This article is the third in a series called Victory Over Sin and is part of the larger series, Fundamentals of the Faith.
In the first two articles, we discussed God’s victory over sin on behalf of the human race.
Adam’s original sin caused three different categories of sin to exist within the human race. In the first article we discussed God’s victory over Imputed Sin that caused the whole human race to come under eternal condemnation. The work of Christ in His death, burial and resurrection made atonement for man’s sin debt to God. In the second article we discussed the ministry of the Spirit who enables the believer to escape the domination Inherited Sin or the sin nature and empowers us to live the Christ-like life. In this final installment we will discuss God’s provision for recovery from the different kinds of Individual Sins we commit after salvation.
Individual Sin
Driven by Desire
God designed the human soul with needs that He intends to meet and needs that other humans can meet. We experience these needs as desires, longings and cravings that we are compelled to satisfy. As children, we had no awareness of God’s boundaries in which our desires are to be pursued. All we knew is what we wanted and believed that gratification of our wants was necessary for happiness. We developed strategies intended to persuade others to give us what we wanted, believing only that our satisfaction was important. In ignorance and without concern, by prioritizing our desires, we violated any and every boundary the Lord has given. Our every motive, thought, design, strategy, feeling and behavior has been committed to self rather than the Lord. Initially, we don’t practice evil by opposing God, we don’t even know about God. When we do learn of God, we try to enlist Him as the major source to further our plans to serve ourselves. Our total self-absorption and commitment to gratifying self is the essence of sin. It is with this mind-set that we practice individual sins.
3 Kinds of Individual Sin
Individual or personal sins come in 3 categories. The first is mental sins, sins of the mind. The second is sins that we say with our tongue and the third is overt sins that commit with our bodies. We use these 3 types of sins as our natural approach to life, thinking that they are appropriate and justified. Let’s look a little deeper at each of these types of sin.
Mental Sins
Mental sins are the motivators for every other kind of sin. What we think and feel motivates what we say and do. Examples of mental sin must begin with lust. Lust is unbridled desire pursued with no regard for and outside of God’s boundaries for fulfilling or normal needs. Many people think that the word “lust” only applies to our sexual desires, but in fact applies to many areas of life. We can lust for power, for wealth, for approbation, for recognition, for material possessions and many other lusts.
1 John 2:16 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world.
Lust is simply normal desire uncontrolled. As we discussed above, desire is the driving force in the human soul. Desire pursued without God, using our own means is sin and the root of all corruption in the world. Listen to Peter’s discussion about lust:
2 Peter 1:4 For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, in order that by them you might become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust.
Notice what Peter says that lust is the root cause of the corruption in the world. Desire pursued without God is sin and corrupts our hearts and minds. The next example of mental sin is the normal human reaction to having our lust frustrated. When we don’t get what we want, we become frustrated, angry, jealous or bitter. Believing that we have a right to what we want and view gratification of our desires as necessary for happiness, we react when we are denied. James, the brother of Jesus pointed this out in his book.
James 4:1-2 What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? Is not the source your desires that wage war in your members? 2 You lust and do not have; so you commit murder. And you are envious and cannot obtain; so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask.
James explains that when we are denied what we want, we react with anger, jealousy, mental murder and quarrels. We justify anger as normal and right because we were denied our desires. We believe that we are entitled to become bitter toward others who reject us or do not cooperate with our strategies. Jealousy, another mental sin fits well within this same scenario. Another type of mental sin is fear and worry. We fear that we will never have what we want or that we will lose what we have and result from a lack of faith in the Lord’s promise
Mental sins are the way we think about life when we don’t depend on God. We believe that gratification of desire brings happiness and we react with anger or fear when satisfaction is denied or possibly lost. Mental sins motivate every other area of sin and are part of the front line in the spiritual war.
Sins of the Tongue
What we think and feel motivates what we say. When our thoughts are virtuous, then we relate with our words with kindness by edifying others. When our thoughts are sinful, then we express ourselves with words that use, hurt or tear others down. The bible admonishes us to control our tongues and use them to help not hurt.
1 Peter 3:10 For, “Let him who means to love life and see good days Refrain his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking guile.
Examples of sins of the tongue are lying, deceitfulness, hurtful words, name-calling, complaining, gossip, maligning, slander and any verbal expression that is motivated to harm others.
Overt Sins
Mental sins also motivate overt sins. Overt sins are sins we do with our bodies. Violence, murder, stealing, adultery and drunkenness are a few examples of overt sins. These are the sins most preachers highlight and what the world thinks of as sin. As we have discussed, sin begins in the heart long before it is expressed outwardly. To avoid overt sins we must deal with the mental sins that motivate them.
Corruption
Mental, verbal and overt sins ruin our lives by corrupting our hearts and destroying our relationships. Mental sins unchecked lead to bitterness and hardness of heart that overflows into our words, tone and behavior. Those we once loved we now despise and they us. Had God not intervened, we would all live miserable, lonely lives. God has made provision that enables us to lay aside sin and walk in the Spirit.
God’s Provision for Individual Sins
Momentary Freedom from Sin
At the moment we believe the gospel of Christ and are saved, God forgives all the sins we have ever committed and cleanses us from their immediate effects. Also at this same moment, the Holy Spirit comes to indwell the believer’s body and fills his soul with the Spirit. For the moment, we are free from sin. At some point after salvation, the new believer will sin again, either mentally, verbally or overtly. When this happens, many believers face a serious crisis of what to do about their sin. Do we lose our salvation? If not, do we lose the filling of the Spirit? What does God want us to do now to recover from our sin? Let’s look at what some churches teach and then discuss the biblical view.
Recovery From Sin
A. Human Works – most churches believe that God requires some form of personal sacrifice from us to make up for our sins. Some prescribe penitence, which is a state of regret, guilt and contrition because of sin. These churches require that the saved sinner feel sorry for sin and even make a sign of their sorrow. Others teach public confession or at least private confession to a priest or pastor. In some churches, the end of the service is marked by members crying at the altar over their sins to gain forgiveness. Perhaps even an empty promise not to ever do it again as well will be suggested. Sadly, none of these prescriptions for being forgiven are biblical and serve only to confuse Christians about the significance of their sins. Let’s look at another option prescribed by God’s word.
B. Grace – Everything we receive from God is an expression of His grace earned for us by the work of Christ. First, we must remember that the post-salvation sins in question have already been paid for on the cross. They have already been named and forgiven in the courtroom of heaven. This is called Positional or Judicial forgiveness. When we commit sins post-salvation, we are not taken back to court because we are now God’s adopted children. Post-salvation sins come under the heading of Parental forgiveness. God as our parent requires that we confess our sins to Him to be forgiven for them.
1 John 1:9 If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Just as any parent looks for a truthful admission of guilt from children, so does God. When we commit sins after we are saved, We are commanded to admit our sins to God and He who is faithful to His word will forgive us (as a parent) and cleanse us from the unrighteous effects the sin has had on our souls. This is God’s grace in action. Having already Judicially dealt with our sins, He has made the sins of His children a parental issue that is dealt with through truthfulness with Him. Notice the Greek word homologeo means to admit the truth and carries no emotional content within the word. God does not require us to feel sorry, feel guilty or show remorse to be forgiven. When we do confess our sins, we not only are forgiven and cleansed from sin but we regain our fellowship with the Spirit, called the filling of the Spirit.
Filling of the Spirit
The Holy Spirit comes to indwell the believer’s body at the moment of salvation, making his body the temple of God. From this post He performs the ministry of filling the believer’s soul.
Ephesians 5:18 And do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit,
The filling of the Spirit is the absolute status of being surrendered to the influence of the Spirit. When the believer is filled by the Spirit, he is free from sin and its immediate influence. The filling of the Spirit is the work of the Spirit empowering the believer to function in the spiritual life. As long as we remain surrendered to His direction by choosing not to sin and listening to His voice, we continue to be filled with the Spirit. When we choose to sin, we take our lives out from under the Spirit’s influence and we lose temporal fellowship with Him. At this point we resume using our old sin patterns to manage our lives, as described above. If we continue in sin, we begin a process of degeneration that will lead us to the sin unto death, where God Himself takes us home.
