indwelled by the Holy Spirit will NOT have faith in Jesus, because they are incapable of doing so.

You might hear some say “you need to get saved”, and my response is “IF you have been saved, it was 2,000 years ago when Jesus paid your sin debt”. So there really is no “getting saved” or “I got saved” at some point in the present, because that salvation happened! It is when you are born-again, at that point the realization comes in, and you place your faith alone in Jesus, you realize you were SAVED, past tense, by His work.

Another IMPORTANT point to make in this, if salvation occurs when you freely choose, then the sacrifice Jesus made did not complete, it isn’t finished, and God would be no longer omniscient. Jesus would not KNOW who He saved or what sins He paid for when He died, again negating God being “all-knowing”.

Paul and Silas in Acts 16:30-31 told the Philippian jailer when he asked “what must I do to be saved”, their response was “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ”. Because just as I said, IF the jailer’s heart was turned on by God, he would place his faith alone in Jesus now realizing what Jesus did for him on the Cross, which is forgiveness of ALL his sin!

Again, this is VERY IMPORTANT to understand. If you desire salvation, believe on Jesus, believe in Him alone that He alone paid for each and every one of your sins, not now, but 2,000 years ago when He was tortured and died in your place on the Cross. Only THEN when you claim salvation, you can say you were saved by His sacrifice, NOT BY YOUR CHOICE, but His choice (past tense). Not by your self righteousness, but His perfect righteousness. Only then, you will realize what Paul was saying by “work out your salvation with fear and trembling” because of the ENORMITY in the cost of which Jesus purchased you by!

Psalm 147:5 Great is our Lord, and mighty in power;
His understanding is infinite.

It is human fallen nature to attempt to reduce God into another human being, albeit a very smart one, maybe the smartestest one, but the very false belief is the way He thinks, feels, and His knowledge is accumulated just like human beings.

The Psalmist above writes “His understanding is infinite”, which is a praise of His omniscience. God is ALL-KNOWING. There isn’t a thought you could dream up of which could be hidden from Him or known by Him before you even attempted to think it. He knows every action and inaction in human and world history down to very last detail, there is NOTHING He does not know.

If you get God’s omniscience wrong, you will get MANY things wrong on His doctrines!

And this is probably the major problem sinners have with God, that they cannot evade justice from Him as they would their own human authorities. In a court case, a criminal will hire a defense attorney who will try to convince a jury of their peers of reasonable doubt. Evidence or the lack thereof is produced, an argument is given, and since the jury does not have infinite understanding, but finite understanding, they make their decision accordingly.

God doesn’t work that way! He has all evidence of everything you did, you did not do, what you thought about, what even your thought process was, your rationalizations and justifications, your excuses, the exact time down to the very second. God NEVER learns, He knows everything of every single human being, His angels, and even Satan and his demons!

God is never reactive. Now in Scripture, by His grace, He entertains human beings or speaks to them at their level, but make no mistake He knows. It is like asking someone if they did something wrong, when you know they did, just to convict them.

Many think that they can manipulate God into believing in them, instead of believing in Him, by this false notion that God is like every other human being in their life. The Pharisees for example could deceive the masses by their religiousity, and solemn piosity, but they could never fool Jesus Christ who called them out all the time.

Jesus would share exactly what they were thinking, and the Pharisees scoffed as to believe Jesus was some sort of silly mind reader. But what they could not bring themselves to believe was that He was God in the flesh. Jesus was not merely reading their minds, He KNEW what they thought before they thought it. And there wouldn’t be anyone who could trip Him up because His understanding was infinite!

God knows each and every hair on your head down to the last number. He knows the exact second you awoke this morning, and if challenged could tell you how many breaths you will take today and how many beats of your heart will have. And not only you, but every created being there ever was! Contemplate and meditate on His knowledge and it will give you a better understanding of who He is and how world religions attempt to negate that knowledge.

Take the billion of the greatest and brilliant human minds all together, and they would not register on any scale against God’s knowledge! We will NEVER come close to understanding the full counsel of Him, but what we CAN understand is that He is ALL-KNOWING and thus apply that to our understanding of Him. It will give you a better grasp on what His revealed word in Scripture is teaching as well! The more you understand that He is omniscient, the more you are humbled before Him, the more you praise Him, the more you will submit to Him, the more you will stop trying to negate that knowledge for your useless finite thinking!