Spir Dynamics 535-540 12/21/94
A. Introduction.
1. Three ways in which the righteousness of God could be compromised, but is not.
2. God has absolute and eternal integrity. The Bible calls it holiness. Holiness means absolute virtue and absolute integrity.
3. Holiness passages include Ex 15:11 and Isa 6:3, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of the armies. The fullness of the entire earth is His glory.”
4. God’s holiness or integrity is maintained by His sovereign will, and therefore, is a part of His unchangeable self.
5. God exists eternally, unsustained by Himself or any other source. The Hebrew word ELOHIM is used for the essence of God and the word JHWH is used for the individual persons of the Godhead. God’s existence is unalterable. God is the cause of all existence outside of Himself. Since God is eternal, there never was a time and there never will be a time when He did not exist.
6. Since God is infinite, eternal, and invisible, it is necessary for God to reveal Himself to mankind. This He has done in many ways.
7. The integrity of God is composed of two divine attributes—divine justice and divine righteousness. Divine justice is mankind’s point of reference with God; for God can do nothing for mankind that would compromise His divine attributes.
a. Prior to the fall of mankind in the garden, the love of God was the point of reference. The created beings (Adam and the woman in the garden) functioned under the love of God as their point of reference. But the point of reference for all born human beings is the justice of God. There was no need for the function of divine justice until disobedience to the one divine command.
b. In the garden, man did not have to choose between good and evil. This issue for mankind in the garden was to choose between obedience or disobedience to one divine prohibition. That indicates that the free will of man coexisted with the sovereignty of God at the beginning of the human race on this earth. Once mankind sinned, divine justice became the point of reference.
8. The justice of God is the initiative part of the integrity of God.
a. God is fair. It is impossible for God to be unfair in the function of His justice.
b. Divine justice administers the system of divine laws which are compatible with His divine integrity. Divine justice is the function of eternal God as the judge of mankind, rendering daily decisions in the supreme court of heaven. The decisions of the supreme court of heaven are compatible with God’s perfect righteousness. They are also compatible with the fact God is wise, incorruptible, perfect, and fair as the judge of mankind.
c. The justice of God administers the penalties and decisions which are demanded by the perfect righteousness of God, Deut 32:4; 2 Chr 19:7; Job 37:23; Ps 19:9, 58:11, 89:14; Isa 45:21; Jer 50:7; Rom 3:26; Heb 10:30-31, 12:23.
d. The justice of God the Father is portrayed in a very dramatic way at the Cross, where God the Father called for the printout of all sins in human history and imputed them to our Lord on the Cross. This was the most difficult thing that God the Father ever did, showing you the power of God’s impersonal love for all mankind. This is the motivation of personal love for God the Father and the capacity of impersonal love for all mankind. So powerful is impersonal love in its capacity and the motivation it derives from personal love for God the Father that there is a remarkable phenomenon related to the fact that, while God the Father was imputing our sins to Christ on the Cross and judging every sin of human history, our Lord screamed, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”
e. Other functions of the justice of God include the judgment of God as the residing supreme court judge, the five cycles of discipline to client nations, the judgment of the baptism of fire at the second Advent of Gentile and Jewish unbelievers of the Tribulation, the last judgment of human history, and the judgment of all fallen angels.
9. Divine righteousness is the second half of the holiness of God.
a. God possesses eternal, unchangeable, perfect divine righteousness, Lev 19:2; 1 Sam 2:2; Ps 22:3, 47:8, 119:9; Jn 17:11; Rev 3:7, 4:8, 6:10.
b. God is absolute good, Ps 25:8, 34:8; Lk 18:19.
c. God is perfect in person and character. God is totally free from sin, 2 Cor 5:21; 1 Jn 1:5.
d. God is perfect righteousness in attitude and in actions, Deut 32:4; 2 Sam 23:31; Ps 119:137; Dan 9:14; Rev 19:2.
e. God’s perfect and absolute righteousness rejects all human standards of righteousness. That means God rejects the highest good you could ever perform, Isa 64:6, “For all of us have become like one who is unclean. All of our righteousnesses are like menstrual rags, and all of us wither like a leaf, and all of our sins like the wind, and our sins, like the wind, take us away.” Therefore, salvation cannot be attained through human righteousness or any system of works, Tit 3:5; Gal 2:16; Heb 6:1.
f. The righteousness of God is available to everyone who believes in Jesus Christ, Rom 3:22, “Even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe.”
g. God is perfect and cannot be anything less than absolute perfection. Because of God’s holiness, immutability, and eternity, it is impossible for God to be imperfect. Therefore, God has perfect righteousness.
h. At the moment of salvation through faith in Christ, God imputes one half of His integrity to every believer—divine righteousness. Three results of the imputation of divine righteousness are important.
