This is probably the most crucial passage in the New
Testament for understanding the dynamics of the spiritual life.
a)
Efficacious
grace: the ministry of God the Holy Spirit to the believer at the moment of
salvation—Romans 8:28-30. This is the specific ministry of the Holy Spirit who
acknowledges the faith of the unbeliever and transforms the faith of that
spiritually dead person into something effective for salvation. Remember we are
not saved because of our faith, we are saved through faith. Ephesians 2:8,9
makes that clear, it is the preposition DIA [dia] plus the genitive of PISTIS
[pistij].
Genitive means “through”. DIA
plus the genitive means “through.” If it was the accusative case it would mean
“because.” God the Holy Spirit is very precise. We are not saved because we
believe, that would put the location of the merit on us because we were wise
enough to believe. But when it is through faith, faith is simply the means of
appropriating salvation and it puts all of the merit in the object of faith
which is the work of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross.
b)
Regeneration
is defined as spiritual birth or being born again—John3:3-7; Titus 3:5. At that
moment we pass from spiritual death to spiritual life, and at the same instant
that the human spirit is imparted to us God the Father imputes to it His very
own life, eternal life. So we have eternal life as a possession that can never
be lost.
c)
Baptism
by means of the Holy Spirit—1 Corinthians 12:13. This occurs also at the
instant of salvation and at that instant every believer is identified with
Christ in His death, burial and resurrection. At the moment of faith lone in
Christ alone God the Holy Spirit identifies us (that is the significance of
baptism. The literal meaning of baptism is to dip, plunge, or immerse, but the
significance is identification) We enter into an eternal union with Christ. He
places us into Christ, into His body. At that instant we are created a new
spiritual species, 2 Corinthians 5:17. So the believer is placed in a permanent
union with Christ and this is the basis of our positional sanctification.
d)
The
indwelling of the Holy Spirit. There is a difference between the indwelling of
God the Holy Spirit, the baptism of God the Holy Spirit, and the filling of God
the Holy Spirit. They are distinct words and they are distinct ministries.
Unfortunately, especially in the Pentecostal holiness camp, they have viewed
those words as synonyms, so they really get confused because they think the
indwelling and the baptism are all the same. The indwelling of God the Holy
Spirit is a Holy Spirit is a permanent possession of every single believer—1
Corinthians 3:16; 6:19. At the moment of salvation God the Holy Spirit takes up
permanent residence in the believer. He transforms our bodies into a temple for
the simultaneous indwelling of Jesus Christ as the Shekinah Glory. We are
indwelt by God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. This has never
happened before in human history. In the Old Testament the filling of the Holy
Spirit was not based on a relationship with God the Holy Spirit because they
did not have a relationship with God the Holy Spirit. Only a very few people,
less than a hundred, in all of the Old Testament were endued by God the Holy
Spirit and it was always related to their job or their function in terms of
theocratic leadership. It could be lost and it was a ministry that was designed
to give them wisdom and skill in the arena of leadership. The best illustration
is the temple and tabernacle craftsmen. The basic mean of the Hebrew word is
skill, and it came to mean wisdom because wisdom is the ability to learn
information and then to transform that and apply it skillfully in life, to
create something beautiful with your life that glorifies God. But its root
meaning is skill and we see that in the craftsmen who worked on the tabernacle
and temple. Enduement was simply to give them that skill, and it was the same
thing with the rulers, the prophets and priests under the ministry of inspiration.
In the Old Testament it was a temporary ministry of God the Holy Spirit; in the
New Testament it is permanent. No believer can lose the indwelling of God the
Holy Spirit, it is a permanent possession.
e)
The
filling of the Holy Spirit. However Old Testament enduement is contrasted with
the New Testament filling ministry of God the Holy Spirit mandated in Ephesians
5:18. Because it is an imperative mood there for PLEROO [plhrow] that means you either will or you will not be
filled. The believer is always indwelt but he may or may not be filled. The
filling ministry of God the Holy Spirit, therefore, is going to be related to
the believer’s volition, because whenever you have an imperative that is
directed toward your volition and you can either apply it or not apply it, obey
or disobey, it is specifically related to the recall and application of Bible
doctrine. So we see that the two sources of power in the Church Age relate to
the filling of the Holy Spirit and Bible doctrine.
f)
The
sealing ministry of God the Holy Spirit. This takes place at the moment of
salvation and is related to the doctrine of eternal security. The seal is an
analogy taken from the Roman empire where it was a signature of ownership. At
salvation the believer has the seal of God placed upon him. This is a signature
guarantee which means that he can never lose his salvation because he is in
Christ—Ephesians 1:13; 4:30.
g)
The
distribution of spiritual gifts. At the moment of salvation every believer is
given at least one spiritual gift. Do not confuse the spiritual gifts with
natural abilities, to natural talent. Spiritual gifts are specific ministries
to be used in the local church. That means that their development and use is
going to be related to the believer’s advance to spiritual maturity.
In this passage there is an
initial mandate given in verse 16: “walk by means of” is an instrumental
dative, “the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh.” So
here in verses 16-18 we see the initial command from the apostle Paul to believers
to live on the basis of the power of God the Holy Spirit. This is contrasted
with carrying out the desire of the flesh. In verses 17 and 18 he explains the
nature of this conflict. “For the flesh [a term for the sin nature] sets its
desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in
opposition to one another, so that you may not do that which you please. But if
you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law.” That is the basis for the conflict in the
spiritual life that we have to overcome if we are going to advance spiritually.
The next paragraph is verses
19-21 which list the deeds of the flesh. “Now the deeds of the flesh are
evident.” Then we have what is basically a grocery list of characteristics that
are produced by the sin nature” “immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry,
sorcery [the use of drugs], enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger,
disputes, dissensions, factions, envyings, drunkenness, carousings, and things
like these …”
In verses 22-23 we have the
list of the production of God the Holy Spirit. We have to distinguish this from
false production, counterfeit production, which comes from the sin nature.
Obviously unbelievers can have some kind of love, some measure of happiness,
some level of contentment and tranquility. They can be patient, gentle, good;
they can have these characteristics to some degree. So when the Scripture says
that these are the production of the Holy Spirit we have to understand what the
dynamic is so that these characteristics are produced in our life, not in the
sense of holding ourselves up by the bootstrap type of approach, but in
understanding that this is the Holy Spirit doing this in our life and not
ourselves. If we are doing it from the flesh it doesn’t count.
Verses 24-25—a conclusion.
“Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its
passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the
Spirit.” In the English this looks like a restatement of what we have in verse
16 but it is a different Greek word for “walk” in verse 25.
Backing up to verse 16 –
this clearly indicates a shift in topic. Paul uses the particle DE [de] which is translated “but,”
“I say” – he is emphasizing this – “walk by the Spirit.” The command is a present
active imperative of the verb PERIPATEO
[peripatew],
the standard word for walking. When you have a present imperative (an
imperative is the mood of command; this is a mandate for the spiritual life)
the present tense is usually continual action, but when you have the
combination of a present tense and an imperative mood it looks at the action as
continuing, and the present imperative as opposed to the aorist imperative is
used with general principles related to the spiritual life, specifically for habit
or behaviour patterns that should characterize our life. The active voice means
that you and I, each believer, is the one who performs the action. The Holy
Spirit does not do this for us; He does not override our volition. God always
respects our volition and never makes us conform. So we have to make the
decision as to whether or not we are going to walk by means of the Spirit. This
means that the ultimate issue is a volitional issue. The thrust of the mandate
is ingressive progressive, i.e. we are to begin doing it and to continue doing
it and making it a customary pattern in our life. To “walk” is used as a
metaphor basically for living life or the conduct of one’s life. We are to
conduct our lives “by means of the Spirit”. This is the dative case of PNEUMA [pneuma], the standard word for the
Holy Spirit, and here it does not have the modifier HAGIOS [a(gioj] for “holy”, but we know
from the context it is always talking about the Holy Spirit and not the human
spirit. This is a dative of means or an instrumental dative. The Holy Spirit is
the means by which the walk, the life, the conduct of the believer is advanced.
The emphasis is on dependency on God the Holy Spirit as opposed to the flesh.
1.
The
word PERIPATEO [peripatew] is usually used of forward
step by step motion. Learning to walk as a small child takes concentration.
Eventually it requires less thought. At the beginning of the spiritual life
there has to be a lot of focus and concentration on just who you are depending on
in this thing called the spiritual life. The word PERIPATEO is used metaphorically to
represent the entire panorama of a person’s life, both his thought life and his
overt activity.
2.
The
second word that is used is STOICHEO
[stoixew].
It means to walk in a straight line and it is used metaphorically to march in
step, to march in rank, to walk in agreement with, to walk forward in an
orderly manner. It is primarily used in this passage for advancing in the
spiritual life in relation to the mandates given in the Word of God under the
inspiration of God the Holy Spirit. So it is used for advancing according to a
standard, following the footsteps of the Spirit. What are those footsteps? The
steps are the mandates of Scripture. God’s Holy Spirit specifically lays out a
track down which we are to walk, and that track is spelled out specifically for
us in all the mandates and prohibitions in the New Testament.
3.
A
third word is ORTHOPODEO [o)rqopodew], and it means to set
something straight. In Galatians 2:14 it was used in a negative sense n
challenging Peter because he was no longer walking a straight course, he had
caved in to the gospel of legalism.
4.
A
fourth word is a very general word, POREUO [poreuw], and it means to walk about, to journey, to
travel. Sometimes it is used in the sense of going about one’s daily activity.
5.
We
are told in Romans 6:4 that we are to walk in newness of life. “Walk according
to the norm of the Spirit and not the flesh—Romans 8:4. “Walk in
honesty”—Romans 13:13; “Walk by means of faith and not by means of sight”—2
Corinthians 5:7 (faith-rest drill); “Walk in the sphere of good works” –
Ephesians 2:10; “Walk in love—Ephesians 5:2; “Walk in wisdom”—Colossians4:5;
“Walk in truth”—2 John 4; “Walk according to the norm of divine mandates” – 2
John 6; “Walk in the light”—Ephesians 5:8. Negatively, we are not to walk
according to the standard of the sin nature—Romans 8:4; not according to the
standard of men—1 Corinthians 3:3; not in craftiness—2 Corinthians 4:2; not by
sight—2 Corinthians5:7; not in the emptiness of the mind—Ephesians 4:17; not in
a disorderly manner—2 Thessalonians 3:6.
One of the greatest areas of
confusion is in the whole realm of sanctification. What makes this so confusing
for many people is that about ninety per cent of what people say is the same
thing. It is that small ten per cent or five per cent difference that is so
difficult to pin down, so when you listen to any three, four or five people
they are all basically saying the same thing or sound like they are saying the
same thing; and yet, if you know what you are listening for you will pick up on
a few things and perceive a few things that will distinguish them one from
another. But unfortunately most people do not always understand these minor
differences, and they are not always minor because what we discover is that it
is in these one or two or three distinctions between the different schools of
theology that make all the difference in the world.
When
we get into this particular section of Galatians the apostle Paul has been
building an argument, from the beginning of chapter three, related to the
spiritual life. Verse 3 of chapter 3: “Are you so foolish? Having begun by the
Spirit, are you now being matured by the flesh?” What that implies is that
there is a way that is really a pseudo-spirituality, and that is too often what
happens when people confuse morality with spirituality. They do not understand
that whatever the unbeliever can do is not part of the spiritual life. The
spiritual life of the Church Age believer is a supernatural way of life and
demands a supernatural means of executing that spiritual life. No one is asking
the question, much less answering the question, How do you distinguish morality
which is a product of the flesh (sin nature) and spirituality? What is the
essential difference? What is going on in your life? Is it production of God
the Holy Spirit or simply a production of your own flesh and your own ability?
So
we begin in 5:16 where we have the mandate: “But I say, walk by means of the
Spirit, and you will not carry out the desires of the flesh.” This section is
bracketed by two different commands which appear to be the same in English but
are different in the Greek. In verse 25 we read: “If we live by the Spirit, let
us also walk by the Spirit.” The word for “walk” there is STOICHEO [stoixew] which means to follow in
the track of someone, to follow in the path of someone, follow in the footsteps
of someone, and so there is a slightly different nuance between the two.
Walking
is one of the best forms of exercise. Whenever you walk it develops a
circulation of your bloodstream; it improves your breathing, it has an aerobic
effect on your cardiovascular system; it supports the regular elimination of
waste; and it strengthens your heart muscle. So let’s take those factors and
develop the analogy to the spiritual life.
a)
When
it comes to walking in the spiritual life, first of all it works out all the
muscles of the spiritual life which are the spiritual skills. So when you walk
by the Spirit you are exercising all of the spiritual skills; you are
developing the muscles of the spiritual life.
b)
It
increases the circulation of doctrine in your soul. The more you use doctrine
in your soul the more you will develop the ability to utilize it. The less you
use it the more you will lose it.
c)
Just
as physical walking has an aerobic effect on the body it has a spiritual
aerobic effect and improves the inhale and exhale of Bible doctrine. The more
you walk by means of the Spirit the more you will be taking in the Word of God
and the more you will be applying the Word of God.
d)
It
will eliminate the waste of human viewpoint in the soul as you renovate the
thinking of the soul. It will eliminate the waste of human viewpoint and
replace it with the divine viewpoint of Bible doctrine.
e)
In
the process your soul will be strengthened and edified through the construction
of the soul fortress which protects and defends the soul from the outside
pressure of adversity and prosperity.
STOICHEO means to walk in a straight line and it is used
primarily for moving forward in the spiritual life, following the mandates
given in the Word of God
under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
The
central issue of walking in the Scripture is that it is one of the key terms
used to describe the characteristics of the believer’s life. The overall
mandate is to “walk worthy.” This is repeated three times in the Scriptures,
and whenever the Holy Spirit repeats something we need to pay attention to it.
The mandate is repeated in Ephesians 4:1; Colossians 1:10; 1 Thessalonians
2:12. We are to walk in a manner worthy of that with which we have been called.
That is motivated by grace orientation. When we have grace orientation that
means that we understand the grace of God, that God has done everything for us,
and that we merely accept it or receive it by faith. As a result of
understanding what God has done for us we are moved to gratitude, and we
realise that we should live our lives in a manner consistent with His plans and
purposes for us. He saved us for the purpose of production of good works. When
we analyze the use of the word “walking” in the New Testament there are three
categories that we can summarize. First, we have the phrase EN [e)n] plus the dative, or
sometimes just the dative, of sphere. We are to walk in the day—Romans 13:13;
in the light—Ephesians 5:8; and negatively, we are not to walk in the sphere of
darkness—1 John 1:7. So our Christian life is to be in a certain sphere.
Secondly, we are to walk in [the sphere of] newness of life—Romans 6:4. We are
to walk in the sphere of love—Ephesians 5:2; 2 John 6. We are to walk in [the
sphere of] good works [divine good produced by the Holy Spirit] and were saved
for that purpose—Ephesians 2:10. We are to walk in wisdom—Colossians 4:5. We
are to walk in truth—2 John 4; 3 John 3,4. Negatively, we are not to walk in
the emptiness (vanity—the vacuum in the soul created by human viewpoint) of the
emptiness of the mentality of our soul “like the Gentiles do”—Ephesians 4:17.
We are not to walk in craftiness—2 Corinthians 4:2, the Greek word means
deceitful cunning, and the context refers to utilizing the Word of God for our
own personal gain, power, prestige, financial gain, or personal approbation.
The
next way this preposition EN plus
the dative is used is to express instrumentality or means. There are two
concepts here: we are to walk by means of faith, the faith-rest drill in 2
Corinthians 5:7, and this is contrasted, “not by sight.” This is empiricism and
relates to the ultimate way in which we think, the basis for our thought. Do we
base our thinking on the Scriptures or do we base it on human viewpoint systems
of knowledge such as rationalism or empiricism? This is a reference to the
ultimate, the final basis for our thinking: Is the final authority in our life,
the Word of God, or is it human experience or human thought? When the Word of
God is more real to us than our feelings, experience, or what we have been
taught in school, then we are beginning to understand what it means to exercise
the faith-rest drill. The second is in Galatians 5:16 & 25, and that is by
means of the Holy Spirit. So we have EN plus the dative of sphere to describe the sphere in which we are to
walk, and then we have EN plus
the instrumental dative of means—“by means of faith, not by sight,” and by
means of God the Holy Spirit.
Then
we have another prepositional phrase that is often associated with walking, and
that uses the Greek preposition KATA [kata], and that means to walk according to a norm or standard. We are to
walk according to the norm of the Holy Spirit and not according to the norm or
standard of the flesh—Romans 8:4. According to the standard of love—Romans
14:15. Negatively, Not according to the standard of men—1 Corinthians 3:3,
referring to carnality and the unbeliever (not according to normal human
standards); not according to disorderly or licentious manner—2 Thessalonians
3:6; not according to the course of this world—Ephesians 3:2, referring to the
lifestyle of the unbeliever.
So
that is a summary describing how critical walking is in the Christian
life.
3.
In Galatians 5:16 walking by means of the Spirit is contrasted with walking by means
of the flesh. The point is, throughout Galatians and the New Testament walking
is used of one of two states. You always have this contrast between two states
of condition. One is in the sphere of the Holy Spirit or by means of the Holy
Spirit and the other is flesh. But there are other words that are used. In
terms of the spiritual life other terms that are used are light, promise, faith
and grace. These are all contrasted with darkness, law, and antinomianism
(without law), referring to unrestrained immorality. Always in the Scripture is
this stark contrast between two states. The question we are going to ask is how
much sin does it take to really violate the righteousness of God. The idea that
we are a little bit righteous, a little bit spiritual, and a little bit carnal
doesn’t take into account the nature of sin in relation to the integrity of
God, and its impact. So we have to realize that the Scripture clearly
identifies two spheres or states in which we can live.
