“Oh sure, we have been saved by grace,but…” I’ve heard that line so many times I wondered if I could find an authoritative religious resource that believes grace,but to actually be one word. Some Christians do not seem comfortable simply using the word grace – it has to be immediately qualified by the word “but”, preferably with little pause between the two words. Grace alone, without some religious proviso or humanly imposed limitation, somehow makes some Christians uneasy.
Much religion opposes God’s grace and often turns itself into theological pretzels attempting to suppress it. So grace,but is a widely used term, especially when religious legalism encounters any detailed explanation of God’s amazing grace.
I am a member of a church named “Grace Church – St. Louis”. But I still have friends and relatives in a centuries-old hierarchy dominated church. One of my friends said that he and his church certainly believed that we are saved by grace,but they believed that there are rewards in heaven for those who are more diligent here on earth.
I reminded him that since the Bible clearly teaches us that we are saved by grace, and since the Bible also teaches that all good deeds that we perform and accomplish as Christians are produced in and through us by Jesus Christ who lives in us, then any rewards that we might be given in heaven, rewards that are over and beyond mere salvation, those rewards also must be credited to God’s grace. After all, how would God contradict Himself and save us by His grace, but reward us by our works?
But my friend insisted that heavenly rewards are based on earthly deeds and presented some far-fetched illustrations. He proposed that Christians who are perfectly faithful (I’ll come back to “perfectly faithful”) to their spouses will be given a higher eternal reward than Christians who “might” (his word) be saved, but were less than faithful. If God does not offer such rewards, he reasoned, why on earth (pun intended) would people want to be faithful to their spouses?
I respectfully told him that his theology had gone to the dogs. My friend seemed to be suggesting that God conditions humans somewhat like Pavlov’s dogs. Remember? Ivan Pavlov conducted a hallmark study in the 20th century, a study that is now known as Pavlovian conditioning. The study proved that dogs can become conditioned to have expectations based on previous experiences. An anticipated reward stimulates behavior, and dogs will perform in order to receive favorable consequences.
But, according to my Bible, we humans are not dogs (and this is just one of those pearls of wisdom you will gain from listening to me!). Our relationship with God is not governed by the promise of rewards based on our obedience. We are created for a relationship with God in a way that no other part of His creation is (including man’s best friend).
We are created with a desire to know God, and to be known of Him. God, for His part, as the Bible reveals, relentlessly and unconditionally pursues us with His love. He gives us eternity because of His goodness, not because of deeds we perform or promise to perform. God never gives up on us, He is always there for us, no matter how objectionable our behavior might be. Our relationship with God is not based on our conditioning, it is based on God’s unconditional grace.
Imperfect humans are absolutely unable to perfectly commit, promise and love. Our heavenly Father is able to love without condition. He does not react to us on the basis of our performance. We do not improve our standing nor do we lose standing with God purely on the basis of what we do.
Let’s revisit the term “perfectly faithful” as it relates to marriage. Let’s recall what Jesus taught in Matthew 5:27-28: “You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Yet in the last verse of the same chapter (vs. 48) Jesus teaches, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
Unconditional love like God’s cannot be produced humanly. Instructing us to be perfect, Jesus is not proposing some humanly unattainable standard. He is saying that God demands perfection, but that we are not humanly capable of producing it. The good news of the Gospel is that although we are incapable of producing what God wants – God will pronounce us spiritually perfect through Christ, because of Him and His perfect atoning work on the cross which God credits to us.
My friend fired back, “Oh, you believe we will be saved, regardless – that everyone will be saved, no matter what they do.”
I told him that in order to be saved we must DO something. We must repent, we must surrender any and all notions that anything that we produce or perform can add to what God gives us by His grace. We must believe that Jesus Christ alone is sufficient to save us. His work on the cross is enough – He doesn’t need our help. Once we are saved we cannot lose our salvation. We certainly could, if it were up to us. But that’s why the Gospel is good news – it isn’t up to us! Thank God!
My friend and I don’t see our theology the same, we don’t see God’s grace the same, but we do see together that we want Jesus Christ as our Savior and Lord.
Perhaps it would be a good idea to rename my church, “Grace And Nothing But Church – St. Louis”. No ifs, ands or buts. Say the word without any qualification. Ponder it, without the limitations religion attempts to impose. Grace alone. Don’t muddle up what God makes clear. Forget about grace,but. Let’s get our buts out of the way.
What is God’s purpose for our living? What is the nature of the life we are created for? Is it just to live a “good” life, or is there much more to our existence?
The Christian life is the Life of the Son of God. The Christian life is not our religious systems, our doctrines, our ceremonies or even our worship. We are forever propping ourselves up with these externals, while God is busy removing the props so that we may live by the single eye of the faith of Christ dwelling within who operates by the Divine Life - the Life of God the Father.
There are two kinds of life possible for human creatures - 1) the “death-life” that we are born with which is really not life at all as God views it and 2) the God-Life or divine Life which is contained in Jesus Christ who lives in us if we have accepted Him by a new birth.
As new Christians and lovers of God, until we know who we are in union with Christ, we are most likely to try to live our “death-life” in GOOD ways. Since the enemy knows that we would not deliberately choose to center on blatant evil, we are deceptively drawn by the “angel of light” into the other side of that forbidden tree - the knowledge of good.
The “good” may take various forms: character development, freedom, programs for growth, power. But all are an attempt to live a good death-life and all are less than God, for none of them is LIFE. To concentrate upon these is to be focused upon something less than the One who said, “I am THE Life” (implying that there is really no other!).
When we, by faith, concentrate our awareness on the fact that we contain the Life of God in Christ (i.e., when we “walk in the Spirit”), these other “goods” become ours. In fact, they become the righteousness of God within His Divine Life. They are ours as natural and spontaneous by-products of being wholly devoted to the Life of the Lord Jesus Christ living within us. These “goods” are called “rivers of living water,” and they flow from our innermost being - from the LIFE of God functioning as we allow it to do so.
As we keep our focus upon Jesus Christ the Source, rather than on the objects of our death-life desires or the obstacles in our way, The River of Life already within us applies the atonement (at-one-ment in Christ) to all our experience.
The problem is that we, as born again Christians, still tend to overlook the fact that death-life is not real Life at all. We have been raised with the concept of the importance of human life in all the modes of earthly living. All our previous actions in dealing with the world have been based on the functioning and interaction of the death-life of humanity. It is not easy for us as Christians to switch gears and to get into the overdrive power of the Life of Christ. But that is what Christian living is all about. That is why we were not taken directly to heaven at our conversion and new birth. We are to grow in our awareness of the LIFE of God within us and then be used by God within our own little surrounding world.
Godly character develops naturally from within. A sense of freedom unfolds within us causing others to question, as Peter said, “From where comes such hope?” As we shed the burden of trying (by death-life), of keeping up appearances (by death-life), and of performance (by death-life), we discover new energy. We are being set free to live in the power of the Life of the Lord, Jesus Christ.
When Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the LIFE. . .“, He also meant under His breath, “...and your human death-life is NOT the way, is NOT the truth, and is NOT real LIFE at all!” Jesus said, “I came to give you LIFE and that more abundantly!” The death-life we are born with is a rudimentary kind of existence which God doesn’t consider as at all proper for His human creatures. There is no abundance to it as there is to His Divine Life.
Centering our focus upon Christ’s Life, instead of trying to do good, changes our perspective - our grace given Life perspective is “unearthed”, and we begin to see what He is seeing. We begin to live the Life we were purposed to live - eternal life in union with Christ. Having the nature of God as His child, we begin to LIVE like a child in His Family. And as we do, all the attributes of the Trinity are working for us!
“But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption” (1 Corinthians 1:30)
In a conversation recently, I was asked the following question by a friend in the Church: “Why am I NOT healed?” I realized that this person did not really expect me to give a reasonable answer, but this is certainly a reasonable question. This person went on to say, “When I did not know anything about God’s Word, I was healed of a condition that threatened my very life. Six years later, having applied myself diligently to the study of His Word, and applying all the healing scriptures with faith, my prayers have been unanswered. Why??”
The pat answer which has often been given is that “you don’t have enough faith!” Let me tell you that I don’t have all the right answers, but I sure believe that this is the wrong answer! Certainly, faith is important - not in quantity but in quality. But there is more to God’s purposes in healing.
Let me bring out two concepts which carry me down a peaceful walk on the road of God’s physical healing.
The first understanding I have is that a person’s physical healing or lack of healing by God is not always for that sick person’s benefit. What do I mean by that? When you have a disease and have faith that God can and will heal you, and it doesn‘t happen, a reason can be that God is dealing with someone around you at this time, and dealing with them through you. You may be being used as a channel of God’s grace toward this other person. And how you respond as a “Christian” in the eyes of this other person may deal with their whole concept of Christianity. Do you moan and complain to them about why God has not healed you? Or do you show a quiet serenity and love in the midst of your disease? In other words, your response to your disease as seen by this other person may be more important to God at the time. Do you get it? God sees your faith and will reward you for it - either at a later time by healing you then, or as a heavenly reward.
This first concept is very clear and understandable to me. There is a second concept which is somewhat less clear to me but is being more and more realized. This is the understanding that all healing comes at the point of surrender of self, consciously or unconsciously. Usually it is only in desperation that a person surrenders all hope in himself. It seems to me that when we surrender to Him as our one and only hope, our healing is made possible.
Could it be that my friend who posed the question had this situation? At the point of his first healing, doctors had forsaken him, and he reached out in hope, surrendered to the one hope that was offered, even though he was unaware of what he was doing. But then in his present condition, he is holding back something of self, something of hope in his own strength or ability, something of hope in healing through others.
The Bible tells us about having faith, hope and love. The faith might very well be there in its proper direction toward God. But the hope factor may not all be toward God but still contain remnants of hope in ourselves or other men.
Now I understand the great successes in healing that evangelists have in third-world countries. People there for the most part have no hope. When an evangelist comes to town he offers them hope in Jesus Christ. It is their only hope, and they take it and are frequently healed. That explains why hundreds are healed at their meetings, while here at home only relatively few. Here we have so many ways to turn, so many avenues of help. There always seems to be another way, another hope to put our trust in. Usually it isn’t until we have exhausted every other source of help that we come to the end of ourselves and in desperation turn to God.