When we decide to confess our sins, our faithful God forgives us, cleanses us and enters us back into the absolute status of being filled by the Spirit. The Holy Spirit immediately resumes His work of moving us along into spiritual growth and empowering the spiritual life. It is His power that makes the Christian life a supernatural life, far beyond anything human ability or will can accomplish.
Divine Discipline
Having read the grace plan of God for post-salvation sins above, many have complained that it is too easy and not costly enough to inhibit future sins. If all we have to do is admit our sins, then what will make us think twice the next time we decide to sin? Paul dealt with this same issue in Rome.
Romans 6:1-2 What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace might increase? 2 May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it?
Afraid of Grace
Many fear that our freedom from grace will remove all of the hindrances to sin in the believer’s life. If there is no fear of reprisal, then why not sin all we want and abuse grace? First, I have learned that all children abuse grace, including spiritual children. I have also learned that children grow out of this phase of life and come to love and appreciate those who give them grace. They turn and serve the same ones who trained them, forgave them, were patient with them and loved them in spite of their sins.
God, as a Father disciplines and trains His children for the purpose of growing them out of their sins. He uses very harsh methods at times to help us remember that sin will destroy our spiritual lives. Listen to the admonishment of the writer of Hebrews:
Hebrews 12:5 and you have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons, “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, Nor faint when you are reproved by Him; 6 For those whom the Lord loves He disciplines, And He scourges every son whom He receives.”
God reproves and God even scourges His children to teach them about the seriousness of sin. Scourging was the ancient act of beating a criminal with a metal tipped whip and skinning the hide from his back. This describes the intensive discipline that God uses to deal with resistant children. His training has a purpose that goes beyond avoidance of sin though. His goal is to train us in righteous living. In the same passage:
Hebrews 12:11 All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.
God trains His sinful saints to bring us to a place where we prefer a peaceful, righteous life with Him rather than a life of sin. We are able to avoid sin and live the spiritual life from love rather than fear. We are wise to fear God’s discipline but we are to trust His training to produce His righteous life in us through growth.
Summary
We have seen that mental sins motivate both verbal and overt sins and that believers commit these sins after they are saved. These sins will destroy the Christian life of the believer who allows them to dominate his life. God has made provision for us to be victorious over our sins through confession of sin, the filling of the Spirit and His divine training program. Confession brings us back under submission to the Spirit. The Spirit empowers us to process spiritual ideas and divine discipline is a training program that teaches us to love God and prefer the righteous life in Him more than the pleasures of sin. God overcomes our sins by His love and grace expressed through the ministry of the Spirit.
This article, Victory Over Sin 2 is the second of 3 articles dealing with God’s provision for sin and is part of the series Fundamentals of the Faith.
In the first article dealing with God’s victory over sin, we discussed the 3 types of sin. These are Imputed Sin, our judicial condemnation in Adam, Inherited Sin, the sin nature genetically transferred to all men and Individual Sin, the personal sins that result from being born sinners. We discussed the details of Imputed sin and the work of Christ in His death, burial and resurrection, that defeated sin for all of us. We saw the power of God through Christ that has resolved the judicial sin problem of the human race forever and His offer of grace that can only be accepted by faith.
In this second article we will discuss Inherited Sin and God’s solution to counteract the sin nature. We will see how the Spirit provides the means for us to live free from the influence of the sin nature. The death, burial and resurrection of Christ won a complete victory over the devil, his forces and the sins that have resulted from his deceiving influence. His victory extends to every area of the believer’s life and is accessed the same way we access His grace for salvation, by faith.
Col 2:6 As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him,
We received Christ by grace through faith (Eph 2:8-9) and in doing so, we were given victory over imputed sin. Victory over inherited sin and individual sin is given the same way, by grace through faith in the promises and provisions for the believer in time. Let’s look at inherited sin, the sin nature and God’s provisions for overcoming its corrupting influence.
Inherited Sin – The Sin Nature
Original Nature
In the creation, Adam/Eve were given a nature to love and serve their Creator. Their nature caused a desire to know God and please Him with their lives. They interacted with Him every day in the garden (Gen 3:8). He loved them and shared Himself with them on a daily basis. He created a perfect environment for them that they were free to enjoy with one exception, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Their food was provided without the struggle of thorns and thistles. They enjoyed the most perfect marriage the human race has ever seen. They were created perfect for one another, without sin, without childhood trauma, without an Old Man belief system and without anyone to compete for their affections. They had perfect souls, a perfect nature, they lived in perfect environment and enjoyed a perfect relationship with God. One day, a perfect life was not enough to satisfy Eve. She became discontent with God’s boundaries for her and opened herself to the devil’s deceptions.
Corrupted Nature
At some point, even perfection was not enough for Eve. For reasons undisclosed in the bible, she was not content with her life as the submissive servant of God and wife. She began to listen to the serpent/devil, who voiced an opinion that was contrary to God’s word. She believed his lies and ate the forbidden fruit. When she sinned, she took the fruit to her husband who chose to follow her rather than follow God. Eve was deceived and didn’t understand the significance of her choice, but Adam knew what he was doing (1Tim 2:14). When they sinned, the presence of sin caused their natures to be corrupted. In His creation of the universe, God made a law regulating the results of sin and evil (Isa 45:7). He decreed that sin would cause spiritual death (Rom 6:23). Spiritual death separates us from God and has a corrupting influence on the sinner. Sin enters us into a process of degeneration that eventuates in total destruction (Eph 4:17-19). When Adam sinned, God’s law of corruption went into effect and his nature was changed from a focus on God to a focus on self. Their new nature caused them to put themselves first before one another or God. This corruption has passed down to all of us. The sin nature causes us to love and serve self, building our beliefs on the foundation of putting ourselves first. The Old Man belief and behavior system that every human builds and uses has at its core a devotion to self. Our self-serving beliefs steer us toward individual sin as a way of managing out lives without God.
Deceptive Desires
The sin nature confuses us about how to meet our needs and find fulfillment in life. We experience our needs as longings and desires. We hunger within for love, affection, acceptance, belonging, accomplishment and recognition. All of these needs are provided perfectly in Christ by grace. Before we are saved, we are driven to find these things through relationships with people. The sin nature produces desires of the flesh and the mind. It also deceives us into believing that gratifying our desires will cause us to be happy, which is not true. Gratifying the desires produced by the sin nature, in the way the sin nature directs us, enters us into the degeneration process that takes us farther from God. Desire connected to the sin nature is called lust and when we believe that we can find happiness by gratification of lust, we are truly deceived.
God’s Provision
The Holy Spirit is the great influencer, teacher and mentor of the spiritual life. Based on the victory of Jesus in His death, burial and resurrection, the Holy Spirit has come to indwell the body of every believer. From within the believer’s body, His ministry is to reveal truth based on the word to influence the believer’s mind. What He reveals, we are responsible to believe and act upon with life decisions. When we listen to His voice, believe what He reveals from the word and act upon it, we move away from degeneration and toward God. In contrast to the sin nature, The Spirit also produces desires, the desires connected with intimacy with God. If we follow the desires of the Spirit, we will learn more about God, grow into our position in Christ and into a love relationship with God. The Holy Spirit is the counter to the destructive desire of the sin nature. He builds ideas that lead us toward God instead of away from God.
Galatians 5:16 But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. 17 For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please.
