A pruned branch
Brother Edu 8-14-23
Pruned branches laying on the ground in a vineyard.
The wage of sin is death. When man first sinned, death became part of mankind. Therefore, the nature of the flesh is to sin and die. Quick or slow, we are all sinners and die. The more we sinned, the less we lived. The agents of death are the demons, to sin is to be enslaved by them. And the means of death are violence, starvation and/or disease. When we acknowledged the Law, we acknowledged that we must die like this. By our own means alone, we are given unto death forces. This is unavoidable. The only way to not sin is to be dead. In some unlawful times, even the righteous may die as mercy, that they may be prevented to be obliged to sin to live more and be spared of the corruption of the world.
Therefore, the first step to a safe and healthy life is a forgiving and repentant heart. Because as long as we are unforgiving and unrepenting, we are severed from Our Father and the body of Christ by sin, and we are given unto the demonic death forces of violence, starvation, and disease, becoming their instruments, their hijacked bodies. And their blood is poison. We are like a branch that has been pruned from a vine and decomposes on the earth, until we are grafted again into His vine. And if we have already become part of the body of Christ but still hold the circulation of His blood, we die too, for we already acknowledged that the old flesh must die, and the forces of death are doubly working against us. We become like a foot that has gone dormant because the blood circulation has been interrupted, no longer properly answering the body, stumbling on its own way and which, given enough time, will rot or step into a bear trap.
But Yeshua, the Messiah, has come to the world to give us eternal life. We are made righteous again when we commit in faith to the fact that His death received the wages of our sins in our place. By Him alone, we can repent from sin, be forgiven, and resurrect sinless. All that believe will be changed. But even before this, we are given an anticipation of this gift of a new life. If we believe AND forgive and refrain from sin after the flesh, we make ourselves as if dead for sin. Then we are given new life as if righteous, under His Grace. Then life no longer comes from our flesh, our body, by our own means alone. It then comes from His body. For if we are made like His bride, one body with him, not by the flesh, but by the spirit, then his life becomes our life. His body becomes our body and his blood becomes our blood by His Holy Spirit. As a finger is kept healthy by the blood of the body and a branch is kept healthy by the sap of the vine, we are kept healthy by the Holy Spirit the more spirit filled we are. Our temple receives his Glory, and we become His Church. A body to make His works.
After I wrote this this morning, He led me to:
Zechariah 14:10-12
"All the land shall be turned as a plain from Geba to Rimmon south of Jerusalem: and it shall be lifted up, and inhabited in her place, from Benjamin's gate unto the place of the first gate, unto the corner gate, and from the tower of Hananeel unto the king's wine presses.
And this shall be the plague wherewith YHVH will smite all the people that have fought against Jerusalem; Their flesh shall consume away while they stand upon their feet, and their eyes shall consume away in their holes, and their tongue shall consume away in their mouth."
And men shall dwell in it, and there shall be no more utter destruction; but Jerusalem shall be safely inhabited.