And so it all comes down to the fact that only God knows for sure WHY healing does or does not come. But God gave us our reasoning abilities to use. And I like to use mine! These two concepts I have described are the best reasons I have to give my friend and anyone else. One: How is your response to your disease affecting others around you? And two: Where is your hope really placed?
The Ability To Read Can Be a Blessing - Or a CURSE!
Are only the literate invited to the fullness of the Christian life?
Matthew could read. John could read. Perhaps one or two others of the followers of Jesus could read. The rest were illiterate. (The Sanhedrin once noted that these rough fishermen could not distinguish one letter of the Hebrew alphabet from another.)
In that day, written literature was found in schools for the rich, in the temple, and in private ownership of books. Only the wealthy could educate their children in actual schools. Outside of these schools (and the synagogues), the ability to read (not to mention write) was about as rare as astrophysics is to our society. How many astrophysicists do you know? And even if people in Jesus’ day could read, there were virtually no books available for them to read.
Some people in Israel were learning Latin and Greek, the languages of the foreign occupation troops, but that again was confined mostly to the wealthy and influential, and to that tiny group that today would be referred to as middle class, the tradesmen and merchants. Ordinary people such as fishermen simply never learned to read or write their own languages.
There were no public schools for the poor. And the poor made up well over 95 percent of the population! A few in these ranks did learn to read, usually because their mother had this skill passed down to her by her parents. This type of learning has sometimes been called “the madonna school” and constituted the main source a poor person had of becoming literate.
These are facts. That they are facts we dare not face lest our whole modern-day concept of how to live the Christian life crumbles does not make these facts any less true.
Do not impose your present-day understanding of literacy on people living two thousand years ago. In ancient days illiteracy was NOT a sing of ignorance, nor was literacy a sign of intelligence. To a large extent, literacy was a trade, similar to cabinetmaking or carpentry or television repair. (How many television repairmen do you know? Well, in Jesus’ day there was about that percentage of people who were skilled at reading and writing.)
In fact, we must not impose what literacy means today upon any society anywhere on earth before 1700A.D.!
Yet, despite these facts, from one end of the English-speaking world to the other, it is heralded from every evangelical pulpit, “You must read your Bible to be a good Christian.” That statement might sound like a sensible statement, after 1700A.D. But that statement would have made no sense at all to ANY society on earth previous to that time.
In the days of Martin Luther, for instance, when the printed word has been credited with bringing in the Reformation, the maximum number of people who would read what Luther wrote stood at about 5 percent! About 90 percent of that part of Europe affected by the Reformation was totally illiterate. Another 5 percent was only functionally literate, and were either too poor to buy Reformation literature or lacked the vocabulary skills to understand the writings of a Luther, a Calvin, or a Zwingli.
Even extending as late as 1800, the message that you must read your Bible every day to be a good Christian would have been irrelevant to most average Christians. At least 85 percent of all the Southern boys who fought in the Civil War, 1860-1865, could NOT read, and those who could read didn’t do it much.
Before the early 1900’s, this statement was the equivalent of saying, “You must have a master’s degree from the university in order to be a good Christian.” A master’s degree NOW and the ability to read 300 years ago has almost the same percentage of people in its ranks.
The twenty-first century needs desperately to ask the first century: Did Jesus Christ tie the victorious Christian life to being able to read? If He did, He certainly demonstrated poor judgment in picking His closest followers!
I am saying this: DID GOD, FACED WITH A CHOICE BETWEEN LITERACY FOR HIS FOLLOWERS OR INDWELLING THEM – DID HE CHOOSE LITERACY? Which opens more doors for more people to know Him?
Today three-fifths of the people on our planet are still illiterate! So what place have illiterates in knowing Christ and living out the Christian life?
There IS a way for the illiterate Christian to be equal to the literate Christian in knowing Christ. He need only be introduced to a few essentials about his salvation, the first of these being that HE HAS AN INDWELLING LORD. He need only learn that Jesus Christ lives in him in a permanent union and begin fellowshipping with that Lord. If the key to living the Christian life is not an indwelling Christ, then whatever else is picked as being that key is drastically limiting the number of people who can enter in. Evangelists or this age are very close to elitism, snobbishness, and the allocation of the Christian life to educated people, as they insist that Christians must master the contents of the Bible.
How many missionaries have come from visiting remote villages in Nepal, Africa, and the jungles of South America to declare they have just beheld the most beautiful expression of the church they have ever seen in all their lives – yet without it ever occurring to them that these beautiful Christians were virtually all illiterate!
Am I saying that reading your Bible is NOT necessary? I am saying that we who are literate and somewhat educated can consider ourselves blessed in what we have. And since we are blessed with our Bible, we should use it and become familiar with it.
BUT – the Bible is not the key to the Christian life. The key is Christ indwelling you in a living permanent union. And this key is ALL that most Christians down through the ages really had to live the Christian life.
Referring to the title of this article, how could literacy possibly be a curse? It is only a curse when we allow all of our reading and Bible study habits to take the place of quiet fellowship with our indwelling Lord Jesus. The centrality of the Christian life MUST BE our union with Christ. Two as one. Our whole spiritual growth in this life must be learning how to communicate with Christ in our human spirit to divine Spirit union.
I am NOT saying that the discipline of Bible study is wasted time. Far from it! We are blessed to live in an age when Scripture is readily available to us and here in our culture in America we are very literate. Thank you, God, that we CAN read your instruction Book on how to live!
But Bible study is just something extra we have today that the Christians from the first to the seventeenth centuries didn't have available. Being literate enough to read the Bible can never make us better at living the Christian life than those illiterate people were.
I am for the Church, prayer and Bible study. But we need to back away from a scenario that seems to exalt Bible over the centrality of our living union with Christ. My point is that the Christian life can, has, does, and will continue to exist apart from literacy.
The Bible speaks of many aspects or morality to the Christian life, but we must learn our inability to live this morality in our own strength and come to a total dependence and trust in the ever-present, ever-to-be-present Jesus Christ living the Christian life in us, as us, and through us.
Only the FIRST CHRISTIAN can ever live the Christian life.
The Bible can only use human language to express superhuman facts, so that it can be only shadow language. And if we are too literal in our interpretation, we can easily miss what it is meant to convey, just as the Jews failed to recognize the Christ when He came.
The greatest failure in this respect is in passing over from the sense of separation which this third-dimensional world conveys to us in all our relationships, to the actual reality of union, the Christ-in-you reality which Paul named as the mystery of the ages. In our average church preaching we have rightly stressed separation from God through sin (although many have missed the fact of our natural birth with a Satanic nature). We have proceeded to reconciliation through Christ. But we have rarely gone right through to unification of Spirit with spirit. And the reason is obvious. It takes us out of our depths in this three dimensional world of length, width and height, of line, plane and cube, where every person or object in its apparent existence is distinct from another. To talk of Christ in us, and we in Christ - to speak of multitudes of persons being one in Him - to be told of a day when everything will be gathered together in One - when God will be all in all - when time will be no more - when past, present and future will be all the same in Him who is already “the same yesterday, today and forever” - to be given many instances and statements in Old and New Testaments to prove that future events are already in existence in God’s sight, for He “declares the end from the beginning” - such facts and statements are uncomfortable to us in our down-to-earth world of space and time. And even though we accept them from the Bible, we really regard them as vague, rather unreal spiritualities rather than the actual facts, while what we call real is in truth vague!
Our complacency is being shaken, however. If we haven’t really accepted the Bible as speaking scientific truth on these subjects, we have suddenly had to wake up to an unexpected ally to the Scriptures - modern science! Classical physics states that solid matter, for instance, is actually billions of whirling units of energy - whatever that may mean. Then the movement and mass of subatomic particles is described by quantum mechanics. At its core is the uncertainty principle first announced in 1927 by the German physicist Werner Heisenberg. The uncertainty principle states that certain pairs of quantities, such as the position and momentum of an electron, cannot be measured simultaneously. This means that the electron is not the objective, absolute, and determinable bit of matter whirling around a nucleus like our earth whirls around the sun like classical physics describes, but a sort of objective entity that in a sense is smeared out around the nucleus. It declares mathematically that atomic and nuclear particles are distributed in an uncertain and random fashion. The location at any instant of any particle can be described only using a system of probabilities and statistics.
There plainly is another world beyond our world of senses. But consider first our three dimensions. The first dimension, which is length, is represented by a straight line made up of an infinite number of points. The second dimension, length and width, forming a flat surface, a plane, is represented by a square which is made up of an infinite number of lines side by side. The third dimension in which we live has length, width and height, and is represented by a cube which is made up of an infinite number of square surfaces as it were piled on top of one another. HERE WE SEE THAT EACH NEW DIMENSION IS COMPOSED OF AN INFINITE COMBINATION OF THE OBJECTS OF THE PREVIOUS DIMENSION.
The first characteristic is that persons in this new kingdom or realm or dimension are not separate as we regard persons here but are really One Person. But because He is the All, all opposites are resolved in Him. Therefore a part may contain the whole, as much as the whole contain the part. Thus the children of the new birth are all one Christ, yet a complete Christ is living in each!
God is the Trinity, yet each Person of the Trinity is separately and distinctly complete God. Of Christ it is said, “The Word (Christ) was with God, AND the Word was God” and “in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily”. The Whole is one God, and yet the Parts are each the Whole! To human logic an absurdity, to faith a reality. And we redeemed children of God are already introduced to this relationship, to this fact. We are actually part of the ascended Christ: “as the body is one and has many members … so also in Christ”. He is the All in all of the body, yet we remain forever separate persons in that One, and in each of us lives the Complete Christ! THAT IS SPIRIT DIMENSION LOGIC.
A realization of this by believers gives a new sense of solidarity to our unity in Christ. This is already a fact, though not realized by our outward senses. It makes an absurdity of separation between believers to the point where we lack confidence in some fellow believer. We may have plenty of differences between us owing to our finite minds and easily disturbed souls, but basic division, no. If we have, we have divided with ourselves, we have no confidence in ourselves, or worse still with Christ, who is the real Spirit of every believer. The more closely you associate with fellow Christians, you must make more room for personality differences, to the point that the critical basis of brotherly love must be UNION WITH JESUS CHRIST DWELLING WITHIN EACH OF YOU.