(1) Instant justification, Rom 5:1. Justification means that God found a way to justify us without compromising His righteousness.
(2) Guarantees the personal love of God for every believer, winner or loser.
(3) The justice of God provides lesser blessings to the righteousness of God for both winner and loser believers.
10. The integrity of God, composed of both divine justice and perfect righteousness, is both the guardian of the divine attributes and the believer’s point of contact with God. The function of the divine policy of grace demands that there can be no compromise of the divine attributes. Therefore, righteousness demands righteousness and justice demands justice in the modus operandi of divine integrity.
a. Righteousness is the principle of divine integrity. Justice is the function of divine integrity. God cannot accept anything less than perfect righteousness and God cannot bless anything less than perfect righteousness. The justice of God is the source of all direct blessing from God to the believer. Divine justice is only free to provide blessing to the believer because he possesses God’s perfect righteousness.
b. Perfect divine righteousness resides in every believer from the moment of salvation. Therefore, the believer is qualified to receive both life support from God under the principle of logistical grace and lesser blessings. Grace is compatible with the justice of God. The principle of logistical grace avoids compromise of the attributes of God (just as true rebound does the same thing), and therefore, is compatible with the holiness or integrity of God.
c. What the righteousness of God rejects, the justice of God condemns. What the righteousness of God accepts, the justice of God blesses. The justice of God, therefore, administers what the righteousness of God demands.
11. God personally loves His own integrity. That is divine self- esteem. That is the pattern for spiritual self-esteem or entrance into the first stage of the adult spiritual life.
a. Divine integrity is not cancelled because some members of the human race reject Jesus Christ as savior. God’s integrity is not cancelled because believers fail to execute the protocol plan of God through the four spiritual mechanics. Lack of virtue or integrity in mankind does not cancel the integrity of God. We do not have the power to cancel all that God’s integrity has done for us at salvation.
b. The justice of God is the source of two things—judgment and condemnation, life support and blessing.
12. The integrity of God is infinite, absolute and eternal, part of God’s perfect essence. The integrity of God is not maintained by the self- righteousness of mankind. Divine righteousness rejects human self- righteousness. Divine righteousness always demands perfect righteousness. What the righteousness of God demands, the justice of God executes in both blessing and judgment.
13. There is nothing mankind can do to destroy or compromise the integrity of God. The integrity of God stands eternally, without any help from mankind, including his self-righteousness, his works, his human good, any form of legalism or activism. Legalism and activism do not promote the integrity of God. They are the enemy and blasphemy of the integrity of God. God has found a way to bless mankind without compromising His integrity—the imputation of divine righteousness at the moment of faith in Christ.
14. Neither man’s sinfulness or self-righteousness can advance the glory of God. Only divine integrity or holiness advances the glory of God. Only God can glorify God. Therefore, what God has provided in grace can glorify God. What God has provided in grace does not compromise the integrity of God, including salvation by faith alone in Christ alone and rebound by naming your sins. Man glorifies God through cognition and utilization of the grace provision of God.
B. The righteousness of God could have been compromised by human righteousness and human works as a part of salvation, but is not because human works and human righteousness is not a part of salvation.
1. We are born physically alive and spiritually dead because of the imputation of Adam’s original sin to the genetically formed old sin nature. The divine solution to spiritual death is faith alone in Christ alone. Tit 3:5, “He saved us, not from works which we have done in righteousness, but as a result of His mercy, through the cleansing that brings about regeneration even renewal through the agency of the Holy Spirit.”
a. Salvation by works is totally rejected because it is a compromise of divine righteousness. The righteousness of God is often attacked by human righteousness—people who want to add something to faith alone in Christ alone. No one has ever been saved by being good. A spiritually dead person can produce no system of works that will ever provide salvation for him.
b. Mercy is grace in action.
c. The last half of this verse describes the mechanics of regeneration. God the Holy Spirit creates a human spirit and God the Father imputes His very own eternal life to the human spirit. Simultaneously, divine righteousness is imputed to the human spirit.
d. All human righteousness is unacceptable to God and never a part of His protocol plan, including entrance through salvation by faith in Christ. There is no place for human righteousness in the plan of God for the believer. There is a sphere of human righteousness extrapolated from the laws of divine establishment for the unbeliever.
