"Spirit." When 1 John 1:9 is understood in context, it was written to instruct a group of Gnostic heretics who said they professed Christ but denied His incarnation as being truly human. Therefore the Apostle John wrote: "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." John tells these Gnostics who claim to be sinless that if they confess their sins, God will forgive them and cleanse them from all unrighteousness. It was not a command to believers to confess every sin, but rather telling believers who had strayed from Truth to repent of their false doctrine and return to the Word of God in humility. Also recall we have addressed the Apostle Paul’s struggle with the flesh, which he records in Romans 7:18- 25. This was written by Paul many years after being saved.
He was certainly a spiritually mature believer but was aware of the constant struggle with the flesh. He was still prone to weakness and could sin if not under the power of Truth in his human spirit. Throughout his entire dissertation in Romans on his struggle against the flesh, Paul never once mentions confession of sins in that or any other of his epistles.
This fundamentalist mysticism disregards God's grace toward believers, and suggests that God treats His believers like unbelievers who are lost in their sins. If someone wants to confess sins, they should, but that must not be tied to losing or regaining spirituality, because God forgave all sin at salvation. The critical mistake and leap is that which ties confession of sin to the mis-translated "filling of the Holy Spirit." That is where the trouble lies. Nowhere does the Bible tie confession of sin with the Holy Spirit. Nowhere. And since sins are far more wide-ranging than most understand, this constant confession can only become manic as the believer never knows if the Holy Spirit may have turned His back on them due to some very minor and unknown infraction.
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The actual issue with confession of sin is about reduction of discipline, not restoring a lost relationship with God in any way or form. We never lose our relationship with God. The Bible clearly teaches that every believer in the Lord Jesus Christ is forgiven of all sins at the moment of salvation by faith in Christ, and is eternally secure in a permanent relationship with God (Colossians 2:13- 14, Romans 8:31-39, Ephesians 4:30, John 10:27-29). Colossians 2:13 " When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins ; 14 having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross." The believer is saved by grace and can never lose the free gift of salvation provided through the cross of Christ. No sin or failure by a believer can affect his salvation. Romans 8:38 " For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
God treats believers in love because Jesus Christ paid for all of our sins in full, and they were all forgiven at the moment of our salvation. If a believer wants to confess sins to God that is fine, but to tie each single sin to a total loss of spirituality drives believers to distraction as they focus primarily on their sins, not on what God desires for us.
Now that we have covered the main approaches to false forms of spirituality, we can see that none of these can please God or make believers spiritual because they do not utilize the method God requires, which is diligently and consistently learning the Word of God to put Truth into the human spirit by the mentoring of the Holy Spirit, and then living out of the human spirit using the power of Truth to drive the soul to interact with God and the world around us. That is the only approach which uses the power of God inside the spiritual part of us, which is the Word of God inside the human spirit. All else is human striving based on human power, which is rejected by God.
From looking at the false approaches to spirituality one can see that they far outnumber the true approach. And they are usually more appealing because they are quick and easy, rather than the long and more difficult approach God has put in place. And there is a very good reason that spirituality requires effort over the long term, namely that God requires believers to make continual and ongoing decisions to choose His Word as the road to spirituality, not the numerous flashy and emotionally appealing ways of the world.
Looking at the state of Christianity today, one can easily see that most believers are trying to 60
please God from their soul alone, apart from Truth, even though they have a human spirit, because they do not have enough Truth in the human spirit. Instead, their human spirit remains a spiritual baby, having never matured, so it cannot direct the soul in any meaningful way as God requires. In fact, most believers actually shut off their human spirit and function only from their soul, pursuing some form of false spirituality as described in this chapter. As a result, everything that believer does is spiritually ineffective, including prayer, worship, evangelism, human good deeds and everything else we are directed to do in the Bible.
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ASSESSING ONE'S OWN SPIRITUALITY
How do we know when we are making progress in our spirituality, and how can we assess our progress or lack of it? This can be done, but carefully, as self assessment of the spiritual life is difficult because we are trying to assess a spiritual entity with soul observations. As we have discussed, the soul is immaterial but not spiritual, while the human spirit is both immaterial and spiritual. Keeping this distinction in mind, we must proceed carefully in our attempts to assess the status of our spirituality.
Developing spirituality is a multi-part process after salvation to provide our human spirit with the power to function as God designed it. If we need many years to train our soul to function in society, why would we expect training the human spirit to function in God's plan to be a quick and easy process? It is not. Spiritual progress does not take place in our soul, because it is not a spiritual entity. The soul must be backed by the human spirit filled with Truth to be able to think spiritually and also act in ways consistent with God's plan. And spirituality is not a constant status, but rather we experience successes and failures, but improving as we mature spiritually in the Truth. None of us achieve perfection, which is why assessing progress can be very difficult. And our spirituality will never be at a constant level because our sinful nature will fight us every step of the way.
We are trying in this chapter to explain and understand how we can assess our spiritual status and know that we are living out of our human spirit, as opposed to living out of our soul. A major question regards how accurately we can assess our spirituality. In order to have any spirituality the human spirit must drive the soul's activities, so that the soul can express the power of Truth toward God and the outside world. The soul is the gateway to the outside, and is given the task to interface with the brain. But the human spirit has no direct access to the brain or to the outside world. Because of this, the human spirit cannot be sensed directly by us, because it is the soul which drives the output to the outside world, and it is the soul we can sense when we think and make decisions. But there are keys to knowing when our human spirit is beginning to function properly, meaning we are advancing spirituality.
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We have already defined spirituality as living out of the human spirit filled with Truth from the Word of God, instead of living out of the soul filled with human learning and backed by the sinful nature. Until the human spirit has enough Truth to begin to become effective, it will not have enough power to defeat the sinful nature, which constantly seeks to inhibit the spiritual life. Everything the human spirit does is spiritual, because it is incapable of doing anything else. False information which we believe to be Truth is not stored in the human spirit, but rather in the memory of soul. After salvation the human spirit is newly imparted or regenerated, and is empty and incapable of doing much of anything at all until it has accumulated spiritual information by learning the Word. The believer therefore only makes gains in spirituality by learning and using divine power in the form of Truth stored in the spirit part of our inner self, our human spirit, and applying that Truth as God's power to harness our soul to do the will of G0d. But until we accumulate enough Truth inside our human spirit to provide some level of spirituality, the life of the believer will be one of more failure than success. That is why intensive Bible study must be started as soon as possible after salvation, and for the rest of our life. Or if a long time believer never learned the Word, starting immediately would be the right idea.
Therefore, believers who have not made any significant progress in learning the Word of God must assess their status as being that of a spiritual baby. For a new believer this is easily understood, but for a believer who has been saved for a long time it can be difficult to declare oneself a spiritual baby. But spirituality is about Truth in the human spirit, not about longevity or outward appearances. A long time believer who has a nearly empty human spirit may look at themselves and conclude that they are generally moral, a good family person, charitable, attend church regularly, and are well thought of in the community. That may be generally accurate, but it is not spirituality unless those things are driven by a human spirit containing sufficient Truth. So the first thing we learn is that appearances can be deceptive when assessing spirituality. God assesses the inner person, not outward appearances. (1
Samuel 16:7)
For believers who are growing spiritually by learning the Word on a regular basis, early attempts to assess their status will likely result in disappointment over the slowness of the progress. Initial progress can indeed be very slow, especially if study occurs only a couple times per week. Spiritual progress requires treating the issue with the importance it deserves, and therefore necessitates intensive study, meaning daily whenever possible. This intensive study provides two main results for such a believer. First, that believer begins to understand what God requires to please Him because the believer is starting to understand His Word.
Such a believer begins to know something about God and what He requires, has increasing faith in God, begins to want to please Him more, has at least some initial spiritual resources to 63
begin to please Him, and starts to make some decisions to follow the plan of God. Slowly at first, and never perfectly. The second main result is beginning to have some initial level of success in fighting the enemy within us, the sinful nature. Only the human spirit can successfully wage war against this enemy and reduce its control over our soul, although it is a constant battle with many failures along the way. Therefore a believer can assess some initial progress if they have some increased faith and also start to see some limits on the power of the sinful nature to drive thoughts and behavior. But as mentioned earlier, this early stage assessment can be very tricky, and progress will not appear quickly. Be prepared for more than a year at this level. The sinful nature is a formidable enemy and will not go down easily, or stay down for long, especially during the early stages of spiritual growth. Therefore, prepare for setbacks and disappointments early on, but do not give up because of a perceived lack of progress, which may simply be due to lack of ability to see the progress with much clarity. And it cannot be overemphasized that initial progress is slow because the human spirit must first build a firm foundation of basic Truth before the structure of advanced Truth can be built upon it. Then the ability to see and assess spiritual progress gets more clear as one achieves the higher levels of spirituality. Truth in the human spirit is like building a beautiful house. The farther along, the more functional and beautiful it becomes. But in the earlier stages, it is two steps forward, one step backward, trip over your own feet, fall down, get back up, then repeat.
If we survive the first stage of spiritual growth, we next enter into the spiritual adolescence stage where a major goal is to have more and more success at controlling the sinful nature as we begin to mature spiritually. In adolescence more advanced Truth is accumulated which provides an ever-increasing understanding of God and His plan, building up spiritual power in our human spirit, which gives us the ability to have additional control over our sinful nature and enables better decision making which will please God more often. More testing happens, which acts as an accelerator for spiritual advance. But we have a long way to go. And this is where the spiritual war heats up inside of us, as the sinful nature will fight back.
Spiritual adolescence is an anxious process, as we go in and out of spirituality, on and off the narrow path, and this is where most believers fail and just quit. If we persist, we go through repeated testing where our spirituality is refined in the fire. The tests are sometimes simple and sometimes intense, but all are useful. At various points we are allowed to relax and enjoy the smooth ride as we get ready for another round. Then more testing comes. It is tempting to ignore the testing and just forget about spirituality, but the alternative is discipline for failure, with no purpose except to get our attention. It is better to go through the testing and come out the other side as steel forged with fire, because there is a purpose to it. We must understand the purpose of testing so that we will not be discouraged and give up completely, 64
because many fail under testing.
In spiritual adolescence the doctrinal "structure" begins to be built on the firm foundation of basic Truth. This is an awkward stage when the believer thinks they have progressed a lot, but does not realize there is so much more ahead. Therefore this stage should be assessed as knowing progress has been made, but understanding there is still a long way to go. The doctrinal structure will have huge holes in it which still need to be filled in with advanced Truth.