4. The basis for the believer’s walk is his new
position in Jesus Christ—Romans 6:4. How shall we who died to sin still live in
it? The passage is talking about positional death which is defined as the
believer’s identification at the point of salvation with the death of Jesus
Christ on the cross. We are positionally identified with His death so that His
death on the cross is tied to and produces our separation from the enslaving
power of the sin nature. This is not talking about the eradication of the sin
nature. We have been baptized into His death, and the significance of baptism
is always identification. There is a reason, a purpose for the believer’s
identification with Christ’s death on the cross: “in order that as Christ was
raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in
newness of life.” The word “walk” is the aorist active subjunctive of PERIPATEO [peripatew], and the reason it is in
the subjunctive is because it expresses the contingency of the believer’s
volition. It is potential. You may choose not to walk in the newness of life
that you have.
Summary of point 4:
a)
The
basis for walking, i.e. the Christian way of life, is our identification with
Christ’s death (our positional death) which happens at the instant of
salvation. At that instant the power of the sin nature in the believer’s life
is broken. The issue now is volition.
b)
Positional
death frees us from the slavery to the sin nature, according to 6:6, but it
does not free us from the sin nature.
c)
The
potential is there for every believer but it is activated only by his volition.
Whether or not you walk in newness of life is up to you.
d) The goal or purpose is to no longer obey the
dictates of the sin nature, so that you can advance spiritually.
5. The sphere of light in the believer’s life—Ephesians 5:8, “for you were formerly darkness, but now you are light in the Lord; walk as children of the light.”
The emphasis is on the believer’s present state: you
are light. Then there is a command: “walk”, present active imperative of PERIPATEO [peripatew], “as children of light.”
This is crucial because here we learn that even though we are positionally
“light” we can live a life that is not discernably different from the
unbeliever because of living in carnality and the power of the sin nature. This
is very important because it establishes two categories. In the positional
category you are light, and it establishes the experiential category of walking
consistently with your ultimate reality. So here we see the two spheres of
operation, positional and experiential. In verse 9 we see that the production
of walking in the light is comparable to the fruit of the Spirit. Here we see
the parallel that walking in the light and walking by means of the Holy Spirit
are tantamount to the same thing and both have the same production.
a)
Light
represents absolute perfection in the Scriptures, whereas darkness represents
all that has been tainted by sin. Light, in fact, represents the absolute
righteousness and perfection of God—1 Timothy 6:15,16; 1 John 1:5.
b)
We
become sons of light at the moment of salvation, so that becomes a description
of our position in Christ. That is, we have positional righteousness, we have
the imputation of Christ’s righteousness at the moment of salvation.
c)
We
are transferred positionally into light—1 Peter 2:9; Acts 26:18—so that we can
receive an inheritance. Colossians 1:13—“He delivered us from the domain,” and
here we have the word EXOUSIA
[e)cousia]
which means authority or power. When you were an unbeliever you were under the
authority and the domain of Satan, the domain of darkness no matter how good,
how wonderful, how pleasing you were. The same is true for everyone who is not
a believer.
d)
Scripture
clearly affirms that believers still possess sin natures and thus still perform
works of darkness. Even though they are sons of light they can live in
darkness—Romans 13:12. Paul would not say “lay aside the works of darkness” if
we were not performing deeds of darkness. This is the aorist middle subjunctive
of the verb APOTITHEMI [a)potiqhmi]. This word is used
sometimes for removing clothing. It means to put away, to put out of the way,
to remove, to take off. So the imagery here is of someone changing clothes,
taking off one set of clothes and putting on a set of armour. The subjunctive
mood is the mood of potentiality and it is sometimes used in certain
constructions to emphasize a certain kind of command, and this is called a
hortatory subjunctive—hortatory refers to the fact that it is an exhortation.
It is an exhortation or a mandate and the subjunctive mood is used in order to
emphasize it is a potential. That potential is going to be activated by one’s
volition. The believer’s volition determines whether or not this action is
going to take place. He is going to make decisions regarding the application of
doctrine in his life, it is not automatic.
e)
In
principle, light and darkness therefore are clearly seen as absolute,
inconsistent categories. You either walk in light or you walk in darkness. But
being in the light and walking in the light are not the same thing. That is
important. You are either light or darkness; that relates to salvation. And you
either walk in light or walk in darkness; that relates to spiritual life. You
cannot be walking with one foot in both.
The New Testament utilizes two different words to
describe what happens to our relationship with the Holy Spirit at the moment of
sin. The first is the phrase
“quenching the Holy Spirit.” You quench a fire by
putting it out. 1 Thessalonians 5:19. In the next verse, verse 20, they are
told not to despise prophetic statements. The immediate context of the command
is that you don’t put out the Spirit because there is a relationship between
the Holy Spirit and the giving of Scripture (prophecy). Prophecy has ceased
now, we have the completed canon of Scripture; so the direct interpretation of
that verse is that you quench the Spirit by ignoring or despising, treating
lightly, the mandates of Scripture. I terms of application you do that any time
you sin. The second phrase which is used to describe the destruction of our
fellowship with God is in Ephesians 4:30: “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of
God, by whom you are sealed for the day of redemption.” Grieving the Holy
Spirit is an anthropopathism, which is applying to God a human emotion in order
to understand the policies of God—a human emotion which God does not possess.
If we look at the context of this verse and compare the various categories
there we see that these overt sins and mental attitude sins and sins of the
tongue are what grieves the Holy Spirit. Quenching or grieving the Holy Spirit
moves us out of the bottom circle, from walking in the light to walking in
darkness, referred to as carnality—1 Corinthians 3:1-3.
1
John 1:3-7, John is talking specifically about fellowship with God. The
emphasis here is that fellowship with God is the basis for human fellowship.
Real life in the spiritual
life doesn’t begin until we begin to get some spiritual maturity under our
belt, the same way that it happens in life. It is amazing that some believers
seem to just be happy knowing that they are going to heaven and yet have no
concept of what it means to really grow or advance to spiritual maturity, so
that they can really begin to live and operate and benefit from all of the
incredible assets that God has given us for living the spiritual life. So we
are taking some time in Galatians to really get a handle on this subject,
starting from 5:16 which deals with the spiritual walk. Walking by means of the
Spirit is the command in this verse, and this is a present active imperative,
which means this is to be the standard operating procedure for the believer’s
life. It is that step by step, day by day, moment by moment dependence upon God
the Holy Spirit as the energizing power and enabler in the spiritual life. So
we are taking a look at all of the passages related to walking.
1 John 1:6—John is going to
use three conditional clauses to represent different responses to God in the
life of believers. “If we say” [3rd class condition, emphasizing potentiality:
maybe it is and maybe it is not. It presents the condition as uncertain of
fulfillment]. In other words, you might say this or you might not say this. It
treats this as though it is a likely happening: “that we have fellowship with
him.” Someone comes along and claims to have fellowship with God, claiming to
be walking with the Lord; “and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not
practice the truth.” What is he saying here? First of all we have seen that we
are positionally in the light. We become a son of light at the moment of
salvation, this is the top circle. So walking in the light has to do with a
step by step process and progress. It is different from a status, which is “in
the light.” There are those who say that walking in the light or darkness are
terms for believer and unbeliever, but as we have seen that is completely
erroneous. Walking in the light and walking in darkness are terms that relate
to the bottom circle, the moment by moment life of the believer in terms of his
spiritual life.
The
word for practicing the truth here is the Greek word POIEO [poiew], and it means to do, to
make, to practice, to apply. This is the word seen time and again in James
chapter one from verse 21 down through 2:26. There it was translated “apply”
because it had to do with the application of doctrine. The second word in this
phrase is the Greek word ALETHEIA
[a)lhqeia],
meaning truth, absolute truth, not relative truth. So this is comparable to
doctrine and is John’s terminology. Whenever John is using this word he is
talking about absolute truth. So walking in the truth is tantamount to walking
in accordance with divine mandates, which we call Bible doctrine. In essence,
what John is saying here is what James is saying in James 1 & 2.
Contrast
in verse 7 – “but if we walk in the light.” So there we have a clear indication
that the believer can either walk in darkness or walk in the light; :as He Himself
is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus
His Son cleanses from all sin.” Blood is an analogy or metaphor for the
spiritual death of Jesus Christ on the cross. When God told Adam in the garden
that the day he ate of the fruit he would die, and he did, he died spiritually.
When Jesus died on the cross as our substitute it had to be a death in kind.
The penalty for sin is spiritual death, eternal separation from God the Father.
Then there is a penalty which has to do with the consequences in time, and this
comes under the category of whatsoever a man sows that shall he also reap. It
is the negative consequences in time that are the results of sin. So that when
Adam and Eve sinned they died spiritually—penalty #1, but everything in life
was cursed and they lived in a fallen environment from that point on, suffering
from the curse of sin, and that was penalty #2. As a result God is going to
deal with this in two different ways. The spiritual death on the cross of Jesus
Christ is a judicial death. God judged Him judicially on the cross by imputing
to Him our sins. Jesus Christ remained sinless: “He who knew no sin was made
sin for us.” Our sins imputed to Him were not His experientially but they were
His judicially. The word theologians use to describe this is not only the term
judicial but forensic. Forensic has to do with the study of things that have to
do with the judiciary, with criminality, so it is called a forensic punishment.
But there is experiential punishment. We need to draw this distinction. There
are two kinds of punishment. We have a judicial forensic punishment at the
cross which dealt with spiritual death, and then we have experiential
consequences or penalties in time. When John says, “and the blood of Jesus
Christ cleanses us from all sin,” we have the verb KATHARIZO [kaqarizw], which means to purify or to cleanse. It is a word that was used in
the Septuagint to relate to all the cleansing that took place in the temple
before a priest could go into the presence of God. Because this is in the
present tense some people will come along and say that this is the standard
operating procedure here, and if you are believer in the Lord Jesus Christ then
you will always be cleansed from sin, so you don’t ever have to do anything
about it; whenever you sin just realize that whatever you do God is going to
cleanse because the blood of Christ cleanses you continuously and you don’t
have to do anything else. In other words, you never have to confess your sins
is what they are saying. But what about 1 John 1:9? John would be contradicting
himself if he meant by 1:7 that you don’t have to confess your sins any more.
What we realize here is that 1 John 1:7 is dealing with Penalty #1
consequences, spiritual death consequences. This means that when you enter into
the top circle and you are in a positional reality with Jesus Christ, that is
an eternal relationship and you can never lose it. Yet we sin! Five second
after you put your faith alone in Christ alone you sin. Do you die spiritually?
No, you don’t. Why? Because P1 has been taken care of on the cross.
You do not die spiritually again. Jesus Christ’s blood continually cleanses you
so that that forensic application of the blood of Christ, meaning His spiritual
substitutionary death on the cross, continually cleanses you from the moment of
faith in Christ until you are absent from the body and face to face with the
Lord and minus the sin nature. 1 John 1:7 is talking about the continual effect
of the death of Christ in terms of never having to deal with P1
consequences of spiritual death ever again. That will not happen to you as a
believer, you cannot lose your salvation.
Verse
8 – “If we say [maybe we will, maybe we will not] that we have no sin, we are
deceiving ourselves.” In other words, there is no such thing as perfection in
the spiritual life, every believer is going to sin and continue to sin to some
degree or another. If you say that you have no sin you are operating on
arrogance and self-deception and the truth [Bible doctrine] is not in you, you
are not operating on doctrine, you are once again operating outside the bottom
circle. Truth is not in you, you are over in carnality denying the fact that
you are a sinner.
Verse
9 – in contrast. “If we confess (HOMOLOGEO [o(mologew], which means to admit or to acknowledge your sin)
our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins.” This means that
there are two categories of forgiveness. One category of forgiveness deals with
what happens at the cross and is judicial or forensic forgiveness that is ours
continuously because we are in the top circle. We constantly have that and we
can never lose it. But then there is experiential forgiveness which is related
to phase two, and this is related to the use of 1 John 1:9 and to P2
consequences, those consequences whether they are natural consequences, cause
and effect consequences, or divine discipline consequences, that are ours in
time as a result of the sin that we commit. The believer cannot sin with
impunity.
In
Ephesians 5 there are various absolute states mentioned. We have the command in
verse 8 to walk as children of the light. Verse 9 is the consequences of
walking in the light—production. The goal of all is this is production of
character, “all goodness and righteousness and truth.” This is the
transformation of character. It is designed to produce in us the character of
Jesus Christ. The fruit of the light is comparable to the fruit of the Holy
Spirit. In verse 11 it says “do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of
darkness, but instead even expose them.” Then we have in verse 14 a reminder of
rebound: “Awake sleeper, and arise from the dead [temporal death/carnality],
and Christ will shine on you.” Verse 15 – the unwise is the fool in carnality,
the wise is the believer operating on doctrine. Verse 17 – “So then do not be
foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.” It is either one or the
other, not a little bit of one and a little bit of the other. Culminating in
verse 18: “And do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be
filled with the Spirit.” So we see that we have two states. Then we have a new
concept: the filling of the Holy Spirit. The term in the Greek is instrumental
dative of means. We are to be filled by means of God the Holy Spirit. The verb
is PLEROO [plhrow] and it means to fill up a
deficiency. The deficiency is the vacuum in our soul caused by a lack of
doctrine. What are we filled with? The phrase “filled with the Spirit” is
somewhat ambiguous. Does that means that the Spirit Himself fills us up, that
He is the content of the filling? That would have to be expressed in the Greek
with the genitive case because the genitive expresses content. The dative
expresses means. So it is the Holy Spirit who is the dynamic element that fills
us with something. This should be more accurately translated “filled by means
of the Spirit.” The content of the filling is doctrine—Colossians 3:16, “Let
the word of Christ richly dwell within you.” The result is going to be given by
a descriptive genitive using the Greek adjective PLERES [plhrhj] which comes from the same root as PLEROO. There is another Greek
word that comes in here. The verb PIMPLEMI [pimplhmi] also has to do with being filled. PIMPLEMI and PLEROO are translated the same way
in the English, yet they are two different words in the Greek and they refer to
two different kinds of filling. Failure to recognize that has led to some real
problems.
The reason the believer
moves from light to darkness is his volition, and there must be a mechanism
whereby he recovers and moves from darkness back to the light. That mechanism
is 1 John 1:9 and is volitional. The volition must be exercised for recovery.
As
we move further into Galatians 5 we will see that our natural ability produces
certain works. The Holy Spirit also has certain fruit and production in our
lives. We can also in the flesh produce ‘pseudo-works’—human good. It looks
like divine good and masquerades as divine good. If you do not have a
mechanism, a means of moving from walking in the darkness to walking in the
light how do you ascertain whether or not you are walking by the Spirit or
walking in the flesh? There has to be some means for determining the realm in
which you are walking and how you recover. 1 John 1:9 supplies that. Just
because you confess your sins and you move back into the sphere of light
doesn’t mean you are going anywhere, it just puts you in a position back where
you can go somewhere. Confession doesn’t move you anywhere other than back into
the sphere of light. It is from that point on that the issue is determined.
Summary
Introduction
Ephesians 5:18—the first verb is the negation of a
command, a present passive imperative of METHUSKO [mequskw]. With the negative it is an imperative of
prohibition, and this indicates in the present tense that this is a complete
prohibition for the entire life of the believer. That is followed by the dative
of means for the word for wine, OINO [o)inw]. The dative indicates
means, so the command is, “Do not get drunk by means of wine”; “for that is
dissipation”— wasting of time. In contrast there is a second command and that
is indicated by the strong adversative ALLA [a)lla], which indicates a strong contrast between the two statements, “but
be filled.” This is the positive command, also a present passive imperative.
The present imperative indicates a standard or general rule for the believer’s
life. It comes from the verb PLEROO
[plhrow],
and that emphasizes to fill something up. The question needs to be asked: What
are you filled up with? It seems in the English that the content of the filling
is the Spirit. In the Greek the dative is used to indicate means, and here we
have an instrumental dative: “by means of the Holy Spirit.” Colossians
3:16—“Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you.” If we compare Ephesians
5 & 6 with Colossians 3 and what comes after that command there are the
same consequences, all of which flow from both mandates. In Ephesians the
emphasis is on the means of filling and in Colossians the emphasis is on the
content of the filling which is Bible doctrine.
a)
Both
verbs are present passive imperatives indicating that the believer is acted
upon by that which is in the dative. The passive voice indicates that the
believer is the recipient of the action. In the first case he is acted upon by
wine and is made drunk. In the second he is acted upon by the Holy Spirit and
he is filled up with something. The imperative mood indicates that this is a
command or a mandate. The imperative is always addressed to the volition of the
individual. It is up to the believer as to whether or not he will implement the
mandate.
b)
In
the past in terms of the history of the interpretation of this passage
drunkenness has been taken as the key issue in the metaphor. Obviously we are
dealing with an analogy here and drunkenness has been taken as the key issue,
and the emphasis has been on the idea of control; that when you drink wine and
get drunk it is the wine controlling you. So the analogy would then mean that
the Holy Spirit is supposed to control you. What’s wrong with that? Recent
studies in the religious practices common in Ephesus at the time reveal that
one of the very popular cults in Ephesus was the worship of the god Dionysus,
also known by the Latin name Bacchus. Among other things he was the god of wine
and his worship was very much associated with the mystery religions at that
time in which participation in drinking enormous amounts of wine in order to
get drunk and get into some kind of altar state of consciousness so that you
could have communion or fellowship with the god. And of you really got lucky
then the god would speak to you in glossalalia or gibberish. In Ephesus they
had the same kind of problem. They were thinking that to become spiritual and
have fellowship with God was by getting drunk. In terms of their religious
background they were using wine in order to have a deeper fellowship with God.