A consideration of dimensions which might help to expand our consciousness is more of a speculation, but we seem to have good grounds for it. Reconsidering the fact that infinite points make a line, and infinite lines make a plane, and infinite planes make a cube, we see how the three together forming our third dimension, are built in increasing ascendancy one upon the other. If we could conceive of a being living in the first or line dimension, he could not understand or grasp anything outside that straight line. Supposing a square or a cube crossed that line, he would be unable to conceive of such objects and it would erroneously appear to him only as if some dot or series of dots had intersected his line. The rest would be unknown to him.
The second dimension, then, would be a combination of length and width; and that would mean height would be unknown to a being in that dimension. Therefore, if a cube intersected with the square, it would appear just as another flat surface at the intersection. The fact of it being a cube with height to it would be incomprehensible.
And so in the third dimension, where there is length, width and height, where we live. The cube is made up of an infinite number of plane surfaces, one on top of the other; but we can conceive nothing beyond these three dimensions.
Now for the spirit realm or fourth dimension. If there is such, though inconceivable to us, it must consist of an infinite number of cubes, individual solid bodies, forming some transcendent unit.
BUT IS THIS NOT JUST WHAT IS SHADOWED OUT TO US IN THE SCRIPTURES? All the redeemed believers being members of ONE - Christ... all things gathered together in ONE - in Christ. … the kingdom “delivered up to God, even the Father, that God may be all in all … time no more, but past, present and future ONE - in Him who is “the first and the last”.
Is this not an indication that our whole material universe is in some way the building blocks of the spirit realm beyond, just as points build straight lines for the first dimension, straight lines build planes for the second, and planes build cubes for the third??
So cubes, all individual solid objects of all sizes, will build the fourth dimension. And we who are, by infinite grace, made part of that One Christ will in some way contain IN US the whole material universe, be in all parts of it at the same moment, with all hearing and all seeing and all past, present and future together. We in God and He in us, all will be the dimension of eternal life and love.
All men have been created to live in the spirit dimension. All Christians by their new birth have been taken into this fourth dimension NOW as infant children of God. We are firmly and eternally planted in this spirit dimension and our Father will complete our growth into the awareness of how the dimension operates.
So there it is. We are introduced by the eye of faith into another dimension, an invisible spirit dimension realm where, by the authority of the Word of God, separation is dissolved. And some scientific discoveries of our day can help rid us of our inhibiting materialistic outlook, and to glimpse both through the Scriptures and by scientific hypothesis our living union with a timeless God. And that means the outworking, through the operations of His faith is us, of His purposes which in His sight are already in existence.
Oprah Winfrey has become a foremost TV personality. Her daily talk-show is highly rated. She is recognized as having become the richest woman in the entertainment industry.
In the last few years, she has begun to devote a portion of her program each day to “getting in touch with your spirit within.” People comment, “Isn’t it wonderful that Oprah is stressing spiritual things to everyone? We need more of this on TV!”
Well let’s analyze Oprah’s spiritual message in light of the truth of the Bible. We ARE all spirit people and every living person is operated by an indwelling spirit. Right so far. Oprah’s popular message for today is that everyone has a good god spirit within and all we have to do is recognize the fact that he is there.
The idea of the human race being spirit indwelt and spirit-operated is not exclusively a biblical idea. It is a belief that has always been widespread in the world. The difference in that overall world view and the biblical view is what is important.
There used to be a commercial for a local ice-cream company - Chapman Ice-cream - which stated that Chapman’s was a little different. But their trademark message was: “Chapman’s has that LITTLE difference that makes ALL the difference!” The same is true about the “spirit within” message. There is a little difference between Oprah’s message and the Bible message that makes all the difference.
Oprah says that everyone contains god’s spirit at their center and all one has to do to be complete is to recognize that fact. Yes, the Bible says we all have a god spirit within that is our master and operator, but - and it is a huge “but” (a “but” that divides the entire human race into two entirely different kingdoms) - there are two different indwelling spirit operators and everyone is operated by one or the other of the two. The unsaved, those who have not chosen to accept Jesus Christ as Lord of their lives, contain and are operated by the spirit of error, or Satan (1 John 4:6), and they are members of Satan’s kingdom, the kingdom of darkness. The saved, those who have chosen to accept Christ’s crucifixion as payment for their sins, have repented and been born again to a new life in Christ, are indwelt by the Spirit of Jesus Christ and they are members of His kingdom, the kingdom of light.
To tell people they are spirit operated and not make a clear distinction between the two spirit operators is very dangerous. To unsaved people, this statement puts them in danger of thinking that the god spirit within them is the one true God. This lie gives them a false sense of security and thus they remain in their lost state of sin. The Bible truth is that our operator changes when we accept Christ as our Savior and have a new birth. The spirit of error (Satan) exits at our new birth and Jesus Christ enters (Galatians 2:20), filling us with His Spirit life.
I am not here judging Oprah Winfrey as a person. I do not know her spiritual condition concerning Jesus Christ. She may very well be a born again Christian but one who has not yet received the complete Bible message. All I am saying is that the way she is stating her “get in touch with your spirit” CAN be dangerous. EVERYONE DOES NOT HAVE A “GOOD” GOD SPIRIT WITHIN! In fact, all humans are earthly born with a “bad” god spirit within! We are all born first of “our father, the devil, and the lusts of your father you will do.” (John 8:44). My fear is that Oprah is trying to lead people when she doesn’t have complete direction herself. And, let’s face it, the message of Satan control would not be a very popular theme to present on TV. Even those of us who do know God through His Son often miss the full meaning of Christ’s death and resurrection and what it means for us in our daily lives.
There are two aspects of the Cross. Jesus did two things when He died on the Cross at Calvary. But we usually start out understanding and knowing only the first experience - the cleansing by His blood. Your sins are washed away by the Blood. I should precede this by saying that the Bible also says, “For ALL have sinned and come short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23). So that includes everybody. Everyone comes into the world short of what God intends for every person to be. Why are they short? Because they do not have the Spirit of God through Christ within but rather the spirit of error.
As wonderful as the effect of Christ’s Blood is, it doesn’t fix the problem. Even after being born again, we continue to sin. As a new Christian I thought, “Since Jesus Christ has paid for my sins from the beginning of my life to the end of my life, that should make me so grateful that I would quit sinning.”
But the problem was that I would keep sinning. I kept doing the very things I didn’t want to do. Paul says this in Romans 7. All the things I wanted to do - be nice to my mother, get along with my sister, be a better father to my children, be a better husband to my wife, be a better Christian, witness more, pray more - I just wasn’t doing! So I had guilt and condemnation over the fact that the blood part of Calvary wasn’t enough to keep me from sinning.
Later in my life, I learned the second aspect of the Cross. I had heard some of the aspect many times, and finally the light dawned. I began to have a glimmer of understanding. The central part of the Bible message hinges around the second part of the Cross: the body death and the body resurrection of Christ. The Bible says that when Christ went to the Cross, “He became sin for us” (2 Cor. 5:21).
That’s a mysterious thing isn’t it? Why would He have to become sin? For sin - the root of sin being Satan’s control or influence - to be taken care of in man, then Jesus had to take on man’s sin nature. So when He died on Calvary, you and I died there also. Everybody in the world that has ever lived or ever will live died in Jesus Christ on Calvary.
Am I saying that everyone was automatically saved by Christ on Calvary? No, I’m not. I’m saying that nobody is separated from God because of their sins anymore. They are separated because of their unbelief. They do not accept the truth that their sins are paid for and their sin nature was taken care of on Calvary.
Now to get this clearer in your mind, think about death. The Bible says that on Calvary, all died. What is death? Death means the spirit leaving the body - the exit of spirit. So, when Christ became sin for us, He took on that sin spirit, and in His death and burial the sin spirit was out. As we accept Christ’s experience by faith, what happened to Him happens to us. The sin spirit indwelling us is out. Jesus was resurrected by God’s Spirit-life raising Him from the dead. We are quickened - made alive spiritually - by this same Spirit.
And we have to be resurrected because we have a human spirit, but that spirit cannot operate us independently of a supernatural spirit. So if God didn’t quicken us and give us His Spirit in Christ, we’d still be dead spiritually. We wouldn’t be Satan nature indwelt; we would just be inoperable because human spirit cannot operate our soul/body without supernatural spirit in union with it.
So the new Spirit of God, the person of Jesus Christ is in us. Where is He in us? He is one with our spirit. The Bible says, “He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him” (1 Cor. 6:17). But you must understand that Christ does not become you and you do not become Christ. There forever remains a duality in the union.
One of the problems that arise when we say we are in union with Christ and that we become one spirit with Him is that we have a hard time fitting sin into this equation. It would seem that the Holy Spirit would so dominate our union that His will would then automatically eclipse our freedom to choose and sinning for us would be impossible. If we become one with Christ, are we then unable to sin? Or does Christ sin as part of the union? Of course we must say no to both of these suppositions because from scripture and experience two things are very clear: Christians (union people) do sin, and Christ has never sinned and never will sin.
So what is the answer? Where do “Christian sins” come from? Where do the sins committed by your Christ/you union come from? Having laid this necessary foundation of the Body and Blood aspects of the Cross, we will next examine how we operate as free Christ indwelt vessels. The religion of my youth taught me that I was composed of soul and body. The soul was the “immortal” soul - the spirit part of me - that would last forever. My body was the material part of me that would die. I see this two part composition in much of what Oprah teaches except that she calls the “immortal” soul the SPIRIT. She indicates that we are SPIRIT (same as soul) and body.
The Bible says that we are composed of three parts: spirit AND soul AND body (1 Thes. 5:23). We are spirit selves but this is meaningless in the world unless we can express ourselves to other spirit selves like ourselves. Soul and body are the terms the Bible uses for our means of self-expression. Our soul is the seat of our reasoning and emotions and choices. Our soul is our control box making decisions based on spiritual input from our human spirit within or based on outside Satan spirit influence of the world.