For those who make it through the difficult adolescence stage, assessing spirituality begins to become more clear. One key to knowing when we are living out of our human spirit is having much stronger faith. We can more easily rest in the knowledge that God is in control of our destiny, and that we have no need to worry. We can relax more, and have less stress in our lives. Things which tempted us strongly in the past begin to have less impact on us. We begin to see God as a benevolent Father instead of a force to be feared for what He might do to us during eternity. We become more aware of how much love our Savior and God the Father have for us. We are less concerned about making mistakes which might displease God and more aware of just moving forward continually under the realization that all our sins have been paid in full, and that growth in spiritual power is the important task, not primarily trying to avoid negatives under our own power. Of course, all of these are on a continuum of relative amounts of impact as we grow. We will have an overall relaxed soul, as it is driven by spiritual Truth, along with the increased faith, and we realize that we are not required to strive and strain to please God. Another is decreased pressure from our sinful nature, as the human spirit gains more and more control over it. Not perfection, just more control. We will pass more tests as they come along, and they will. The tests will be over a range of issues, especially those which bother us the most. If we are highly focused on money, guess where our tests will focus. Right. As we progress in spiritual maturity we gain a sense of being in the hands of God, not in our own. We trust God more and more. We worry less and less. Overall, we stress less about trying hard to please God and we simply start doing it from God's own power inside our human spirit. It takes far less effort, and we have much greater success, when we are using God's power, not our own. And God only approves of His power, and does not approve of our power.
Overall, we can know our human spirit is functioning as it should, because we have more of what the Bible says we should have, such as more faith, more hope, more love. We begin to be relaxed about things in life (again, no perfection) and life gets more pleasant, with more happiness, even though we may be in the midst of difficult circumstances and many tests of 65
our faith. We will see positive results in spiritual growth, doing more of everything the Bible says we should achieve, and less of what the Bible says we should not do. This is where avoidance of the negatives becomes a result of spirituality, not of soul striving.
As we achieve the highest levels of spirituality, we can see how there is control over our spiritual life coming from the background of our inner self, with that control being more automatic and requiring less thinking about it. This is when the human spirit has straight access through the soul as it takes more control and is in charge most of the time, without so much fighting for control. The soul sits back and lets the human spirit drive the inner self, while the soul does what it is supposed to do, all with minimal interference from the sinful nature. That is when the spiritual life gets to be truly fun. Life is much easier and more enjoyable, because we know God is in control, and we look more to our eternal future than to daily life and its issues. That happens only at the highest level of spirituality.
So the goal is to break down the sinful nature's control over the soul and have the human spirit take over control. Until that time the soul/spirit interaction is somewhat like a border checkpoint for a nation, where every car is stopped and a lot of questions are asked, and some things are disallowed and others are allowed. At first the soul stops the human spirit inputs and gives them close scrutiny, and often chooses in favor of the sinful nature inputs while refusing what the human spirit says needs to be done. The sinful nature always offers an alternative approach which is often an emotional appeal to satisfy the desires for what the world can provide, which can be very compelling. But at higher levels of spiritual maturity the human spirit has gained a greater level of control over the sinful nature so that the human spirit generally gets what it wants most of the time without even being questioned by the soul, unless it is a particular area of weakness.
The human spirit can actually be "sensed" at the more advanced stages of spirituality, as living out from it becomes more automatic, meaning we do not need to stop and think about doing things the right way, we just do them without much thinking. What we can "sense" (and we need to be careful not to overuse this since it is a very subtle thing) happens when the soul gets to the point where it is simply passing through what the human spirit wants, and no longer requires every single input from the human spirit to be scrutinized before allowing it to proceed. This cannot happen early on, and requires attaining spiritual maturity because the power of the sinful nature over the soul must first be broken and reduced to a minimum. On the other side of this equation, if there is no Truth in the human spirit a person can "sense"
their sinful nature controlling the soul through various lusts, which shows how we can sense that which controls the soul. We all know what lust can feel like, and how we can sense it 66
coming from inside us, whether it be lust for money, power, carnal pleasures, or whatever. In the same way sensing the human spirit is a real issue, but much more subtle than sensing the sinful nature. In spiritual maturity we can sense the human spirit having a greater level of control over soul outputs. It is a subtle sense that the soul is not trying so hard to do its job, but rather the directions for the soul are coming from somewhere else in the background and the soul is just passing them through. When we no longer need to think as deeply about whether to do the right thing, as the human spirit is mostly in charge of soul outputs, and the sinful nature has less influence over the soul. Again, we do not want to overstate this issue of sensing the human spirit, but rather it is just something to be generally aware of, and it only happens in a state of spiritual maturity when there is maximum Truth in the human spirit, so that the power of the sinful nature over the life has been broken.
In spiritual maturity we have a human spirit filled with Truth, which provides the power for a more consistent "walk" with God in spirituality. This is what the Apostle Paul referred to in Galatians 5: "16 So I say, walk by the spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17 For the flesh desires what is contrary to the spirit, and the spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want. 18 But if you are led by the spirit, you are not under the law. 22 But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control." Paul used the reference to a spiritual "walk" with God numerous times as a analogy to something nice and peaceful and pleasant, and something which seems natural. In the advanced stages of spirituality the believer can use the human spirit more easily, and more often, because there is a significant amount of Truth which provides the power to produce the
"fruit of the spirit" as Paul said, which is an outworking of Truth from the human spirit toward the world. At this stage the human spirit has the power to keep the sinful nature mostly in check, and enable the believer to enjoy a life of somewhat continuous spirituality, communing with God the Father and our Savior Jesus Christ, and also showing the world what God's power from His Word in our human spirit can do. Although never perfectly, of course. God does not require perfection from us, so we can relax on our spiritual walk with Him and not be derailed by our failures, which will always happen. God has taken care of the sin problem through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross, so He can deal with us in love and forgiveness.
When the highest level of spirituality is achieved the believer is in a stage called the "rest from God," and at that point spirituality becomes a smoother process with a mostly successful spiritual life and fewer failures. Very, very few believers enter into the "rest from God."
Although it is a relative issue and we can always go higher, it is like being in a plane at 60,000
feet above it all, sailing smoothly along. There is always turbulence now and then, but mostly 67
we just sail along. It is serene and fun and we do not worry so much about life. We can simply relax under God's wings, but with the knowledge that we must keep our seat belt securely fastened. There is no striving, no straining, no fear. Just communion with our Lord and Savior on a higher plane than we ever thought possible. Then God will have something very special and interesting for us. It is different for each believer, but it will be something spectacular. And there will be a special form of testing which only the mature believer is allowed to experience. For the Apostle Paul, it was a demon was assigned to constantly harass him. A source of constant irritation. Paul called this his "thorn in the flesh." What will it be for those few others who reach this level of spirituality? It will be interesting, whatever it is.
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WHY THE WORD OF GOD IS THE POWER FOR SPIRITUALITY
We have discussed that the Word of God, which is revealed divine Truth contained in the Bible, is the power source for spirituality. But how does that work? And why is God so insistent that using His power is the only way for believers to have spirituality? The Bible is unlike any other book, because the information it contains has power unlike any other when it is transformed by the Holy Spirit inside the human spirit into God's own power in us. That is difficult for most to comprehend, that God puts His own power into us through His Word.
After all, how can a book have power, let alone provide a person with power from God? And this is the issue in spirituality which many believers cannot get past. They want to do it for themselves, under their own power, and to perform great deeds for God, or at least clean up their life a bit. They think their soul power is sufficient for the task of bringing themselves into a state of spirituality. But God's plan is one of using His power, and the Bible tells us "the Word of God is alive and powerful." (Hebrews 4:12) It is only when we admit our weakness that we can accept the power from God to bring us into spirituality, and that is only by a long process of learning the Word of God, filling up the human spirit with Truth. Then we have power from God to live our life as He desires. Any other method is rejected by God as "wood, hay and straw" which will not be rewarded. (1 Corinthians 3:12) In book form the Bible has no inherent power. When sitting in our home on a shelf it does not benefit us. It is not a good luck charm. Its power is only unlocked for the believer when learned under the ministry of the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit converts Bible information and learning into divine power which believers can use from inside their human spirit. This is because the Holy Spirit is our mentor for divine Truth, and He indwells the human spirit of the believer, where His primary purpose after salvation is to mentor the believer who seeks to learn the Word of God, to enable them to grow up spiritually. His mentoring includes conversion of the Word into Truth, the divine power which can transform the way we think and act from the spiritual side of us, instead of living only from the soul. Romans 8:16 says
"The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children." Without having Truth from the Word stored in our human spirit we have no power for spirituality, and therefore no spirituality, only our own useless human power based on human knowledge in the soul.
Spirituality is not an abstract concept. It is a daily walk with God by faith using God's power, a personal relationship with Him through our human spirit filled with Truth from the Word of 69
God. Therefore the Word of God is the only source of power for spirituality, and we must possess it in our human spirit to live spiritually by faith. That is when we begin to live from our human spirit, not from our soul alone.
In discussing spirituality the Bible uses the word "sanctification" for the process leading to spirituality. This is different than the word "justification" which is generally used for salvation. Therefore we are "justified" at salvation, then we must embark on a process of
"sanctification" to attain spiritual growth and spirituality. The word for sanctification is used in the Bible as being made "holy" for the purpose of spirituality, but not sinless. John 17:17
says "Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth." Therefore it is God's Word which transforms us from within the human spirit, the only place it can reside in the form of power from God. Of course, we are not made perfectly holy as God is holy. But we can become spiritually sanctified as a process of cleansing the soul by filling the human spirit with Truth.
Once we have Truth inside our human spirit it begins to cleanse the soul, enabling it to function in spirituality by means of the power of God, which is the Word of God. And that power is only stored in the human spirit by the Holy Spirit. Essentially, the human spirit filled with Truth gradually takes over control of the soul and directs its thoughts and actions.
But it is never total control, because we will continue to fail and give in to the sinful nature.
The battle for control of the soul never ends until we depart from this life. God understands our weakness, and always treats us in grace and forgives every sin and failure. Therefore the sanctification process is a long journey from being a spiritual baby to spiritual maturity by accumulating Truth in our human spirit, then living under the control of the human spirit filled with power from God.
The Bible contains the totality of what God wants us to know during our time on earth. Since it is literally from God, it is called the Word of God, the mind of Christ, and Truth. It makes God's power available to us, not simply in a "knowledge is power" way, but rather the Word of God has its own power and energy embedded in it after it is converted for our use by the Holy Spirit inside our human spirit, where He indwells us. It is the power by which we must live, and is real power from God which can change our life and provide spirituality. It is the source of all God's Truth and the power for our spiritual life, but only when it has been placed into the human spirit by the Holy Spirit. John 16:13 says "But when he, the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth." Information of any other type cannot provide spirituality, even though it might motivate us to be a better person and to perform good deeds. But such information resides in the soul, and does not provide power from God, so it is not spirituality even though it might look like it to others. Without God's power in the human spirit we cannot please Him with our thinking or actions from our soul, since that is from human power. God requires believers to use His divine power, and anything else is unacceptable to 70
Him, even if it seems to comply with mandates in the Bible. The key to spirituality is that we must use the power and Truth which God provides, and that power is only unlocked in the human spirit by the mentoring of the Holy Spirit. And it is important to understand that the human spirit is not just a storage location, it is the basis and center of our spirituality, and the residence of the Holy Spirit and Truth in us.