So Paul is saying don’t get drunk with wine because that’s not going to get you
in fellowship with God, but be filled by means of the Spirit because that is
what gets you in fellowship with God. As long as the believer is in fellowship
with God and is learning the Word of God the Holy Spirit is going to be filling
up his soul with doctrine, making it understandable so that there is something
there for Him to bring to his mind at the proper time.
c)
Conclusion:
The filling of the Holy Spirit means to be filled by means of the Holy Spirit
and is the means to fellowship and spirituality.
d)
In
earlier writings by various theologians who fail to understand the original languages
an argument was made for repeated fillings. The imperative mood of Ephesians
5:18 indicates that you can lose the filling of the Spirit. Nowhere in Acts
does it indicate that you can lose the filling of the Holy Spirit. The reason
is that the word that is used in all of these passages is the word PIMPLEMI [pimplhmi]and the word that is used
in Ephesians 5:18 is PLEROO.
They are not synonymous. Luke 1:15 in reference to John the Baptist—PIMPLEMI.
What dispensation is John the Baptist living in? The dispensation of Israel,
not the Church Age where we have the unique filling of the Holy Spirit, PLEROO [plhrow]. Cf. Luke 1:41, 67; Acts
2:4; 4:8—there is a relation between filling and speaking, it has a revelatory
significance. This word PIMPLEMI
would have more in common with the Old Testament temporary enduement than it
does with New Testament filling, because it is temporary and exclusively
related to some kind of verbal utterance, just as the prophets in the Old
testament were filled with the Spirit in order to write the Scriptures.
e)
There
is a failure to distinguish between the verb PLEROO and the related adjective PLERES. PLERES is an adjective and
as such is descriptive. PLERES plus a genitive of description is going to give
us a character analysis of a person. Acts 13:10 is a description of one of the
various characters who were in opposition to the apostles in Acts. “You who are
full of all deceit and fraud”—PLERES. Another example is in Acts 9:36—“full of
good works and mercy [lit.].” This is a character description of the woman.
These descriptions are not related to the Holy Spirit at all. In Acts 6:3 they
are going to choose the deacons—“full of the Spirit and of wisdom.” Here it is PLERES again. He is not talking
about PLEROO, that these men are filled
with the Spirit. It is obvious from the passage that if you are going to choose
such men you are not going to choose men who are going to be filled with the
Spirit and the next moment not. Secondly, you are not filled with the wisdom
one moment and not filled with wisdom the next. That is clearly an adjectival
description of somebody whose whole life is characterized by the Holy Spirit
and wisdom. So PLERES is different from PLEROO. PLEROO is the means of filling; PLERES describes the ultimate, mature
result of filling. So what we would say is that the reason that they are full
of the Spirit and wisdom is because these men have grown to spiritual maturity
and they have spent a maximum amount of time being filled with doctrine under
the ministry of God the Holy Spirit, and it is exemplified in their life. Acts
6:8—“And Stephen, full of grace and power.” That describes his life. Cf. Acts
11:24. PLERES indicates the character results of PLEROO. The Bible is saying that character matters! The
ultimate goal is not to be filled with the Spirit, not to be in fellowship; it
is to advance to spiritual maturity and exemplify the character of Jesus
Christ. The fruit of the Spirit is PLERES, the result of continuous filling by means of God
the Holy Spirit. So the conclusion is that PIMPLEMI relates to the pre-Church Age enduement of the Holy
Spirit for special revelation. PLEROO
relates to the work of the Holy Spirit in filling the believer with doctrine.
The content of the filling is always doctrine and the result is expressed by
PLERES, and that is Christ-like character. So there we see the entire process
from spiritual infancy to spiritual maturity. The means is the Holy Spirit
filling the believer with doctrine. The process is continuous walking. The
result is transformed character expressed by PLERES.
Contrary to the way
spiritual warfare is taught by so many people today the real battle, no matter
who the enemy is, whether the enemy is outside of you in terms of Satan or the
demons, or whether it is the cosmic system, or whether the enemy is the
internal enemy of our own sin nature, the way to respond to that enemy and
defeat that enemy is always the same. It never involves going out and taking
Satan captive or rebuking the devil, or any of that sort of nonsense, but it is
always related to thinking. The real battle takes place between your ears. So
the issue is ultimately and always volition.
Galatians 5:16—“Walk by means of the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desires of the flesh.” The present active indicative indicates that walking by means of the Spirit is a standard operating procedure for living the spiritual life. We have to walk a moment by moment, day by day conscious dependence upon God the Holy Spirit, moving forward. Walking by the Spirit works because, first and foremost, we have made a decision to depend upon God the Holy Spirit. This is not something mystical, it is done primarily through learning and applying the Word of God. But we have seen that when we sin we grieve the Holy Spirit and we quench the Holy Spirit. We are then out of fellowship and the Bible says that this is walking in darkness. As long as we walk in darkness we do not have fellowship with God. The only way to recover is through 1 John 1:9, confession of sin. Then we begin to walk in the light, it puts us experientially back into the bottom circle. Here the issue once again is volition, obedience and application to divine mandates. These are mutually exclusive categories: either you are out in carnality, walking in darkness, or in walking in the light. There is no middle ground.
“Walk by means of the Spirit, and you will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh [lit.].” The verb is the aorist active subjunctive of TELEIOO [teleiow], which means to bring to completion. Often this is translated “perfect,” but not in the sense of sinlessness. The main idea is to bring something to completion. In Greek, if you wanted to say something and negate it in the strongest possible terms, what you would do is put it in the subjunctive mood because that is the mood of potentiality. What you are going to do in your negation is show that there is absolutely no potential here. So you would take two negatives, OU and ME [o)u and mh]. In English it is bad form to use a double negative. However in Greek if you want to say no and you mean it, then what you do is double your negative. So if you take the double negative plus an aorist subjunctive verb, what you are saying is that there is no possibility whatsoever that this can occur. It is the most absolute form of negation possible. So it indicates that these are mutually exclusive concepts: either walking by the Spirit or carrying out the desires of the flesh. You can’t be a little spiritual and a little carnal, it has to be one or the other. The Greek word for “flesh” is SARKOS [sarkoj] which can refer to the literal muscles and meat that wraps around the bones of the body, but it has a metaphorical meaning that relates to the sin nature.
1.
Terminology:
SARX [sarc] is used figuratively for
that which inhabits, or has as its source, the genetic structure of the human
being and produces the inclination and propensity to sin. Prediction: That any
day there may be discovered a gene that means that you will be an alcoholic, or
a certain gene that means that you will be a murderer, or a certain gene that
means that you will be a homosexual. The Bible does not negate that. But to say
that this is necessarily where you will be is wrong. The Bible says that the
sin nature has its source genetically and is transmitted genetically through
procreation, but that this genetic material is merely a predisposition in
certain directions. Ultimately it is your volition that determines whether or
not that is brought to fruition. So every person has certain proclivities of
their sin nature. Whether or not you activate those things depends entirely
upon your volition. An unbeliever is a slave to his sin nature and can do
nothing but obey his sin nature, but a believer is free from the power of the
sin nature. Cf. Romans 7:5, 18; 8:4ff.
2.
Definition:
The Westminster larger catechism defines sin as “any want or conformity to, or
transgression of, any law of God given as a rule to the reasonable creature.”
L. S. Chafer modified that a little. Instead of saying it is a want or
conformity to the law of God it was better to put the character of God, because
the law of God is the verbal expression of the character of God. Further he
said that the general term for sin is the Greek word HAMARTIA [a(martia] meaning that a prescribed
mark or ideal has been missed. This mark or ideal is the essential character of
God which is made known to man by God’s revealed will or law. John Calvin had a
very extended comment on sin: “Original sin, then, may be defined as a
hereditary corruption and depravity of our nature, extending to all the parts
of the soul, which first makes us obnoxious to the wrath of God, and then
produces in us works which in Scripture are termed “works of the flesh.” So
clearly talks about sin as not some illness but a corruption and depravity. He
concludes by saying, “Nay, the whole nature, as it were, is a seed-bed of sin
and therefore cannot be but odious and abominable to God. Hence it follows that
it is properly deemed sinful in the sight of God for there could be no
condemnation without guilt. Next comes the other point, that this perversity in
us never ceases. It constantly produces new fruits, just as a lighted furnace
sends forth sparks and flames, or a fountain without ceasing pours out water.
Hence, those who have defined original sin as the lack of the original
righteousness which we ought to have had, though they substantially comprehend
the whole case, do not significantly enough express its power and energy. For
our nature is not only utterly devoid of goodness but so prolific in all kinds
of evil that it can never be idle. Those who term it concupiscence [modern
definition: sexual lust, and not a good term for the sin nature] use the word
not very inappropriately provided it were added that everything which is in man
from the intellect to the will, from the soul even to the flesh, I defiled and
pervaded with this concupiscence, or to express it more briefly, that the whole
man is in himself nothing else than concupiscence.” In other words, we are
totally depraved. So when we talk about sin we will define it this way: Sin is
any mental, verbal or overt act which violates the character, standards and
will of God which are revealed in the Word of God. What that tells us right
away is that there is an absolute standard, and that is in the person and
character of God. We live in an age which rejects the notion that there are
absolute standards. The technical term for the ideology dominating our current
culture is postmodernism. It walks hand in hand with something called
“multiculturalism” which says that every culture is equal and has equal value,
and all parts of each culture are equal and have equal value. So if you are a
Satanist or an animist in the darkest of Africa, or if you are an intellectual
at Harvard university, or if you are a white male European or a female Asian,
whatever your culture is the greatest sin you can commit is to say that one is
better than the other. What lies behind that is a system of values which says
you cannot say something is right or something is wrong anymore, because that
simply reflects your own cultural bias. And if you are the” worst of all
sinners,” a white male, then you can never use terms such as right and wrong
because that simply reflects your chauvinistic bias! You don’t hear today that
behaviour is right or wrong anymore, especially in the schools. What you hear
over and over again is something is “appropriate” or is “inappropriate.” The
root of that terminology is postmodernism: there is nothing right or wrong
anymore. The second definition we need to address is the sin nature. The sin
nature is the capacity, the propensity and the inclination in every human being
to make life work independently of God. Sin in its essence says, “I make the
decision, I am the authority, not God. I will determine what right and wrong is
and not God.” It is an assertion of independence, and that is exactly what took
place in the original angelic fall and also in the garden of Eden.
3.
Sin
originated in the universe when Lucifer first sinned—Ezekiel 28 & Isaiah
14. If we look at the beginning of Ezekiel we see that the word of the Lord
comes to Ezekiel to address an oracle of condemnation against the “leader” [NASB] of Tyre, but it is really
the “prince” of Tyre as in the King James version. Today, most Old Testament
scholars don’t think either of these two passages have anything to do with
Satan/Lucifer. It is absurd. If we look at what is said here in relationship to
the prince of Tyre in verses 2-10 that obviously will apply to a human ruler.
But what is said starting in verse 11, and what is addressed t the king of
Tyre, is something else again. The king of Tyre cannot be a human being. In
fact it refers to the power behind the throne, someone who is not up front but
who is manipulating things behind the scene. That is the scenario we have
starting in verse 12. The human king of Tyre is really a puppet who is being
manipulated by someone else, and this someone else is identified as the true
ruler of Tyre. And this personage cannot be a human being because of what is
said about him, and must refer to an angelic personage. “You had the seal of
perfection,” past tense; “full of wisdom and perfect in beauty” This
terminology in Hebrew indicates that this creature was at one time the most
perfect creature ever to come from the hand of God—the most beautiful, the most
brilliant, the most intelligent creature. That describes Lucifer, the highest
of all of the angels. Then in verse 13, “In Eden you were,” Eden being a term describing
the throne room of God; “the garden of God,” not to be confused with the garden
of Eden where man was placed; “every precious stone was your covering…” The
jewels mentioned remind us of the jewels that the high priest of Israel was to
wear in his breastplate. If you were Jewish and read this what would come to
your mind is the breast of the high priest of Israel. So from this we get the
hint that in his original function before he fell Lucifer had something of a
priestly function in relationship to all of the angels. Then in verse 14, “You
were the anointed cherub who covers …” This is a pregnant verse in terms of the
implications here. First of all he is called the “anointed” cherub, the Hebrew
word mashiach—messiah. Messiah
relates to Jesus Christ, it simply means the anointed one; but it shows that
this role that Lucifer held prior to the fall is a special role, he had a
unique role. The cherubs are almost always implicated in the throne of God and
associated with His righteousness and justice. The word “covering”: remember
there is the covering of sin on the mercy seat in the ark of the covenant, so
this is a term that carries with it the sense of atonement. So there are all
kinds of nuances to these words that are used here to describe Lucifer’s function
prior to the fall that speak of some kind of a priestly role. God create
Lucifer perfect, but like all rational creatures that God creates he had
volition. He exercised his volition against God one day and unrighteousness was
discovered in him. Verse 16 is interesting: “By the abundance of your trade” –
talking about Tyre, a major commercial centre in the ancient world; “you were
internally filled with violence.” What was Lucifer trading? We can’t say for
sure but the suggestion is that because of the priestly terminology used to
describe him that what he is trafficking in is that he is carrying the praise
and worship of the angelic host to God, just as the high priest of Israel would
be carrying the praise and worship of the people of Israel to God. The high
priest is the representative of all the people and they approach God through
him. So all the angels would approach God through Lucifer as their high priest.
As he trafficked in that trade what happened was that he decided he wanted all
of that praise and worship for himself instead of giving it to God. So he
begins to want to be like God. The result is give” “you sinned; therefore I
have cast you as profane from the mountain of God. And I have destroyed you, O
covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire. Your heart was lifted up
because of your beauty; you corrupted your wisdom by reason of your splendor.”
Isaiah 14:12—“How you have fallen from heaven, O star of the morning [Lucifer],
son of the dawn! You have been cut down to the earth, You have weakened the
nations!” This starts off where Ezekiel 28 stops. Here we have the sin of
Lucifer, the five “I wills.” This is asserting his will over against God’s
will. That’s why the sin nature may be defined as essentially that inclination
towards asserting independence from God: I am the final authority, not God.
4.
Sin
is an act of volition against God, producing sin in four categories:
commission, omission, ignorance, cognizance. Sins of commission are when you
actively perform or engage in overt, mental, or verbal acts which violate the
character of God. A sin of omission is a sin because you fail to attain the
high standards revealed by God. For example, you have the opportunity to
demonstrate impersonal love toward someone. You don’t hate them or hurt them,
you just don’t do anything and you ignore the situation. You fail to do what
you should have done. Sins of ignorance is doing those things which you did not
know was a sin. Because you wanted to do it you are culpable. Ignorance is not
an excuse. A sin of cognizance is where you know it is a sin, you want to do
it, and you do it.
5.
As
we have seen from all of this sin is ultimately a sin of independence against
God, so all sins are first and foremost sins against God no matter who else
they might affect.
6.
When
God created Adam and Isha, man was originally created in the image and likeness
of God, according to Genesis 1:26, 27. Being created in the image of God they
were created perfect and had absolute righteousness, even though this was an
untested and unconfirmed righteousness. They were placed in perfect environment
and God provided everything that they would need to supply every single
necessity that could be imagined. There are a couple of things to note with
regard to the prohibition in the garden. First of all, God supplied all kinds
of food for Adam and Isha. There was nothing inherent in the fruit of the tree
of the knowledge of good and evil that made it wrong. It was not poisonous.
There was not something in it that changed them. It was not physically wrong.
It was wrong because God said it was wrong. And it was not some sort of
allegory for sex. The issue was obedience or disobedience to God. That is what
made it sinful, not that there was something inherently wrong with the fruit. For
man to eat that fruit was to say, I know more than God knows, and I will make
the determination for my life in opposition to God. So there was a test: the
test of the tree. And there was a penalty, which is stated in a very strong
Hebrew phrase, the use of the qal imperative plus the qal infinitive absolute.
When you take a qal imperative of prohibition plus a qal infinitive absolute
that emphasizes the certainty of the prohibition. It has been said that because
of the double verb here, it should be translated, “Dying you will die.” But it
has been demonstrated that if you translate it like that anywhere else in the
Scriptures it is nonsense. What this means is that at the moment of eating the
fruit death would occur. The death that occurred was spiritual death which is
defined as separation from God, the essential meaning of death, not a failure
to exist. Spiritual death is the cause of all other kinds of death, of which
there are six other kinds in the Bible. Spiritual death affects the entire
dimension of creation. There are certain consequences spelled out by God in
Genesis 3:14-19. This is called the curse. These are not simply consequences,
it is a negative curse that God places on the planet and on creation and on man
because of sin. First of all to the serpent, verse 14. At this moment there was
a major physiological transformation in the serpent. From this moment he would
no longer move about the way he did before. Then to the woman, verse 15. “Your
seed” – all that would follow Lucifer, all that would be involved in the cosmic
system; “her seed” refers to the coming Messiah. This is the first promise of
the gospel. “He shall bruise you [Satan] on the head” – a fatal wound. Jesus
Christ bruised Satan on the head at the cross. “And you shall bruise him [Christ]
on the heel.” It would be a temporary but not a permanent wounding. That is
what took place at the cross. To the woman: “I will greatly multiply your pain
in childbirth”. This doesn’t say that childbirth is part of the curse. God
intended for the woman to bear children from her inception. “Yet your desire shall be for your husband”—not
sexual desire, the Hebrew word means desire for control. It is the same word
God used when He was speaking to Cain in Genesis 4:7 when God told him about
the temptation he was going through, and He told Cain that “if you do not do
well sin is crouching at the door, and its desire
is for you.” It is a desire to control, a desire to master, a desire to
manipulate So what we see here is that sin is going to impact on human
relationships, so that rather than peace and harmony there will be continuous
struggle for dominion, authority and leadership. “And he shall rule over you.”