When we accept Christ as our personal Savior, the Bible says that we become born again, or saved. At our center, there is a change of spirits, and the Spirit of Christ replaces the Satan spirit. And this is a forever change - Christ will never leave us or forsake us (Heb. 13:5). We are forever changed into a forever child in the Family of God. As hard as it is to understand or accept: once saved, always saved! Satan’s nature is now out, and we are free from the sin producer; but if we are honest, we will admit that we are as besieged with selfish and wretched thoughts and feelings as we were before we came to Christ. And because we don’t know any better, we assume we are what we think and feel. Because of this erroneous believing, we are overcome with guilt and defeat at not being able to change or improve either our thoughts or feelings.
We sin in a moment of unbelief when Satan entices us to agree with him that we are independent, self-operating selves. In this state of unbelief, Satan makes our choices for us and takes us into any sin he chooses. He gains the power to boss us from outside ourselves (because we are ignoring Christ within). Our union with Christ is not broken, however, and the control of Satan over us need not last long. He drops the reigns the instant we confess our sin and turn from it.
The way out of this Satan trap is simple but not widely understood and, even more sad, not always practiced by those who do understand it. ALL THE PROBLEMS WE CHRISTIANS HAVE LIVING LIFE HAVE THEIR GENESIS IN OUR SOUL REALM. It’s not what happens to us that should really concern us but rather how we respond in our soul to life’s happenings. Our hurts, fears, joys, successes, defeats, physical states of health and illness cause us to respond with different feelings and thoughts. Some are positive, and some are negative, but all are normal and necessary for us to function as total humans.
Life for many Christians stops in the soul because soul is the only reality of which they are aware. Because soul and spirit are so closely linked together in function, it takes a revelation of the Spirit for us to know the difference between them. Hebrews 4:12 gives us an illustration of their closeness: “For the word of God is quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of SOUL and SPIRIT, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” Paul is saying that the two are as imminently connected as the marrow is to the bone. Like the marrow, spirit is the life of the body. The soul, like the joint, which is the vessel for the marrow, is the means by which the inner spirit life expresses itself.
And we must discern between the “thoughts” (the soul reasonings) and the “intents” (the long-range spirit desires of God). For example, there are times as born again believers that we feel like God is far away and we think we are spiritually dry. Both are soul observations, and neither is true in the spirit dimension. The truth is that God in Christ has joined Himself to us, one spirit, so for us to be separated from Him is impossible. Our being spiritually dry is also impossible because God is an eternal well of living water springing up within our spirits. The secret to life is for us as believers to know that we can know and live from spirit truth in spite of any outcry of thoughts and feelings that is pouring in on us from our soul.
It is important that we learn to recognize soul and the problems it presents so we can avoid the Satan sin trap that it so often leads us into. We need to practice saying when thoughts and feelings arise that they are not real spirit thoughts and feelings even though they grip us at the time. I am not saying that we are to ignore our soul thoughts and feelings. It is vital that we look at them honestly, but as quickly as possible move past them and begin to reflect on who and how Christ is in us. And He is going to stay in us through thick and thin, using our soul mistakes to drive us closer to Him and His ways of power and control from our Spirit union. There will be chastisement for our soul mistakes of sin, but only to teach us the glory of children of God and never for condemnation.
God’s greatest desire for us is for us to live life by putting our faith in the fact that it is Christ living despite what we are feeling. God expects us to march into the battles of life, feeling terrified and with sweat on our brow. That was Jesus, wasn’t it? He sweated blood in the garden of Gethsemane even though He knew from the foundation of the world that He was going to go to the Cross. Nonetheless when the time came for His crucifixion, His plea was, “Let this cup pass.” His soul feeling was fear. His soul feeling was pain. The whole point is that whatever the human Jesus was feeling - His feelings were swallowed up in His choice to be controlled by His Father within. This was who He was and what He came to do. You and I can do the same thing. When troubles come, we also can choose to be controlled by the power and goodness of Christ dwelling in our human spirit.
Yes, as Oprah says, concentrate on your spirit alright. But understand the possible two spirits who can dwell there. Understand the function of the human soul. And then -
You Are Not Being "Tested" By God - You Are Being "Demonstrated To" By God
Mistakenly, we often seem to think that God put Adam in the Garden to test him, to see whether he would obey or not. Not so. It was because by no other means could God demonstrate to Adam his own innate quality of helplessness.
It was not, as we often erroneously think, that Adam could have done the righteous act of rejecting the advances of Satan. If that were so, man could be righteous by his own unaided effort. No, he was placed between those two trees to learn that of himself he can do nothing righteous, and that he is not expected to!
He was put in the Garden to have demonstrated to him the basic fact of his creation, that his own human spirit is an empty, helpless vessel so far as living in righteous obedience to God is concerned.
In truth, we must learn the difference between being “good” and being “righteous”. Righteousness is a characteristic ONLY of God. It is living in obedience to the lifestyle of the Family of God; it is following the built-in spiritual laws which regulate everything. Righteousness is totally spiritual in nature. Man, on his own, can never be righteous.
Goodness or doing “good” is totally physical in nature. The “good” acts which people do have nothing to do with BEING righteous. Confusing? Don’t being “good” and being “righteous” both give JOY to those who receive their effects? Yes, they do. But many good deeds are done with the wrong motives. The MOTIVE is the key. And man, on his own, can never have righteous motives.
Man was not created to BE righteous! He was created to be INDWELT by the Righteous One. In Adam’s case, the negative command not to eat of the tree, followed by the direct temptation to do so, was not to stir into action some potential capacity in Adam for obedience and righteousness, nor to test whether he COULD live God’s lifestyle if he WOULD. It was to reveal to Adam the one essential point he had to learn about himself - that he was created helpless so far as being able to live in obedience to God’s built-in moral lifestyle law.
Adam was to learn that his little human spirit had one marvelous potentiality: his spirit could be the container of the Divine Spirit via the Tree of Life, and yet he would not lose his own individuality. The glorious fact is that the two - human and Divine - can dwell together, each in the other, in an eternal fruitful bond of union.
This demonstration to Adam continues down through all history - through the Old Testament, New Testament, and through Church history right down to our present lives.
The Old Testament can be summed up in the following: God said, “OK, people, I ‘m here to show you that you can’t live on your own. You can’t follow my built-in moral law in your own strength. You need Me! You can’t do it! You just can’t do it!”
The people responded, “We think we can do it. We know your built-in moral law is good for us, and we think that we’re strong enough to keep it and make our own decisions.”
So the people would proceed to TRY. And for a while they would be able to produce goodness (but not righteousness). But they would inevitably fail, (just as Adam failed). The Old Testament was a roller-coaster of goodness and then sin, goodness and then sin, but never righteousness because they were never INDWELT by God. God was demonstrating the futility of life outside of union with God. The people were “DEALT WITH” but not ‘DWELT WITH” by God.
Then, Jesus Christ came.
He continued to point out the Old Testament failures. He pointed a stern finger at the law and the people’s inability to keep the moral code. Then came the turning point in the demonstration by God which had been carried on since Adam: Jesus told the people that HE COULDN’T KEEP THE MORAL LAW OF GOD HIMSELF IN HIS OWN STRENGTH! He agreed with what God has said in essence through history: “You can’t do it! You can’t do it!”
Jesus said that of His own self He could do nothing. But then He began a new kind of demonstration. He said that God (His Father) lived within Him in a living union, and that this is the ONLY way that a person can be obedient to spiritual law. Then He proceeded to demonstrate the power that can come out of such a union: righteous thoughts, righteous deeds, even miracles beyond understanding.
The rest of His three and a half year public ministry was spent in this demonstration, getting across man’s need for a living union with God - man as a container of divinity.
The people marveled at His message and His ministry. They saw the effects in His life of what He preached about union. But He was only one man! How could they, they wondered, see the same effects in their own lives? If He was the Son of God as He claimed, then Jesus was SPECIAL. The Father was IN Him, but the Father could never be IN them, they thought. They were just plain old humans, not Sons of God!
In the last weeks of His ministry before His crucifixion, Jesus began to put forth to His disciples a radical concept: After His death (paying the penalty for their sins), He would be resurrected from the grave and His Spirit, and the Holy Spirit, would come to dwell in any follower who would believe and accept Him as Lord.
There was the solution to the age-old demonstration by God: Believers from that point forward would be INDWELT rather than just DEALT WITH by God! Jesus Christ, as the first Son of God, would be followed by believers transformed into many Sons of God BECAUSE they were indwelt by Christ.
The apostle Paul proclaimed the message with the greatest power. He laid out the plan to the churches which he had founded. He put forth what he called the “mystery” (the solution to the demonstration down through history) of “CHRIST IN YOU, THE HOPE OF GLORY” (Colossians 1:27). The apostles John and Peter followed up on the message.
But the roller-coasters of humanity were not over. The Church of God founded at Pentecost has been on a two-thousand year roller-coaster where the message of “Christ in you” has been very prominent for a time and then recedes almost into oblivion for a period. Satan would love to have this message of indwelling Deity covered up. Without this understanding, believers are much more easily influenced by his deceptions. So through the time of this Church age, Satan has had his weak times and his strong times of influence on the Church. Whenever this “Christ IN you” message was strong, the Church was a strong influence for right moral leadership in the world. But whenever this message was weak or absent, the Church had a shameful record of internal dissension and external problems.
Now we come down to you and me in this twenty-first century. No matter how much you hear in the world about man being “tested” over right and wrong, this life of ours is NOT a test. Just as in Adam, just as in the Old Testament, just as in the days of Jesus, and Paul, and John, and Peter, just as in the two-thousand year Church - GOD IS DEMONSTRATING HIS WAYS TO US, NOT TESTING US.
The concept of a “test” is that it may be passed or failed. But this life is not really a pass or fail exercise. Certainly, we have choices to make but we must always look upon our circumstances and situations as DEMONSTRATIONS of our need for an indwelling union with Christ and our continual awareness of the truth of our new birth into that Living Union.
Our Creator is “persuading” each one of us by a demonstration, sometimes painful, sometimes gloriously joyful. If it is any kind of a test at all, it is what we referred to in school as an “open-book test” - you can look up and see the answers in that greatest book of all - the Bible.
I admit it! I develop serious attachments to my pets. Call it love. Call it concern. Call it what you will, but I have a weakness toward the welfare of our God-created friends in the animal world.