The soul was designed by God to interact with His creation. Human information, when accurate, is knowledge about what God designed and created. This includes accurate forms of science, engineering, mathematics, farming methods, use of natural resources, labor skills, finance, and on and on. Accurate information can be put to good use by humans, both believers and unbelievers, to live in the world God created. This type of knowledge is a gift from God to all humans, believers and unbelievers, made available by a study of the universe around us. We learn the basics of how the world works, a language, skills such as carpentry, how to be a good citizen in society, and many things as we grow up. But when human information is inaccurate it represents a misunderstanding of God's creation and design, and such misinformation distorts reality. This happens in the soul, for both believers and unbelievers, and includes all types of distortions from insignificant to destructive. When a person accumulates correct information in the form of learning across a broad spectrum of subjects related to life, that person has enhanced capabilities for living. This is a form of power from knowledge, but it is only "knowledge is power," not an embedded power like divine Truth from the Word of God. Therefore learning human information can provide a semblance of power to the person who understands how to live inside creation. However, human information and understanding, whether accurate or not, has no spiritual power because spiritual information and its associated power comes only from the Word of God and the mentoring of the Holy Spirit.
Information from the Bible which is taken into the human spirit becomes spiritual fuel by which our spiritual life is energized. And that information only becomes usable as spiritual information when stored in our human spirit by the Holy Spirit, our mentor/teacher. We also require a human teacher (pastor) who accurately conveys the principles and doctrines of the Word to us, and when we hear and accept Truth the Holy Spirit stores it in a spiritual form inside our human spirit, not in our soul as with all forms of human understanding. The Word cannot be stored in the soul as spiritual information because it can only be stored and used from a spiritual vessel, which describes the human spirit. If Bible information is stored in the soul, either by a believer or unbeliever, it is just memorization and not spiritual information, and therefore it has no spiritual power. Additionally, if we learn incorrect information (non-Truth) from a pastor or any other source, that cannot be stored in the human spirit or provide any spiritual power. In such a case the Holy Spirit will reject it, and it will be stored in the 71
soul as misinformation, not in the human spirit.
By contrast, the unbeliever has no human spirit, and no ability to store Bible information in a spiritual form, even though they can memorize such information as facts inside their soul memory. They may have heard that the Bible says Jesus lived and did miracles and other good deeds, but they do not believe He is their Savior. The difference is that soul memory cannot be spiritual, so no unbeliever can be spiritual in any way or form because they lack a human spirit. Although an unbeliever can memorize what the Bible says, that information is stored in their soul as non-spiritual information just like any other human information, and its power is not unlocked. The difference is what the Holy Spirit does for us by putting the information into a spiritual format then storing it in our human spirit, where He also resides since He indwells each believer. Spiritual information inside the human spirit becomes power from God to live spiritually, which is unlike human information inside the soul which has no spiritual power.
It is important to understand that learning the Word is a transfer of power from God to His believers, but this only happens if the believer consistently learns the Word. Sadly, most believers neglect their duty to learn the Word and therefore have little or no spiritual power, and cannot achieve spirituality, or minimally at best. No matter how much they work to live a good, decent, moral life, it is not a spiritual life. However, if they had a human spirit filled with Truth motivating those same thoughts and actions, they would be part of their spirituality. It is a surprise to most believers that spirituality is not about how we act, but rather about what motivates the actions, soul power or divine power from inside the human spirit.
Therefore power to live a life of spirituality comes only through consistent accumulation of divine power from God by learning His Word under the ministry of the Holy Spirit. And this is a long process, since the human spirit is an empty vessel at the moment it is received at salvation. Spiritual growth takes time and patience, because God requires His believers to make continual positive decisions toward Him and His plan, which is accomplished primarily by learning the Word on an ongoing and consistent basis. This transfers power from God to us so we can fulfill His will for our life, which is to live spiritually. If we refuse, we will instead live as worldly believers who use their own paltry and unacceptable forms of human power, and never achieve spirituality. Then in eternity there will be no rewards.
Therefore the Word of God is the power from God which we are required to use if we are to be 72
spiritual. It is the only way to know and understand God and what He requires of us, and it is also a transfer of God's power into us as believers. It is the power for being able to fight our own sinful nature and control it, so it does not control our soul. And the power of the Word leads us to learn to love God and our Savior Jesus Christ. It becomes our motivator to do what God desires, rather than striving and straining from the soul using our own human power, which God rejects since it is not from Him, and therefore not spirituality. It cannot be overemphasized that the Word of God inside our human spirit is required to live a spiritual life. It is the only source of our spirituality. That is why this book repeats this principle over and over again, because so very few understand it.
As mentioned, building up spiritual power is a long process, requiring a little learning then a little testing, then repeating this process over the long term. Big tests will come along when we are ready for them. That is why our life is not easy as believers, because we must be constantly tested to build up spiritual strength. And the process is a lifelong one, since building up our human spirit is much like building up and maintaining physical muscle with continual exercise. Therefore believers must always be learning and continually applying what we have learned as spiritual power to life and to testing as it comes our way. New believers cannot have spirituality right from the start, except in very narrow areas such as appreciating the salvation they have just gained as a free gift by faith in Christ as Savior.
Similarly, someone who has been a believer for a long time cannot have spirituality if they have never learned the Word of God, or if they learned some and then quit. Such believers may live a lifetime out of their soul and never out of their human spirit, and this is the definition of spiritual failure in life. They may even be generally good, decent moral people, but although they will spend eternity with God, it will be without any rewards. They have nothing in their human spirit to apply, so their life on earth will be full of divine discipline from God for never learning the Word and therefore failing to live the spiritual life as He requires.
Think of how children are required to learn vast amounts of information about a wide variety of subjects in order to be able to live and function effectively in society. This information is about the creation of God, but not about God Himself. In much the same way God requires believers after they are saved by faith to begin a long process of learning about Him and His requirements to live and function effectively as a spiritual being. Why should we treat learning about God in such a shallow manner, when we go through many years of school and home learning just to be able to function in a working role, and even more learning to function at a higher plane? Human learning takes many years to reach a functional level, but most believers only reach second grade spiritually, and then drop out or flunk continually and remain at a very low level. Or worse, never go to school at all. God expects believers to grow 73
throughout their life as a believer, and His goal for every believer is to reach a Ph.D level in spiritual learning and application of that learning. Looking at the population of believers today we can see that most have fallen far short.
This issue of storing Truth from the Word of God as our source of power in our human spirit is a little known concept which has led to serious misunderstandings about spirituality itself.
Most who teach the Word today do not generally know this, so those they teach never learn about it. The result is often very little teaching since it is not understood to be the power of the spiritual life. Instead, believers are lectured about straining and striving to use their soul to live a life based on avoidance of bad behavior, and loving those who are not very lovable, rather than about living a life of power and spiritual accomplishment based on the power God has provided through His Word.
The following are some of the Bible verses related to being filled with Truth: 2 Timothy 3:16-17
"All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work."
Hebrews 4:12
"For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart."
2 Thessalonians 2:13
"God chose you as firstfruits to be [delivered] through the sanctifying work of the spirit and through belief in the truth."
1 Peter 2:1-2
"Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up."
Ephesians 6:17
"And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God"
1 Timothy 2:15
"This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be 74
saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth."
Romans 8:16
"The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God"
Proverbs 3:1-2
"My son, do not forget my teaching, but let your heart keep my commandments, for length of days and years of life and peace they will add to you."
Ephesians 6:15-17
"Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth."
John 8:32
"And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."
John 17:17
"Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth."
Luke 4:4
"And Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”
Hosea 4:6
"My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because you have rejected knowledge."
Revelation 1:3
"Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear, and who keep what is written in it, for the time is near."
Isaiah 28:9-10
“To whom will he teach knowledge, and to whom will he explain the message? Those who are weaned from the milk, those taken from the breast? For it is precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little, there a little.”
Psalm 1:2
"But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night."
Colossians 3:16
"Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to 75
Romans 8:1-10
"In order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the spirit set their minds on the things of the spirit."
Isaiah 55:11
"So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it."
2 Peter 3:18
"But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity."
Romans 15:4
"For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope."
2 Peter 1:2-3
"May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence"
2 Timothy 2:7
"Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything."
2 Peter 1:20-21
"Knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man"
Proverbs 3:5
"Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding."
2 Peter 1:3-4
"His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence"
Jeremiah 15:16
"Your words were found, and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and the delight 76
Psalm 119:103
"How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!"
1 Timothy 4:13
"Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching."
Luke 24:44
"Just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters."
John 10:35
"Scripture cannot be broken..."
Mark 4:24
"And he said to them, “Pay attention to what you hear: with the measure you use, it will be measured to you, and still more will be added to you."
2 Timothy 3:14
"But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it"
Proverbs 4:13
"Keep hold of instruction; do not let go; guard her, for she is your life."
Romans 10:17
"So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ."
Now let us look at an issue which has confounded Christian theologians for a long time. It is about the two spirits--the Holy Spirit and the human spirit. We will need to spend some time sorting this out because it has been taught incorrectly in churches and seminaries for centuries, which we will discuss in detail later.
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THE ROLES OF THE TWO SPIRITS
Now we must discuss a very important issue which has confused believers, Pastors, seminary theologians and other scholars for many centuries. The result has been a failure to understand the basic tenet of this book regarding living out of the human spirit filled with the Word of God to have spirituality. We have defined spirituality as living out of our human spirit using the power of the Word of God to have a right relationship with God. And it is the Holy Spirit who turns the Word into Truth inside our human spirit so that it becomes the power of God inside us to live a life of spirituality. However, it is often incorrectly taught that the Holy Spirit directly controls, empowers and/or enables believers to live their spiritual lives, and therefore He directly imparts spirituality. But as we have seen, this is not accurate.
The Bible regularly refers to two different "spirits," namely the Holy Spirit and the human spirit. But the human spirit is virtually unknown to most believers, and there is a reason for this. Romans chapter 8 is a primary passage for understanding when either the human spirit or Holy Spirit are being discussed, as the Apostle Paul wrote to the Roman believers when explaining how spirituality works. Paul makes it clear he is discussing both the human spirit and Holy Spirit when he says in Romans 8:6: "The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children." So there are clearly two different "spirits" being discussed, and this issue repeats throughout the New Testament. But Bible translators have confused the issue by incorrectly capitalizing "Spirit" in many instances where it should not be capitalized, and should instead be "spirit," meaning the human spirit. This error occurs dozens of times in the Bible. This simple difference of capitalization changes the translation from human spirit (spirit) to Holy Spirit (Spirit) in many instances, and has misled believers about the roles of the human spirit and Holy Spirit in our spiritual life. Although both are important, proper interpretation is required so believers may understand the issues involved in spirituality. We will discuss how and when the mis-translations happened later in the book, but for now let us simply clarify the roles of the two spirits, and look at what it means for us spiritually.