The word for “rule” there is a word that implies tyrannical control. So what we
see here is that generally speaking in history (it doesn’t mean that every lady
is a contentious woman who wants to go out and dominate her husband) this is
the tendency throughout the species. Of course, to whatever degree a woman has
been taught biblical principles this can be overcome. The whole purpose of
sanctification is rolling back various aspects of the curse. The same thing is
true for the husband. The indication here is that men will want to gain a
tyrannical position over women. That also is played out in history and is going
to be radically transformed by the application of doctrine. Then man has to
deal with the fact that nature is being transformed, so there is an aspect of
sin that impacts creation, verse 18. As a result of sin every aspect of
creation was radically transformed. What the earth was like after the fall bore
little resemblance to what it was like before the fall. And God provides the
perfect solution in Jesus Christ who begins the process of rolling back the
curse because He is the one who dies and pays the penalty. This is rolled back
sequentially, it starts with the redemption of mankind, and then we see
historically it takes place at a second stage in the Millennial kingdom where
part of the curse is rolled back so that the lion lies down with the lamb, etc.
7.
At
the instant of Adam’s sin he died spiritually and acquired a sin nature which
inhabits the cell structure or DNA code of the human race. So the sin nature is
passed on genetically to every member of the human race through the male of the
species. As a result of that sin Adam’s basic nature was transformed. Prior to
the fall he was to subdue the earth; now it would be covered with thorns and
thistles, there would be warfare on the earth, and conflict between man and
nature. So sin has a certain physical consequence.
8.
The
result of this is that every person is born physically alive and spiritually
dead. It is the sin nature that produces spiritual death, separation from God.
The reason it is called spiritual death is because man was originally created
trichotomous—three parts: body, soul, spirit. The body is the material part of
mankind, the soul is the immaterial part (self-consciousness, mentality,
emotion, volition, conscience), the soul is that immaterial part of man which
is intimately linked to the soul (the spirit doesn’t think, it is the mentality
of the soul that thinks and makes decisions) and allows the soul to have a
relationship with God and to understand the things of God. When Adam sinned the
human spirit was lost; he became spiritually dead, so that man was divorced
from an understanding of spiritual reality. That is why it is important for man
to be born again because at the instant he puts his faith alone in Jesus
Christ, at that instant God the Holy Spirit creates a human spirit, and
instantly and simultaneously imparts that to the believer so that he becomes
spiritually alive at that particular point and is then able to grow
spiritually, to have a spiritual life, and to understand the things of God. The
technical theological term for this is total depravity, and it is often
misunderstood. By total it does not mean that man is as bad as he can be, it
means that man’s soul or being in its entirety—every aspect—is affected by sin.
This means that we are absolutely helpless to do anything about our fallen
status. There is nothing that man can do to gain God’s approbation. That does
not mean that God cannot do relatively good things, but what good things he
does cannot gain the approval of God. Depravity also means that every aspect of
our being is corrupted and polluted by sin. That means that if we look at our
self-consciousness our concept of who and what we are as creatures, as human
beings, is going to be distorted by sin. It means that in our mentality, in the
thinking part of our soul, even the very starting point of our thinking
(rationalism, empiricism) is affected. The only other alternative is
revelation, that God directly instructs us and teaches us what the starting
points are. That doesn’t mean that God tells us everything but He gives us the
starting point and then we work it out from there, but always consistent with
the revelation of God. Our mentality id affected; our emotions are affected, so
that we are constantly living in emotional reaction and emotional sin. Our
volition is affected and our conscience is affected, the norms and standards of
our soul are distorted. And every human being who is born is obnoxious to God,
something that runs counter to the natural inclination of mankind. We want to
think somehow that after a child is born that he is not really obnoxious to God
until he reaches a certain point when maybe he commits certain sins or he is at
the age of God-consciousness or accountability, and it is only at that point
that he becomes a sinner. But that is not what the Bible teaches. The Bible
teaches that at the point of birth every human being is minus-R, lacking the
perfect righteousness of God. We also learn that as unbelievers, fallen
creatures, we are naturally unable to understand spiritual phenomena because we
do not possess a human spirit—1 Corinthians 2:14, the word natural is the Greek word PSUCHIKOS [yuxikoj] from the word meaning “soul.” It is a “soulish
man”, i.e. he has a human body and a human soul but lacks a human spirit. The
text says that a soulish man cannot understand the things of the Spirit of God
because they are spiritually discerned. In other words, there has to be a human
spirit present in order for spiritual phenomena to be understood. In the case
of the gospel being presented to the unbeliever, the Holy Spirit acts as a
stand-in for the human spirit in order to make the gospel clear to the
unbeliever.
9.
Adam
became a sinner by sinning; we sin because we are sinners. Adam’s sin was
unique. He was perfect; he became a sinner by sinning. We were born a sinner,
so we sinned. Adam’s personal sin caused his sin nature, but our sin nature
produces personal sins.
10.
Sin
changed man constitutionally. The word “constitution” refers to the basic
composition or structure of something. Sin is not simply a disease or that you
are lacking perfect righteousness. Sin is much more than that. Sin means that
there is a constitutional defect in the basic nature of man. The constitution
or nature of man changed downward. After Adam’s sin he no longer was what he
was when he came from the hand of God, his human nature had been degenerated.
The result of that is that all of his descendants are born in his image rather
than in the full, perfect image of God.
11.
Sin
permeates every aspect of our humanity—Genesis 6:5; Job 14:4; 15:14; Psalm
51:5; Ecclesiastes 7:20, 29. The Scriptures clearly identify that man is deeply
infected and constitutionally defected by sin.
12.
There
are various misconceptions about sin. Sometimes people define sin as
selfishness. While all selfishness is sin, not all sin is selfishness. Sin is
not merely unbelief. While Scriptures clearly say that anything done apart from
faith is sin, sin is not merely unbelief. All sin is not a violation of law, it
goes beyond that to the violation of the character of God which lies behind all
law.
13.
Our
sinfulness has had a tremendous effect upon God. It has affected God because
God in His mercy and grace and love has chosen to solve the sin problem. If God
could have solved the sin problem in any other way He would have done so, but
God could only solve the sin problem by sending His Son, the second Person of
the Trinity, to become flesh and to go to the cross where He would die
spiritually and be separated from God and all the sins of humanity would be
poured out on him, and He who knew no sin would be made sin for us. That is how
it affected God.
14.
All
of our sins—past, present and future—were paid for in full by Jesus Christ on
the cross. Therefore because sins were paid for sin is no longer the issue. The
issue is, What do you think about Jesus Christ? Sin will not be the issue at
the final judgment, the issue will be righteousness or works. Because sins have
already been judged the issue is going to be works, and because works do not
add up to perfect righteousness the unbeliever will spend eternity in the lake
of fire. The Scripture says that he who believes in the Son is not condemned,
but he who believes not is condemned already because he has not believed in the
name of the only-begotten Son of God. Failure to put one’s faith in Jesus
Christ means that they die minus-R. Faith in Jesus Christ means that at that
instant God imputes to the believer the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ.
15.
The
believer still possesses a sin nature, it is not wiped out by salvation; but
the believer is no longer a slave to the sin nature. He now has a new nature
which is the human spirit and is indwelt by God the Holy Spirit. The human
spirit regenerated at the moment of salvation is not enough in itself to
overcome the problems of sin and to overcome the lusts of the flesh. In the Old
Testament every believer was regenerated. They had a human spirit and yet they
were not able on the basis of the Mosaic law which was an external standard of
life, comparable to a standard of morality, to overcome the flesh because to
live the spiritual life involved something more. In one sense what is taught
throughout the Old Testament dispensation is that if we are truly going to live
for God man by man’s efforts cannot do it, he cannot save himself, neither can
he live the kind of life that would like for him to. So in the Church Age we
have the unique spiritual life that is based upon God the Holy Spirit. In 5:16
– “walk by the Spirit,” EN PNEUMATI [e)n pneumati] indicates the instrument or means. So what we
learn here is that the means for living the spiritual life or having victory
over the sin nature is primarily going to have something to do with the Holy
Spirit. The way that we know that this is the Holy Spirit (the word HAGOIS [a(gioj] is not used here) is
because some of the things said later on—e.g. the fruit of the Spirit, vv. 22,
25—can only apply to the Holy Spirit and can’t apply to the human spirit. So we
know that the dynamic for living the spiritual life is going to be the Holy
Spirit. The propensity of the human spirit is toward God. The natural
inclination of the human spirit is to direct the believer toward a life with
God. The sin nature has a different inclination and that is toward independence
and this is why there is now a battle in the believer’s soul and the human
spirit itself is not enough to overcome the problems of the sin nature. So in
the Church Age we have the unique ministry of God the Holy Spirit in three ways:
the baptism of the Holy Spirit, an instantaneous act that takes place at the
moment of faith in Jesus Christ whereby the believer is transferred and
identified with Christ in His death, burial and resurrection, so that he
becomes positionally identified with Christ and entered into union with Him so
that we are new creatures in Christ; indwelt by the Holy Spirit who take up His
residence in every believer at the instant of salvation and He makes our body a
temple through the indwelling of the Shekinah glory. God the Father, God the
Son and God the Holy Spirit all take up residence in the believer at the
instant of salvation; the filling ministry of God the Holy Spirit where He
works in our life to teach us doctrine, to recall doctrine to our mind, to
store doctrine in our souls, to fulfil the whole process of metabolisation, and
then to produce in us a transformed character, to change us into the character
of Jesus Christ and to produce in us certain character qualities that reflect
Jesus Christ. So it is these three ministries of the Holy Spirit that make the
spiritual life of the Church Age believer radically different from that of any
believer in human history. We have access and privileges as a result of this
that no other believer in history ever had. This is why the least believer in
the Church Age is greater than the greatest believer of the Age of
Israel—because of all that has been done for us and provided for us through the
ministry of the Holy Spirit. So it is through the ministry of the Holy Spirit that
we are going to be able to have victory over the sin nature, because this
battle continues. It is a battle between the sin nature and the Holy Spirit who
indwells and fills us. This is the thrust of Galatians 5:16.
16.
In
the Church Age the Holy Spirit has been provided to enable the believer to
fulfill the divine mandates for living out the spiritual life. In this passage
it involves the concept of walking, and in Ephesians 5:18 the concept of the
filling of the Holy Spirit which is part for the mechanics of being able to
walk.
17.
We
need to remember Jeremiah 17:9, that the heart (thinking part of the soul, the
mentality) is more deceitful than all else. This is the rationalization
qualities of the mind, that we rationalize away our wickedness, our sinfulness,
and we get caught up in arrogance and self-deception where we say, Well that’s
not really a sin, and get caught up in self-justification and try to justify
our sins. The sin nature has an area of strength, and an area of weakness where
we are most prone to sin. The area of strength is where we don’t yield to sin
but we do produce many good deeds—human good or dead works, Hebrews 6:1. The
motivator of the sin nature is in the middle. This is the lust pattern which
produces lust in a variety of categories, a combination of categories—power
lust, approbation lust (the desire for approval), money lust, materialism lust
(the desire for the things that money can buy), social lust (the desire to
have, and putting an emphasis on, friends), sex lust, chemical lust, pleasure
lust, crusader lust (the desire that when anything happens that you disagree
with you want to go on a political campaign in order to straighten everybody
out), revenge lust, inordinate ambition resulting in inordinate competition.
The trouble with lust is that it divorces a person from reality. Lust places a
certain object, whatever it is, and defines happiness and meaning to life in
terms of that object.
1.
Definition:
Pathology is the scientific study of the nature of a disease. In this case the
sin nature is not a disease but a constitutional defect. We will define it as
the scientific study of the nature of this constitutional defect and its
causes, processes, development and consequences. The way you do a scientific
study is collect all of the available data on the subject and then correlate
it, categorize it, and classify it. The data that we are examining is the
information in the Scriptures. That is how we do theology and why it is said
that theology is the queen of the sciences, not in the sense that it is a
science like biology or botany or zoology or physics but it is a science in the
sense that we have a field of data—the Bible; and that through the use of
observation and inductive study methods we correlate all of the facts that we
have in the Scriptures, relate them together, classify them according to topics
and categorize them. As a result of that we learn what the mind of God, the
mind of Christ, has to say about all of the various subjects addressed in the
Scriptures.
2.
The
sin nature was originally acquired when Adam sinned, so this means it is not
normal. Everything since the fall of man, everything in human environment, is
abnormal. By that is meant that God created the universe perfect, He created
the earth perfect, He created the environment perfect, He created the animal
and plant kingdom perfect, and He created man perfect. He placed man in a
perfect environment and gave man volition. That volition is the issue. Man
represented by Adam had one choice before him. There was only one sin that Adam
could commit in the garden and that had to do with whether or not he obeyed God
with respect to the prohibition of eating the fruit on the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil. All of his conditions were perfect and yet once he
sinned he acquired a sin nature which totally changed his makeup and had a
devastating effect on his environment. So the environment was no longer perfect
and he was no longer perfect. That sin nature is passed on genetically to all
of his descendants. The only human being who has been born without a sin nature
is our Lord Jesus Christ, who because He was born of a virgin did not acquire
the genetically-passed-on sin nature. He was born without a sin nature, and He
was born perfect and lived His life perfect, and He never committed any act of
sin. For that reason He was able to go to the cross and die as our substitute.
Every single person in human history is born with this constitutional defect.
That means we are all marred at the very essence of our being by the sin
nature. We lack perfect righteousness; we are all born minus righteousness. And
God, because God is +R, and because the righteousness of God cannot
have fellowship with the unrighteousness of man, what the righteousness of God
rejects the justice of God condemns. So that mankind is repugnant to God and
obnoxious to God.
3.
No
person is born innocent because they have all received the guilt of Adam’s sin.
This is not guilt because they have committed sin, this is guilt because Adam’s
original sin has been imputed to their sin nature, and so they are guilty. We
sin because we are by nature sinners; we are not sinners because we sin. Man is
inherently evil when left to his own devices; he is bent on making life work
apart from God. When we come to talk about children it is important to lay down
a few definitions and a few important points. If a child dies before the age of
accountability, then they are saved. They go directly to heaven on the basis of
the fact that God is righteous and the issue of salvation—and the issue of the
fall was volition, they have not reached a chronological and/or spiritual and
mental age whereby they can understand the issue and make a responsible choice
in relation to the gospel. This age of accountability varies from culture to
culture. The age of accountability, therefore, means the age at which a child
becomes conscious of the existence of God. Remember that according to Romans
1:19-20 there is plenty of evidence throughout the creation of the invisible
attributes of God, so that, as the Scripture says, they are without excuse.
Every human being knows God exists. Even the atheist who shouts from the
mountain top is fully aware in the deepest recesses of his soul, although he
would never admit it, that God exists. Because man is unrighteous the
orientation of his soul is to “suppress the truth in unrighteousness”—Romans
1:18. Some would make this a gnomic present which would make this a
characteristic of every human being, and that is a subjective decision that is
usually informed by hyper-Calvinism. What this means is that those who suppress
the truth means negative volition at God-consciousness. Negative volition at
God-consciousness means that they know the truth, they have perceived the truth,
and from that point on they are actively suppressing the truth. Romans 1:19—God
made it evident to them, i.e. those who are suppressing the truth. They know
about God because God made it evident to them, but they are suppressing the
truth. Verse 20—they are without excuse. Note: The age of accountability does
not mean that you are not accountable or responsible for decisions and actions
during that age. From the point a child is born until about age three, four or
five, we have a tendency to think of them as innocent, as not guilty. What
needs to be understood as the basis of our thinking is that that is not
reality. Reality is they have a sin nature, and that sin nature affects every
aspect of their being and decision-making process from the point of birth on.
4.
The
sin nature is orientation to independence from God. That is the essential
meaning of the sin nature. It means that we are asserting our autonomy: AUTOS [a)utoj] = self; NOMOS [monoj] = law. “I will determine my
own destiny, I will define reality on my own terms, I can make my life work
apart from God.” That is a reminder of the five “I wills” of Lucifer in Isaiah
chapter 14. Therefore the sin nature is defined as the propensity, inclination
and proclivity to violate the character and standards of God and the desire to
make life work without God. We think that we can define meaning, purpose, and
happiness in life. We think that on the basis of our own experience, intellect,
native ability that we not only can come to an actual understanding of these concepts
but that we can define how to get there. The sin nature is motivated by lust
patterns at its very core. These lust patterns will move the sin nature in one
of two directions—trends, toward either asceticism or legalism, or toward
antinomianism and lasciviousness. Furthermore, there is the tendency to operate
in one of two areas, the area of weakness which produces personal sins or an
area of strength that produces human good or dead works.
5.
The
sin nature is the only and exclusive control factor for the soul at birth.
Whether we realize it or not we are always functioning volitionally. We may not
be aware that we are making choices but we are making choices. The sin nature
has a material force and an immaterial influence and it is continually seeking
control of the soul. As an unbeliever that is the only control factor. That
means that as far as the production is concerned the only production is that
which is human good or personal sins. The unbeliever because he does not
possess a human spirit and there s no doctrine resident in the soul whatsoever,
not Holy Spirit resident in the soul, cannot produce anything else, cannot make
a decision that is based on anything other than human viewpoint, and therefore
no matter how good, wonderful or nice it might be or how close it might line up
with Scripture it is still human good or personal sin. Isaiah 64:6. We are born
enslaved to the sin nature—Romans 6:16, 17. The believer is no longer a slave
to sin, the power of the sin nature has been broken at the point of salvation.