Walking in the Spirit is given as the means to avoid giving yourself over to the desire of the sin nature. The Spirit produces a counter desire that leads to intimacy with God. What is walking in the Spirit? It is simply seeing and listening to what the Spirit reveals as the will of God based on the word of God and believing it to act on it. The Spirit reveals the application of the word in the moment and brings it into conscious awareness. When we need the Spirit to show us God’s will, He does so and then we have to believe in that revealed will to act on it. The consistent choice to listen to the voice of and obey the Spirit is what is meant by walking in the Spirit. In the next article, we will discuss this in more depth. When you find yourself walking in the desires of the flesh through personal sin, remember to confess your individual sins and walk in the Spirit.
These are the study notes from the 2nd internet conference delivered on 3/8/09. Dr. Jim Brettell set up these bible classes using his internet expertise and his network of pastors and believers. Many thanks to Dr. Brettell. These concepts will be rewritten in the Transformation Workbook as it progresses.
Old Man – New Man: Lesson 2
The Old Man belief/behavior system opens our understanding of the difficulties of the Christian life after salvation and why we still consistently operate independently from God. The beliefs that each of us programmed into our OM were built when we were separated from God and simply seeking to find our way in life. All of us were simply looking for a way to have others love and care for us and to feel good about ourselves. We were seeking to meet the needs God designed us to have, yet without Him to meet them or even guide us about how to go about meeting them. The OM is the system that each of us constructed to make sense of our human experience and to find happiness in the harsh environment of the devil’s world, w/out God to help us. You might recall, before God was a daily presence in your life, you had another system you used to make life work for you, the OM. As we take off the OM within us, we are able to choose the NM in Christ so that the mind of Christ becomes the motivation and operating system we use to relate to life in the devil’s world.
Introduction
Important Questions & Considerations
1. If the Old man has been crucified with Christ (Rom 6:6) why do we still struggle with OM beliefs, selfish motives & have difficulty with relationships?
2. If the old has passed away and we are a new creation in Christ (2Cor 5:17) – why does the old way still have so much power in the lives of so many believers?
3. If the love of God has been totally poured out (perfect tense) into the heart of a believer (Rom 5:5), then why do so few truly experience His love and why do so many still feel unloved and even unlovable?
4. If the power that raised Jesus from the dead lives in us (Eph 1:19-20), why are we so weak, dominated by worldliness, materialism, anger and fear?
Christian Delimma
After salvation, spiritually growing believers become aware of a major inconsistency in their lives. Believers who do not grow remain oblivious to almost every spiritual issue except overt sinning. We read the promises about the abundant life and the admonitions to live the obedient life but we soon realize that we don’t have the capacity to produce it. We want to live the life the bible describes and we try our best to do so, but we consistently come up short. This “hypocrisy” might be the primary impression the unbeliever has about the church. Our inability to produce Christ like character in spite of our best efforts also creates an inner conflict in the soul. Most of us think we should be more spiritually inspired, be loving deeper, be feeling less anger or fear and we believe that everyone else is a more successful Christian. This is the inner experience of every growing Christian and this situation deserves an explanation.
Different denominations seek to explain the discrepancy between how we “ought” to live and how we actually do live with different biblical interpretations:
Charismatics – 2nd blessing that empowers the believer to be like Christ
Legalists – try harder: obedience, bible reading, prayer, church attendance & involvement
Lordship – decide to make Christ Lord of your life
Doctrinal – more knowledge of the truth, more information – Gnosticism
The questions and considerations above must be addressed and answered for us to understand what God really expects of us after we are saved. The Doctrine of OM-NM explains why we know how to live, have been given the power to live and yet fail to live the Christ centered life. This doctrine explains why we are still enslaved to our sin patterns after salvation and offers us a means of destroying the body of sin that we no longer live as slaves to sin (Rom 6:6).
Rom 6:6 knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, that our body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin;
Positional – API – OM crucified with Christ – simple past event
Practical – purpose clause – hina – purpose of crucifying OM with Christ
APSubj – future potential – potential point in the future – OM can be done away with
PAInf – Infinitive shows results – that we are no longer slaves of sin
· OM being crucified occurred at salvation as part of our union with Christ
· Doing away with beliefs/behaviors of OM has not fully occurred yet – potential
· Most believers & perhaps all to a degree still struggle with slavery to a sin patterns
The means of developing the capacity for the abundant life is connected with doing away with the body of sin so that we are no longer enslaved to sin. As OM is taken off (Eph 4:22), the NM can come online so we can use it to operate
This rest of this study will discuss the following concepts:
a) The distinction between the sin nature and the OM belief/behavior system
b) What is the OM BB system & what are some of its characteristics?
c) Why did the whole human race build this system & how did we build it?
A. Distinction between the sin nature & the Old Man belief/behavior system
What is the sin nature and what is the Old Man?
Sin Nature – phusis – natural bent, tendencies – that which one naturally does;
Rom 11:24 – wild by nature; Eph 2:3 – by nature, children of wrath; 2Pet 1:4 partake of the divine nature through the promises of God – NM has divine nature
We are not told the exact characteristics of A/E’s created nature. The following is my view of their original nature and what happened to it when they sinned.
a. Man was created with a human nature that naturally wanted to grow in knowledge, intimate love and devoted service to God.
b. Eve did not tempt herself to sin; her temptation came from outside of her
c. Sin corrupted their nature to naturally love and serve self, independent of God.
d. Sin nature causes us to put self first: self interest, self love, serving self
e. Sin nature corrupts the development of our belief system so that we believe that our needs are primary over God’s or anyone else.
f. Sin nature is not the immediate source of temptation or sin; it is a nature to serve the needs/desires of self that corrupts our ideas making sin a reasonable course.
g. The significant impact of the sin nature is its corrupting influence on our beliefs and relational strategies.
Old Man – the belief and behavior system that every human develops under the influence of the sin nature causing us to view the meeting of our own needs as primary.
a. The SN is inherited – the OM is built and developed
b. The SN is a genetic corruption – OM is a thought and idea system
c. The SN is biological – the OM is both biological and psychological
d. The SN is involuntary – The OM is involuntary but chosen by volition
e. The SN came from Adam – the OM comes from each of us
f. Adam is responsible for SN – OM is not our fault but our responsibility
B. What is the Old Man?
Man’s status and situation at birth based on Adam’s sin.
1. Man is born empty within, needing to be filled – needs Jn 7:37-39
2. Man is born separated from God, who alone is essential for +H – Jn 7:39
3. Man is born with a sin nature that enslaves him to sin – Rom 6:6
4. Man is born into the devil’s world which is designed to deceive – Eph 2:1-3
5. Man is born into a family of sinners who will can’t meet his needs
6. Man is born with no knowledge and has to figure it out for himself.
7. Man is born spiritually blind and unable to understand spiritual things 2Cor 4:3-4
8. Man develops a corrupted belief system aligned with worldly values Rom 12:2
9. Man seeks to meet his needs using his corrupted system- failure & pain Phil 3:1-4
10. Man’s failure and pain causes him to implement defense systems – Col 3:21
11. When man comes to Christ, his psychological state is corrupted and hopeless.
Old Man – Rom 6:6; Eph 4:22; Col 3:9 – the ideas, concepts, principles built as a system into the heart of the unbeliever that determine his views, attitudes, feelings, relational strategies and behaviors.
a. The OM is a belief system, a way of thinking about self, God, others & life.
b. OM is mankind’s self devised system for meeting his needs without God, w/out truth, in the devil’s world.
c. OM is the sum of the conclusions we reach about life on our own, w/out God.
d. The OM is built from the conclusions we reach from personal life experience.
e. Personal conclusions that are believed become part of our belief system.
f. W/out God, we are on our own to figure out how to find a little happiness and protect ourselves from the harsh realities of the devil’s world.
g. Sp death & blindness render us incapable of understanding truth from a spiritual perspective – only divine establishment principles
h. OM is a human system built on human viewpoint, based on human ability from personality & intelligence and operates independently of God.
i. OM continues to be built until we stop being influenced by anyone but God.
j. OM is not removed at salvation, but brought into the Christian life and remains our core operating system until its ideas are rejected, one at a time and replaced with NM ideas.