We have previously discussed that as a person matures humanly they develop the soul by human learning. In a similar manner, after salvation the new believer must develop the recently acquired human spirit by filling this new spiritual vessel with spiritual learning. And 78
that is only done when Bible Truth is taught correctly, learned over time, and stored in the human spirit by mentoring from the Holy Spirit. This is where the Holy Spirit has one of His main functions in our life, which is to help believers with the spiritual learning process, by converting and storing divine Truth in the human spirit. That process is the key to the spiritual life, and no one can live a spiritual life without using that process over a long period of time, actually for the rest of their life. If spiritual learning is ignored, the believer will live out of the soul and ignore the development of the human spirit, because the human spirit only runs on the fuel of divine Truth from the Word. Without that spiritual power in the human spirit the Holy Spirit cannot help that believer develop a spiritual life because the source of power, the Word of God which is alive and powerful (Hebrews 4:12) is absent or mostly so from the human spirit. This is what the Bible means "Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God..."
(Ephesians 4:30) because if we ignore spiritual growth He is grieved and unable to help us grow spiritually, though He desperately wants to help us become spiritually strong through Truth in our human spirit. Therefore He is grieved by our lack of spiritual development, and our refusal to fill up our human spirit with Truth. Such a believer can only live as an unbeliever would, living out of the soul but not the human spirit, since the human spirit without Truth has no knowledge, no power, and no influence over the soul, nor can such an empty and powerless human spirit fight against our internal enemy, the sinful nature. It is important to understand that spirituality requires the believer to make consistent decisions to first learn the Word of God so the Holy Spirit can make it into Truth inside the human spirit, and then to make continual decisions to live by that power of Truth from the human spirit.
That is very different than the Holy Spirit directly controlling, empowering, and/or enabling the spiritual life of the believer. Those who believe in the latter do not understand why we have a human spirit, or how the human spirit works by using the Word of God as the source of power from God to drive our spirituality.
We have seen that when we are using our human spirit to motivate our soul activities, instead of living from only our soul, the results are spiritual because the human spirit can only do what is spiritual. The human spirit is a perfect entity, and is why God can look at all believers and see someone He loves, regardless of how we are living. It is why we cannot lose our eternal life once we are saved, because eternal life is an integral part of our human spirit, which cannot be lost after it has been regenerated at salvation. The human spirit can do nothing wrong, nothing sinful, and nothing non-spiritual, although it can be virtually empty due to not filling it with Truth, which depends on our decisions to learn Bible Truth.
Therefore it can do nothing at all if we do not fill it with Truth or refuse to use it. So if it is empty or nearly so, that lack of Truth in the human spirit inhibits our spirituality. And if it has Truth but we refuse to apply it to our life, and instead we consistently give in to the sinful nature, we also fail spiritually. The human spirit is our eternal life, so we have it whether we are making proper use of it or failing miserably. That is the difference between having the 79
human spirit and using the human spirit. The question is whether we will fill up and use our human spirit and live a life of spirituality, or refuse to learn Truth and neglect using our spiritual component which is our only means of interacting with God. Using it requires fuel to empower and make it function in actual spirituality during our life on earth, and that fuel is Truth from the Word of God. Only then can it engage in battle against the sinful nature and provide an ever-increasing level of spiritual success. Remember, "not perfectly." We must keep looking and moving forward.
Since unbelievers have no human spirit, they have no eternal life, and so could never live with God unless they change their mind and believe in Christ as their Savior. That faith in Christ would revive or regenerate their human spirit. Look at unbelievers and how they interact with the physical universe. It is all they can do, since they have no spiritual component. That spiritual component was lost at the Fall of Adam and Eve, and must be regenerated individually, person by person, by faith in the Savior Jesus Christ. If that never happens during their life on earth, they cannot ever interact with God, so must be condemned.
Eternally. For those with no human spirit, they are able to live what appears to be an otherwise normal human life. They can learn and think and love and interact with the universe and other people, because these are physical. Believers have the same type of soul and can do all the things unbelievers can do, although we are required to also be spiritual.
Unbelievers can be very moral, choose right over wrong, work hard, be fair to others, live by a set of standards, and appear to act in a manner which God could appreciate and approve. But they have no human spirit, so they cannot be spiritual or interact with God. They have the opportunity to gain a human spirit, but they either reject or ignore the issue of salvation, and take a path opposed to God.
The main point here is that the soul is a very capable instrument designed and created by God to make humans into beings which can act rationally if they choose. But without the spiritual component, the human spirit, the "image of God" is incomplete. As the Bible says, God created humans in His own image, namely, the soul and human spirit, which combined will imitate the capabilities of God in many ways, but on a much lower level. Unbelievers are missing part of the image of God, that part which is spirit, so they are no longer in the complete image of God since they are missing the spiritual component. This loss of status as a human was the disastrous result of the original sin, and can only be remedied by salvation through faith in Christ as Savior. Without the human spirit the person has zero spirituality, and no capability to interact with God on any level. This is why they must be condemned eternally, because God offers the human spirit to all humans as a free gift by faith in Christ, but many reject it.
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There is a constant internal struggle for control of the life inside every person. For believers it is a battle between the human spirit and the sinful nature, as 1 Corinthians 3:1-3 says:
"Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the spirit but as people who are still worldly—mere infants in Christ. 2 I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. 3 You are still worldly." For unbelievers, they may try to fight their sinful nature, or they may give in to it, and both are done from only their soul since they have no human spirit. They can hold off the sinful nature to some degree using their soul, and can live a somewhat moral and generally useful life if they chose to do so.
But since they have no human spirit their abilities are limited to earthly activities, not heavenly ones. And the results of their human efforts do not impress God in any way since they have not accepted the free gift of salvation, which is the only way to bring the righteousness of Christ into the life through regeneration of the human spirit. And although the believer has the human spirit to fight the sinful nature, if it is empty of Truth it is unarmed and has little or no strength, making it weak and incapable of fighting effectively. The Holy Spirit cannot help such a believer since He works through the human spirit, but only when it has spiritual resources available, namely Truth from the Word. God does not treat us like puppets on a string, and does not suppress our sinful nature directly, since that is what we are tasked to do. We can only suppress the sinful nature if we develop our human spirit by filling it with Truth from the Word of God, and only then can the Holy Spirit prepare us for spiritual warfare, as He sends us into battle prepared and armed to be victorious in our Christian life.
Ephesians 6:10-17 says: "Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. 11 Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. 12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. 13 Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. 14 Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, 15 and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. 16 In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. 17 Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God." The Holy Spirit gives us the sword, armor and helmet if we study the Word, then we must make decisions to use them in our spiritual battle.
But we often fail, especially until we have grown spiritually over a long period of time. 1 Peter 2:11 tells us "abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul." This is because lusts are from the sinful nature, and these lusts tempt the soul into thoughts and actions which inhibit the human spirit from controlling the soul through Truth. The more we give in 81
to the sinful nature, the stronger it becomes in our life, especially in our weak areas. This is why we must defend the soul by consistently using the human spirit, because there is a war inside us for control of the soul, and the sinful nature has Home Field advantage, because it has been with us from birth. And each of us have developed it into what it has become. We like what it can do for us by making us feel good at a primal level, even if that is short-lived and followed by regret. The more we develop the human spirit by filling it with Truth the more power the human spirit has, and can therefore be more successful. But it must be a long term effort to develop and use our human spirit to fight our sinful nature and live a spiritual life out from our human spirit. Spiritual growth is a long and arduous task, but it is why we are left on earth after salvation. It requires much learning, and then applying Truth during testing to develop spiritual strength. If we succeed, the result of our efforts will be glorification of our Lord and Savior, as well as eternal rewards. It is the only way. There are no shortcuts, no series of rituals, and no endless striving from our soul which can ever be acceptable to God, only the spiritual development process He ordained for us.
We will now look at Romans 8 and will add [in brackets] which "spirit" is being discussed, whether the human spirit or the Holy Spirit. Unfortunately, the translators got it wrong most of the time. Keep in mind that Paul is showing how we must live out of our human spirit filled with Biblical Truth by the mentoring of the Holy Spirit so we can use that spiritual Truth to enable us to be spiritual and act in a spiritual way from our human spirit. Therefore he discusses both the human spirit and Holy Spirit in this chapter.
Romans 8:1 "Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, 2 because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit [human spirit] who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. 3 For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit [human spirit].
5 Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit [human spirit] have their minds set on what the Spirit [human spirit] desires. 6 The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit [human spirit] is life and peace. 7 The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. 8 Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God.
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Let us stop here and explain. In the first eight verses the Bible translators mistranslated the human spirit as the Holy Spirit five times by capitalizing spirit as Spirit, turning the human spirit into the Holy Spirit. Let us continue, and we will see that this trend continues: 9 You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit
[human spirit], if indeed the Spirit of God [human spirit] lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit [human spirit] of Christ, they do not belong to Christ. 10 But if Christ is in you, then even though your body is subject to death because of sin, the Spirit [human spirit] gives life because of righteousness. 11 And if the Spirit [human spirit] of [from] him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit
[human spirit] who lives in you.
In the above thee verses the human spirit was mistranslated as the Holy Spirit another six times. But the mis-translations are not yet done:
12 Therefore, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation—but it is not to the flesh, to live according to it. 13 For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit [human spirit] you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.
14 For those who are led by the Spirit [human spirit] of [from] God are the children of God. 15 The Spirit [human spirit] you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit [human spirit] you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” 16 The [Holy] Spirit himself testifies with our spirit [human spirit] that we are God’s children.
Another four mis-translations in these verses. That is a total of fifteen times in sixteen verses.
Only the last verse above was correctly translated. Then in the next verses there are several more:
17 Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.
18 I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. 19 For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. 20 For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own 83
choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.
22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23 Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit [human spirit], groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? 25 But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.
26 In the same way, the [Holy] Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the [Holy] Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. 27 And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit [human spirit], because the [Holy] Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God."
We can see the effect of over-capitalizing the word "spirit" as "Spirit." The impact is monumental, as it turns the word for human spirit into the Holy Spirit. mis-translations regarding the word "spirit" are found throughout the New Testament numerous times. We will soon look at why this happened in a future chapter.
The Apostle Peter also wrote about the human spirit, and again we see how mis-translations have clouded the understanding of human spirit and Holy Spirit: 1 Peter 1:2 "who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying [ work] of the Spirit [human spirit], to be obedient to Jesus Christ."
Note that the word "work" is not in the original Greek. Other more literal translations say: "in sanctification of the spirit" because the word "work" is not there, and spirit is not the Holy Spirit, so "spirit" should not be capitalized. Again we see that Bible translators used "Spirit"
when it should be "spirit." In this verse it is the human spirit which is being sanctified, which happens after salvation as the believer learns and applies Bible Truth to the life, and the believer is cleansed of the old and imparted with the new, meaning the newness of life and the setting apart by Truth for service to our Lord. During this process of spiritual sanctification the human spirit is filled up with Truth and the soul is cleansed over time as the human spirit 84
gains control over the soul by taking control away from the sinful nature.