From birth to salvation a person is a slave to sin, and so the only decisions
and actions he can make flow from the sin nature.
6.
Since
no child is born a believer there is no option in life for any child but the
sin nature’s control and human viewpoint problem-solving techniques. So that
whenever the unbeliever faces the onslaught of adversity or the pleasures of
prosperity the only way to deal with it is the sin nature’s control. When
pleasant or adverse circumstances present themselves that young child growing
up has to make certain decisions as to how it is going to respond or react to
those circumstances, and the only options available are wrong. Think about the
implications of that! Environment is not the issue, the issue is what is in the
soul, and the only thing that is in the soul for every single person is the sin
nature’s control. So what happens in the pathology of sin is when a child
begins to grow he is going to receive input through his senses. He learns to
taste, and it takes a while for all of those taste buds to connect and get to a
point where a fairly sophisticated palate is developed. A child begins to
recognize voices, develop a sense of smell, etc. At the same time the child
begins to go through various pleasurable and painful experiences. They don’t
have the ability or maturity to know how to deal with experiences such as the
pain of losing a loved one, and that God has decided that that time is what God
has decided to take that person. They can’t operate on that, they are not a
believer and don’t understand anything about doctrine. So they have to deal
with that pain in some way and they develop a strategy for doing it. The same
thing applies to various pleasures and they decide which might take care of
that pain they are going through. That might be extrapolated out further into
areas where there is abuse and all kinds of scenarios that are horrible to
think about. They develop various strategies for achieving what they think is
happiness and stability, meaning and purpose in life. So all of this is a
process in maturing, but if the only solutions available are human viewpoint
solutions then the end result is always going to be catastrophic. The
Scriptures call it temporal death. Because even if the solution is socially acceptable,
provides a modicum of happiness and stability and not overtly self-destructive,
the Scripture says that because it flows from the sin nature it can have only
one result.
7.
As
we grow we develop various techniques and strategies for gaining our objective
and these are related to certain factors:
a)
There
are always certain genetic predispositions. Just because you have a genetic
predisposition it doesn’t mean that you have to yield to that.
b)
We
have certain lusts and trends.
c)
We
learn from observing behaviour patterns, and by imitation.
d)
We
learn from instilled behaviour patterns.
e)
Personal
likes and dislikes.
The issue is always
volition. We do what we do because we are sinners and there is only one
solution, our volition. If we have some doctrine we have an alternative. We
have a new power system and that is the Holy Spirit, and we are going to walk
by means of the Holy Spirit and by applying doctrine, and that is going to
change our life. That is the process of the spiritual life. It shifts responsibility
completely to our own shoulders, it is not blamed on what happened to us as
kids.
1.
Options
are always available whether we realize them or not, whether we are aware of
them or not or whether we want to admit it or not. We are accountable for our decisions
and we are going to reap the consequences of those decisions in our life. As we
grow up we are going to develop strategies for dealing with pleasure, pain, and
adversity and hostility all through life. Some of those techniques are going to
be helpful and beneficial and some are going to be personally destructive, but
they all have their root in the sin nature and a deep-seated commitment to make
life work apart from God. Therefore no matter how functional they might make
you, no matter how much pleasure they might bring you, no matter how successful
you might become as a result of that, God looks at all of those strategies that
you develop from the sin nature and He says that they don’t amount to anything
and are all wrong. What are the mechanics of this? James 1:13, the word
“temptation” relates to the sin nature which solicits the soul to a certain
response which is either going to be human good or personal sin. Once the soul
goes negative to doctrine and chooses personal sin then you may react immediately
to human good and from thereon out be involved in human good. There are three
sources of temptation, two are overt and one is inside of us. Satan and the
whole demonic realm usually work through an orderly system of ideas which the
Bible calls the cosmos. The cosmos is that orderly system of ideas devised by
Satan and which we sometimes call human viewpoint and the Bible also calls
“foolishness.” The bottom line is that it is a way of solving life’s problems
that is totally independent of God. Verse 14: It is not a sin to be tempted. We
will always be tempted by our sin nature. Yielding to temptation is the sin.
The word for “lust” in v. 14 is EPITHUMIA [e)piqumia], also found in Galatians 5:16ff where it talks
about the sin nature lusting against the spirit and there is a constant
warfare. This word is used to describe that warfare, the desire to control.
Verse 15: “when lust has conceived” – when lust is united with negative
volition that is when it produces personal sin; “it brings forth death.” When
anything flows from the sin nature—personal sin or human good—God says that the
end result is always going to be death, not life. Here the death is operational
death or temporal death which is sin nature control of the soul. It is not a
permanent enslavement, we can confess our sins and are forgiven and at that
point are free from the control of the sin nature and back under the filling of
God the Holy Spirit. For the unbeliever there is no option, he is always in
carnality and in temporal death. The result is that when the believer continues
to operate in temporal death the long-term result is devastating. It fragments
his soul—he is described as being “double-minded”, DIAPSEUCHOS [diayeuxoj]. Such a believer can end
up living a life that is indistinguishable from an unbeliever.
2.
The
consequence of all human viewpoint problem-solving is death, no matter how much
it makes a life functional. The issue for the believer is not functionality,
the issue is not being able to handle life’s problems and be a success; the
issue is spiritual growth and maturity operating exclusively on the power of
God the Holy Spirit, walking by means of the Spirit, and handling life’s
problems through the principles of God’s Word extrapolated in the ten
stress-busters found in James. It is God’s problem-solving devices that are the
issue and unless we are solving problems that way the result is going to be
destructive. Human viewpoint always seems to focus on the enormity of the
problem, the horror of the circumstances, and it always tends to emphasize the
innocence of the person and therefore suddenly shifts the blame to the person
who causes the victimization. That is why we have a society today that
emphasizes victimization because it shifts responsibility from the person who is
acted upon to the person who performs the action. The issue is not who does
what to you, it is how are you going to choose to respond to whatever adversity
there is in your life.
3.
The
only hope, the only real answer is biblical Christianity. It starts at the
cross where Jesus Christ paid the penalty for every single sin in human
history. The biggest problem we face in life is the problem of sin because that
underlies every problem in life. Every problem in life is the result of Adam’s
sin and the introduction of sin into our environment and into our constitution.
As a result of that Jesus Christ solved the greatest problem we will ever face
which is the problem of sin, and we know that Jesus Christ can solve every
other problem in life.
4.
Along
with the Word of God we have the indwelling Spirit of God who is the power of
the spiritual life under His filling ministry, and through whom all things are
possible.
Just
because you are believer that is no guarantee that you cannot sink into the
most extreme, the most depraved form of sin and carnality known to man, and
just because somebody is living a life like that does not mean that the person
is not a believer. Some of the worst people in history have been believers in
the Lord Jesus Christ giving free reign to the sin nature and knowing nothing
about the spiritual life and walking by means of the Spirit. Walking by means
of the Spirit is a major priority of every believer—that our spiritual life is
the emphasis of walking. Walking describes that moment by moment characteristic
of the believer’s life, that we are to “walk by means of” God the Holy Spirit.
The life of the believer in the Church Age is unique from any other age in
history because we have three ministries of the Spirit unique to this age: the
baptism of the Holy Spirit, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and the filling
of the Holy Spirit.
Verse 17—“For the flesh sets its desire against
the Spirit.” The Greek begins here with the particle GAR [gar] which is almost always
causal, i.e. it should be translated “because.” So we are going to be given a
reason here: the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit
against the flesh. There is warfare here, so once again we have the sin nature
on the one hand and the Holy Spirit on the other, and there is complete
antagonism between the two, represented in the Greek by the preposition KATA [kata] plus the genitive,
indicating opposition, standing against something. This is the war that goes on
inside every believer. The sin nature is driving the believer on one direction,
and the problem with that is that from the moment he was born until the moment
he is saved he develops innumerable habits from the sin nature: either personal
sin habits or human good habits. He has learned them so well that he doesn’t
even think about them any more. In fact he is executing those sinful responses
or human good responses before he even thinks about them, they become so
ingrained in the thinking, personality and life, that it is only through a
conscious effort that doctrine is learned and then applied under the filling
ministry of God the Holy Spirit. We have to go through that very difficult
process of putting doctrine into practice and retooling from the ground up
everything in our mentality. But what happens is that as soon as we hit some
adversity the first thing that pops into our mind and out of our mouth is
something that is generated by the sin nature. That’s why it is such a
difficult struggle.
Then
we have another explanation with the same particle GAR: “for these are in
opposition to one another.” Here we have the present middle indicative from the
verb ANTIKEIMAI [a)ntikeimai] which means to oppose, to
be against, to be antithetical to. The present tense indicate continual action here.
These are continually in opposition to one another. The middle voice is a
dynamic middle for emphasis. The indicative indicates the reality of this
warfare. What we see by the use of this particular verb is that these are two
opposites, there is no way that they are going to be brought together in any
form of compromise. It is either one or the other. The believer is either
operating under the filling ministry of God the Holy Spirit or under the sin
nature. It is either one or the other, not both. You cannot be partially
spiritual and partially carnal and this is one of the verses in the Scripture
that makes that very clear.
Then
a HINA [i(na] clause in the Greek which
can indicate purpose or result, and here we have a result clause, i.e. that
there will be a level of frustration because of this struggle: “so that you may
not do the things that you please.” Here Paul recognize that when the believer
is not living in the power of the Holy Spirit there is continual failure in the
spiritual life, even though through knowing doctrine he knows that there is a
certain standard expected of him and he desires to please the Lord. This is
because of the struggle and because of the sin nature. The issue is always
volition.
Verse
18—“But if you are led by means of the Spirit, you are not under the Law.” The
Galatians had been evangelized by the apostle Paul on his first missionary
journey. After he left a group of false teachers came in (Judaizers) and saying
that it was great what Paul taught but you need to be in line with everything
that God taught in the Old Testament, including Mosaic law, so you have to
start applying the Mosaic law in every area of life and become identified with
Abraham just as the Jews are through circumcision, and then you have to make the
Mosaic law the dynamic force in your life. They did what many people do today,
they confused morality with spirituality, and there is a vast difference.
Morality is for every member of the human race, believer and unbeliever alike.
But that has nothing to do with spirituality, and this is the point that Paul
is making: don’t confuse morality with spirituality because morality can be a
product of human good and therefore a product of the sin nature. So he comes
back to this concept of the law by reminding them that if you are led by the
Spirit (1st class condition: if, and I’m assuming you are) you are
not under the law. Legalistic obedience and legalistic concepts of the
spiritual life are completely antithetical to a life based upon the Holy
Spirit. When the believer is in fellowship he is going to be led by the Spirit.
When he is in carnality and operating on legalism then the influential factor
in the soul is the flesh, the sin nature. So if he is being led by the Spirit
then he is not under the Mosaic law. These are mutually exclusive concepts.
Spirituality by morality is going to destroy any hope of advancing in the
spiritual life.
1.
Every
single believer at the moment of salvation is indwelt by God the Holy Spirit
and therefore is going to be led under the guidance ministry of the Holy
Spirit—Romans 8:14. This is the general ministry of leading. If the believer is
out of fellowship this is done by the convicting ministry of the Holy Spirit,
and if in fellowship it is by His active leading which is done on the basis of
Bible doctrine. This is not some kind of mystical, intuitive leading.
2.
In
this passage being led by the Spirit is more than simple divine guidance. This
is a summary of all that is involved in the work of the Holy Spirit in bringing
the believer to spiritual maturity. The emphasis in verse 18 is that it is not
just the concept of general leading that is expressed in Romans chapter eight
but the active aspect of that leading whereby you are following. If someone is
leading you then they are on point and they are out there blazing that trail
and pointing you in the direction you should go. So if they are on point and
you are following them, what are you going to be doing? Walking!
3.
We
start off by walking by means of the Spirit, which is a mandate addressed to
our volition and emphasizes the continual step by step nature of that progress.
But what are we doing? We are following something, so we are led by the Spirit.
He is directing us and this relates to the teaching of His Word—the mandates
and the prohibitions in doctrine. The path is clearly laid out by the overt
objective mandates and prohibitions of Scripture. We walk, but our walking is
by following Him. This is further emphasized in Galatians 5:25: “If we live by
the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit,” and the Greek shifts words. In
verse 16 it is PERIPATEO [peripatew] which emphasizes that
moment by moment, step by step walking, and in verse 25 is STOICHEO [stoixew] which emphasizes following
in someone’s footsteps. So we see how the three images—walking, leading, and
following in the footsteps—all blend together. When you see that imagery of
following in the footsteps you know that there must be some clear objective
path to follow, and that is laid out by the mandates of God’s Word.
4.
In
terms of the ministry of God the Holy Spirit in the believer’s life He is
convicting the believer of sin, He is teaching the believer doctrine, He is
helping the believer understand doctrine and correlate one doctrine with
another doctrine, He is reminding the believer of the doctrine that is stored
in his soul, He is assuring the believer of his salvation, He is providing
divine guidance, He is interceding for the believer in prayer, He is
transforming our character into the character of Jesus Christ, and He is
gifting us for Christian service. All of that is under the category of being
led by the Holy Spirit when we are operating under the filling of the Holy
Spirit and walking by the Spirit.
5.
The
teaching of the Holy Spirit. In John 16:12 Jesus said to His disciples, “I have
many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.” That tells us
that in the whole realm of doctrine there are certain doctrines—very basic or
elementary doctrines of the Old Testament because there was no Holy Spirit
there to teach, to help them understand. Apparently, on the basis of what Jesus
is saying in John 16 and some things in 1 Corinthians 2—that can be understood
because the regenerate believer has the human spirit; v. 13 “But when he, the
Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not
speak on his own initiative, but whatever he hears, he will speak; and he will
disclose to you what is to come.” Here we see that the Holy Spirit is specifically
referred to as the Spirit of truth. He is called the Spirit of truth because He
is the one who will be communicating truth, Bible doctrine. Furthermore, it
says He will guide us into all the truth. He doesn’t say he will guide you to
buy a house in a certain suburb, whether to go to one university or another,
whether or not to marry this person or that person; it says He will guide you
into all truth, i.e. Bible doctrine. So once again we have the emphasis on
truth. These are absolute concepts revealed in the Word of God. So the leading
of the Holy Spirit is related to teaching doctrine.
6.
The
Holy Spirit therefore leads, provides direction, and guides the believer
through objective information. Guidance therefore is not guidance by intuitive
insights or hot flashes but guidance by means of objective revelation. So we
have to understand what God has said, and God has communicated His Word to us
to be understood. It is to be lucid, clear, understandable.
7.
Divine
guidance comes from the mandates and prohibitions of the Word of God.
In verses 19-21 Paul is
going to give us evidence of how we can tell if we are in sin nature control
versus Holy Spirit control. Verse 19—“Now the deeds of the flesh are evident.”
The Greek adjective here is PHANEROS
[fanhrwj]
and it relates to something that is perceptible, something that is clear,
obvious, manifest or conspicuous. What Paul is saying is that if you are
operating on the sin nature you are not going to have to sit back and guess
whether the sin nature is in control or the Holy Spirit. There are going to be
certain things that are going to be evident which are the works of the flesh—ERGOS [e)rgoj] means “works.” There is an
emphasis on the external consequences here. This is how the sin nature’s
control will ultimately manifest itself, there will be no doubt whatsoever
about what is going on. Romans 6:14—a reminder of the basic principle: “For sin
shall not be master over you (at the point of salvation we are freed from the
penalty of sin and at that instant of justification we enter into the spiritual
life, but the whole process of the spiritual life is to be saved from the power
of the sin nature. The sin nature’s mastery over us is broken at the cross),
for you are not under law, but under grace.” The rest of this chapter and into
chapter 7 relates Paul’s own personal experience as a believer trying to
understand what it means as a believer to live on the basis of grace and not on
the basis of law.
In chapter 7:14, 15 Paul says,
“For we know that the law is spiritual (the law has spiritual value, it does
not make you spiritual); but I am of flesh, sold into bondage to sin, for that
which I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would
like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate.” That should remind us of
Galatians 5:17, that there is a warfare between the flesh and the Spirit so
that you may not do the things that you please. Here Paul is saying that this
is true in his experience, that he knew what he wanted to do (please God), but
he couldn’t do it. There was a law in his members, the sin nature, that was
driving him in a particular direction.
Verses 16-26 outline for us
the issues in the spiritual life. This is one of the most crucial passages to
understand if we are going to go anywhere in our spiritual life. The sad thing
is that too many people don’t realize that they are to go somewhere in their
spiritual life. They think the end result is getting saved, that they are going
to heaven, and they don’t give any thought to the fact that that is the
beginning of a new life and not the end of a course of action. The issues in
this chapter deal with what is involved in advancing from spiritual infancy to
spiritual maturity. The issue is very clear for salvation: “Believe on the Lord
Jesus Christ and you will be saved.” As a part of regeneration God imparts to
the believer a new spiritual life. Just as in physical life you begin as a
spiritual infant but it is the believer’s responsibility now to grow, to
advance. How does a believer grow? This spiritual life is uniquely powered by
God the Holy Spirit. That is, it is different from a life of simple morality.