d. Characteristics of OM
a) OM operates on 2 primary directives – pursue pleasure and prevent pain
Pursue Pleasure – false belief that gratification of desires through pleasure = +H
Eph 4:22 – OM is corrupted by deceitful desires – false belief that gratification = +H
2Pet 1:4 – divine nature (NM) enables us to escape the corruption in the world by desire
· Pleasure, gratification, sense of fulfillment, success, victory, completion
· Gratification of sinful pleasure ß à Human good through success
Prevent Pain – false belief that pain is to be avoided at all costs through whatever means are practical or available
· Soul pain from primary love relationships – parents, peers, mates, children – use of psychological defense mechanisms – denial, repression, projection, addiction
· Physical pain from injury, disease, abuse – medicines
b) Core motivation in both OM & NM is desire – driven by desire
Eph 4:22; 2Pet 1:4 – OM is driven by desire, deceived & corrupted by desire
Gal 5:16-17 – conflict of desires between flesh and Holy Spirit
· Desire is the expression of normal need – love, sex, approval, acceptance, success
OM – Desire flesh deceives – gratification = +H à strategies for fulfillment
NM – Desire of Spirit – pleasure of God’s presence; desire for word, spiritual experience
OM – false strategies à failure à disappointment/pain à anger, fighting Jam 4:1-3
· Anger – frustrated desire à fight, manipulate others to change them
· Fear – not getting desire or losing what we have – fear of loss
NM – Godly strategies à supernatural peace, content, love à healthy relationships
· Peace – sufficiency in Christ; confidence in the future; never leave or forsake
c) OM is focused on earthly, worldly, temporal goals and possessions
OM ideas built w/out God and so are focused on gratification in this life
NM ideas built on Phase 3 eternity with God – frees us from details of life
d) OM measures success or failure by comparing self to others.
2Cor 10:12 – commending one another based on self-comparisons
· I am better than others – I know more, do more, etc
· Paul – Phil 3:4 – more reason for confidence in the flesh – better than others
NM – compares self to Christ & views self in Christ apart from human accomplishments
C. Why & How We Built OM Belief & Behavior System
a. All mankind is born separated from God because of Adam’s sin Rom 5:12.
b. All mankind is designed with needs we are compelled to have met.
c. Our deepest needs can only be met by God Jn 7:37-39.
d. Separation/God leaves us with the only option available – look to people
e. OM BB system is built around the core idea that man can meet man’s needs.
f. Man fulfilling man creates the illusion of independence from God
g. We are also born knowing nothing, needing to build a system of ideas that will enable us to meet our needs and make our way in the devil’s world.
h. We build our ideas one at a time, based on our own conclusions out of our human experiences, relationships and environment.
i. We build our ideas from the personal conclusions we reach based on experience.
j. Any conclusion that we believe and use to operate becomes part of the system.
k. The OM belief and behavior system is built by faith – by believing concepts
l. Any idea that is believed and integrated into the system works unconsciously, under the level of awareness, influencing every other idea in the system.
m. We build our ideas about relationships using concepts of conditional love/regard
Love to be loved; give to get back; evaluate self worth from what others think of us; base worth on human characteristics – looks, personality, ability
n. We build our ideas w/out God’s presence to fulfill our souls or His guidance from truth to steer us into right thinking.
o. The OM system is man’s attempt to solve his own problem of being born alone in the devil’s world, without God.
The system we build is need driven, man centered, self advised and uses conditional relating to determine self worth. It is built independent of God and pleases Him in now way and not at all. It must be done away with and replaced with the ideas of the NM in Christ as taught in the NT scriptures.
Bobby Joiner sent this in his Jesus Cafe’. I thought it was worth posting. The link to Bobby’s daily e-mail is on the main page of this site.
What LOVE means to 4-8 year old children . . .
Slow down for three minutes to read this. It is so worth it. Touching words from the mouth of babes. A group of professional people posed this question to a group of 4 to 8 year-olds, ‘
“What does LOVE mean?”—the answers they got were broader and deeper than anyone could have imagined. See what you think.
Rebecca- age 8—“When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn’t bend over and paint her toenails anymore. So my grandfather does it for her all the time, even when his hands got arthritis too. That’s love.’
Billy—age 4—“’When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different.
You just know that your name is safe in their mouth.”
Karl—age 5—“ Love is when a girl puts on perfume and a boy puts on shaving cologne and they go out and smell each other.”
Chrissy—age 6—“ Love is when you go out to eat and give somebody most of your French fries without making them give you any of theirs.”
Terri—age 4—“ Love is what makes you smile when you’re tired.”
Danny—age 7—“Love is when my mommy makes coffee for my daddy and she takes a sip before giving it to him, to make sure the taste is OK.”
Emily—age 8—“Love is when you kiss all the time. Then when you get tired of kissing, you still want to be together and you talk more. My Mommy and Daddy are like that. They look gross when they kiss.”
Bobby—age 7—“ Love is what’s in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen.” (Wow! Wish I could take credit for that one!)
Nikka—age 6—“If you want to learn to love better, you should start with a friend who you hate.” (go Nikka!—we need a few million more Nikka’s on this planet)
Noelle—age 7—“’Love is when you tell a guy you like his shirt, then he wears it everyday.’
Tommy—age 6—“’Love is like a little old woman and a little old man who are still friends even after they know each other so well.”
Cindy—age 8—“During my piano recital, I was on a stage and I was scared. I looked at all the people watching me and saw my daddy waving and smiling. He was the only one doing that. I wasn’t scared anymore.”
Clare—age 6—“ My mommy loves me more than anybody .You don’t see anyone else kissing me to sleep at night.”
Elaine—age 5—“ Love is when Mommy gives Daddy the best piece of chicken.”
Chris—age 7—“Love is when Mommy sees Daddy smelly and sweaty and still says he is handsomer than Robert Redford.”
Mary Ann —age 4—“ Love is when your puppy licks your face even after you left him alone all day.”
Lauren—age 4—“ I know my older sister loves me because she gives me all her old clothes and has to go out and buy new ones.”
Karen—age 7—“ When you love somebody, your eyelashes go up and down and little stars come out of you.’ (what an image)
Mark—age 6—“ Love is when Mommy sees Daddy on the toilet and she doesn’t think it’s gross.”
Jessica—age 8—“ You really shouldn’t say ‘I love you’ unless you mean it. But if you mean it, you should say it a lot. People forget.” (amen!)
All of these were pretty good, but the winner was a four year old child whose next door neighbor was an elderly gentleman who had recently lost his wife. Upon seeing the man cry, the little boy went into the old gentleman’s yard, climbed onto his lap, and just sat there. When his Mother asked what he had said to the neighbor, the little boy said, ‘’Nothing, I just helped him cry.”
Old Man – New Man
Isaiah 28:10 For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little:
Belief Systems
1. The human soul operates using a belief system to determine our views, motives, feelings and behaviors.
a. Definition – assembly of associated ideas & principles joined together to form a system to determine our viewpoints, philosophies, attitudes, feelings & behaviors.
b. God designed the human soul to form and operate using a belief system.
c. Our belief system is formed out of our life experiences by the conclusions we reach & believe based on personal experience.
d. Our belief system is formed from whatever ideas we believe to be true.
e. What we believe controls how we view life experience and the relational strategies we develop to meet our God designed needs.
f. What we believe controls how we feel and behave in our relationships.
g. Old Man (OM) belief systems are built on human viewpoint while New Man (NM) belief systems are built from divine viewpoint.
2. God’s purpose for church age believer is to glorify Him through the New Man belief and behavior system enabled by the ministry of the Holy Spirit.