The net effect of these incorrect capitalizations of Spirit throughout the New Testament is numerous incorrect translations, whereby the Holy Spirit has been wrongly assigned the role in our lives to directly control, empower and/or enable our actions and also to fight our own sinful nature directly for us. That relieves us of a lot of responsibility for our spiritual life.
Therefore our daily spiritual life is said to be under the control of the Holy Spirit, who directly leads us in daily living, causes us to produce good works, keeps us from sinning, guides us in the proper direction, and overall is the direct cause of what believers do in their lives. This direct control of our spirituality is absolutely false. To assign such roles to the Holy Spirit is a serious problem because this assigns responsibility for our spirituality, or lack thereof, to the Holy Spirit, not to us as believers who are required to grow spiritually and utilize the power of Truth in our daily lives. Additionally, assigning responsibility to the Holy Spirit to directly control and empower our spirituality would mean He generally fails since most believers do not live spiritual lives or produce much in the way of spiritual production. Is the Holy Spirit a failure as this view would assert? Of course not, He is God. In reality, He does not directly empower or control believers or produce spirituality in them. Each believer is responsible for producing spirituality by using Truth from the human spirit, and this must be true if they are to be rewarded in eternity. If the Holy Spirit directly caused the spirituality the believer could not be rewarded for it since the believer would not be the responsible agent.
This is where people want to get angry about such a discussion, because Bible mis-translations have led believers to think the Holy Spirit directly empowers and controls their lives. But if so, why so many failures in the majority of believers? If the Holy Spirit is in charge of such things, why are they not easier for us? Of course, the answer is that the Holy Spirit's role is to mentor us and convert and store Bible Truth into our human spirit as we seek to learn it, and then WE use that power from the Word by living out from our human spirit to apply the power of Truth to our daily lives to produce and live as spiritual beings. That is true spirituality, and each believer is responsible for their own.
This point is so important that it cannot be overemphasized. The Holy Spirit is crucial to enabling the believer to learn the Word of God when the believer studies and seeks wisdom from it. But then it is the power of the Word of God inside our human spirit which produces the "fruit of the spirit," which is the fruit of the human spirit, filled with the Word of God. It is the spiritual production which enables us to live a spiritual life and produce and glorify God, and these are also rewardable in eternity. It is the human spirit filled with the Word which is the basis for our spirituality. It is not the fruit of the Holy Spirit, but rather of our human 85
spirit which produces the production of spirituality in us. Spirituality is therefore living out of the human spirit executing the Word of God in our daily lives, not the Holy Spirit taking control of our life and directly making us spiritual. Such an assertion would relieve believers of all responsibility for their spiritual life, and that does not line up with what the Bible teaches.
This enables a conclusion that it is the human spirit which is discussed in many passages where Bible translators have mistranslated the word "spirit" as "Spirit," driving centuries of misleading, incorrect, wrong, and ridiculous assertions that the Holy Spirit directly controls, drives, enables and/or empowers the spirituality of believers from His own power without regard for the status of the believer's human spirit and the amount of Truth residing therein.
Remember that the Holy Spirit did not even indwell any believer before the Church Age.
What about the heroes of the Old Testament such as David, Moses, Elijah, and on and on?
They lived out from their human spirits without the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, but they all had the Word of God in their human spirits. But not to the degree of empowerment we have today as part of the Church.
Based on everything the Bible says about spirituality, and about the Holy Spirit in relation to the human spirit, we must conclude that the ‘Filling of the Spirit’ is actually the ‘Filling of the spirit’ (human spirit) not ‘Filling of the Spirit’ (Holy Spirit), meaning it is the human spirit which is in view. This is necessary because of the following: 1) The Holy Spirit would not fail so miserably as to allow most believers to be such colossal failures in their spiritual lives if He were indeed in full control.
2) The Holy Spirit cannot and does not control the life of any believer, otherwise it would be He who would be rewarded in eternity for the achievements, not the believer.
3) The Holy Spirit actually is described as mentoring the believer, so that the Word of God, when studied, can fill up the human spirit. This is the "filling of the spirit" (small "s"), meaning "filling up the human spirit" which the Bible teaches.
4) The Holy Spirit only directly empowered the first generation Apostles and a few others so that the Church could be put on solid ground for expansion of the gospel. That does not happen for the rest of us.
5) The human spirit is our only spiritual component, and therefore what we believers must use to interact with God, to learn His Truth to drive our soul to proper spiritual function. The Holy Spirit does not drive the spiritual function, but rather He mentors the believer so that 86
each believer can use the power of the Word of God to live a spiritual life of impact for God.
6) Finally, if indeed the Holy Spirit directly empowers believers during the Church Age to become spiritual, He has failed miserably, as we can see by looking at the status of most believers today. But He cannot fail at all! Which makes the assertion of direct empowerment impossible.
Those who insist that the Holy Spirit directly controls and empowers the spiritual life of every believer do not realize they have rejected personal responsibility for our spiritual life. As such it is much like the Muslim version of "everything is God's will," so that we are not the primary cause of our own actions. And this view also states that spirituality is the same regardless of spiritual growth in the Word, so that new believers with no Truth and mature believers with much Truth in the human spirit are both equally spiritual. Although some would put qualifiers on this, such as confession of every sin, or yielding to God, it is hard to understand, if the Holy Spirit is indeed responsible for the spirituality of every believer, then how is spiritual failure explained in the life of any believer? How could we even sin if under the direct control and empowerment of the Holy Spirit? The answer is that this theory is incorrect, as we have explained.
We will discuss the reasons for these misunderstandings in a later chapter, but let us first take a deeper look into God's plan for His believers in the current Age of time, and how being spiritual is what God requires of us. Therefore we will now expand on how the Word of God is the power source of spirituality in the life of the believer to sanctify the soul, which is the use of the word "sanctification" in the Bible.
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CHANGES IN SPIRITUALITY OVER THE AGES
Why do we have a New Testament which teaches advanced concepts when believers prior to the cross only had the Old Testament, with far less Truth to live by? We currently live in the Church Age, the time from just after the cross until the Rapture (resurrection) of the Church which will take all believers off the earth. After that happens, a seven year Tribulation on the earth will begin. The Church Age is the period of time when God was finally able to fully open His grace plan to mankind because the cross had just provided reconciliation between God and mankind through the salvation work of Jesus Christ. Before that time God dealt with mankind provisionally “expecting” that reconciliation would eventually be provided by the Messiah, looking forward to the cross when the sin issue would be removed. But until reconciliation actually removed the sin problem God needed to keep in place restrictions and deal with believers under the status of a provisional grace plan until the reality had occurred.
Romans 3:25 says: “God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood--to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished...” God does not get ahead of His own plan, and His perfect righteousness and justice demanded satisfaction for the sins of mankind. Therefore God needed to wait until that satisfaction for sin was actually provided by the salvation work of Jesus Christ before He could put in place a fully functional and expanded grace plan, which was ultimately provided to the Church. God had planned to provide this expanded grace to the Kingdom with Jesus Christ as the King, but that was rejected by the Jewish leadership of His day, so the Kingdom was delayed and the expanded grace plan went to the Church, while the Kingdom (Millennium) was delayed.
Old Testament believers lived a restricted spiritual life since God had to “assume” the sins would be paid for by the Messiah-Savior in the future. Although God acted in ways consistent with an expected future reality, He did not open wide the floodgates of grace until the reality actually occurred. After the cross God was able to deal with believers under the reality of reconciliation having been accomplished, with the sin issue having been removed as an impediment to His interactions with mankind. At that point the New Testament was given to the Church as God fully opened His grace plan for believers. Thus the plan of God first dealt with mankind provisionally in Old Testament times, with very limited revelation of Truth, then after the cross God deals with mankind under the provisions of the New Testament with 88
the reality of salvation having been fully accomplished. God held back many grace provisions from believers until after the cross, then He released a flood of grace toward believers once He was able to finally do so. At that point the Mosaic Law was shut down as the spiritual life for believers, and the New Testament revealed a whole new facet of God's expanded grace provisions. The "thou shalt not" approach was replaced by "grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ" as stated in 2 Peter 3:18 and in similar terms throughout the New Testament. Grace has replaced the process of simply following instructions, and a far more complex spiritual life replaced the simple obedience required during Old Testament times. The Church Age believer has been freed from the shackles of the Mosaic Law because Christ fulfilled the Law and replaced it with the law of grace. Galatians 5:1-4 says: "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery....You who are trying to be justified by the law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace."
The difference between Old Testament and New Testament spirituality is significant for several reasons. Although Old Testament salvation was by faith that God would provide a Messiah in the future, salvation after the cross is by faith in the actual Messiah Jesus Christ.
Regarding spirituality, Old Testament believers were basically required to "have faith in God,"
and "wait patiently," and such phrases are used numerous times throughout the Old Testament. After the Law was given to Israel, it was designed to show them that no one can comply with all of its 619 commands, and therefore dependence on God and faith in Him was paramount. Their lot in life was to simply "have faith in God" and trudge on, often for many years or decades waiting for God to do something in their favor. Noah waited 100 years for the promised Great Flood to occur while everyone ridiculed him. Abraham waited for over 30
years for the promise of a male heir to be fulfilled, because God had promised "I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore." (Genesis 22:17) Isaac died having never seen a grandson. Jacob himself had to labor under his future father-in-law for 14 years before he could marry his desired future wife Rachel. Greatness was often exhibited by making one or more important and correct decisions during a lifetime. David was an exception with many great successes and several disastrous failures as well, but was declared by God to be "a man after my own heart."
Overall, most believers during Old Testament times lived a simple life without much spiritual power because they had very little Bible Truth to empower them from their human spirit.
They also did not have the indwelling Holy Spirit, so the Truth of the Word was very limited and much simpler, so that it had much less power and provided a lower level of spirituality.
After the cross, God was able to provide expanded grace and much more spiritual opportunity because of the increased grace and power from the expanded Word of God, and also the 89
indwelling Holy Spirit. This was because much more could be given to believers once the sin issue was finally dealt with. Now, New Testament believers are required to have many more facets of their spiritual lives. They are required to "grow in grace" and learn the Word, to
"fight the good fight", to "stand firm in the faith", and on and on.
This shows why the Church Age is the first time in human history when God has been able to provide maximum blessings under grace rather than limited blessings under a code of strict obedience, which was the Mosaic Law. Now during the Church Age all believers are given greater powers, greater provisions, and greater grace. The best of everything God has ever offered has been provided to believers of the Church Age, and there never has been, and never will be again, another Age of time which can match it. The Ages which come after the Church are first the Tribulation, which completes the Age of Israel, then the Millennium is once again focused on Israel when Jesus Christ will rule the world from Jerusalem. But these coming Ages will not have the extensive spiritual benefits Church Age believers have. Once the Millennium is over, human history will be complete. And the Church will have special status for all eternity.