Since this new life that we have in Christ is a supernatural life it demands a
supernatural method or means, and that is through God the Holy Spirit. So we
have to ask the further question: How do we distinguish between the life that
we are living just on the basis of our own ability and energy and a life that
is produced by the Holy Spirit? That is a most important question. The average
believer today does not realize that he can live a moral life and it is the
production of his sin nature. That is a profound concept. The conclusion is
that morality is not the spiritual life. The spiritual life of the Church Age
is a far higher life than that of mere human morality because it is energized
by God the Holy Spirit.
Verse 19 – a grocery list of
what is produced when walking under the control of the sin nature. “Now the
deeds of the flesh are made manifest.” The first three listed relate to sexual
sins. God designed sexuality to be enjoyed by mankind as a course of pleasure,
recreation, and secondarily procreation. Its primary purpose was to be a
celebration of love between a man and a woman and it was designed to be in the
context of marriage. Here we have “immorality” – fornication, i.e. sex between
two people who are not married, to adultery which is sex between two people,
one of whom at least is married to someone else; “impurity” – relating to the whole
realm of perverse sins, from homosexuality, bestiality, etc.; “sensuality”.
Verse 20 – this person would
probably be motivated by a trend toward legalism: “idolatry” – includes all
forms of idolatry. Usually pictured as worship some physical image to which is
attributed various attributes of deity. But idolatry is not restricted to the
worship of a physical object, it can also involve the worship of something that
is abstract. For example, in Colossians 3:5 – “greed,” materialism lust, money
lust; greed which amounts to idolatry. Idolatry is looking to anything other
than God as the source of meaning and purpose in life, value and happiness as
the solution to life’s problems. The second category here is translated
“sorcery” but it comes from a Greek word PHARMEKEIA [farmekeia], from which we get our English word “pharmacy.” It
has to do with the use of hallucinogenic drugs for the purpose of reaching a
certain kind of consciousness so that one can contact the various gods [demons]
in order to have certain power. So here it relates to drug use, not for the
legitimate use of drugs for curing disease but for the illegitimate use in
order to achieve happiness or power, or something along that line. It was often
associated with religious rites and witchcraft. Following that we have a series
of activities, both mental and overt, which relate to the consequences of sin
on human relationships and how personal sin is devastating and destructive to
human relationships. The first is “enmities” – EKTHRA [e)kqra] which relates to the development of hostile
feeling, animosity, hostile behaviour, sharpness or bitterness in expression or
manner. It includes both mental attitude rancor, anger, bitterness and overt
activities of contentiousness; “strife” – ERIS [e)rij] or discord between people,
quarrelsome or argumentative, someone who is always in a bad mood and picking a
fight, someone who is always arguing over something simply for the sake of
arguing; “jealousy” – ZELOS [zhloj], the result of
self-absorption, an orientation of one’s thinking to self. It is a
subjectiveness. Such an attitude results in self-indulgence. You begin to give
in to whatever it is that you want, to what your desires are; you indulge the
lusts of your sin nature. This leads to self-justification. You have to justify
why you are involved in this. Jealousy focuses on what somebody else has and
the fact that you don’t have it, think you want it, and deserve it. This is
going to differ from envy which seeks to destroy what someone else has that you
think you deserve; “outbursts of anger” – THUMOS [qumoj] refers to anger, wrath, rage, passion, losing
one’s temper. The believer who is walking by means of the Spirit will not be
given to outbursts of anger; “disputes” – ERITHEIA [e)riqeia] means selfish ambition, disputations from selfish
ambition, self-centered advancement at whatever the cost; “dissensions” – DICOSTASIA [dixostasia] means divisions and
discord. So we have three words here that talk about the breakdown of
relationships. Cf. Romans 16:17; “factions” – HAIRESEIS [a(ireseij] from which we get our English word “heresies” and
it means sects, divisions, divisiveness. This what happens when people get
caught up in following the lusts of the flesh. The sin nature is in control of
the soul and they start interpreting the Word of God through their own
subjective, arrogant grid instead of by the accepted canons of interpretation
handed down through the centuries. They get involved in different views and
start arguing over their different views, and that just creates division in the
church.
Verse 21 – The last word in
the list is “envyings” PHTHONOI
[fqonoi],
it emphasizes the result of self-absorption, is an emotional sin in reaction to
the prosperity and blessing of others. Envy seeks to destroy what others have
and jealousy seeks to have what others enjoy. The last two words refer to
extreme partying. This is not having a good time and a bowl of punch, it refers
to the drunken revelries that were so typical in Greek culture. Many times it
was related to the licentious worship of the time. METHAI [meqai] = drunkenness, and KOMOI [kwmoi] = revelry. This is all
involved in partying with the intent of becoming inebriated and removing all
inhibitions. All of this defines and describes the works of the sin nature;
“and things like this” – HOMOIA
[o(moia],
of the same nature, similar, like, resembling, something belonging to the same
class.—“and things belonging to the same class.” This is a representative list
of the works of the sin nature.
“that they which do practice
such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God” – this is very important to
understand. What does this mean? The phrase translated “those who practice” is
the present active participle of the verb PRASSO [prassw] which means to practice, to continually carry out,
continually do something. It means to have something which characterizes your
lifestyle; “shall not inherit the kingdom of God” – What does it mean to
inherit the kingdom? It refers to something different to simply inheritance.
There is a descriptive genitive here which modifies the word “inherit.” We are
inheriting the kingdom of God, so there would be a difference between
inheritance generally and inheriting the kingdom of God. There are two options
that are usually given for interpreting this phrase. One is that it is
synonymous for entering heaven or gaining eternal life. This is the first way
most people want to take this. That would then mean that if you practice any of
these things you’re not going to get into heaven. The second interpretation is
that it refers to special blessing and rewards in heaven to believers who
advance to spiritual maturity. The problem with the first view is that if this
means entering heaven or gaining eternal life then it is basing salvation upon
works, or on moral reformation of the life. That is in direct contradiction to
passages like Titus 3:5, Ephesians 2:8,9. Cf. 1 Corinthians 6:9, 10—“Or do you
not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God ….” If
“inherit the kingdom of God” means to be saved then what this passage is saying
is that thieves can’t be saved. Furthermore, if this is what it means then the
thief on the cross couldn’t have been saved. Yet Jesus said to him, “Today you
will be with me in Paradise.” The idea violates the principle of salvation by
grace. Ephesians 5:8—“you are light … walk as children of the light.” Even
though a believer is in the kingdom of light he can still walk in darkness.
Back to verses 3-5 – in verse 3 the mandate to avoid carnality. Verse 5, the
contrast: “no immoral or impure person or covetous man, who is an idolator, has
an inheritance in the kingdom of God.” So it is clear that if you live a
certain kind of lifestyle under the control of the sin nature that you are
going to be forfeiting inheritance. But what kind of inheritance? Inheritance
in the kingdom. A second problem comes up in how the meaning of PRASSO [prassw] in Galatians 5:20 is
defined. Does this mean to do something a few times? Does it means to practice
this activity after salvation for some time but then later in life you don’t do
this any more? Or does this mean that you continue to do this activity from the
time of salvation all the way to death? What Paul is saying here is that it is
something that characterizes the person’s lifestyle and eventually there is a
point where spiritual maturity is reached and one stops doing these things.
Legalism says that you automatically stop doing these things once you are
saved. The issue as things are presented in Scripture is that as you grow to
maturity as a believer the Holy Spirit will at some point eventually deal with
these sins in your life and you will move beyond that. It takes time, and the
trouble with superficial legalism is that it expects everything to happen over
night, which is not realistic. Everybody grows at a different rate and
everybody has different trends, different lust patterns. For you to impose your
standards on somebody else is the height of arrogance and self-righteousness.
The other thing that needs
to be dealt with in interpreting this passage is that there are three different
views. There is the Arminian view that if you trust Christ as saviour but fail
to give up these activities then you lose your salvation. They take inheriting
the kingdom as being salvation and that if you are a believer but continue in
these activities ten you lose salvation. There is the lordship view, the
extreme Calvinist view, which says that if you have faith in Christ but
continue to do these things then that faith in Christ is not a saving faith, it
wasn’t a genuine faith, and that the only way you know it was a genuine faith
when you believed is by whether or not you quit doing these things. The grace
position says that the issue here is not gaining eternal life, the issue is
eternal destiny or eternal rewards, your position in the kingdom. If a believer
has failed to advance in the spiritual life, failed to deal with the sin nature
through the principles of doctrine, then he will forfeit rewards and his
position to rule and reign with Christ in the kingdom. He will be in the
kingdom but will not be a possessor of the kingdom.
In the early years of our
spiritual life after we first become saved we are motivated by a desire to
learn, to know more, to answer questions. How do we understand prophecy? What
is God going to do in the future? Or how exactly does salvation work? What is
this thing called election and how does the sovereignty of God relate to the
free will of man? All of these kinds of questions drive us and so we are motivated
by an intellectual sort of motivation to learn new information. But by the time
we get into spiritual adolescence many of those questions are answered. You’ve
learned what you wanted to learn. The things that drove you by means of
intellectual curiosity have now been satisfied, so you have to replace that
initial instant oriented motivation with the motivation of maturity. The
motivation of infancy differs from the motivation of maturity and what happens
is as you move through spiritual adolescence you begin to realize that you are
living not for today, not for tomorrow, but for eternity. We are determining
right now by the decisions we make what we will be for all eternity, and that
is one of the major motivators in the spiritual life of the believer.
When we face adversity in
life we have to decide whether we are going to handle these on the basis of
divine resources or human resources. God has provided everything we need in the
spiritual life to handle any and every situation in life on the basis of His
Word. This has been outlined under the category of ten problem-solving devices.
It begins with confession (1 John 1:9), the entry point into that fortress that
God provides for the soul. He is our fortress, the psalmist says, our shield,
our buckler, our refuge in time of trouble; and the entry point is confession.
When we are outside that fortress we are operating under the sin nature and on
our own resources, so we have to exercise grace recovery to get back into the
fortress. Then the power base of the spiritual life is the filling of the Holy
Spirit, so we handle problems under the ministry of the filling of the Holy
Spirit. Next are three basic problem-solving devices: the faith-rest drill
which produces the faith-rest life; doctrinal orientation; grace orientation.
These are all part of spiritual infancy and the building blocks to the whole
spiritual life. As you master those techniques/spiritual skills you will be
able to advance beyond spiritual childhood. He transitional stage is when you
come to a sense of your eternal destiny because it is at that point that you
begin to realize that every decision you are making right now affects all of
eternity: when we start thinking about our present life in terms of eternal
ramifications of that. That is what the doctrine of the inheritance of the
kingdom of God relates to. Then for the advanced problem-solving devices are
personal love for God the Father, impersonal love for all mankind, and
occupation with Christ. It is our love for God, our focus on Christ, our
emulation of His example of unconditional love for all mankind that is critical
in all of our relationships. The ultimate result of that is inner happiness,
that perfect tranquility and peace that we have.
Inheritance is an issue that
is not understood and which is very confusing to a number of different people.
“Inherit the kingdom of God” is not simply talking about inheritance. In Romans
chapter eight there is a reference about being heirs of God and joint heirs
with Jesus Christ. Each of these adjectival phrases that go along with the
concept of heirship or inheritance are important for defining the subject
matter. “Kingdom of God” is a technical term that is related to the messianic
kingdom that will be brought into existence when Jesus Christ is personally
ruling and reigning on the throne of David in Jerusalem. That has not occurred
yet, that was the kingdom that Jesus offered when He came during the first
advent and which was postponed. At the time that Jesus came at the first advent
His last three years of public ministry culminated in the crucifixion. He came
offering the messianic kingdom of David to the Jews and they rejected it. If
was offered and postponed; it was not inaugurated. (There is a false view
[“progressive” dispensationalism] that Jesus came an inaugurated the kingdom
but it is not fully here) At the second advent when Jesus returns to the earth
bodily He sets up His kingdom—the Millennium, which refers to the 1000-year
reign of Christ described in Revelation chapter 20. In between are two major
events. Beginning on the day of Pentecost and extending to the Rapture of the
Church when Jesus Christ comes in the air and those who are dead in Christ
shall rise first, and we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together
with Him in the clouds. It takes place in the twinkling of an eye, there is no
prophecy that needs to be fulfilled before Jesus comes back. Then there will be
a period of seven years called the Tribulation, the time of Jacob’s trouble,
the Great Tribulation. It is when Satan throws his last great temper tantrum in
human history in order to try to achieve his plan and purposes. What takes
place in the “heavenlies” during this time is what is called the judgment seat
of Christ, the evaluation throne of Jesus Christ when all believers are
evaluated. When we talk about inheriting the kingdom we are talking about the
place, the role, the function of Church Age believers when they return to the
earth in their resurrection bodies with the Lord Jesus Christ at His second coming
to establish the Millennial kingdom. What is your role going to be in that
Millennial kingdom? The Scripture has a lot to say about that. If you are a
successful believer and advance to spiritual maturity, or are advancing to
spiritual maturity, you will be an inheritor of the kingdom. But if you do not
you will not inherit the kingdom.
What does inherit the
kingdom mean?
1.
It
comes from the Greek word KLERONOMOS
[klhronomoj]
which means to inherit, to possess, to own. In English we all know that there
is a difference between somebody who just enters into a house and lives in a
house and somebody who owns and possesses the house. If that distinction is
understood then so will the basic distinction Scripture makes between being an
heir of the kingdom and being saved. Someone who is saved but not an heir will
live in the kingdom but they will not own or possess the kingdom. So the issue:
Is it something that is simply synonymous with entering into heaven and gaining
eternal life, or does it refer to special blessings and rewards in heaven for
believers who advance to spiritual maturity? The conclusion is that it is not
salvation, entering into heaven or gaining eternal life. If that was true then
works would be an issue.
2.
The
problem with the view that it means entering into heaven is that several
passages are contradictive. So inheriting the kingdom must refer to something
else. It must refer to a category of believer in heaven. When we get to heaven
there will be two categories of believers: heirs and non-heirs. But all will be
in heaven.
3.
A
second problem to be addressed is the meaning of the word “practice” – PRASSO [prassw]. It is a present active
participle which means continual action, but when we talk about continual
action that could cover any range of meanings. Does it mean to do something a
few times? Does it mean to practice something after salvation for maybe ten,
fifteen, or twenty years, and then the last years of life you don’t practice
it? Does it refer to continuous action from the point of salvation all the way
until you are taken home to be with the Lord? There are problems with each of
those views. Where does it stop? How much is too much?
4.
It
is important to realize that the entire phrase “inherit the kingdom of God”
must be taken into account. There are three historic views for understanding
this. The first is the Arminian view. The Arminians believed in a conditional
election, which means that you could lose salvation because you had to keep up
that condition or God would stop choosing you. So there is a conditional
election, an unlimited atonement, and they taught that the ministry of God the
Holy Spirit is resistable. The Calvinist position was a reaction to this: the
five points of Calvinism under the acronym TULIP. The Arminians would interpret this passage on
inheriting the kingdom of God as being able to lose one’s salvation—by
continuing to practice the sins mentioned. In the hyper-Calvinist position they
interpret this to mean that if you practice these things you weren’t really
saved at all. There is a third position that is being developed today but has
been around for a long time. It is being defined and developed in new ways. It
is called the free grace position which makes a distinction between salvation
and inheriting the kingdom. The issue here, then, is not our eternal destiny
but our role in the eternal kingdom and reward.
5.
The
problem is that these passages, like Galatians 3:29; 4:1; 1 Peter 1:4,5 speak
of our inheritance as a permanent possession based on faith alone in Christ
alone. In other passages such as Ephesians 5:5; Colossians 3:24 the inheritance
is seen as a reward, something given for works. Salvation is not given for
works, it is a grace gift. So there is a distinction made between gifts and
rewards for works. How do we correlate these concepts?
6.
There
are two categories of inheritance: inheriting the kingdom, which is being a
joint heir with Christ because we have endured in the spiritual life, following
His pattern; the category of being an heir of God, which is inheriting simply
eternal life, an eternal destiny in heaven—Hebrews 1:14; Romans 8:17.
Luke 19:11-27, the parable
of the minas. A parable is a fictitious story designed to communicate a
doctrinal principle. The kingdom had been offered and rejected and Jesus wanted
to make it clear that it had been postponed. A mina was approximately three
months’ income. Verse 15: the slaves are not the citizens, they are not
unbelievers here. The citizens represent the unbelievers who are living in the
kingdom; the slaves are believers. His citizens hated him—the nationalistic
response of unbelievers. They do not want God involved in their world and they
are shaking their fist at Him. The calling of the slaves is comparable to the
judgment seat of Christ; the evaluation of the servants. The mina represents
all the spiritual assets and physical assets that God has given the believer.
There is going to be accountability for how these are used. This accountability
is not related to getting into heaven, it is related to the believer’s position
in the kingdom. Verse 16 – because the slave used his gift and developed
capacity and shown responsibility he is rewarded with a rule over ten cities in
the kingdom. Verse 18 – he didn’t work so hard; there is no praise. His reward
was five cities, a fivefold return. Verse 20—the mina was hidden. Verse 22—“By
your own words I will judge you, you worthless slave.” The Greek word
translated “worthless” is very interesting; it means evil. This is the believer
who does not utilize the assets that God gives him. Verse 26—“I tell you, that
to everyone who has shall more be given, but from the one who does not have,
even what he does have shall be taken away.” Loss at the judgment seat of
Christ. Are we living today in the light of eternity and what is going to
happen at the judgment seat of Christ?
There are going to be Church Age believers who fail to live the
Christian life. They continue to live in carnality, they never utilize 1 John
1:9, they never advance in the spiritual life, the continue to operate under
the sin nature, and when the Lord comes back at the judgment seat of Christ
they will lose rewards and will be in the kingdom but not heirs of the kingdom.