One of my favorite writers, C.S. Lewis, has a chapter in one of his books The Problem of Pain in which chapter he discusses (speculates might be a better term) concerning animal “pain” and the possible place of animals in the spirit realm. He opens by saying:
“The problem of animal suffering is appalling; not because the animals are so numerous. . .but because the Christian explanation of human pain cannot be extended to animal pain. So far as we know, beasts are incapable either of sin or virtue; therefore they can neither deserve pain nor be improved by it. . . God has given us data which enable us, in some degree, to understand our own suffering. He has given us no such data about beasts. We know neither why they were made nor what they are, and everything we say about them is speculative.”
Lewis then goes on to describe how the animal species “prey upon” one another and are in a state of “ruthless” competition. He asks the question, “How can animal suffering be reconciled with the justice of God?” and he gives the best reasons that his intelligence can come up with.
Lewis considers the Bible use of the term “soul” for animals as compared to humans. He then states:
“It is worth considering whether man, at his first coming into the world, had not already a redemptive function to perform. Man was told to ‘have dominion over every living thing’. Man, even now, can do wonders to animals: my cat and dog live together in my house and seem to like it. It may have been one of man’s functions to restore peace to the animal world, and if he had not joined the enemy he might have succeeded in doing so to an extent now hardly imaginable.”
Lewis continues to speculate much in the chapter about animals, their perceived pain, their innocence, their uses by man, the relationship between their reaction to environment and their instinctive choosing.
Then Lewis comes to the part that really grabbed me (brackets used are my thoughts):
“I have been warned not even to raise the question of animal immortality, lest I find myself in company with all the old maids [or old retired pet-lover guys like me!] … The complete silence of Scripture and Christian tradition on animal immortality is a serious objection ... If animals were, in fact, immortal, it is unlikely, from what we discern of God’s method in the revelation, that He would have revealed this truth. Even our own immortality is a doctrine that comes late in the history of Judaism. The argument from silence is very weak … If, nevertheless, the strong conviction which we have of a real, though doubtless rudimentary, selfhood in the higher animals, and especially in those we tame [like the dogs I have had - Foxy, Barney, Nicky, etc.], is not an illusion, their destiny demands a somewhat deeper consideration.”
Now Lewis’ speculation got very interesting to me. He said:
“Man is to be understood only in his relation to God. The beasts are to be understood only in their relation to man and, through man, to God. Man was appointed by God to have dominion over the beasts, and everything a man does to an animal is either a lawful exercise, or a sacrilegious abuse of an authority by divine right. The tame animal is therefore, in the deepest sense, the only “natural” animal - the only one we see occupying the place it was made to occupy, and it is on the tame animal that we must base all our doctrine of beasts. Now it will be seen that, in so far as the tame animal has some real self or personality, it owes this almost entirely to its master. If a good sheepdog seems “almost human” that is because a good shepherd has made it so.”
Now we come to what this old animal lover, myself, finds speculatively fascinating in Lewis’ treatise. He says:
“There is a mysterious force in the Bible use of the word “in” … Man is “in” Christ and Christ “in” man and Christ “in” God and the Holy Spirit “in” the Church and also “in” the individual believer. …1 AM NOW GOING TO SUGGEST - THOUGH WITH GREAT READINESS TO BE SET RIGHT BY REAL THEOLOGIANS - THAT THERE MAY BE A SENSE CORRESPONDING, THOUGH NOT IDENTICAL, WITH THESE, IN WHICH THOSE BEASTS THAT ATTAIN A REAL SELF ARE IN THEIR MASTERS. That is to say, you must not think of a beast by itself, and call that a personality and then inquire whether God will raise and bless that. You must take the whole context IN which the beast acquires its selfhood - namely the goodman and the goodwife [children IN union with Christ] ruling their children and their beasts in the good homestead. That whole context may be regarded as a ‘body’ [in human union] by God, and how much of that ‘body’ may be raised along with the goodman and the goodwife, who can predict? So much, presumably, as is necessary not only for the glory of God and the blessing of the human pair, but for that particular glory and that particular blessing which is eternally colored by that particular terrestrial experience. And in this way it seems to me possible that certain animals may have an immortality, NOT IN THEMSELVES, BUT IN THE IMMORTALITY OF THEIR MASTERS. And the difficulty about personal identity in a creature barely personal disappears when the creature is thus kept in its proper context. If you ask, concerning an animal thus raised as a member of the whole Body of the homestead, where its personal identity resides, I answer ‘Where its identity always did reside even in the earthly life - in its relation to the Body, and especially to the master who is the head of that Body.’ In other words, the man will know his dog, the dog will know its master and, in knowing him, will BE itself.”
Lewis continues: “The theory I am suggesting makes God the center of the universe and man the subordinate center of terrestrial nature - the beasts are not co-ordinate with man, but subordinate to him, and their destiny is through and through related to his. And the derivative immortality suggested for them is part and parcel of the new heaven and new earth, organically related to the whole suffering process of the world’s fall and redemption.”
What Lewis is saying, as I read it, is that the Bible says that in the spirit realm, there is a spirit union of beings. Paul and John in particular speak of a living union between Christ and the believing born again Christian. Galatians 2:20 says that “Christ lives in me.” Lewis speculates on the concept that whatever union of personality exists between the tame beast and his master MAY BE ALLOWED BY GOD TO CARRY OVER INTO THE SPIRITUAL REALM OF HEAVEN. If a pet is a big part of our human life, then why not make it a part of our spirit life also? Possible? The Bible is silent. Speculation? As an animal lover who in 74 years has seen the joy and companionship of many pets, I would appreciate the fulfillment of Lewis’ speculation.
Ten years ago when my faithful one-eyed dog, Foxy, died, I speculated to my wife that one day in the spirit realm I would resurrect Foxy with two eyes as a companion again. It was a sad day which was brightened somewhat by my speculation. Now it seems that C. S. Lewis has the same concept as a possibility.
My wife has since passed on and I now live with a faithful fifteen year old Pomeranian dog named Nicky. I like Lewis’ speculation that Nicky lives IN ME just as I live in Christ and He lives in me. Nicky has been tamed by me and I am his master. I have done my job of “having dominion over him” and Nicky has been incorporated into my terrestrial “household”. There is a friendly competition between us to see who will last the longest and who will die first. But whatever the outcome of our ages, I want to believe, like Lewis, that Nicky will be allowed by God to be a happy part of my heavenly existence.
“Why speculate?” you say. “What good does it do?” Some speculations are provable now. Others must wait to be proven when we are total spirit members of the family of God. But speculation serves a purpose. It EXPANDS our minds into thinking what the kingdom of God will be like. This is not day-dreaming! This is not escapism! This is not wasting your time. Our long range goal for living is the kingdom of God and whatever glorifies God in The spirit realm. GOD MAY WELL BE BETTER GLORIFIED BY WHAT WE RESURRECT AND GLORIFY OF OUR EARTHLY CREATURES WHO HAVE BONDED IN AN EARTHLY UNION WITH US.
The Biggest Reason Why Your Christian Life Isn't Working
“Why do I keep sinning? I see that Jesus Christ died for my sins and I have chosen to make Him the Lord of my life. So what’s wrong with me now that I‘m a Christian and I still can’t do what is right and avoid what is wrong??” I hear these questions among my fellow Christians so often.
We have been born again as children in God’s Family; however, many of us still have a problem. How do we make this Christian life work out in practice? What is holding us back from really achieving our goal?
The biggest reason is a lack of knowledge and understanding of one big important truth: WHEN WE CHOOSE TO ACCEPT CHRIST AS LORD, HE COMES TO LIVE IN US IN A LIVING UNION - HIS SPIRIT TO OUR HUMAN SPIRIT. The central mystery of all history is the union of the creature and the Creator. Not just the Creator. Certainly not just the creature. But the union. We’ve found the whole meaning of life in time and eternity when we’ve found that.
Ancient mythology and tradition recognized some union of God with man, but it was a union which only degraded the gods and didn’t lift mankind. It still left a great gulf between the earthly and the heavenly. But the truth of the Bible is that God is not only a God who mercifully pardons our guilt and saves us from its consequences, not only a God who gives to us a new nature that loves to do the right which once we hated, not only a God who comes to. our aid in temptation and trial and extends His strength and His providence for our deliverance, BUT ABOVE ALL HE IS A GOD WHO COMES HIMSELF TO INDWELL US AND TO LIVE HIS OWN LIFE IN US.
God takes us into the divine Family, makes us partakers of the divine nature, undertakes our life for us, becomes the Author and Finisher of our faith, and assures us that He will never leave us or forsake us.
It’s probably beyond apprehension by the finite mind, as well as beyond description. But if our minds cannot completely grab onto this infinite glory, thank God that we can have faith in it and experience it in our souls.
The whole concept of a being from another dimension living right inside of this human body seems to many very weird. The idea takes a lot of getting used to. But knowing this, accepting this and staying aware of this is the key to success in the Christian life. The human mind has a hard time staying aware of spiritual things and always wants to revert back to material thinking.
Look at one of the greatest Christians of all time - the apostle Paul. Before his conversion, he had no inkling that he was anything other than a material human being. He believed in God as a being in the spirit realm outside of Paul and this God was to be loved and worshiped to the best of Paul’s human ability. In fact Paul was very zealous that every person should worship this far away God in the way that Paul did. He went so far as to persecute this new band of people who were following Christ rather than the Jewish faith and tradition.
But what happened when Paul himself became a Christian? Not immediately, but in a matter of years, Paul came to see that he was not “just Paul” but had Christ living in him. Paul said, “I am crucified with Christ - nevertheless I live - yet not (just) I - but Christ lives in me. And the life that I live humanly, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20). Paul saw the union of the creature and the Creator.
There is such an intimate union that there should never again be a sense of division between the Christian and the living God. We’ve become one united being - part human, part spirit - for “he that is joined to the Lord is one spirit.” Not two, but one. And yet within that mystery there is a unity that allows us to retain our individuality. That’s where a major difficulty comes.
The first point that we need to get clearly in mind is the union - that we’ve become one being or “person”. We’ve gotten so used to the curse of the fall, which is separation, that it’s a long time before we fully realize the fact of our union with God through the indwelling Christ. And we still never entirely attain to a continuous recognition of this union.