One of the issues which helps illustrate how God acted provisionally toward believers before the cross actually occurred was the location of Old Testament believers after they died. After death all Old Testament believers went to Paradise, a place of comfort and rest in the heart of the earth. None of them went to heaven, nor were they allowed to visit heaven. As an aside, although Hell (Hades, Torments) is also in the heart of the earth, there is a big difference in status, as is well understood. God treated those Old Testament believers under a provisional status, allowing them to rest in Paradise, but not allowing them into heaven until the cross became a reality. Once the cross occurred, Jesus went immediately from the cross to Paradise and told the believers there that salvation was now a reality, and that they would be moving to heaven very soon, which happened after the resurrection and ascension of Christ. Jesus was the first human ever allowed into heaven. Now when Church Age believers die, we go straight to heaven. Paradise is now empty. Another illustration of the provisional status of Old Testament believers was the Mosaic Law which was a minimalist approach with limited grace provisions, and an emphasis on strict obedience as the basis of the spiritual life. Those believers had few spiritual resources and minimal spiritual power. Church Age believers have expanded grace as their spiritual way of life.
The Church Age is unique in the annals of spiritual history because of what the Holy Spirit is able to do for every Church Age believer. Unfortunately, the current status of Churches ignores the power of the Holy Spirit and instead promotes a "praise and worship" approach 90
without the underlying support of extensive knowledge of the Word of God, which is required before there can be any real praise or worship. The Old Testament also focused on the spiritual heroes, while the Church Age brings every believer to a level where they can exceed all of them, if only they will "grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ" and subsequently glorify our Lord in ways never before possible. The Church Age, which had been the ultimate Biblical mystery of all time, was revealed in the New Testament.
This new Truth to the Church launched the Age of expanded grace which was never revealed to Old Testament believers. It was kept hidden and reserved for Church Age believers until the cross occurred, and then the best spiritual provisions of all time could finally be offered to man by God.
The Church will be the first group of believers to be resurrected, showing the importance of the Church in the hierarchy of Ages. This will occur at the Rapture (resurrection) of the Church, just prior to the Tribulation. Church Age believers will also rule with Christ during the Millennium and then again during the Eternal State. And there are no greater earthly blessings to any group of believers than what has been given to Church Age believers. We have unique blessings which have never been offered to any believer of any prior Age since the provisional status of salvation only became a reality after the cross. We are the Bride of Christ, and will be closer to Him than any other group of believers ever were or will be.
(Ephesians 5:22-33) We have the maximum power of the Holy Spirit unlike any other group of believers. We have greater access to God through prayer and more blessings than at any time, before or after. We are allowed to function under a grace system which minimizes the impact of sin in our lives, and maximizes the impact of growing in grace. We have been set free -- free to serve our Lord, but of course not free to do as we please. For all eternity the Church will be the pre-eminent group of believers because of what they accomplished on earth to show the full measure of God's grace given to the maximum extent possible to His believers.
If the Church has been set free from the Law, what is our goal? Why do we remain on the earth after salvation? The Apostle Paul told the Roman Church "Do not conform 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." and the Ephesian Church "be made new in the attitude of your minds; 24 and to put on the new self [human spirit full of the Word], created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness." Note the emphasis on learning God's Word which renews the soul and fills the human spirit with Bible Truth. However most believers erroneously think the Christian life is merely living a moral life, being better than the average person, and this alone is somehow pleasing to God.
Avoidance of sin becomes their highest priority, mixed in with being a generally nice person 91
toward others. This view of the Christian way of life is human powered self-improvement and therefore misguided. The Old Testament placed an emphasis on strict obedience and simple faith as the spiritual life, but the Church has been freed from the shackles of the Mosaic Law.
The spiritual life for the Church is far more advanced, placing the emphasis instead on learning the Word of God, which makes us grow spiritually. As we "grow in grace" we use our spiritual knowledge under the power of the Holy Spirit in our daily life, applying that spiritual knowledge to live a higher order spiritual life with purpose and power. Believers will continue to sin since we all have a sinful nature and do not lose it at salvation. But if we continually confess our sins we can move on in our spiritual life and grow out of many of them as we gain spiritual strength and momentum.
The sinful nature is how Satan's Cosmic System influences people, and this is true whether it is a believer or unbeliever. There exists a battle in the soul for every person to keep the sinful nature under control to some degree, but although we as believers can never fully succeed, we can gain advantages by filling up our human spirit with the Word of God. And although unbelievers have no salvation, they can still generally conform with God's divine laws set up for all humans, including such things as respect for parents, family values, monogamous marriage, hard work, playing fair, helping neighbors, and so on. An unbeliever can be outwardly very moral in actions, and not much different in morality than many believers due to God's divine laws which encourage general decency among all people. This is a matter of promoting a stable society where all are free to choose for or against God, but has nothing to do with salvation, and it is not the spiritual life for Church Age believers. Therefore these divine laws emphasizing morality and stability are meant for the entire human race, unbelievers as well as believers. And remember in all of this, morality has nothing to do with salvation, but rather morality for believers is a part of the issue in how well we please God after we receive salvation through faith in Christ as Savior.
God does not promote sin, of course, but He has taken it out of the way as a barrier to having a relationship with Him. Our spiritual way of life is, simply stated, to use the freedom Christ has given us to make continual positive decisions toward God. After the first positive decision toward Christ as Savior has been made, we are a child of God forever. We are saved eternally.
There is no losing that status. But God requires a continuation of positive decisions and actions toward Him once we are in the family. We begin as spiritual babies, having just been
"born again" as John 3:3 discusses, since we just received a human spirit at salvation. As with any baby, spiritual food is required, and that is the Word of God. So the next series of positive decisions are twofold, continual requests for forgiveness of sins as they occur (and they will continue throughout the life of every believer) which maintains the power of the Holy Spirit in the life, and also positive decisions toward the Word of God, by learning it and applying it to 92
our life. These result in spiritual growth and living the Christian way of life which is pleasing to God. The more we learn and grow and apply the Word, the greater God is pleased with us.
And this results in blessing during our time on earth, and also eternal rewards. So the positive daily decisions to request forgiveness of sins as necessary keeps the power of the Holy Spirit functioning in our spiritual lives. Along with that, positive daily decisions are required to learn from the Word of God under the power of the Holy Spirit to "grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." (2 Peter 3:18) And as we grow, positive daily decisions are made to apply what we have learned and to "think Biblically" using the Word of God, which is the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16). Thinking drives actions, and thinking Biblically drives actions which please God and glorify our Lord Jesus Christ. The Church Age believer has been set free from the Law to serve our Lord by first growing in knowledge of the Word of God, which strengthens our faith and provides ever expanding opportunities for higher levels of spiritual impact. As we grow in the Word we gain strength of faith and have increased ability to serve the Lord in more significant ways. Those ways are different for each believer, according to the various gifts given to each one. Some are pastors, some evangelists, some providing help to others, some focused on prayer, some serving as administrators, some never knowing what their individual gift is and simply doing what is required at the right times and places. Our mission after salvation is to learn, grow, and serve God by making continual positive decisions toward Him and His plan for our life. And God supplies the power through the Word as taught under the mentoring of the Holy Spirit. When we live by that Truth we are carried along by the grace of God if we will only continue making positive decisions toward Him. This is where divine guidance comes into play as the believer grows in the Word, since most guidance from God becomes simply applying what has been learned, and doing so under the power of the Holy Spirit who will occasionally nudge us along and into certain decisions which become obvious and even unavoidable. Therefore most of the Christian life is about learning and applying the Word. Of course, there will be bumps and diversions and failures along the way, most self induced. But God is always ready for the next positive decision toward Him, and off we go again in His plan of grace.
We have seen that sin is not the issue in salvation since Jesus Christ was judged on the cross for every sin ever committed, because no human could ever pay for their own sins no matter how many or how few. Therefore the relative amount of sins, or sin types, has no bearing on salvation. Salvation is only by faith in Jesus Christ as Savior, and any sinner can have salvation if they accept it by faith in Christ. No person will spend eternity in the Lake of Fire for being sinful. We are all sinful. It is our nature to sin ever since Adam fell in the Garden of Eden, and we can only be relatively more or less sinful, not sinless. God does not deal in relative righteousness. So also after salvation, merely trying to practice avoidance of sin is not the Christian way of life, although as noted previously God does not promote sin. The Christian way of life is a series of positives toward God, and is therefore not based primarily 93
on negatives such as avoidance of sins, or avoidance of certain sins. However the series of positives discussed above will lead to a reduction in the negatives over time as we grow spiritually, resulting in the believer generally sinning less often. As the Apostle Paul said,
"Well then, should we keep on sinning so that God can show us more and more of his wonderful grace? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?" (Romans 6:1) The issue in the Christian way of life becomes what power we use. If we attempt to use our own power we will fail, even though we might reduce sinning, we end up in arrogant self righteousness about our human successes. But if we use the power supplied by God, the power of the Holy Spirit, and make those daily positive decisions toward God and His plan under that power, we will be living the spiritual life God intends for us. As with a newborn we must grow up, and the early stages are not stellar successes, but it is a step by step process. The key is daily positive decisions using Truth from our human spirit, learned under the power of the Holy Spirit, not negative decisions under our own soul power.
Unfortunately, many believers do not follow God's prescription for the spiritual way of life, but rather live a life of self-righteousness, comparing their relative sins, both by type and by quantity, to the sins of others. That relative sinlessness has nothing to do with either salvation or with the Christian way of life, and a self-righteousness based on relative righteousness is despised by God. Self righteousness is not the Christian way of life any more than immorality is. Most believers think that the self righteous approach to life is preferred by God over immorality, but that is not the case. God despises both. But what exactly is self righteousness?
The Bible defines self-righteousness as a viewpoint of superiority based on morality. It is a mixture of both arrogance and judging of others which compares one's own sins with those of other people, and creates a sliding scale of moral superiority over others based on that relative sense of whose sins are considered worse by type and quantity. Although the Bible teaches that morality is good, it does not teach that superiority based on morality is authorized by God, which it is not. Because self-righteousness is arrogance and often results in judging others, God considers arrogance and judging to be among the worst of sins, outranking many carnal sins most believers would assume to be worse. It would shock these moralizers that God's sense of the worst sins does not match their own, and that their own sins are viewed as worse than the carnal people they look down upon. Proverbs 6:16 provides the list of the worst sins, not the Ten Commandments which is a moral code for the administration of the Jewish nation under a theocracy: "There are six things the LORD hates, seven that are detestable to him: 17 haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, 18 a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, 19 a false witness who pours out lies and a person who stirs up conflict in the community." Nowhere on the list is adultery, 94
drunkenness, or any number of carnal sins ranked highest by most self righteous Christians.
The self-righteous Christian regularly commits several of these worst sins, including arrogance, lying about others, and stirring up trouble in the community. Yet they consider themselves highly moral and close to God based on avoiding other sins they view as worse.
God does not share that viewpoint.
