Editor’s Note
When reading Paul’s letters (especially in Romans), it’s easy to get bogged down in the language and depth of the content. Scripture that delves into our “walk with the Spirit” and our relationships to sin, flesh and the law can be daunting and difficult to decipher. Praise God for Norman Grubb, and others, who were able to take their God-given revelations and put them down for us in a way that we can understand and apply in our lives! This issue of The Intercessor features several articles that help illuminate scripture dealing with the role of the law in the Christian life.
Our “Q&A” and “Words to Live By” articles for this issue are a great place to start–each simply and clearly stating what the law is. In the “Q &A,” Page Prewitt then makes it come alive by sharing what her failure to keep the law revealed to her in her own life.
In our lead article “Law: God’s Grace?,” Norman Grubb breaks down what a right relationship to the law means in a victorious life, explaining that Paul “makes it as important to understand what it is to be dead to the law as to be dead to sin.” Most Christians still feel bound to try to keep the law after accepting Christ. In trying to be “good Christians” they are brought to make one of two choices to handle the fact that they can’t be. They either choose hypocrisy by pretending that they are succeeding, or they choose to be honest–bringing them to a Romans 7 experience. Regardless of which category you fall into, Norman biblically and logically lays out the fact that there is no independent human self apart from Christ that can keep the law.
“If ye are led by the Spirit, ye are not under law” (Gal 5:18). What does this mean? Norman expounds on this in our “Bible Bedrock” feature, in an excerpt from The Deep Things of God.
Continuing on, Carol Hoffman’s article “Closer to God: Impossible” touches on this theme as well. She explains how all of her efforts to be a “good Christian” in her church did not work. In reality, her view of her works bringing her closer to, or further away from God was just a lie.
This issue also continues with Part Two of the transcript of Scott Prewitt’s teaching on Body, Soul, and Spirit. In this interactive question/answer format, you can picture Scott in dialogue with a group of young adults. He interacts with his audience–shedding light on our make-up as persons, with scriptural references of who and what we are.
Another “must-read” is a personal testimony on the topic of singleness vs. marriage. In this world where the view of marriage can be so distorted, the author shares how she came to her Total Truth view of singleness, in this compelling letter to help a struggling friend. Married people do not exempt yourselves from reading this! How many of you married with a view of gaining completeness from your spouse? This article can be illuminating for you as well.
Our final mentions are of two letters written by our beloved Norman. One short personal letter offers a biblical view on the topic of physical suffering. The other, a letter to his “very dear Co-knowers,” spells out how our message differentiates from that of the mainstream Church: “We never had a human self by itself”!
Thank you for reading The Intercessor–God’s means for getting this message out to the world. We hope you glean a lot from it and that it helps you in your daily walk with Christ in you, as you. Enjoy!