Let’s talk about when a human crisis problem hits us, whether as a result of our own human weakness or imposed on us from an outside source. The usual thing we say is, “God permitted it.” That means that God is up there and we are down here dealing with this crisis. But God isn’t up there at all! He is within. Well-meaning Christians who raise their eyes upward when they pray really do so unnecessarily. Why should I try to get a Person to come down when He lives within me? I can see Him where He is, in a common bit of human flesh redeemed in His precious blood and now in a living union with Him.
This makes my whole attitude to life different. Once I recognize that God is joined as one with me, I no longer try to find Him or get Him to come and rescue me.
A crisis come to me. No, no - it doesn’t! It comes to US - Christ/Lou. Not to me, but to US. And Lou is a mighty little part in the us, while Christ is a mighty big part. It comes to Him. And if it comes to Him, He doesn’t just permit it, He means it to come for a reason. And if He means it to come, He’s going to make it turn out for His own purposes. So what makes the Christian life work? What must my attitude be? “Come on Lord, handle it now! Whatever the purpose is, it’s perfect! Carry it out now - AND I‘LL WATCH YOU!” And life becomes a great watching life. We sit on the sidelines and clap when the goals are scored.
You say, “Yeah, sounds good. But I just can’t keep this union idea in my mind. It leaks out in my daily human existence. Since I can’t totally understand it, I can’t totally apply it to work for me.” And you are right. The human mind does leak out what it has learned of spiritual things. It must be constantly recharged by a discipline of connecting or plugging into the WORD. We come to some understanding from the written Word, the Bible. But our understanding and awareness must go farther by connecting with the living WORD, Jesus Christ living in us.
Paul told the Philippians that they should “work” out their own salvation, but that it was God in them who really “worked” out everything. (Phil. 2:12-13). If God “works” in you to both will and to do His purposes, what is the human “work” for the Christian? IT IS JUST THE DISCIPLINE OF RECHARGING OUR AWARENESS BY THE WRITTEN AND LIVING WORD.
I like to emphasize the Bible as an extreme book. It entitles us to live an extreme life and preach an extreme message. It speaks there about the “new man.” It says that when we become this “new man”, Christ is all, and in all of us. If Christ is ALL in me, and ALL in you – what’s left? Is there anything more we can have of God then than we have now if Christ is “all, and in all”? We are complete in union with Him.
Now if a common, created little piece of clay like me can say “Christ is all in me,” it doesn’t leave me with much to bother about myself. I just say, “Alright God, carry on then.” He is in everything that happens in my life; He is totally involved.
If a disease comes to me, it comes to Christ as well as to me. It’s HIS business then. That’s when the burdens go off! You’ll find all our burdens are upon us because we have this separate instinct instead of the united instinct. Every sorrow we carry, every trouble we bear, every tear of self-pity we shed (and there’s an awful lot of self-pity in our tears), comes out of separation ideas instead of union truth.
Every weakness we feel comes out of separation. We all share these human feelings of separation from God. Yes, I feel weak - but it‘s all nonsense. Weak? Of course I‘m humanly weak; but there’s Someone inside me who isn’t!
What we are after in this life-long Christian transformation is a fixed life, a spontaneous life. By God’s grace I am to learn to live spontaneously in a continuous Christ-consciousness, so that it’s “natural” to me to live this way. It’s to be fixed in me. It’s to be fixed in my mind that Christ has taken up a permanent residence in a creature called Lou Hodapp. And He has promised He will never leave Lou or forsake Lou. Lou is being transformed into the best child of God that he can become in this life and has the assurance of eternal life forever in Christ.
The story of the human Jesus Christ 2,000 years ago is the start of the revelation of God’s purpose being plainly revealed to mankind. Hebrews 1:1-3 states that, previously, God had been known in portions; now He was plainly revealed, indwelling the human Jesus. There was to be divinity and humanity combined in a union. Jesus mentioned so many times that His Father lived in Him in a union with Him, and that of His own humanity Jesus could do nothing.
Just as Jesus was a living manifestation of His internal Father, so we manifest God when Christ dwells in us. John tells us that “as He is, so are we in this world” (1 John 4:17). The difference between the human Jesus and us Christians is that He was perfect in His awareness of His union with the Father. Jesus was the perfect example of what this divine/human union relationship was supposed to be. But we are imperfect and, starting with our new birth in Christ, must learn on a daily basis how this divine/human business is meant to work out in practice.
What’s our part? Availability, we simply say, “Well Lord, let’s do it!” and recognize that He is doing it. How do we recognize? Not by outward appearances. We recognize by our spirit controlling our mind. We recognize that as a new creature in union with Christ, our human spirit and the Spirit of Christ are together and are operating as a single unit. There are two, but they are operating as a single unit. That is our starting point.
In the past there were days when I felt I ought to, but I didn’t want to. There were days when I felt I shouldn’t, but I wanted to. How could I stop worrying about the ought-to’s and the shouldn’ts?
I had to learn arithmetic according to Paul. I had to learn that one plus One equals ONE. In I Corinthians 6:17 Paul says, “He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit.” Now Paul didn’t say that the “he” was Jesus Christ.; he said that the “he” is joined to the Lord. So there are two persons, a “he” and Jesus. Sometime in the past you, like I, reached out and said, “I’ll take Jesus Christ.” And you got Him.
You have Jesus as your Savior. You know that. I can’t shake you on that. Now let’s go further. How do you come to believe that Christ lives in you? Ask yourself: How did you ever believe that he died for you? One makes as much sense as the other. If He could die for you, He could certainly live in you and through you to His world. That‘s what we‘re talking about - Christ living in every converted, born again person. Not all Christians know this. What is important is that you know it. We are not responsible for other people’s knowledge, but we can open up our own minds to the revelation of this union with Christ.
Paul said in Philippians 1:21, “For me to live is Christ.” For me to live is Christ living through me, that’s what Paul meant. It was Christ living out His life as Paul when Paul went to all those places that God sent him, speaking to people in the marketplace, or to those he stayed with, or sometimes in the synagogue. As long as they would listen to him, it was Christ making His appeal through Paul.
So it’s not us for Him, but Christ by us. If that’s true, then who’s going to the grocery store tomorrow? Who’s going downtown? Who’s going fishing? Who’s going to relax in the sun? Christ is, if that’s what you’re going to do tomorrow, because He’s vitally in union with you. What’s He interested in? What you’re interested in! What’s He doing? What you’re doing! What‘s He concerned about? What you’re concerned about! Why? Because you and He are ONE!
You may say, “Well, I‘m not always concerned about religious things.” Wonderful! Neither was He! In the Gospels He was seldom concerned about “religious” things. He seemed more interested in being with people. He was down by the lake; people saw Him down there. He was in the home of Mary, Martha and Lazarus; people heard about Him being there. Every once in a while they’d hear about Him being at church, and that’s when they would ask Him to speak! And what did they hear? Not religion, but a word of life. They responded to life. So, we go about our business - we are life, that’s all. Just carriers of THE LIFE!
How can this be? How can I be so unconcerned, so uncritical, so free of judgment about my own character and my own purposes? Because life is spontaneous. Before you became a Christian, you never got up out of bed and said, “I‘m going to try to be lost today.” Did anybody go around saying, “Where‘s that book on how to be lost? I‘m going to try to be lost today.” No, you just got up and were lost. There wasn’t any difficulty in being lost, because you were born that way.
Now is it difficult being a Christian? I thought it was, because for years I got up and I said, “Now where’s that Book that tells me how to be a Christian?” I‘d look in this Book, and I‘d see something like this: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” and I would think, “That’s what I’ll do. The Bible says it, and I’ll do it!” I would go down the road and fifteen minutes later I would see somebody I just couldn’t stand much less love. Then I‘d read something else about, “You shall not do such and such.” So, I would say, “I won’t do it. You won’t catch me doing that because I’m a Christian. I love God. I won’t do it!” But just give me enough time and before long I‘d do it. So would you.
Christians react in different ways to that frustration. Some want to give up on Christianity altogether because they reach the conclusion, “I can’t do it.” Others keep plowing right along. But those who sincerely love God and want to serve Him usually end up very frustrated. And that’s exactly what is meant to happen. All of us need to come to the recognition that we simply can’t do it on our own.
A while back I discovered that I was just a New Testament Jew. I think most Christians are. You know why? Where was the Jewish God? Their God was “up there”. Where was my God? He was “up there”. How did they try to stay right in God’s eyes? By trying to keep the Law by their own strength and offering sacrifices to be forgiven of their sins. How did I try to stay right in God’s eyes? By trying to keep the New Testament Law by my own strength and offering “sacrifices” for my sin failures - time spent trying to make it up to God by forms of “penance”. Was there any difference? No, I was just a New Testament Jew.
Until the Christian life comes as spontaneously as being lost once did, you don’t know Christ operating as you. Can Christ be trusted in union with you and me to live that life? I can now say yes. I couldn’t always say yes, because I looked like a bad risk. I looked wishy-washy. I looked hot and cold, in and out, up and down. I couldn’t say yes until I wore myself out trying, because I was a God-lover, and I thought that’s what I was supposed to do for God. You probably are a God-lover too.
But we’re God-lovers because God is love, and we contain God by Christ in us, and we love by Him. We’re new persons. We’re, as it were, a new “species” of man. The old person with Satan’s nature has died. But, instantly, a new person in union with Christ has been born.
So now as we love and live and act, we say, “Jesus, you are the one loving and living and acting in my life.” And the bottom line is: we don’t have any real and lasting desire to do what’s wrong. Any burning, zealous drive within us to do what is wrong is gone. Occasionally, we still do, but it’s a surface whim, not a deep-down want. So, we don’t judge ourselves as evil beings because of the occasional lapses.
When we were lost, we occasionally did things that looked like God. It didn’t count for any right standing with God - because our union was wrong. Now that we are converted, occasionally we’re going to do things that don’t look like God is living in us - but they are not sins “unto death” because we are not condemned by these slip-ups. We just confess the sin to God, and acknowledge that it is covered by the blood. It is forgiven, and forgotten, and we go on, very probably in a stronger spiritual state for having seen our error and resolved to “give it all to Jesus”! And acknowledging Christ as our Life will never fail to steer us on God’s way.
God is better able to keep us than we are able to keep ourselves. God is better able to produce what will please Him than we can produce what we think will please Him. The latter is from an illusion of separation and profits nothing. The former is from the truth of one plus One equals ONE and profits infinitely.