Glorify: doxazo – to make manifest God’s character and qualities causing praise, honor, respect to be directed toward Him.
a. In the church age (CA), the believer is enabled to form the mind of Christ within his own soul & operate from Christ’s same beliefs, motives, attitudes & behaviors.
b. The mind of Christ built and functioning in the soul of the believer is called the New Man (NM)– Eph 4:24; Col 3:10
c. The mind of Christ is assembled in the heart of the believer by learning and believing accurate categories of bible doctrine – pieces of truth
d. When the New Man (NM) is assembled, the believer’s soul then contains the same beliefs that Jesus used to live His earthly incarnation.
e. The NM is the beliefs, attitudes, viewpoints and behavior system provided to the humanity of Jesus for His earthly life.
f. NM function in/through the believer’s soul produces the character of Christ through the believer’s life bringing awareness of and praise to the essence of God.
g. The Church Age believer glorifies God by building NM beliefs in his soul and using NM behaviors to live his life, thereby exposing the character of Christ to the world.
h. Mechanics: perception & application of categorical bible doctrine
3. The CA believer is commanded to submit to a growth process called transformation.
Romans 12:2 Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is– his good, pleasing and perfect will.
a. The believer is commanded to choose between 2 systems of thinking.
· Conformity to the world – cosmic system of Satan – Old Man (OM)
· Transformed to be like Christ – NM belief & behavior system
b. The progressive present + me means to stop something already in progress, which is described as conforming to the age (aion) – common pattern of the times.
c. The passive voice indicates submission and/or allowing yourself to be influenced by 2 different system’s of thought.
d. Conforming to the world refers to the first belief system built by the unbeliever the bible calls the Old Man (OM).
e. From birth until the new birth, the unbeliever is unable to process spiritual phenomena and therefore unable to understand spiritual truth – only LDE.
f. From birth to the new birth (and beyond), the unbeliever builds a belief system by which he operates out of what he can understand – human logic, worldly philosophy, Satanic philosophy.
g. Notice that the believer is commanded to stop building the OM belief and behavior system as the first order of business in the transformation process.
· Functioning in NM requires more than building NM thinking in the soul
· Operating in NM requires that we stop using OM logic first.
h. Building NM, or being transformed is accomplished by renewing our thoughts.
· Renewing the beliefs by which we evaluate life experience and choose strategies to relate to others.
4. In Eph 4:22-24, Paul describes this same process involving 3 steps.
Ephesians 4:22-24 That ye put off with reference to your former conduct the old man, which is being corrupted according to its deceitful lusts; 23 And be renewed in the spirit of your mind; 24 And that ye put on the new man, the one after God having been created in righteousness and holiness from the truth.
Take off – Renew mind – Put on
a. There is a taking off action – apotithemi AMInf – take off clothing
b. We are instructed to take off the OM belief and behavior system we developed as unbelievers without God’s influence in our lives.
c. The OM’s root motivation is desire and these desires cause a deception in our belief system – build false strategies to meet our needs/desires.
d. Renewing the mind – building the NM belief/behaviors through knowledge of truth
e. There is a putting on action – enduo AMInf – make the NM our operating system
f. NM is according to God – the beliefs and behaviors of Christ – divine viewpoint
g. NM is created to produce righteous and holy living
h. NM is created from truth – built by pieces of truth assembled in the soul.
5. Building the OM Belief and Behavior system.
a. Fall of Adam has caused mankind to be born spiritually dead & separated from God – Rom 5:12; Eph 2:1
b. All mankind is born without a relationship with God, without access to God’s truth.
c. All mankind is born without understanding and ideas to live in the devil’s world.
d. Man’s dilemma at birth: spiritually dead, eternally condemned, w/out access to truth, w/out knowledge, with compelling needs, sin nature, sinful parents, in the devil’s world.
e. Man begins to form his ideas at birth and builds his beliefs from experience.
f. W/out God & truth, all of the ideas we build are human viewpoint and false in the context of spiritual world.
g. Unbeliever is able to use LDE as beliefs but unable to process spiritual ideas.
h. All of us build a system of beliefs designed to pursue our needs and make our way in the harsh environment of the devil’s world.
i. The OM belief and behavior system is the system we build based on experience, w/out God or truth, built on human viewpoint.
j. This system controls our viewpoints, motives, attitudes, feelings & behavior patterns.
6. The impact of the sin nature on our belief system.
a. In truth, the universe is centered around God, His purposes and His principles.
b. The sin nature corrupts the human soul by causing us to see ourselves as the center.
c. As infants, we see ourselves as the only important person – about my needs.
d. We build our beliefs on the idea that meeting my needs is the universal mission.
e. Our OM beliefs not only contain false ideas but are built on false self importance.
f. Nothing in the OM BB system is acceptable to God or serves His purpose.
7. The OM BB system is carried with us into the Christian life.
a. At salvation, only a small part of our belief system is exchanged for truth – gospel.
b. After salvation, we retain the core ideas of the OM – motives and strategies for attaining happiness.
c. After salvation, we use God to achieve our OM motives and methods.
d. After salvation, we build NM ideas into the soul and seek to implement them by human will.
e. OM beliefs do not lose power to influence because we still believe the ideas we believed before – must be taken off by no longer believing them.
This article Victory Over Sin (1 of 2) is part of the series Fundamentals of the Faith.
The next 2 articles will explain 3 types of sin that resulted from Adam’s original sin (AOS). Every member of the human race is born into these 3 types of sin and if allowed, our sin will destroy us and send us to an eternity without God. All of us are both victims because we inherited Adam’s sin and agents because we choose to practice our own. God does not desire that any of us remain victims of sin and has made perfect provision to free us from Adam’s sin and guilt. He has also made a way for us to change our desires so that we want Him more than the pleasures of sin.
God has defeated sin and its results for the whole human race. In the following 2 articles we will discuss 3 types of sin and what God has provided so that we can live free of sin in the Christian life. In this first article, we will present the 3 types of sin, focus on the first category of sin and explain God’s provision that He offers to give us victory.
3 Types of Sin
There are 3 types of sin that resulted from Adam’s sin. When Adam sinned, he came under eternal condemnation from God’s Justice, experienced the corruption of his created nature and began to practice his own individual sins. The human race has inherited all 3 categories of sin that Adam experienced in the garden.
The first type of sin is imputed sin, which means that Adam’s sin and condemnation has been credited to the whole human race. When Adam sinned and came under condemnation, it was as if we all sinned and were condemned (Rom5:12-21).
The second type of sin is inherited sin, which is theologically termed the sin nature. The sin nature is the corruption of Adam’s original nature to love and serve God. He created Adam and Eve with a natural desire for a relationship with Him. The presence of sin caused their natures to be corrupted with the result that they naturally loved and served themselves. Their new nature put self first over God and one another.
The third type of sin we face is individual sin, the personal sins that we all commit even after salvation. Individual sin is committed in 3 areas, mental sin, sins we think, verbal sin, sins we say and overt sins, sins we do with our bodies.
In this first article we will examine Imputed Sin and God’s grace provision for us to overcome it and be secure in Christ forever.
Imputed Sin
Adam/Eve – Condemned by God
When Adam/Eve sinned by disobeying God’s command (Gen 3:6), they became unrighteous and lost their righteous standing with God. God who is perfect righteousness was forced to condemn their sin and cast them out of His presence (Gen 3:22-24). Their unrighteous status not only had the immediate resullts of being cast out but also had the eternal consequences of condemnation. Condemnation requires that God separate Himself from the condemned forever. Those who die without Christ will be thrown in the Lake of Fire forever (Rev 20:15; Mt 25:41).
Imputation
The word imputation, Grk logizomai, means to credit to one’s account. If I place money in your bank account, that is an imputation. If I charge a debit to your account, that is an imputation. God uses imputations in a legal manner when dealing with sins. He debits us with Adam’s sin and then debits Christ with everyone’s sin. Imputation is the key to understanding salvation and our security in Christ.