The Pharisees of Jesus' day were very moral yet entirely self-righteous. Jesus repeatedly chastised them for such, calling them names such as "hypocrites", "whitewashed tombstones"
and a "brood of vipers." Self-righteousness is a sin of arrogance combined with other mental sins, so it is a sin complex, one which the Lord spoke strongly against while on earth. The highly moral Pharisees used their self-righteousness to oppose Jesus' ministry at every turn.
And it was the self-righteousness of the Pharisees which crucified Jesus, not immorality.
During the earthly ministry of Jesus the number one attack on Him was from self righteous people who thought they were better than He was. Odd as that might seem, this pattern repeats throughout the entirety of the human existence.
In contrast to self-righteousness, God's plan and the Christian spiritual life is one of grace whereby God does the work and mankind can accept the results and benefit, or can reject God's work and gracious gifts and face the consequences of using their own works instead.
Under grace God gets the glory and mankind gets the benefit. God has solved the sin problem on the cross. They were paid in full by Jesus Christ, so sin is not the main issue in pleasing God. We all sin. Most believers simply do not know enough about the definition of sin to know they sin far more often than they think. But God has provided a means to deal with our personal sins by requesting forgiveness and moving on, forgetting what is behind and growing up spiritually in the Word of God. However, the believer who rejects God's grace as the focus of their daily spiritual life ends up being disciplined by God. Hebrews 12: 7 says: "Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children. For what children are not disciplined by their father? 8 If you are not disciplined—and everyone undergoes discipline—
then you are not legitimate, not true sons and daughters at all." Discipline from God is meant to put us back on the right track spiritually. We cannot lose salvation, but the discipline can be intense.
Guilt over past sins is especially destructive to the Christian way of life. In fact, guilt is a sin which is worse than most sins believers have guilt over. And personal penance is an insult to God's grace. God has provided us with the grace approach to confession of sin to Him and then moving on as if it never happened. The cross enabled God to forgives all sins for those who have accepted salvation by faith in Jesus Christ. Guilt is a failure to accept God's grace 95
which enables spiritual advancement. Guilt is living in a past which God has forgiven and
"forgotten." Guilt is one of the most debilitating sins of all and has destroyed the spiritual life of many believers. And teaching children to feel guilty about numerous things in life sets them up for spiritual failure as an adult. Yet in all of this, guilt is the primary motivator of believers in numerous church denominations, dooming those believers to spiritual failure as well as a miserable life.
From what we have noted so far about the Christian way of life a sad reality becomes clear about the current state of churches. They do not teach grace, namely that God provides to us in grace all He ever demands back from us. They are unclear about how salvation is by a simple act of faith in Jesus Christ as Savior. The reality is that most churches teach their congregation of believers to simply be good people and avoid sinning in order to have salvation and find favor with God. In other words, they teach human-powered self improvement which is a rejection of God's grace and power. The result is a life of self righteousness based on character building, avoiding certain specific sins and human powered self-improvement through mental gymnastics as a substitute for God's grace. They teach that being good people means God will approve of them, which is false. They also teach that God will bless them for giving lots of money, which is also not true. As will be discussed in a later chapter, tithing is not part of the Church Age, but was only for Old Testament Israel. Grace gives people salvation by faith as a finished gift, then grace teaches the believer to grow up spiritually through the Word of God under the power of the Holy Spirit which leads to grace-powered changes in the life. Will a person try to please God by his own works or rely on the finished work of Christ for him? Will a person attempt to better himself or be transformed by the power of God into the image of Christ? Will a person merely try to change the outputs of his sinful nature to something less humanly objectionable or accept the divine nature by growth in grace through the power supplied by God? Unbelievers can be good people and they are not saved and cannot find favor with God on their own. Therefore the things being taught in most churches are not the means of accepting or living the Christian life, but rather trying to achieve human viewpoint self improvements without accepting the power God supplies in grace, the only power God accepts. Therefore the current state of the Church is largely one of using self-righteousness, sin reduction, and following Old Testament directives as a means to please God. These substitutes for the real Christian way of life involves using relative value judgments which compare sins as a means of gaining spiritual stature by comparison to others, and assigning relative values to various sins. This leads to judging others who do not meet those artificial standards while ignoring God's plan which emphasizes growth in the Word resulting in faith, grace, tolerance and love all of which are based on humility. Some churches even place undue emphasis on social responsibility and even activism, which is merely a means of cleaning up Satan's world, making Satan appear more appealing to unbelievers. That is reverse evangelism aimed at making Satan look good, and is 96
certainly not part of God's plan, and not honoring to God. And none of this self powered self improvement pleases God in any way, shape or form. Quite simply it is not the Christian way of life.
As we have seen, the Christian way of life is not a series of negatives, but rather it is based on a series of positives toward God. Those positives start with a positive acceptance of grace salvation through Jesus Christ. It continues by making consistent positive decisions toward God by learning the Word of God on a regular, hopefully daily, basis. Nothing about God's plan involves using our own relative power, which in reality is weakness. The spiritual life is not about less, but rather about more of everything related to God in positive ways. God requires that we constantly say "yes" to Him by continually taking what He hands to us.
God is only pleased when someone gives back to Him what He has first given to that person in grace. God provides in grace all He ever demands back from us. And He only accepts back from us anything that He first gave to us. The positive acceptance of grace gifts and use of the power from God and positively giving back to Him using what He has previously given to us is the Christian way of life. God gives us the power of the Holy Spirit to use, and He is only pleased by that power. Human power has no standing with God.
God has given greatly expanded grace provisions and power to Church Age believers since the cross enabled God to provide those greater blessings due to reality and finality of salvation.
Therefore believers in the Church Age are under expanded grace instead of being under the Mosaic Law which was a code of prohibition-based directives. The Church is an Age of human history when all believers have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, are their own priest, are on the royal staff of the Lord Himself, and have a completed Bible with the New Testament providing an emphasis on grace rather than an emphasis on strict obedience to rules and codes, as with the Mosaic Law. The New Testament has become our spiritual food and the Holy Spirit uses it to empower our lives for service to God, and this combination enables us to worship God more intensely through Jesus Christ. Very few Old Testament believers had any power from the Holy Spirit, which was limited in form and reserved for the prophets and a few others. But every Church Age believer has the power of the Holy Spirit available to them, even though most do not use that power. And the New Testament provides a complex set of doctrines and instructions providing freedom to worship and serve, rather than restricting believers to obedience under extensive rules and "thou shalt nots" as in Old Testament times.
There is no more blessed group of believers than the Church, past or future. We have the best of everything God has ever provided because Jesus Christ fulfilled and set aside the Mosaic Law, providing salvation and also a grace-based approach for Church Age believers. Sin has 97
been defeated, and our personal sins do not keep us down as long as we confess them and move on. Because salvation is now a reality after the cross, God was able to provide a greatly expanded grace-based way of life for the Church. Therefore expanded grace from God and a resultant expanded grace toward others are the overarching standards for the Church Age believer.
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OLD TESTAMENT RELEVANCE TO SPIRITUALITY TODAY
Now that we have explored the expanded grace of the Church Age, it is useful to look back at the Old Testament to see how it applies to our spirituality. Many Christians struggle to understand the relevance of the Old Testament to their spiritual lives because the Bible has an Old Testament and a New Testament, and most default to using the New Testament but do not understand what parts of the Old Testament still apply. Some try to live the Old Testament life, thinking that is important in spirituality. What then is the current relevance of the Old Testament in our spiritual life, and why are there two Testaments in the Bible anyway?
The correct terms for the two parts of the Bible are Old Covenant and New Testament, and there is a difference in terms for a reason. A Bible covenant is a contract between God and man whereby God agrees to do and provide certain things, and requirements are placed on man as the recipients of God's favor. That was the case during Old Testament times, as God made a provisional covenant with those believers, specifically with Israel. God changes His approach to mankind during various Ages of time in order to prove certain different issues as will be discussed further. The New Testament is not a covenant because the cross changed how God was able to deal with mankind because the sin issue was finally taken out of the way, as Jesus Christ paid in full for the sins of the world. Therefore a covenant with believers after the cross is not necessary, since grace replaces obedience to a moral code.
As an overview, when dealing with the issue of current relevance of the Old Testament it is important to separate the information into three categories: 1) that which was directive only to Israel and no longer valid for the Church, 2) that which is informative and remains useful in several categories, and 3) prophesies which have not yet been fulfilled. The directive portions meant only for Israel during Old Testament times are no longer valid for our spiritual direction, specifically the Mosaic Law. The informative portions generally remain valid, and are useful in several categories including historical information, lessons to be learned from the successes and failures of major figures, the Books of Wisdom, and certain other general information. Finally all unfulfilled prophecies remain valid until they are fulfilled. That is the overview, now the details will follow.
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Christ is the key to understanding the Old Testament. It was generally written about Him as the future Messiah in order to reveal Him to mankind before the cross occurred. Jesus said
"In the volume of the Book it is written of Me" (Hebrews 10:7) and "Search the Scriptures..they are they which testify of Me." (John 5:39). As part of the revelation of the coming Messiah, Israel was set up as God’s chosen people to deliver that message to the world. The Old Testament Mosaic Law was therefore given to Israel to establish how it would function as a spiritual nation to use until the Messiah would redeem mankind from the curse of sin, and also from the onerous requirements of the Law. That was its purpose, and when that purpose was complete a new set of requirements would and did replace it after the cross.
The Mosaic Law is the early part of the Old Testament which provided laws, moral codes, social directives and ceremonial requirements for Israel to live by, essentially the latter part of Genesis and most of the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. These were a temporary covenant with Israel and meant only for them as God’s chosen people who were the keepers of divine truth and also required to evangelize the world. This is what it means that the Jews were God’s chosen people, since they were chosen to be the keepers of the scriptures and the evangelizers of the world, both during Old Testament times and again in the future after the Church Age. But currently all Jews who are believers are simply part of the Church.
The theme of the Old Testament was that mankind was in slavery to sin, and God would provide a Messiah to deliver mankind from the curse of sin. Once the Messiah Jesus Christ completed the salvation work on the cross this old covenant became outdated and no longer in effect, so it was set aside in favor of a New Testament to the Church, which replaced the requirements of the Mosaic Law portion of the Old Testament, but not the entire Old Testament. The Apostle Paul said “Christ is the culmination of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.” (Romans 10:4) Although the Mosaic Law portion of the Old Testament has been set aside as directive for our spiritual life, other portions which were not part of the Mosaic Law generally remain valid, although the New Testament provides the primary spiritual life directives for the Church. Overall, the key to understanding the current validity of the Old Testament is to understand that the Mosaic Law is no longer spiritually directive for the Church Age believer. That is because Christ fulfilled it, and then He set it aside as being completed by Him.