So here is the answer. First, as humans we will always walk in the flesh, and always be conscious of the assaults of all forms of temptations. That is our privilege to be real participants in a real world, in order to overcome it and shine as lights in it. We no longer confront our flesh battles as flesh people, as if we humans should conquer them. We admit the flesh doesn’t fight our battles. But if we recognize and are aware of our union with the indwelling Christ, we say with Paul that we are not in the flesh but in the Spirit (Romans 8:9). In this God-given consciousness, it must naturally come to me to transfer my temporary recognition of the outer pull of flesh (mind and body) on me to my true understanding of who I really am - a union of: Christ, the divine Master/Lou, the human child of God.
If I have momentarily followed the flesh, the shed blood of Christ on Calvary removes my wrongs from God’s sight and mine, a forward moving lesson is learned, and my conscience is cleansed. God has forgotten, so I, too, must forget.
Life becomes a spiritual education going from one grade to the next. You take the tests and, when you pass, you move on higher. Sometimes you do so badly that you may have to slip back a grade and take that course over again. But the marvelous thing is that you will make it through to graduate! There will be set-backs, there will be pain from mistakes, but these are only lessons to be learned. When you enroll in this “Christian school” of life, YOUR TEACHER, YOUR TUTOR, COMES TO LIVE RIGHT INSIDE OF YOU WITH ALL THE PERFECT POWERS OF PERSUASION TO GET YOU THROUGH.
Feet are funny things. They are the extensions at the end of our legs that we walk on, that maintain balance whether walking or standing. Not always highly honored, they are frequently referred to as smelly, sore and swollen, sometimes all at one time. They are probably the most maligned, least cared for and unappreciated parts of our body - until they hurt or tragically, in some cases, cease to function.
I was walking along a sandy Missouri River bank near my home not long ago and was thinking about an even more obvious observation about feet. They leave footprints. In the sand I noted numerous imprints of well-known footwear manufacturers who insist that the wearer leaves their particular logo. I detected Adidas, Nike and Reebok, readily recognizable from the distinct markings on the soles. I saw that the imprint I was leaving behind was the imprint of my cheap Target tennis shoes.
Deciding on our identity imprint is for many a lifelong quest. We keep trying to find who we are or imitating someone else. Or else we are laboring to leave imprints that only reflect perfection for fear we fail God or disappoint others. I recall the following verse:
The future lies before you like a field of driven snow. Be careful how your tread it for every step will show.
For the believer who has come to see Christ as Life, there is a whole new, exciting and liberating way to look at our footprints.
Many are familiar with the famous “Footprints” poem:
One night a man had a dream. He dreamed he was walking along the beach with the Lord. Across the sky flashed scenes from his life. In each scene, he noticed two sets of footprints in the sand --- one belonging to him and the other to the Lord. When the last scene had flashed before him, he looked back at the footprints and noticed that many times along the path, there was only one set of footprints in the sand. He also noticed that this happened during the lowest and saddest times in his life. This really bothered him --- and he questioned the Lord. “Lord, you said that once I decided to follow You, You would walk with me all the way. But I noticed that during the most troublesome times of my life, there was only one set of footprints. I don’t understand why --- when I needed You the most, You deserted me.” The Lord replied, “My precious child, I love you and I would never leave you. During your times of trial and suffering when you see only one set of footprints --- it was then that I carried you.”
As beautiful as the sentiments of this story are, the truth is that we are neither walking alongside the Savior, nor is He carrying us when the going gets rough. The New Testament Epistles are replete with the inescapable evidence that we have become UNITED to Christ and that we are ONE (Galatians 2:20; 2 Corinthians 13:5). The Father‘s promise, never to leave us or forsake us, is much easier to understand when we embrace the concept of being forever in a mysterious union with Him.
The only footprints we leave behind are our own. Jesus does not walk beside us because He lives right within us. We are the material vessel (feet and all) which carries Him inside of us. He does not just walk beside us during the good times in order to be there when we cry for help in the bad times. Whether the going is rough or smooth, Jesus Christ is there IN US.
The key is the constant awareness that we are His vessels to use in the good times AND the bad times. We carry Him constantly in our walk but He is not a burden - in fact, He overcomes gravity and makes our footprints lighter in the sand whenever we choose to trust and follow His direction.
And when we do let Him live through us, He miraculously leaves His “Logo” in our footprints for all to see:
I pray to the Father that He shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you forever. He is the Spirit of Truth whom the world cannot receive because it does not see Him or know Him. But you know Him, for He dwells with you and shall be in you.
The Comforter who is the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, will teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance that I have said to you.
When the Comforter comes whom I will send to you from the Father (He is the Spirit of Truth who proceeds from the Father), He shall testify of Me.
It is the best thing for you that I go away, for if I don’t go away, the Comforter will not come to you, but if I go, I will send Him to you. And when He comes, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness and of judgment. Of sin - because they don‘t believe in Me. Of righteousness - because I go to My Father and you see Me no more. Of judgment - because the prince of this world is judged.
I have many things to say to you but you cannot understand them now. But when He, the Spirit of Truth, comes He will guide you into all truth, for He will not speak of Himself, He will show you things to come. He will glorify Me and show you about Me -about how everything the Father has, I have. A little while and you shall not see Me, and again, a little while and you shall see Me, because I go to the Father. (John 14:16-17;26 John 15:26 John 16:7-16)
These passages from the Gospel of John show the purpose of God as He makes a change in the type of discipleship from an external to an internal form of guidance into truth. John 14:20 says exactly how this will take place. AT THAT DAY YOU SHALL KNOW THAT I AM IN MY FATHER, AND YOU ARE IN ME, AND I AM IN YOU.
So upon being born again by accepting Jesus Christ as Lord and Master, we receive a Comforter - the Holy Spirit of God. As I read the above Comforter verses, I picture the working out of it this way: Christ as the living Son of God comes to indwell my human spirit and to change my basic spirit nature from a Satan nature to a divine God nature. Christ lives in union with me right there in my human spirit. This is a fact. This is reality which occurs immediately at my new birth in Christ.
The problem is - I didn’t know that this is what happened WHEN it happened, I had to learn it and continue to learn more about it every day of my life. And not me alone. It seems to me that almost everyone is lacking of this “Christ in you” understanding at their new birth. Oh, they have some vague idea about how Christ is going to be available when they need Him, and that they are going to do their best to follow Him, but that is usually the extent of a new believer’s understanding.
I see these words about the coming of a Comforter meaning that the Holy Spirit of the Trinity of God, who previously had been dealing with the person from an external position, now comes to actually indwell the human soul of the new Christian just as Christ indwells the human spirit. The soul is the intellect, the emotions and the will by which factors we choose, we decide, we act through our bodies.
The Holy Spirit COMFORTS our soul by teaching us that we are in a living union with Christ and that we have salvation in Him. The Holy Spirit is there to show us on a daily basis how this union with the indwelling Jesus Christ works out in practice. In general, the Holy Spirit deals with us internally to show us the facts that Jesus said in John’s gospel that we were unable to understand before.
And when we come to know these facts, we receive great COMFORT from the Comforter. But what about the process of coming to know and accept this truth? Does the Comforter always give comfort?? Or does the Comforter many times have to make us UNCOMFORTABLE in our life??
I have found in my own life that as I have come to the knowledge of my union with Christ, I have had a wonderful overriding COMFORT and peace. But there have been many times when the Holy Spirit has had to MAKE ME UNCOMFORTABLE! And the circumstances causing my uncomfortability or frustration have always been the same - it is when I drift away from the awareness of Christ living in me and temporarily begin to do my own thing in the world. John’s message from Jesus says that the Holy Spirit lives in us to constantly remind us of Christ. And the only way to give us our ultimate comfort is to make us uncomfortable when we forget who we are in Christ. The 12th chapter of the book of Hebrews describes “chastening” or correction of the children of God when they tend to slip out of awareness of who they are in Christ. And, let’s face it, we live in a world that is constantly working to draw us away from that awareness. The world, the flesh and the devil – the culture of the world, the desires of the flesh and the temptations of Satan – all work on our humanity.
Let me paraphrase Hebrews 12 starting with verse 5 and going to verse 11:
My child of God, don’t get mad when the Holy Spirit makes you uncomfortable because of the way you are thinking or acting. That is why He is there: to make you see the frustration in not trusting Christ to live His Life in you. And the only way you can be frustrated is to be uncomfortable. God loves you as His child and He corrects you as any good Father does who loves His child. In order to learn the lifestyle of God’s Family (in which you will forever live) the Father has to use correction - and that correction involves making you uncomfortable in your errors. In fact, if you didn’t feel uncomfortable in ignoring Christ within you, the Father would be shirking His responsibility. You came to understand that when your human father corrected you, it was for your own good. How much more is the correction by discomfort and frustration by your heavenly Father for your own good - your eternal COMFORT! We gradually by correction become partakers of His holiness! Sure it hurts! Sure it makes you uncomfortable! There’s no human joy in being corrected. The pain can be short or even long-lasting humanly, but in the light of eternity it pales in importance. What is important is that our discomfort draws us back into the awareness of, as the saying goes, “what side our bread is buttered on” - what is the real purpose in our creation: to have a living union with the righteousness of God in Christ.
Yes, the Comforter is for our ultimate COMFORT. But along the way, the Holy Spirit makes us temporarily UNCOMFORTABLE so that we return to the peace and comfort of Christ. And in the next chapter of Hebrews, chapter 13, verses 5 and 8 give the basis for our eternal COMFORT on earth as it is in heaven: I WILL NEVER LEAVE YOU NOR FORSAKE YOU! JESUS CHRIST, THE SAME YESTERDAY, AND TODAY, AND FOREVER!
Many people take great pleasure in hunting up their pedigrees, their family tree or their roots. There is always a risk in doing this since one may encounter some unpleasant character that could somewhat spoil the picture, but it could nevertheless add to the excitement. In any event, an understanding of our roots gives us a sense of our true identity.
My sister and my aunt have been great genealogy buffs. They have traced the Hodapp ancestry through a direct line back as far as 1637 in Baden-Baden, Bavaria. The Hodapp’s were Bavarian bakers. (I guess this is the reason that I love the bakery section at the supermarket. The taste for those wonderful baked desserts is in my genes!)