Imputation of Adam’s Sin
We were all born under Adam’s condemnation (Rom 5:12-21). The imputation of his sin and condemnation is the reason that all men must be saved and why no one is good enough to save himself. Jn 3:36 explains that if we reject Christ, we remain under God’s condemnation, not enter into it, because we were credited with it in Adam. He imputes Adam’s sin to the whole human race making us all guilty in Adam. Even though we didn’t commit Adam’s sin, we still are credited with his sin and its consequences. While this may not seem fair, it is actually more than fair, it is a grace gift. By condemning us all in Adam, God made us all sinners needing a savior. Now He can offer us grace based on His work and not based on our own.
Imputation of All Sins to Christ
The work of Christ in His death, burial and resurrection satisfied the Justice of God with regard to our sins. This satisfying of God is called propitiation. Having been satisfied with Christ’s payment, He could remove our guilt, which is called expiation. His work on the cross propitiated God for all sins, from Adam’s down to the last sin to be committed by the human race. On the cross, God the Father imputed our sins to Christ and punished Him for them. He imputed Adam’s sin to us, and then imputed all sins to Christ. He paid for sins past and sins in the future. He paid for sin period and satisfied God’s Justice period. Just as imputation caused us to be condemned, so it is God’s tool for removing our condemnation. More than fair, God is gracious to impute our sins to Christ on the cross and Christ to accept the mission to pay for them.
Imputation of Divine Righteousness
When we believe the gospel to accept Christ as our personal savior, we are placed into a permanent and eternal union with Him. We are connected to Him forever. We are connected to His person, His work, His position, His possessions and His destiny. Everything Christ is and everything He possesses He shares with those who trust in Him.
One of the things Christ shares with us through our union with Him is His righteousness.
On the cross, our sins and guilt were imputed to Him satisfying God’s Justice and expiating our guilt. When we believe in Him, we are credited with His propitiating and expiating work for us. At that same moment, the righteousness of God is imputed to those who believe. Paul taught about imputations this way:
2 Corinthians 5:21 He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
Paul says that Jesus who committed no sin of His own, had our sins imputed to Him on the cross and in turn, when we believe, His righteousness is imputed to us. He accepts our sins to pay for them and we receive His divine righteousness. He takes our guilt and gives us His righteousness. It is this imputation of divine righteousness that makes us worthy for God to bless us forever. Without it we would remain unrighteous in Adam and God would be forced to maintain our condemnation. This is the fate of those who reject Christ.
Summary
Adam’s disobedience caused condemnation to fall upon the whole human race. His sin also caused 3 categories of sin to come into existence. The first, our subject, is Imputed Sin, which is the crediting of Adam’s sin and guilt to all mankind. God bound up all sin in all of us into one account so that He could deal with it in one way. He imputed Adam’s sin to us and then imputed all sins in the account to Christ. Christ, who never sinned, accepted His mission to pay for sin on the cross and allowed our sins to be imputed to Him. When they were credited to Him, God-Father punished Him for them. When they had all been paid for, God’s Justice was propitiated (satisfied) and our guilt had been expiated (forgiven). God offers the work of Christ to all as a free gift that can only be accepted by faith. He refuses to accept any of man’s work added to His own. When we believe in the gospel, the death, burial and resurrection of Christ, His work is imputed back to us, along with His own righteousness. When we receive His righteousness through our union with Him, we become worthy of God’s blessing forever. We have been judicially forgiven and pronounced judicially righteous in the courtroom of heaven. We will never be judicially charged with our sins again.
The imputation of our sins to Christ who paid them in full, resolved the judicial issue of sin with the Justice of God. When we believe in Him, we pass the point of salvation and the eternal punishment for sins is never brought up again. The judicial sin issue has been settled and no longer applies to the believer. Yet, even as believers in Christ and members of God’s Royal Family, we still have a sin nature and commit personal sins. In the next article we will discuss how the cross has given us victory over these other 2 types of sin. We will discuss the questions, “why do I still sin” and “how do I recover when I do sin”.
This article, The Plan of God C is the third dealing with this topic and the first in the series, Fundamentals of the Faith.
Birth___1_____Salvation_____2________Death______3________
Review: Phase 1 & Phase 2
The plan of God can be broken down into 3 phases so that we can understand what God is doing at each stage of our lives and what He expects of us at each stage. We have discussed Phase 1, which begins at birth and ends at our new birth. Phase 1 is focused on God bringing us to saving faith in Jesus Christ. First we wonder if God exists and then we ask who He is and how we come into a relationship with Him. When we believe that He exists, He sends the gospel so that we can be saved through faith in the gospel of Christ.
When we believe the gospel, we enter into Phase 2 of God’s plan called the Christian life. From salvation until we leave this life at death, we live out Phase 2 as God’s children and representatives. The focus of this phase is growth from spiritual childhood to spiritual adulthood. In spiritual adulthood we gain the inner strength to faithfully endure the adversities of life by trusting the promises of God. As mature believers we begin taking the adult responsibilities of edifying one another and witnessing to the world by sharing the gospel. The mature Christian receives spiritual blessings in time that equate to eternal rewards in heaven. It is our experience in the eternal state with Christ that is the focus of Phase 3 and the rest of this article.
Phase 3
Phase 3 begins the moment we leave this life through death or rapture and extends throughout all eternity. Phase 3, which is life with God in the next life never ends. This article will discuss what happens when we enter Phase 3. We are immediately transferred to the throne room with Christ, we will experience an evaluation and then we will receive our resurrection body with or without rewards.
Face to Face
God designed us with a body, soul and spirit. The body is a house that holds our soul and spirit. Paul calls it an earthly tent that we will shed at the moment of physical death. When the body dies, the soul and spirit of the believer continue to live. At the moment of death, we are immediately taken to be with Christ.
2 Corinthians 5:6-8 Therefore, being always of good courage, and knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord– 7 for we walk by faith, not by sight– 8 we are of good courage, I say, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord.
While we remain alive in our earthly body, we are away from the Lord. When we leave our earthly body behind, we go home to be with the Lord. In what form or state we exist at this point is unclear. We have shed our earthly body and have yet to be given a body like Christ. It makes sense that we will be given an interim body of some kind while we wait on the resurrection where we will receive our resurrection bodies. Regardless, our souls will leave Phase 2 and find ourselves face to face with the Lord, waiting on the Judgment Seat of Christ.
Judgment of the Believer
At the moment of the rapture, all Church-Age believers will be gathered together in the presence of Christ. This point in time coincides with the beginning of the Tribulation on the earth, which will last for 7 years. Sometime within this 7-year period, Christ will perform an evaluation of every believer’s earthly life called the Judgment Seat of Christ. This evaluation will examine all of our works as Christians and expose our motivation for the good that we did. Good works performed by the power of the Spirit to glorify God will be deemed as truly good and will render a reward. Good works performed through human ability to promote ourselves will be seen as “human good” and will not be rewarded. This evaluation process is described as a fire where human good will be burned up and true good will remain (1Cor 3:12-15). When this judgment of our works is finished we will receive our rewards that will last for all eternity. Our eternal status will be determined by the way we lived in time, emphasizing the importance of living for the Lord now.
Resurrection Body
Our earthly bodies inherited the corruption of Adam’s sin so they get sick, grow old and die. At death, our perishable body goes to the grave where it decays back into dust from whence it came (Gen 3:19). At our resurrection, we are given a new body that will be like the body Christ received, that is imperishable (Phil 3:21). This body will never get sick, grow old, never hurt and never die. This new body will be physical, able to be touched (Lk24:38-40) and able to eat (Lk24:41-43). It will also have new abilities like the capacity to move through walls (Jn20:26) and the ability to fly (Act 1:9). The resurrection body will be or new home forever and is the mansion Jesus described In Jn 14:2. It will give us the capacity to serve the Lord in the eternal stage that awaits us in the next life.