God’s plan for the believer is to be an heir of the kingdom, a joint heir with
Jesus Christ.
1.
We
need to distinguish between the judgment seat of Christ and the great white
throne judgment described in Revelation 20. The great white throne judgment
takes place at the end of the Millennium. Its purpose is condemnation of
unbelievers only. The purpose of the judgment seat of Christ is to evaluate
what believers have done with what their life on earth.
2.
Scripture:
2 Corinthians 5:10. There is accountability, not for sin but for lost opportunities
and failure to advance in the spiritual life. Here we have the word BEMA [bhma], a technical term. This was
a raised dais that was set up in the public square and the moderator of the
assembly in Athens executed judgment. It was the place where law suits would be
settled, where criminals would be tried, and it is the place of evaluation and
judgment. “We must all,” i.e. every single believer, “appear.” It is required;
“that each one may be recompensed”—this is the aorist middle subjunctive of KOMIZO [komizw]. The word’s basic meaning
is to receive something. Here we are going to receive either reward or a loss
of reward. An aorist subjunctive plus i(na indicates purpose, and so
there is a purpose in our appearing before the judgment seat of Christ. The
subjunctive mood indicates potential and reward is dependent upon how the
believer exercises his volition while he is alive on earth. The word here for
deeds is not ERGON [e)rgon], instead there is an
article used as a relative pronoun meaning “what,” and then the aorist active
indicative of PRASSO [prassw]. So the aorist tense
bundles up all of the acts that we have done on earth and looks at them as one
act. This is an active voice, which emphasizes the things that we did from our
volition. The indicative indicates the mood of reality. The reward is for
people who have endured in the struggle; “that each one might receive for what
he practiced in the body.” (Think of what is said in Galatians 5:21—“that those
who practice such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.” Lifestyle is
what is in view here) “ … for what he has done, whether good or bad.” The word
for “good” here is AGATHOS
[a)gaqoj]
and means intrinsic good and refers to divine good, that which is produced
under the power of God the Holy Spirit. The word for “bad” is PHAULOS [fauloj] which means evil,
worthless, bad, slight, trivial or common. 1 Corinthians 3:10-15. What are you
constructing on the foundation of the gospel? Paul warns that we should be
careful and need to pay attention to what we construct upon that foundation.
There are various materials one can use to construct his life. There are two
groups, those which have eternal value and that which have temporal value. They
are listed as gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, and straw. The point
here is that there are different kinds of human good, different kinds of divine
good from which the believer is going to construct, and the whole edifice is a
mix of these things. This edifice is the mix which is our life. Then Paul says,
“each man’s work will become evident.” The only time this is going to be made
manifest is at the judgment seat of Christ. In the mix is gold, silver and
jewels, and a lot of garbage, so the only way to find out what is there of value
is to set the whole thing on fire. What is evaluated and left on the
foundation—the word here is DOKIMAZO
[dokimazw]
which means to evaluate something for the purpose of praise, not for the
purpose of condemnation—is what is going to be rewarded; “if any man’s work is
burned up, he shall suffer loss.” He is not going to lose his salvation. He
loses what was built above the foundation but he still has the foundation which
is Jesus Christ—“but he himself shall be saved, yet as through fire.” This is
the person who receives nothing, there is no inheritance of the kingdom. There
is inheritance of eternal life but not inheritance of the kingdom. Cf. 1 John
2:28—“And now little children, abide in Him, so that when He appears, we may
have confidence and not shrink away in shame at His coming.”
2 Timothy 2:11-13—what is the context, the flow of the
author’s reasoning? What is Paul telling Timothy to do? Timothy is a pastor and
Paul is encouraging him to hang in there through tough times as a
pastor-teacher. He is to be “strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.” He
has to understand grace orientation; “these things [the doctrine he has been
teaching] entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.” So
here Paul is relating specifically that part of the responsibility of a pastor
is to make sure he is communicating doctrine to specific men who will in turn
be able to communicate that doctrine to other men. This is the concept of
teaching within a local congregation. Within that congregation there will be
men who have the gift of pastor-teacher and it is the responsibility of the
pastor-teacher to teach in such a way that those men as well are being matured
so that they can go and do likewise. The basic command is to continue to be
strong in grace. As he develops that he gives three illustrations, beginning in
verse 3: “Suffer hardship with me, as a good soldier in Christ Jesus.” This is
why one has to be grace oriented as a pastor when going through the various
trials and testing in order to make it through because it is not as simple as
some think it is. So the first image is of a soldier who is out in the field
and going through difficult times. Verse 4 – the analogy of the soldier is
further: not to be entangled in the things that would distract him from the
ministry of teaching the Word of God. Verse 5 – the illustration of an athlete.
“… if anyone competes as an athlete, he does not win the prize unless he
competes according to the rules.” By interpretation these apply to Timothy but
by application they apply to every believer. You have to suffer hardship as a
believer. There are things as a believer you are not going to be able to do,
that other believers who do not care about the spiritual life do and that
unbelievers do, because you know it will distract you from the goal of
spiritual growth. Secondly, there are rules in the spiritual life. One of the
greatest dangers is antinomianism, taking grace for granted: because Christ
died on the cross and paid for my sins so I can do just whatever I want to and
it is not going to make a difference. It will make a difference! Paul says that
if you don’t run like an athlete and follow the rules you will be
disqualified—1 Corinthians 7. Even Paul realized the possibility of sin and
failure in his life that would disqualify him from the reward. The third
illustration is of a farmer: “The hard-working farmer ought to be the first to
receive his share of the crops.” This brings in the idea of reward for the
effort put forth. So we have in this passage the idea of endurance in difficult
times, following the rules, and receiving reward for the effort put forth. In
verses 7-10 Paul is simply encouraging Timothy to pay attention to what he has
said, and relating his own example. In verse 10 he uses the word “salvation” SOTER [swthr] which means simply
“deliverance,” so it is always necessary to look at the context to see what
kind of deliverance is being spoken of. Here it is not phase one salvation;
“for the sake of those who are chosen,” and he is using the word “elect” here
as a synonym for those who are saved; “that they also may obtain salvation” –
not phase one because they are already phase one, this is phase three, the
culmination of the spiritual life when the believer is face to face with the
Lord. He is using this to encompass the entire framework of God’s plan for
their life. Then he is going to summarize this in verses 11-13 through the use
of what appears to be a hymn that was commonly sung in the church at that time,
and because this hymn accurately reflects the truth, the apostle under the
inspiration of the Holy Spirit includes this much of the hymn is Scripture in
order to make the point.
There are four conditional clauses listed here. In the
parable in the minas in Luke 19 there were three servants involved. The
nobleman went off to a far land to receive his kingdom. Before he left he
called his servants and gave each a mina and we are told what happened to three
of them. The first one is faithful and the one mina is turned into ten. The
second one is faithful, he doesn’t receive verbal praise but he does receive
rulership in the kingdom. He turns his one mina into five. And the last one
because he is afraid of the accountability procedure he just hides the mina,
doesn’t do anything with it; and that is comparable to the believer who does
nothing with the assets of God’s grace, and so he is chastised and rebuked and
his mina is taken away and given to the others. The third group of people in
that parable which represents the unbelievers is put to death; the servants are
not, even the unfaithful servant. The unfaithful servant is denied possession
of what was given him. There is a denial of rewards.
Verse 11 – “It is a trustworthy statement [a doctrinally
true statement],” and it is derived from what is supposed as a popular
song/hymn of that day. “For if we died with him [and we have], we shall also
live with him.” This begins with a first class condition: if, and we assume it
to be true. The main verb is SUNAPOTHNESKO [sunapoqnhskw] which has to do with a joint death’ “we shall also
live with him” is in the future tense, which indicates a future life, phase
three glorification. The baptism of the Holy Spirit at the moment of salvation
identifies the believer with Christ in His death, burial and resurrection—Romans
6:1-4. If we died with Him we will live with Him. This death is positional. We
still possess a sin nature but it is no longer the undisputed master of our
soul. The point of verse 11 is that if we died with Him positionally, and we
have, once positional truth takes place it cannot be repeated and it cannot be
lost. “We shall also live with him” is a promise.
Stanza number two, verse 12: “If we endure, we shall also
reign with him.” There again it is a first class condition because Paul is assuming
that we endure. He is being optimistic. There we have the same idea that we saw
in the parable of the minas, that the believer who is obedient and faithful has
a position ruling and reigning with Jesus Christ. “If we endure” comes from the
present active indicative of HUPOMENO
[u(pomenw].
The present tense is continuous action in present time, emphasizing the
importance of endurance in the spiritual life in phase two. Endurance is the
key to going through the test—the test of hardship here. Application of
doctrine is going to lead to maturity, capacity for blessing in time and
eternity. “We shall also reign with him”—phase two is the training ground for
the believer’s position as a ruler in the Millennial kingdom. If we do not pass
the test during this time there is no ruling and reigning, there is no
responsibility in phase three, because there is no capacity or ability to do
that. The believer learns how to do it in phase two during this lifetime.
Verse 13 – “If we are faithless [1st class
condition: and some will be].” That means to be disobedient, to not trust the
Lord, to not grow to spiritual maturity, to treat God’s grace in a light
manner; “he remains faithful” – so while we might be unfaithful, disobedient,
etc., He remains faithful because that is His character. He is immutable, the
same today, yesterday and forever; “because he cannot deny himself.” He cannot
change; He cannot go back on His word. So back to the last clause in verse 12:
“If we deny him, he also will deny us.” Many have recanted the faith under
persecution. Denial here speaks of rejecting Christ as saviour after one has
accept Him as saviour. So He will deny us what? Deny us reward. This is not to
deny us salvation because as we have already seen in verse 13, “If we are faithless,
he remains faithful.”
The result: 1 John 2:28—“And now little children, abide
in Him, so that when He appears, we may have confidence and not shrink away in
shame at His coming.”
“Abide in him” is Johannine terminology for HUPOMENO, endurance. Hang in there,
stay in fellowship, walk by means of the Holy Spirit. There will be many
believers who have been given this incredible array of spiritual assets to live
the spiritual life, but do not use them, who will be ashamed when Jesus Christ
returns. There will be shame at the judgment seat of Christ because rather than
hearing the Lord say, “Well done good and faithful servant,” there will be
either nothing or hearing the Lord ask why we did what we did or failed to use
what we were given, as he did with the unfaithful servant.
The timing of our evaluation
judgment is uncertain. Revelation 22:12—“Behold, I am coming quickly.” It could
happen at any moment. It is the Greek word which means that when these things
start happening everything will roll out very rapidly; “and my reward is with
me to render to every man according to what he has done.” So there we see that
rewards are based on merit, not on grace. Salvation is based on grace but
reward is based on what you do with what God has graciously given you—all of
the spiritual assets that God has graciously bestowed upon you. Cf. 2
Corinthians 5:10.
In
our society we look upon inheritance as that which when anybody dies whatever
property they own is automatically transferred to his descendants. Primarily it
has the idea of transference at death. The inheritance in the Bible primarily
has the connotation of possession.
1.
In
the Old Testament inheritance refers to the ownership of property, especially
property which is passed down from one generation to another. The reason
passing down from one generation to another is emphasized is because it is
something that is not lost, it is a permanent possession.
2.
An
example of this is Numbers 36:2. The emphasis here is on family and the tribal
allotment that God had designated in the land. To each of the tribes of Israel
there is given an inheritance in the land, with the exception of the
tribe of Levi. This passage is referring to the tribe of Manasseh. Zelophedad had died and had
no heirs. Inheritance in Israel always went to the male child but Zelophedad
had died and hand only daughters, so there was a problem. If Zelophedad’s
daughters married outside the tribe of Manasseh then this land which is
Manasseh’s land by right as their possession given by Moses would have the risk
of being transferred outside the possession of Manasseh. So in order to protect
this property right and in order that this property stays within the tribe of
Manasseh, Moses said, verse 6: “Let them marry whom they wish; only they must
marry within the family of the tribe of their father.” Verse 7 – there will be
no transfer of inheritance. So here we see that inheritance is treated as
property right, and the daughters of Zelophedad are restricted in their
marriage to marry only within the tribe of Manasseh. In that way Manasseh will
not lose any of their real estate. Inheritance is related to real property.
Inheritance, property and possession are all interchangeable ideas. So
inheritance, therefore, means to have ownership of something. So inheritance in
the kingdom means to have ownership, property rights, within the Messianic
kingdom.
3.
Did
everybody have ownership and property rights in the theocratic kingdom of
Israel in the Old Testament? They did not. There were different groups who
lived in the kingdom but did not have an inheritance or possession within the
kingdom. Exodus 12:48, 49 deals with the stranger, the non-Jew, the Gentile who
was living in the land or even a proselyte. Notice, “he shall be like a native.”
He can participate in the ritual but he is still not a Jew, not an Israelite.
Cf. Numbers 18:20, 24. Aaron is the high priest; this is not a reference to
salvation. We see in this verse that there are two distinct inheritances or
possessions in Israel. One is possession of the land, the other is possession
of God. There is something that all believers had: inheritance with God and a
second additional inheritance which is the possession in the land. Possession
in the land is going to be conditioned upon obedience to the Mosaic law. That
is the reason for the five cycles of discipline mentioned at the end of
Deuteronomy as a warning that if they did not obey the law the land would be
taken from them. They would still have an inheritance with God but no longer a
possession in the land. So we see that even in the Old Testament we have this
distinction.
4.
In
1 Corinthians 10 we are told that all of these things happened in the Old
Testament as a type, as an example to us in the New Testament. So in going back
and looking at what happened in Israel it is a sort of teaching model, a
concrete way of illustration of what the New Testament s going to talk about in
terms of the believer’s future inheritance. Verse 24: the whole tribe of Levi
do not own land, they do not have an inheritance in the land. The point is that
in the Old Testament inheritance means possession and not everyone who lived in
the theocratic kingdom had a possession in the theocratic kingdom. So it was
possible to live in the kingdom but not be an owner in the kingdom.
Furthermore, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob lived in the promised land but they never
owned any of the promised land. Hebrews 11:13.
5.
Even
in the Millennial kingdom, not all who dwell there will possess it—1
Corinthians 15:50. “…that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God;
nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.” There is a clear reference
to Jesus prior to the resurrection of Christ as flesh as blood, but the
reference interestingly of His resurrection body describes it a flesh and bone.
So when coming into the Millennial kingdom you can’t be an owner, possessor of
the kingdom if you are flesh and blood. But during the Tribulation period there
are going to be a number of Tribulational saints who survive and go into the
Millennial kingdom, and they marry and have children, they still have their
physical bodies. They don’t have a resurrection body, they are still “flesh and
blood.” So the earthly inhabitants of the Millennial kingdom, the Tribulation
saints who survive, are flesh and blood; they are living in the Millennial
kingdom but they are not possessors of the Millennial kingdom.
6.
Inheritance
was viewed as a reward for obedience, it was not given on the basis of
grace—Joshua 14:8, 9. This is a reference to what occurred at Kadesh-Barnea.
Joshua and Caleb had an inheritance in the land because they obeyed the
Lord.
7.
Possession
of the land was therefore conditioned on obedience, and being conditioned on
obedience it could be lost. Principle: Inheritance is conditioned on obedience
and it can be lost through disobedience. Genesis 17:14—if a Jew refused
circumcision he would lose his inheritance. So his possession was predicated to
his obedience to the Mosaic law. Numbers 14:24 refers to Caleb.
8.
The
entire Exodus generation had become God’s first-born son—Exodus 4:22, 23. They
were to receive a double portion of inheritance. Yet with the exception of
Caleb and Joshua they forfeited that inheritance through disobedience. God
disinherited them at Kadesh-Barnea but they did not lose their salvation.
9.
Tough
not all have an inheritance in the land all have God as their inheritance and
possession—Psalm 73:26; 119;57; 142:5.
10. Inheritance is difference
from entrance or living in the land. Inheritance refers to possession, so
inheriting the kingdom of God indicates possessing and owning the kingdom of
God and refers to those like the two faithful servants—those who will rule and
reign in the Millennial kingdom.
What we are in pursuit of is an inheritance, a reward
in the Millennial kingdom. We are living in the Church Age and given roughly
three-score and ten years to
live. Ephesians 5:16 says we are to redeem the time. We are given a vast array of spiritual assets—Ephesians 1:3. We have the completed canon of Scripture, the Word of God, a vast array of Bible doctrine, and we are to take this phenomenal wealth of resources, spiritual assets and physical talents, and invest them in time for the eternal kingdom of God. Then when the judgment seat of Christ takes place we will be evaluated on the basis of that. Everyone will be an heir of God but only those who endure and suffer with Jesus (Romans 8:17) will be considered joint heirs with Jesus Christ. These will receive rewards and inheritance and will rule and reign with Him; all other believers will suffer loss, there will be shame at the judgment seat of Christ, and they will live in the kingdom but they will not be heirs of the kingdom.
1.
Jesus
Christ is the firstborn; He is the heir of the kingdom—Romans 8:29.
2.
The
firstborn receives a double portion of inheritance—Deuteronomy 21:15-17.
3. Who owns or possesses the kingdom? It is Jesus—Psalm 89:27; Luke 1:32, 33; Psalm 2:8; Hebrews 1:2. Everything is given to Jesus Christ as the double portion given to the firstborn, the preeminent one of all creation. Firstborn, PROTOTOKOS [prwtotokoj], refers to His preeminence.
4.