The Church lives under the New Testament as its directive Truth from God and we are 100
prohibited from functioning under the Mosaic Law as direction for the spiritual life of believers. This is because the work of Christ on the cross set aside the Mosaic Law as a directive covenant since “Christ is the culmination of the law...” as mentioned above. But it is all too common for Christians to accept a grace salvation by faith in Christ apart from the works of the Mosaic Law but then revert to the onerous directives of the Law as the rules governing their spiritual life. The Apostle Paul addressed this to the Galatians when he wrote
"It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery." (Galatians 5:1) Any church or religious group which seeks to function under the Mosaic Law of the Old Testament as spiritually directive is violating God’s will and purpose, as Paul clearly states. The Old Testament now has a subordinate role, with prophecies remaining to be fulfilled, and the non-law portions can definitely be illustrative to us. But with regard to the Mosaic Law the cross changed how God was able to deal with man once the problem of sin had been removed as a barrier between God and man, and in turn God changed how we must live our spiritual lives now that Christ has set us free from the provisions of the Mosaic Law. God waited until after the cross to provide the New Testament to the Church. The cross was the single most important point in human history, and divided how God was able to deal with man before and after. After the cross God was able to greatly expand the grace provisions we live under and free us from onerous requirements of rituals, sacrifices, spiritual feasts, codes and prohibitions against mundane activities. Although the New Testament points out that sin is still sin, and that God does not approve of any of it, our spiritual life is now based on what we do right, not on what we do wrong.
A discussion about how God divides human history into periods of time, referred to as Ages in the Bible, helps us understand why the Old Testament has been set aside. Although not part of this study due to its complexities, a brief explanation of Ages is necessary to see how we fit into God's overall plan since each Age has unique features. God does not constantly change His mind and therefore change how He deals with man, but rather He has a multi-faceted plan for human history which must play out in stages. Those stages each have different requirements and rules necessitating changes in God’s direction to mankind during the various Ages of time. Therefore God has divided human history into Ages which are: 1) Age of the Patriarchs: from Adam until Moses (i.e., Israel established as a nation) 2) Age of Israel Part I: from Moses to the cross, then an interruption inserts the Church Age 3) Age of the Church: from the cross until the Rapture (Resurrection of the Church) 4) Age of Israel Part II: resumes and finishes Age of Israel during the seven year Tribulation 101
5) Millennium: the 1000 year reign of Christ completes human history.
We see there are four Ages, however they cover five separate periods of time since the Age of Israel is split into two separate parts, with the Church Age inserted between those two parts.
The Tribulation will resume and finish the Age of Israel since it was interrupted seven years short of completion when the Church Age was instituted shortly after the cross on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2:1-3). It is important to understand that the Tribulation is part of the Age of Israel since this explains many things about events which will occur during that period of time. For additional details my book "The Future Times: Biblical Prophecies About the Remainder of Time & Beyond" is available free online.
Going back to the first Age when Adam and the woman sinned in the Garden of Eden, God needed to either condemn them immediately to the Lake of Fire or provide a plan for salvation. God chose to provide salvation through a future Messiah who would eventually be Jesus Christ. This Messiah Savior would not be provided immediately after the first sin, therefore God divided how He would interact with mankind into stages with the Messiah's salvation work being the central issue in human history. God established a plan which included the various Ages discussed above, and they would require different covenants and requirements as time progressed to define how God and man would interact during each Age.
God first made some simple covenants with Adam and the Patriarchs until the time came for God to set aside a nation called Israel as His people chosen to serve Him as the keeper of the scriptures and evangelizers of the world. At the proper time in human history, the Age of Israel began and covenants were made with Israel, which eventually became the Old Testament. Then the most important dividing issue in the plan of God occurred, which was the cross when the Messiah paid for the sins of all mankind, past and future, and satisfied the demands of God’s perfect character by making full payment for sin. As previously discussed, God needed to deal with man in certain different ways until the salvation work was actually completed on the cross, then after the cross He was able to offer increased grace and access to Himself once the sin issue was finally removed. This is the defining issue with regard to why there was an Old Testament which dealt with mankind in a provisional way and then a New Testament which deals with mankind under the reality of completion of reconciliation between God and man. Therefore God provided the Old Testament to be used until the cross, then the Law portion of it was set aside as no longer directive to believers after its usefulness was complete, and a New Testament was given to the Church.
The New Testament defines which parts of the Old Testament remain directive, which parts have been shut down, and which parts are now used for reference, information, illustrations 102
and as simple doctrines which have universal application to all Ages due to their generality.
To be clear, the Old Testament is still useful, even though much of it is no longer directive regarding how Church Age believers must live the spiritual life. But there is a big difference between useful and directive, and that is the main point being made here. A covenant is directive to the Age for which it was intended, but is not directive to other Ages unless re-certified.
Another important consideration is that Jesus Christ fulfilled vast portions of the Old Testament, including numerous prophecies, analogous rituals (all animal sacrifices, feasts, etc), "types" of Christ, representative Temple furniture including the Ark of the Covenant, and other portions which represented the future Messiah, whether directly or indirectly. This means those portions of the Old Testament are completed and therefore no longer valid, except historically, since there cannot be another Messiah. Vast portions of the Mosaic Law were representational analogies to Christ the Messiah and His work of salvation, and He fulfilled all the Mosaic Law requirements for righteousness and reconciliation which the Law could never provide, and on the cross paid in full the penalty for sin required by God the Father. The entirety of the animal sacrifices, food offerings, Levitical priesthood rituals, tabernacle and temple furnishings, and so on presented the future Messiah in analogous terms which demonstrated how God required a real sacrifice for the sin issue, and the animals and other offerings were merely representative of the future Messiah. But they never pleased God of themselves, they only taught how God would be pleased by the Messiah. By taking away the sin issue and providing reconciliation between God and man on the basis of faith in Himself, Christ fulfilled and then canceled the Mosaic Law as a directive code. Then the New Testament outlined the new provisions which replaced the temporary provisions of the now retired Mosaic Law. John 1:17 says: “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” Romans 10:4 “Christ is the culmination of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.” Hebrews 7:18 “The former regulation is set aside because it was weak and useless 19 (for the law made nothing perfect), and a better hope is introduced, by which we draw near to God.” Ephesians 2:14 “For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, 15 by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations.” Colossians 1:13
says: “He forgave us all our sins, 14 having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross.”
Hebrews 9:10 says the Levitical offerings were “external regulations applying until the time of the new order” meaning the New Testament. We see how the Bible clearly says the Mosaic Law has been fulfilled, has come to an end, and has been set aside. The Mosaic Law was fulfilled by Jesus Christ who kept it perfectly before His death on the cross, then on the cross paid the penalty for sin as required in the Law, so the Mosaic Law is no longer directive to believers after the cross. Going back now to living under the Law of Moses is going back into a 103
system which has been deactivated. It is like saying the work of Christ was not effective. It is rejecting the enhanced grace plan God has provided to the Church. We can learn many things from the Old Testament but must not live under the Mosaic Law as a directive covenant. The issue of prayer is another good example. Most Old Testament believers could not pray directly to God. Only designated priests, prophets, and a few others could pray directly to God. During the Church Age all believers are priests and pray directly to God. (1 Peter 2:9) The Church has been set free from the restrictions of the Law of Moses, and we must not re-shackle ourselves to it or we will lose out on the expanded grace plan God has in store for all believers during the Church Age. In short, believers of the Church have a new spirituality.
Provided below are additional verses which address the issue of the Mosaic Law vs. the grace plan for the Church Age:
Hebrews 10:1-4 “The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming—not the realities themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship. 2 Otherwise, would they not have stopped being offered? For the worshipers would have been cleansed once for all, and would no longer have felt guilty for their sins. 3 But those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins. 4 It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.”
Philippians 3:9 “not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith.”
Romans 3:19 “Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. 20
Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin. 21 But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. 22 This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.”
Romans 3:28 “For we maintain that a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law.”
Romans 8: 1-4: “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, 2
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because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. 3 For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.”
Romans 5:20 “The law was brought in so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, 21 so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Galatians 2:16 “Know that a person is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no one will be justified.”
The Apostle Paul was hounded by a group of religious unbelievers called “Judaizers” who sought to undo the teaching of Paul wherever he went, such as in Galatia. Paul taught that the grace of God had been expanded after Christ set us free from the Mosaic Law. But each time Paul left a town, the Judaizers went into those same places such as Galatia and told those believers they must live under the Law and ignore Paul’s teachings. Afterward Paul wrote a blistering epistle to the Galatians to reinforce his grace message, and these are representative passages on the subject of the Mosaic Law:
Galatians 3:13: “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us”
Galatians 3:19: “Why, then, was the law given at all? It was added because of transgressions until the Seed to whom the promise referred had come.”
Galatians 4:9-11: “But now that you know God—or rather are known by God—how is it that you are turning back to those weak and miserable forces? Do you wish to be enslaved by them all over again? 10 You are observing special days and months and seasons and years! 11 I fear for you, that somehow I have wasted my efforts on you.”
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Galatians 4:21-25: “Tell me, you who want to be under the law, are you not aware of what the law says? 22 For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and the other by the free woman. 23 His son by the slave woman was born according to the flesh, but his son by the free woman was born as the result of a divine promise. 24 These things are being taken figuratively: The women represent two covenants. One covenant is from Mount Sinai and bears children who are to be slaves: This is Hagar. 25 Now Hagar stands for Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present city of Jerusalem, because she is in slavery with her children.
Galatians 5:1 “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.”
Galatians 5:4 ”You who are trying to be justified by the law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace.”
Galatians 5:18 “But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.”
Paul made it very clear to the Galatians that Christ freed us from the drudgery and curse of the Mosaic Law, and that we must not return to it. The Law was only given to Israel to teach them about the future Messiah, and to show them how no one can be saved on their own since no one can keep the Law perfectly except the Messiah Jesus Christ the God-Man. Now that the cross has occurred, we are free from the Law, and it has been set aside. If a believer after the cross attempts to go back and live under the Mosaic Law they are in fact rejecting the work of Christ on the cross which fulfilled those Old Testament provisions. They reject the reality of the expanded grace plan purchased at great price by the Lord Jesus Christ and instead go back into the shadows and attempt to worship under the limited provisions which God Himself has set aside. They reject the new covenant in exchange for a powerless old covenant.
Since the work of Christ was successful at completing the Old Testament requirements, they are no longer in effect and discarded as the means of serving God. The New Testament is now the way to please God, since God's plan has moved on to a new and better stage focused on expanded grace.
Another future change in covenants will occur when the Millennium begins under the direct rule of Jesus Christ on earth. When Christ returns He will implement the promised “New Covenant to Israel” and a new set of currently unrevealed principles, doctrines and 106
requirements for worship will be put in place to worship Christ the King as the God-Man Ruler who is present on the earth. With Christ present on the earth there will be changes made which require eliminating the New Testament we are living under now during the Church Age.
Jeremiah 31:33 “This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time
[Millennium],” declares the LORD. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. 34 No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, ‘Know the LORD,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the LORD.”
When that occurs, the current New Testament will be set aside just as the Old Testament has been set aside during the Church Age. Mankind must keep up with God and live under the rules outlined for the Age in which that person lives. We must not try to live in someone else’s Age by living under their outdated and superseded covenant and requirements.