Summary
God has a plan to bring us to salvation through faith in Christ in the first phase. In the second phase, He changes us into the image of Jesus in our hearts through spiritual growth and offers us the privilege of serving Him with or earthly bodies. As we trust and obey His will in the second phase of the plan, we receive temporal blessings that build eternal rewards. At our physical death, we pass into the presence of the Lord where we will remain with Him forever. It is in this eternal state that we receive our rewards and a resurrection body like His.
These 3 phases of God’s plan give us an outline of our personal history from birth, to death and beyond. This big picture look allows us to know God’s emphasis for each phase of life so that we can align our efforts with His for maximum effectiveness. If you are reading this now, you are most likely in Phase 2 and the emphasis is growth through knowledge and application of God’s word. Be Faithful!
This was written by Gene Cunningham with whom I share many values. His discussion about materialism and his recent experience with those who have nothing material is refreshing and desperately needed by we who have been given so much. We possess so much that we are drowning in it, clinging to it and grieving the possible loss of it. I say, let it go. It means nothing, adds nothing that is real and our hunger for it brings a grunt of disgust from the lips of Jesus. Let it go, back to its source to be used to deceive some other foolish, misdireceted and empty Christian who believes it is necessary for happiness. Thanks Gene for speaking so clearly and well.
Al
February 2009
Solid Preparations for an Uncertain Future
Part One
While we were in Papua New Guinea we were cut off from all news. For two weeks I taught the book of Romans to the graduate students, while Nan took women’s and children’s classes. The last week we “saddled up” with our backpacks and trekked village to village, through some amazing triple canopy jungle, visiting outlying churches. The so-called modern world seemed very remote indeed.
Meeting Frank the hunter
One personal highlight was meeting Frank, a renowned hunter, who often sets off into the jungle for a week or two, with his dogs and spears, to hunt wild pig and cassowary. Nan and I sat in his hut, with the fire smoking and Frank eating baked yam, surrounded by his wife and family, as he told of his hunts and hunting methods. A strong Christian, Frank had one request. He said, “I have only a New Testament, and I need a whole Bible so I can study the entire word of God.” Frank had been challenged by a class Logan Carnell had taught in the village church, and expressed a desire to learn to better “live by faith”. I was able to leave Frank not only a Bible, but also passed on to him my Cold Steel Bushman knife, promising that I would bring him a pig spear blade made by the same company when I returned (on the provision that he would take me on a pig hunt). When we parted he whispered to me, “Don’t forget pig spear!”
A radical contrast
Imagine living for weeks with people who wrest their survival from the jungle with only a machete and a spear, then returning to a world of billion-dollar bailouts. We left Frank’s family of seven, who live in a thatched-roof hut of two rooms, with a total of possessions that could easily be carried by one person, to frantic television reporting of people in America, bleating into the camera, “We need financial help to keep our car, our house, our furniture”, etc. Another was quoted saying, “I’ve got to have my own kitchen, bathroom, bedroom…”and so on. I do not deny that many are facing hard times, but rather I want to emphasize a difference in mindset of what is essential, and of self-reliance versus the modern attitude of helpless dependency.
Finding sufficiency in unstable times
All of this narrative brings me to think on a question often asked, “How can we prepare for an increasing dismal looking future?” I pondered this question quite a bit during our travels, and would like to offer, not what I think others should do, but what I have come to as my own approach. I personally believe we are entering a time of testing that may well surpass the Great Depression. I fully realize that I could be wrong, but my philosophy has always been, “Hope for the best, prepare for the worst, and be ready for anything”. If I prepare for the “worst-case scenario” I should, A Fortiori, be ready for any lesser conditions. So the big dilemma is, how to proceed and what preparations/provisions do I need. My criteria, I decided after visiting Frank, must be based on a true perception of the word “need”. Though my though ts and theories will no doubt continue to be refined, I offer some ideas reached so far in my own pursuit, and they may surprise you!
The cord of three strands
“Two are better than one…for if they fall, one will lift up his companion.
But woe to him who is alone when he falls, for he has no one to help him
up…Though one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him.
And a cord of three strands is not easily broken.” Ecc.4:9-12
This passage spoke to me years ago, during a time of great personal struggle. At the time it gave me much strength and wisdom, and its implications have resurfaced repeatedly in times of need. Read the entire passage, and note that the author speaks of “two” who meet adversities together, then concludes with the axiom about the three-fold cord. How did Solomon get three out of two? I am convinced he was introducing the necessity of faith in One who is unseen. By doing so he reminds us of the providential care of God, and of His unfailing presence with those who entrust themselves to His care. Now let’s apply the principle to the question at hand, with three distinct levels of preparation.
Level one
At the most fundamental level of my preparations, I must consider the extreme possibility of facing the worst adversities armed with nothing but a full heart and empty hands. To fail to account for this grim possibility is to deceive myself about how precarious is our existence and how fragile our civilization. Many in history have been confronted with this bleak scenario. How can I be sure I will not? I remember years ago seeing a poster with the image of an American Green Beret on it. He was wounded, bandaged roughly, but with fists clenched, staring out of the picture with an orange sun rising out of the mists behind him. He was devoid of arms or equipment, just himself. The heading under the picture read, “Your mind is your ultimate weapon”. It is this condition I must face at the very bed-rock level of preparation. For such a seemingly hopeless situation I would want three things.
1. A storehouse of scripture hidden in my heart. This means Bible memorization, for my Bible can be taken from me, but the storehouse of my heart cannot be plundered. So learned the author of Psalm 119, whom I take to be a young captive of Israel, taken on the death-march to Babylon. I must therefore prepare by a disciplined memorization of Scripture.
2. A strong and resilient faith. I remember in the first Rambo movie, after he had escaped capture, evaded forces sent to apprehend him, and with only his knife worked havoc with snares and traps laid for his pursuers. His former commanding officer made the statement, “He is resilient, isn’t he?” Like Rambo’s skills, resiliency of faith does not come overnight. It is developed by daily, determined practice. The book of James teaches us that every little or large trial is an opportunity to develop a resilient faith. We need to face each day’s troubles with the certain knowledge that we are in the gymnasium, preparing for greater battles. Somewhere in one of my old Bibles, near a passage where Paul speaks of his sufferings, I have written a quote from the old stoic philosopher, Epictetus. He said, as I recall “When you find yourself facing some great adversity, then be sure that God, the great coach, has paired you with a worthy adversary, so as to prepare you for victory in the Great Games.” Today’s trials, great or small, are opportunities to build strength for some greater test tomorrow.
3. A genuine daily fellowship with Jesus Christ. We must get over the spoiled-child mentality of asking, when trials come, “Where is God when I need Him”, or, “Why does God not hear my prayers.” These are spiritually immature statements. We have absolute assurance in the promises, “I will never leave nor forsake you”, and “Whatever you ask, believing, you will receive”. If we live in a daily growing relationship with our Savior, His presence alone is all we need in troubled times. This mature approach to the evils of life is best expressed by Paul, who said, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” Paul’s consistent victories on the battlefield of life were won through the conviction that he was never alone, though often forsaken by men. In Jesus Christ he found the c onstant companionship and all sufficient source of strength to meet adversity.
If I have nothing but empty hands and a full heart, I can face whatever the future may hold. This should give great comfort, for there is nothing here too expensive for even the poorest of men to buy. As the prophet Isaiah said so long ago, in Isa.55:1-3.
“You who have no money, come buy and eat. Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why do you spend money for what is not bread, and your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen to Me, and eat what is good, and delight yourself in abundance. Incline your ear and come to Me. Listen that you may live; and I will make an everlasting covenant with you according to the faithful mercies shown to David.”
This is the spiritual “final option” for every believer. It is the true bottom line for facing whatever may come. With it Daniel and his friends overcame the greatest earthly kingdom in history. Starting as helpless slaves, stripped of all outside supply or support, they overcame every obstacle, until their Lord was honored in the kingdoms of Babylon and Persia. These resources sustained men and women facing incredible hardships through the span of Israel’s history (Heb. 11:32-40). And, since I have taken so much space with the first level of preparation, I will save the next two for a later posting.