The
believer then becomes a joint heir with Christ and it is different from being
an heir with God. Romans 8:16, 17—there are no punctuation marks in the
original Greek, it is accomplished by style. The verses should be translated:
“The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God,
and if children, heirs also of God”—that is category one heir; then category #2
heir: “and joint-heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, in order that
we may also be glorified with Him.” If heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ
are the same thing, then what is the conditional clause? “If indeed we suffer
with Him would then be the condition for being an heir of God and a child of
God. That is placing the condition upon salvation and making salvation works
and not grace. So that is why you have to be very careful with these things. “If
children, heirs of God” – eternal life is your possession based on faith alone
in Christ alone; it is by grace. Category #2: “joint-heirs with Christ, if
indeed we suffer with Him.” This is tantamount to 2 Timothy 2:11, 12. One
inheritance is based on grace and the second is based on merit. This
distinction is reiterated in Revelation 2:26, 27; 3:21.
1.
Inheritance
means possession and there are two kinds of inheritance.
2.
The
first is heirs of God which is tantamount to eternal life. This is free and is
based on the unmerited favour of God—John 3:16; 5:24; 6:40; Revelation 22:17.
3.
There
are aspects of eternal life which are said to be earned. Of the forty-two times
in the Greek that the phrase AIONOS ZOE [a)iwnoj zwh]
(eternal life) occurs, in eleven of them it is worked for. This adds a dimension to the quality of
life in eternity that is based on a closer relationship with the Lord. Cf. John
12:25—based upon making God the highest priority in life; also verse 26; John
17:3—eternal life is defined as a special category of intimate knowledge of God
that goes beyond salvation; Galatians 6:8.
4.
Rulership
and reigning in the kingdom is presented as being a result of obedience and
spiritual growth in this life—Luke 19; 1 Timothy 2:11-13.
5.
At
the judgment seat of Christ there are rewards given to those who advance to
spiritual maturity and who are advancing to spiritual maturity, and there are
rewards that are taken away—loss on inheritance in the kingdom.
6.
Inheriting
the kingdom refers to those believers who advance to maturity and have their
character renovated into the image of Christ. In the kingdom of God character
matters. Colossians 3:10.
Verses 22, 23 – the production or the fruit of the
Spirit. “But the fruit of the Spirit” begins the contrast between the
production of the sin nature and the production of the Holy Spirit. What we see
in all of this is that the filling of the Holy Spirit is a condition, it is not
an experience. How do you know that you are filled with the Spirit? It is not
because you feel like it, it has nothing to do with emotional stimulation.
Therefore the fruit of the Spirit is character, not emotion. Character matters,
and the whole issue here is the transformation of our character, our inner core
nature, from that which is tainted by sin to that which reflects the image of
Jesus Christ. So the goal is that which is mentioned in Galatians 4:19—“My
children, with whom I am again in labour until Christ is formed in you,” the
formation of the character of Christ in the believer. This first phrase gives
us a clue as to what is going on. First, we have the noun KARPOS [karpoj] which literally means
fruit, but fruit is that which is produced from a tree. What this is talking
about is a system which is going to produce something, it has to do with
production. It is a figure of speech indicating the activity, the result of
deeds, or what we will call the production of the Holy Spirit. This is in
contrast to the works of the flesh.
1.
The
fruit is specifically stated to be from the source of the Holy Spirit—the noun KARPOS and then the genitive of PNEUMA [pneuma], the Greek for the Holy
Spirit. The genitive is a genitive of source telling us that the source is not
our own energy, our own desire to reform ourselves and pull ourselves up by our
moral bootstraps. This is something that is uniquely produced by God the Holy
Spirit. It is the result of the command to walk by means of the Holy Spirit. So
this once again emphasizes the principle that this character must be the result
of the Holy Spirit in the believer, otherwise it is called wood, hay, and straw
at the judgment seat of Christ. The fruit of the Spirit is uniquely from the
source of the Holy Spirit.
2.
This
is in contrast to the work or activities which are from the source of the sin
nature. The determiner is the believer’s volition.
3.
There
is no middle ground. The fact that these virtues and qualities are said to be
from the source of the Holy Spirit immediately elevates them beyond any natural
or human virtue. These are supernatural qualities because the life of the
believer is a supernatural life which requires a supernatural power source. We
cannot do this on our own.
4.
These
can only be produced in the believer who is walking by means of God the Holy
Spirit—a moment by moment dependence upon God and based on the filling of God
the Holy Spirit.
The two power sources of the
spiritual life are the Spirit of God and the Word of God. They do not operate
independently of one another, they operate in tandem. When we are walking by
means of the Holy Spirit we are learning the Word of God and assimilating it
into our thinking so that it is transforming our thinking according to the
principle of Romans 12:2, and we are advancing spiritually. As a result of that
the Holy Spirit is doing something internally in terms of our character, with
the Word of God. Our volition is exercised to go to church, to be at Bible
class at every opportunity, to study the Word of God, to meditate on it, to
learn it, to assimilate it into our thinking. But then God the Holy Spirit
works inside us to transform us and to produce something in our life. We can’t
make that happen. There is a part of this where our volition is active and part
of it where our volition is passive. Illustration, eating: you decide what to
eat, how to eat, how fast to eat, and you exercise your volition to put the
food in your mouth and to swallow. After you swallow automatic reflexes follow
which do not involve anything volitional on your part. Once those nutrients
have been broken down and assimilated into the cell structure of the body,
after this metabolism has taken place, then we exercise our muscles in terms of
production. The passive part is the assimilation; that is up to God the Holy Spirit.
We decide to take in the Word of God, we think about it and we believe it. That
is analogous to swallowing. Then the Holy Spirit is the one who breaks it down
and makes it usable, and then volition becomes active again and we use it. This
is the process where fruit production takes place. And fruit production is not
to be confused with Christian service. This is a very simple mistake that is
often made. Christian service is the production in your life related to your
royal priesthood and your royal ambassadorship. This is a totally different
category from the fruit of the Spirit. In fact the fruit of the Spirit has to
be there before this has any value, otherwise this is no more than what the
unbeliever does and going out there trying to perform certain things under his
own strength.
Since the fruit of the
Spirit is a condition and not an experience or an emotion, and since it has to
do with character, Paul gives us criterion to determine whether or not the Holy
Spirit is producing in our lives. Over a period of time you will see a
transformation taking place in your life, in your character. If you do not see
this transformation taking place in your character then you are not walking by
means of the Holy Spirit. Somewhere there is a short-circuit and you need to
take a look at your life and see where that is.
In our passage we next have
a grocery list of various characteristics of the believer who is walking by
means of the Spirit. This is not an all-inclusive list; neither is it given in
any order. The first three have to do with mental attitude transformation. They
are not emotion, they have to do with the orientation of your thinking produced
by the Holy Spirit. Emotion is not produced by the Holy Spirit. The first of
these characteristics is love and it is not an emotional love. This is a mental
attitude that completely overrides emotion so that when emotions want to go one
way in terms of reaction, anger, resentment, bitterness, or hostility, this
love overrides these so that there is stability, forgiveness, and there is
grace in action. This is the Greek word AGAPE [a)gaph]. The other word used in the New testament for love
is PHILOS [filoj], and it is related to a
close, intimate friendship. AGAPE is
a different concept, it goes far beyond emotion and is the kind of love that
will enable the believer to handle people testing in all of its forms. It
enables him to handle rejection, hostility, animosity, anger, resentment, and
all sorts of system testing that is antagonistic to him. So whenever he runs
into anything that is hostile he has an option: a) to react, and the sin nature
controls the soul; b) to respond to the application of doctrine. The first
thing to do in a hostile situation is to think, not emote. The kind of love we
are talking about is unconditional love or impersonal love. That is, all of the
value, all of the virtue is in the person doing the loving, and operates even
when the person being loved in unattractive, unlovable and obnoxious in terms
of their basic character and attributes to the person doing the loving. The
person loves because of virtue, and that is unconditional love. It does not
even require a personal relationship. It is impersonal love. Everything depends
upon the person loving and nothing depends upon the object of love. It is a
non-emotional love which seeks the highest and best for the object of love.
This means that unconditional love in impersonal love is also objective love.
Personal love is often subjective. Personal love when it comes from sinners is
inherently unstable. You can never have a long-time relationship with anyone
when the only kind of love that is present is personal love. The only way that
there can be any kind of permanent or long-term stability in love is to have
impersonal or unconditional love. The example of love is what took place at the
cross: “But God demonstrates His own love for us, in that while we were yet
sinners, Christ died as a substitute for us.” We were obnoxious to God as an
unbeliever—a sinner, at enmity with God. The actions of love, then, were
dependent exclusively on the character of God and had nothing to do with the
character of the object. Cf. John 13:35—the hallmark of a believer is this kind
of unconditional love for other believers. John 15:9,10—“If you keep my
commandments.” You have to know the commandments [mandates] before you can keep
them. He is talking about obedience. You learn the Word, then assimilate it,
and then you apply it. Keeping is application; you cannot apply what you
haven’t learned. And you can’t learn something unless you make it a priority
and you exercise discipline and consistency and concentration; and you think
about it a lot to assimilate it into your thinking. Then there is application.
What Jesus says is that love is not divorced from this process. 1 Corinthians
13:4 describes the characteristics of love—patient, kind, is not jealous, does
not brag, is not arrogant.
The second characteristic is
joy. This is defined as inner happiness, sharing the happiness of God. It is
not an emotional excitement, it is an inner happiness that goes beyond mere
human happiness. It is a stable happiness, a happiness that is despite the
circumstances, not based on circumstances. This is a joy that has as its focus who
God is and what He has done for us. When our focus is on God then it will not
matter what the circumstances are.
The third characteristic is
peace, the Greek word EIRENE
[e)irhnh].
This is not world peace, the absence of conflict; this is peace in the soul
that has to do with tranquility, contentment and inner harmony. It has its
roots in the peace we have with God because of reconciliation. Man now has
peace with God because the sin problem has been dealt with, therefore the
believer can now have a mental attitude of peace. John 14:27—“Peace I leave
with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives, do I give to you. Let
not your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful.” Notice, peace us juxtaposed
to mental attitude fear, worry and anxiety. It is just the opposite of mental
instability. It is based on our relationship to God—Romans 5:1. If the believer
is living in carnality based on the sin nature he will not have this level of
peace and stability—Romans 8:6; Philippians 4:6. God has provided a defensive
structure for our souls; it is produced by God the Holy Spirit. This is the
soul fortress. Our soul is strengthened by the Word of God, and as the Holy
Spirit teaches us and as we assimilate it into our souls it is strengthened so
this becomes a defensive structure surrounding our souls so that we can handle
any circumstance and situation in life.
These first three deal with
the mental attitude transformation in the believer. Because your mental
attitude has been transformed then it affects your relationship.
From “patience” on the
passage deals with application. This is MAKROTHUMIA [makroqumia] and it relates to steadfastness, endurance,
endurance in relationship to people testing, hanging in there is difficult
circumstances, continuing to apply the Word of God no matter how difficult it
might be, waiting upon the Lord even though it might be years before you see
answers to prayer. Isaiah 40:31; Colossians 3:12.
“Kindness” – CHRESTOTES [xrhstothj] and has to do with
kindness. It relates to grace orientation. As you realize that everything that
you have in Christ is related to the work that God did for you, and you didn’t
earn and deserve any of it, that begins to impact on the way you deal with
other people. Kindness is graciousness towards people because you understand
people. It is dealing with people not on the basis of what they deserve but on
the basis of God’s character. Ephesians 2:7. Just as God exercises kindness
toward us we are to exercise that kindness toward others.
“Goodness” –AGATHOSUNE [a)gaqosunh] is intrinsic good and has
to do with a generosity of spirit, application of doctrine.
“Faithfulness” is a bad
translation. The Greek is PISTIS
[pistij],
not PISTOS [pistoj]. If you translate PISTIS as “faithful” you have a
lot of theological problems. PISTIS is faith, not faithfulness, and it has to do
with the fact that as we grow God the Holy Spirit strengthens our faith. We
need very little faith to be saved (as a mustard seed), but as the believer
grows by learning the Word of God, God the Holy Spirit strengthens and
intensifies that faith, that ability to trust God. That faith grows, and it is
the result of learning and applying the Word.
Verse
23—“gentleness and self-control.” “Gentleness” is the word PRAUTES [prauthj], which doesn’t mean
gentleness at all. There two different Greek words for humility and this is one
of them. It describes humility in action and is the grace orientation which
takes place in the soul. The more the believer is oriented to God’s grace the
more there is a development of the internal attitude which is a recognition of
one’s proper place in the plan of God. When this genuine transformation of
humility takes place it produces a result in our external behaviour. This is
not some form of self-effacement, putting one’s self down, or having some sort
of false humility or low view of one’s self, but it is a virtue towards other
people in treating them in kindness. It is sometimes translated “meekness” and
it is strength in virtue because we know who we are and are properly oriented
to the plan of God. Cf. Ephesians 4:2. “Self-control”—ENKRATEIA [e)nkrateia] means self-mastery,
self-control, self-discipline. This is the production of the Holy Spirit. Any
unbeliever can have a level of discipline and self-control, but this is talking
specifically about self-mastery in relationship to control of the lusts of the
flesh, control of the sin nature, and application of doctrine; “against such
things there is no law” – so this indicates a character quality and there is
nothing out there that can prevent the believer from developing these qualities
in his life, as long as he is studying God’s Word and applying God’s Word.
Verse
24 – “Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its
passions and desires.” We need to understand the dynamics here. Reaching a
conclusion in verse 24 and taking us to a new level in the battle between the
sin nature and the Holy Spirit. In the Greek this begins with a postpositive
conjunction—it becomes second in the sentence and is translated first—DE [de]. This word can be used in
the framework of an explanation to indicate the development of thought to the
next level. It should be translated here, “Now you see.” Paul has explained the
basics of the argument. It is then explained in terms of the cause of the
battle, then of being led by the Spirit, followed by the manifestations and how
one can determine whether they are walking by means of the flesh or the Spirit,
and now he is going to take this to a concluding level. He is going to describe
a crucial principle for understanding the dynamics of the spiritual life as
something that happened at the point of salvation. It is what we call
retroactive [going back] positional truth. It is what takes place at the moment
of salvation in the life of the believer. The believer is identified with the
work of Jesus Christ on the cross by means of the baptism of the Holy
Spirit—His death, burial and resurrection. That identification frees from the
bondage to the sin nature.
“Now
those who belong to Christ” begins with a nominative plural HOI [o(i]which is a relative
pronoun, and should be translated “those who.” But then the phrase TOU CHISTOU [tou
xristou] which
is a genitive singular indicating relationship. This doesn’t have the word “belong” but that is inherent
in the construction. It refers to every single person who is a believer in the
Lord Jesus Christ. What Paul is saying is that every person who is a believer
in Jesus Christ belongs to Jesus Christ.
“have
crucified” – the word is STAUROO
[staurow],
from STAUROS which originally meant a
stake and refers to crucifixion. Here it is an aorist passive indicative. The
aorist indicates it is just simple past, referring to the fact that as
believers this has happened in our past. The passive voice indicates that we
have received the action of the verb, we don’t crucify ourselves. The
indicative mood is the mood of reality, a statement of doctrine. In chapter
two, verse twenty, Paul says, “I have been crucified with Christ.” There we
have a different form of the word STAUROO, it is a compound, SUNSTAUROO (SUN = the preposition which
means with), indicating co-crucifixion with Christ. And there it is a perfect
passive indicative. The perfect tense always indicates past action but the
emphasis is usually on the present ongoing result from that past action. So
what Paul is saying is that we have been crucified with Christ, indicating that
at the moment of faith alone in Christ alone something happened which has
results that go on throughout our spiritual life. It is “no longer I who live,
but Christ lives in me” – no longer me and my character but Christ and His
character, and this is the result of something that happened at the point of
salvation. Romans chapter six is the chapter in the New Testament for the
doctrine of positional truth. All that Paul has been saying is that because we
have been crucified with Christ that absolute control by the sin nature has
been severed and broken. We are not under law but under grace and we need to
recognize that because of the principle of retroactive positional truth we need
not, should not, and ought no follow the lusts of the flesh, its passions and
desires.
Verse 25—“If we live by the
Spirit” is in contrast to what Paul has been saying in verse 24: crucifying the
flesh. The flesh is positionally dead and because it is we can live by means of
the Spirit. This is a first class condition in the Greek which means “If we
live by the Spirit, and we do”—if, and it is assumed to be true. Walking by
means of the Spirit in verse 16 and walking by means of the Spirit in verse 25
frame this entire section, but there is something we don’t see in the English
text. That is that the Greek word translated “walk” in verse 25 is STOICHEO [stoixeo], not PERIPATEO [peripatew] the word used in verse 16.
This is a synonym here for walking to bring out another aspect of the doctrine
of walking. STOICHEO goes back to classical
Greek where it was a military term which was used of troops lining up in a row
or in ranks. Later it was applied to anything that was in a direct line, a
group that marched in rank and file, and by New Testament times it came to mean
to follow a certain course of action, to follow a preset pattern, to stay in
line, and it is used to refer to walking in a closely regulated life, living
according to set of definite rules. The concept here is not simply the day by
day lifestyle that is emphasized in verse 16 but it moves it to the next stage
which is living by a set of rules. These are the mandates set up in the New
Testament for the spiritual life. We are to walk by means of the Spirit and
that walk follows a preset pattern or path. Where do we find that path that we
are to proceed down? The path is set up by the Word of God which has been
revealed by the Spirit of God. So it is the Word of God that defines the course
of action for the believer’s life. So Paul is saying here that we should walk
according to the pattern that is revealed in the Scriptures. It is walking by
an objective standard or pattern, and that is the Word of God. (Review the doctrine of walking)