They have traced a very specific history of how the Hodapp’s came to America in the early 1800’s. They came ashore at New Orleans and began a trip up the Mississippi searching for a place to settle which, preferably, had a similar climate to their Bavarian roots. Some dropped off the boat in the St. Louis/St. Charles area and, for whatever reasons, decided to settle there. The majority of the family continued north on the Mississippi into the area of Minnesota. The climate and the fertile soil made them decide that this would be their home.
We now know names and dates of specific brothers and sisters who made the journey. We know about events which occurred along the way such as cholera on the boat and attacks by indians from the shore. We know about the rough times that the Minnesota settlement had in carving out a place in the wilderness in the heart of a hostile indian territory. This information was found in a local history of the Mankato, Minnesota area written in the late 1800’s by a German Catholic priest from the area. All of this information has given our family a sense of real Hodapp roots.
Of course, that great book, the Bible, gives us an even deeper discovery of human roots. In regard to Jesus’ humanity, the Gospels give us His family tree or genealogy, without omitting those shadier characters who helped to form the direct line to His birth at Bethlehem. There was Rahab the harlot, and David the man of blood - the murderer, a man of lust and pride and fear. These, and others who fell short of the divine ideal, were not left out of the record, but in each case were given a place of honor. Despite how dishonorable this pedigree appears, how wonderful to know that God has everything in hand, for “He works all things after the counsel of His own will” (Eph. 1:11).
We certainly are all aware that our family tree - or roots - might well reveal participation in evil as well as commendable actions. However, it is our hidden roots, our spiritual connections, that are more important in giving us our sense of identity. As creatures originating from God, what is the nature of our spiritual roots?
That we have such roots is certainly substantiated by Paul in his word to the pagan Athenians when he said, concerning the “unknown God”, “In Him we live and move and HAVE OUR BEING” (Acts 17:28). The apostle John affirmed that there was not a man who came into the world in whom there was not concealed the Light of Life (John 1:4). And Paul said that every person is without excuse in recognizing that there is a Creator God (Romans 1:19-20). Hidden in all is a God-consciousness! It can be ignored, or recognized and acted upon.
God does not leave His creation - man and nature - and become “God in absentia”, as would a clock maker who makes a clock, winds it up, and puts it on the shelf as something existing quite separate from himself. No, God’s creation is in a unique way an extension of Himself, a manifestation of His being. It is true that God is hidden in all His creation, but not absent. The “divine genes” are there doing their spiritual work. God is hidden in man’s consciousness, though He may be sadly ignored by man’s devotion to lesser gods. To tear man away from his self-chosen gods is the supreme work of the Cross, applied by the Holy Spirit.
Man is composed of spirit, soul and body - three parts making up one whole (1 Thessalonians 5:23). I like to say that I AM a spirit, I HAVE a soul, and I LIVE in a body. The real root of me is my human spirit which is the foundation of my being, an eternal part of the spirit realm of God. My soul is my intellect, emotions and will which connect my human spirit to my body for material action. And, of course, my body is strictly earthly and material (although it will be replaced with some form of spiritual body in the future - see 1 Cor. 15:35-44).
Looking for his real roots, man will come to look into the face of Jesus Christ and there begin to see what has been up to then a negligible matter to him - the glory of the Family of God. The person who begins to tire of and turn from the lesser gods will begin to see that not only are his sins to be dealt with (actually have been!) but that his personal identity is inescapably threatened. Jesus died not only “for our sins” but AS sin: “He became sin for us” (Eph. 5:21).
The Bible traces my human roots back much further than 1637 in Bavaria. All the “family” names of Smith, Brown, McCarthy, etc., and HODAPP can be traced back ultimately to our first parents, Adam and Eve. Everyone’s human gene structure, as complicated as DNA has become, goes back to the egg and sperm DNA of these first human beings. Our bodies, souls, spirits had their human roots in the composition of these two first people.
Now what did we inherit from them in these roots? The Bible says that all humanity inherited the human spirit nature of Satan! (Gen. 3:14-19; John 8:38-44). Our spirit root became saturated with the ideas and desires of Satan - the Enemy and the Accuser - because of the wrong choice of our first parents in the Garden. We inherited the desire to sin, i.e. to be separated from dependence on God, our Creator. We inherited the effects of our first parent’s mistaken desire to live their own lives in their own strength. This was not an “anti-God” desire. I am sure that they still recognized God as a friend that they could call on when they really needed to. But they chose to attempt to be independent selves making their own decisions about life. Is this not what we see in the worldly people around us? Most are not “anti-God”. They just think that they can get along without Him almost all of the time. They look to their own supposed strengths to handle things. But of course, in a dire emergency, they then call out for help. They say that you never saw so many people praying in earnest as on the Titanic in its last moments.
So our human roots from our first parents consisted of the effects of their sin (commonly called “original sin”), but also included the nature and desire to commit our own sin - to live separated from God except in drastic emergencies. Adam and Eve had to make an original choice of roots - would they depend on God or would they depend on themselves - and they made the wrong choice. This established our human roots to this day.
This was the bad news! Now here’s the good news: like Adam and Eve, each one of us can also choose the root nature of our human spirit! WE CAN CHANGE OUR ROOTS! We are born with a SIN root nature; but we can choose to change our roots into a GOD root nature. And I don’t mean just temporarily - I mean permanently, forever!
This change in root nature is called “salvation”. It can only come to us by deliberate choice - in becoming persuaded by all the circumstances of human life that we DO need to depend on our Creator God. When we recognize this dependence, we are then shown by revelation the cross of Jesus Christ and the necessity of belief in His sacrifice for our sins.
As we repent and accept Christ as Lord, we instantly change our roots. The Satan nature is instantly removed and the nature of God replaces it in the Person of Christ who comes to indwell the changed human spirit.
Though I can’t change the fact that I came from a baker in Bavaria in 1637, and I can’t change the fact that I came from the “loins” - the sperm and egg - of my first parents Adam and Eve, I CAN CHANGE MY ROOTS WHERE IT REALLY COUNTS - IN MY SPIRIT NATURE!
This recognition and acceptance of God’s foundational plan will begin to undo man’s self-centeredness and bring him eventually (still by trial and error after the salvation change) to the spiritual growth God desires in His children. Each person’s experience in passing through this process may differ in a thousand ways from others who are making the same quest for their roots. This discovery is often made through pain, as the person is released from the self life into an awareness of union with Christ. Man discovers that his “union” roots are in the eternal union experienced with the indwelling Christ - and with Christ’s own union with the Father. In the following scriptures, Jesus is clearly identifying us along with Himself in relation to the Father:
“The firstborn among many brethren” (Rom. 8:29). “Chosen in Him before the foundation of the world” (Eph. 1:4). “That they may be one, even as We are one I in them and You in Me that they may be made perfect in one” (John 14:21).
There are many scriptures that show that we are brought into that same flow of Divine union which the Son enjoys with the Father. We are therefore not experiencing some new solution to man’s problem, but are being engulfed in and embraced by the only union there is - the eternal Son-Father relationship. The ability to comprehend this was transmitted by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the comprehension continued with the teachings of Paul and John to the fledgling Church, and continued on down through the checkered career of the Church’ s history - always known to those who saw through to a reality far beyond the mere formal and much-embattled doctrines current in their day.
Today it is being realized more and more that we are not the product of a plan that emerged from God to meet a problem, but that we have emerged from that holy ROOT union of Father and Son and must at all costs be brought to an awareness of the wonder which is at the ROOT of the universe. The Father and the Son are referred to as “one Spirit”, and therefore “he that is joined to the Lord is one Spirit.” This is the unalterable ROOT of our being which can be anyone’s chosen spiritual ROOT. Human life is a schoolhouse of circumstances to bring us to see clearly that our ROOTS are in this absolute union of the Godhead. In this eternal union in which we are participating, we are embraced by God as gods - as His real spirit nature children. Our becoming effectively aware of it, whether by an immediate or by a delayed awareness, is a matter concerning which many stories can be told, both of personal ecstasy and agony.
As temporal beings we date things from the historic events, and rightly so, for these are what arrest us and direct our attention to the eternal truths. Going back to 1637 family history can, in fact is meant to, instill a sense of inheritance of values. This sense can be used by God to draw us into a recognition of inheritance of sin or separation from Him. By this the veil is drawn aside for us to see what reality is in the work and presence of Christ FOR US and AS US. We date all this from Eden when the process of bringing light out of darkness began to be a working operation. This process has never been stopped through all history; it has flowed as the river of God’s grace through the centuries.
There can be no doubt that there have been gradual dawnings as well as brilliant noon times of man’s comprehension of these spiritual ROOTS. To some there has always been a less clearly-defined awareness of an overshadowing “will to all goodness”. To others it has come like a cataclysmic event, when for them eternity has suddenly broken through. The CHANGE OF ROOTS has come through many and varied circumstances. David says in Psalm 36:9: “With You is the fountain of life and in Your light we shall see light.” David had gone a very painful way. A fountain is a great picture of utmost diversity and universal direction - for its base is a fixed confinement, a hidden unchanging reality, but the spread of the water is in many directions and forces. Paul says that we are to “rooted and grounded in love” (Eph. 3:17). And John says that “God IS love” (1 John 4:16). Our eternal ROOTS are given us, for our beings are grounded in God!
Throughout the centuries reason has wrestled concerning what should be the correct formation of theological concepts, those “stars” which have been the luminaries for the soul mind. Yet with a very minimal understanding of these objective “stars” of truth, many have found the love light of noon. For many, these theological concepts have been almost bypassed. For they, at best, have been the objective prelude to the total personification of our ROOT in Christ, changing for them what has been external formulas into a life-changing inner revelation - a transcendent God out there somewhere to an immanence, an awareness of union as a reality of the soul.
I am going to paraphrase my favorite Bible verse, Galatians 2:20, in light of my ROOTS: I am crucified with Christ (I have changed my spirit ROOTS from Satan to Christ), nevertheless I live, yet not I but Christ lives in me (I am no longer a child of Satan but rather a child of God), and the human life which I live, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me. (We are ROOTED in Christ, and it is out of Christ IN ME that the fruits are grown and delivered.)