Stay faithful, and stand firm!
Gene Cunningham
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This article, The Plan of God 2 is the b section of the first subject in the series Fundamentals of the Faith.
The Plan of God is best viewed in 3 phases. Phase 1 begins at birth and ends at salvation. Phase 2 begins at salvation and ends at death. Phase 3 begins at death and continues forever in the eternal state.
Phase 1
The Plan of God A, discussed Phase 1 which begins at human birth and ends at our new birth/salvation. During Phase 1 the first goal is to reach the state of God consciousness, the stage of life where man decides what he believes about God’s existence. At God consciousness, we must choose to believe in a Creator-God or reject His existence. If we believe that God exists. Then He moves us to the next step of hearing the gospel. If God exists, then it makes sense that He has made a way to redeem us from the condemnation of Adam’s sin. The work of Christ in His death, burial and resurrection provides the sacrificial atonement that satisfies God’s Justice on our behalf. When we believe the gospel, God saves us and enters us into Phase 2, the Christian life.
Phase 2
At the moment of salvation, we enter into a new phase of spiritual life. At that moment, God takes 50 different actions on our behalf that are permanent and eternal. These 50 things change us from our position in Adam and transfer us into union with Christ. We now share all that Christ is, all the positions He holds and all the wealth He possesses. Also we share His power through the ministry of the Spirit enabling us to live out His victory over the forces of evil. Our life on earth as God’s children can be characterized as overcoming and winning in every aspect of life.
Spiritual Growth
From our new birth until the day we die, God wants us to express His character through our lives to bring glory to Him. He has provided the means for us to grow spiritually, transforming our old ideas into the very beliefs and behaviors of Jesus. God has provided us with the belief system of Jesus that He used to live out His earthly life. Spiritual growth, building the mind of Christ in us, empowers us to love others unconditionally and serve God out of love not fear. The means of spiritual growth is learning and applying God’s word in life. Listen to Peter’s discussion of the subject.
1 Peter 2:2 like newborn babes, long for the pure milk of the word, that by it you may grow in respect to salvation,
The word is described as food (milk & meat) that we eat by learning it and believing it. When we put the word into our hearts by faith, it gives us the supernatural ability to use it to form our ideas and make life decisions. The goal of spiritual growth is spiritual maturity, the status of adulthood in the spiritual life.
Spiritual Maturity
At our new birth, we are born again as spiritual children (1Pet 2:2). The first goal of a spiritual child is become secure in his salvation. Security in Christ gives us the confidence to move into the spiritual war where we will succeed and fail as we grow. It is our security that enables us to recover from sin and failure through confession of sin (1Jn 1:9). As we grow into the adult stages of the spiritual life, we build the momentum to walk in the Spirit more and walk in the flesh less. Maturity is the stage of spiritual adulthood where we take adult responsibilities in worship and service for the Lord (Eph 2:10). We have built the strength to faithfully endure temptations under adversity and trust the Lord to fulfill His promises (Jam 1:2-4). Maturity is the stage of service and also the stage where God begins to bless us with the spiritual blessings He prepared before the world began (Eph 1:3-4). Our blessings in time are parlayed into rewards in eternity.
As we trust God to fulfill His promises in time, we receive the blessings inherent in a relationship with God. These blessings are a grace gift and are intended to sustain us in the devil’s world. Every blessing received in time has a corresponding reward in eternity. The storehouse of blessings when emptied in time, fills a storehouse of rewards that await us in eternity. The ultimate goal of phase 2 is to trust the Lord in every area of life and allow Him to give us the blessings He has prepared for us. In the next article we will discuss Phase 3, the eternal state, where we will enjoy the eternal rewards God desires to give us.
This article is the first in the series titled Fundamentals of the Faith
God has a Plan
Everyone, at some point in life, wonders why they are here, how did the universe come into existence and what is the meaning of life. These questions set us on a journey to find God or develop another explanation for human existence. The first question anyone asks on the road to finding God is “does God exist”? None of us are born knowing God or even knowing that He is real, but all of us if we live long enough wonder if He is real. This article will discuss God’s plan for the human race. His plan is best viewed in 3 sections or phases and will be discussed in the next 3 articles.
3 Phases of God’s Plan
Phase 1 of God’s plan is to bring us to salvation through faith in Christ. In order to reach faith in Christ we must come to God consciousness and then hear the gospel. Phase 2 of the plan begins the moment we believe in Christ for salvation and ends at our death. Phase 2 is called the Christian life, life as a believer on the earth. Phase 3 begins at death and stretches throughout eternity. This phase is our life with God in the eternal state. In this article will look briefly at Phase 1 and describe its characteristics.
Timeline of God’s Plan
God Conscious Gospel – Faith Christian Life Eternal State
Birth____________1__________Salvation________2___________Death________3_________
Does God Exist?
Phase 1 begins at birth and goes to the point of salvation by faith in Christ. At birth, we are born separated from God and unaware of His existence. The first obstacle to reaching faith in Christ is to believe that God exists. There are many who do not believe in God as a person or in a God of any kind. Some believe that God is an impersonal force and some believe that God is the life force within us all. To reach a decision about God’s existence, He uses nature to bring us all to God consciousness (GC). GC is an awareness of the question, “does God exist”? Everyone reaches GC at different points or ages. Some may reach this point early in life while others ask the question later in life. Many factors are involved in reaching GC, especially the beliefs of those in our environment. If many in our surroundings believe in God, then we will be aware of His existence early. If talk of God is scarce among or peers, then we may reach awareness late.
God Consciousness
The beauty of nature and the existence of an orderly universe demand that we ask how this order came to exist. Logic leads us to ask how, when and why life began. Did life happen by some cosmic accident or was there a Creator who initiated all that we experience as life? Logic leads us to look for a “first cause” of creation. Science has developed the “Big Bang Theory”, which theorizes that the universe began in one moment of time with a tremendous explosion. This idea says that all matter originally existed in one place and this explosion has resulted in our present day universe. This popular theory of creation while explaining many aspects of the universe, does not explain where matter came from in the first place or what caused the explosion. The only possible explanation for the existence of matter, space and life itself is that the Creator exists and that He initiated the universe. God is the first cause and the source of life. The logic of a Creator makes sense even without the bible. It is the only possible answer to the questions of how, when and why we exist. When anyone reaches this place of logic and believes that God exists, he has reached God consciousness and said yes to God.
Gospel Hearing
In eternity past, before God created the universe, He knew that Adam was going to sin and that all mankind would be born condemned. He knew the eternal problem we would face and it was then that He devised a solution. God’s solution devised in eternity past was to send His Son to redeem mankind from the wages of sin. He would send Jesus to the cross to pay for sins of man and resurrect from the dead. His plan for everyone is to trust in Christ for eternal salvation. To trust in the gospel, we must first come to GC and believe that God exists. Whenever a person believes that God exists, He then takes them to the next step, which is hearing the gospel of Christ. He sends someone to explain the gospel so that they can choose to believe it or reject it. When they hear and understand the gospel, they have 3 choices. The first choice is to accept it for salvation by believing that Christ died for them and raised from the dead. The second choice is to remain undecided and neutral, neither believing nor rejecting. God views this choice in the same way He views the third option, rejecting the gospel by choosing not to believe it.
Summary
Phase 1 of God’s plan for the human race is focused on bringing us to saving faith in Christ. To arrive at saving faith we must first reach God consciousness and believe that God exists as a real person. When we choose to believe in God, He sends us the gospel to believe for salvation. If we reach GC but decide not to believe that He exists, then God may or may not send us the gospel. In this day of instant communication, most people on the earth have heard the gospel. When we hear, understand and believe the gospel of Christ, we are given eternal life and enter into Phase 2 of God’s plan, the Christian Life.
The next article will discuss the characteristics of the Phase 2, The Christian Life.