(1) When the unbeliever has integrity, it is a human self- righteousness.
(2) When the believer has integrity, it is all divine provision. The worst believer in history still has the righteousness of God.
(3) It is possession of the righteousness of God that is the basis for justification. Justification means that the justice of God evaluates the believer’s relationship to Himself on the basis of the fact that He possesses the life of God and the righteousness of God.
e. The possession of divine righteousness and eternal life means God has found a way of blessing us in our postsalvation function without compromise of divine righteousness.
2. Everything that has been given to us in grace does not compromise divine righteousness. Divine righteousness cannot be compromised in the things that are given to us at the moment we believe in Jesus Christ. Because Jesus Christ was judged on the Cross, divine righteousness remains consistent under the doctrine of immutability. Divine righteousness remains uncontaminated by any system of human works to retain or receive anything from God. God’s righteousness remains intact to provide for you the greatest spiritual life of history.
3. Our point of reference is the holiness of God—His justice and His righteousness. Neither the justice nor the righteousness of God can ever be compromised. All the wonderful things that God does for us do not compromise His justice or righteousness. Your self-righteousness is not the basis of God doing anything for you.
a. Every blessing we have is on the solid ground of grace. People think of grace as God giving out something for free. That is wrong, because it would be a compromise of His integrity.
b. Grace is an extension of the righteousness and justice of God.
4. There is no emotion in the essence of God. There is love in the essence of God, but God’s love is not emotion. God has something far greater than emotion. Spirituality is not emotion. Everything that God has provided for us contributes to spirituality under the principle of metabolized doctrine circulating in your stream of consciousness.
a. Emotion does not have the power of spirituality. The power comes from God. The power does not compromise the essence of God.
b. This does not mean we are emotionless. It means that to whatever we respond emotionally, it must be because of what God has provided.
c. If you do not know the truth, you will be a slave to your emotions. The chains in the soul are the worst kind of bondage.
5. God found a way to provide for us His very own eternal life and to give us His very own righteousness without compromising His integrity. That is true giving. When you are giving truly, you never compromise your integrity. You do not give because you want to get control of someone. You do not give to make up for your own failures in your relationships with others. You do not give out of guilt, which is emotional sinning.
6. Our self-righteousness and human good is dead works, Heb 6.
a. All human works are excluded from salvation through faith alone and all human self-righteousness is excluded from the unique protocol plan of God for the Church. Immorality is excluded too.
b. God’s righteousness does accept our righteousness. No one is saved because they are good. No one is saved because of self-righteousness. No one is saved because of their works.
c. Not being saved by works includes faith plus lordship. The spiritually dead person cannot make Christ lord. God the Holy Spirit makes Jesus Christ our lord at the moment of salvation. Anyone who says that you have to believe and make Christ lord is blaspheming against the Holy Spirit. Christ is lord because God the Holy Spirit entered us into union with Christ.
B. God’s righteousness could have been compromised by the problem of divine personal love toward every believer, but is not.
1. Divine personal love is directed toward all believers whether winner believers or loser believers because all believers have divine righteousness. Because of this divine righteousness, God can love the believer with personal love.
2. There is no divine personal love toward the born human being because all human beings are born spiritually dead. The best that spiritual death can produce is human self-righteousness. Therefore, God can only love the unbeliever through impersonal love.
3. Divine personal love can only have as its object perfect righteousness. This is illustrated by the personal love of the members to the Godhead to each other.
4. God protects His righteousness by imputing it to every believer. God can now have personal love toward every believer without compromising His righteousness. That is the basis for the fact that believers are commanded to love the brethren without exception. This command is based on the fact you have to have a motivation—personal love for God the Father— and on the fact that you have to have impersonal love for all mankind as your capacity.
C. God’s righteousness could be compromised by adding human works to the function of rebound, but is not.
1. There is a heresy concerning rebound which says that since faith is the solution to salvation, faith must also be the solution to rebound. Nothing is mentioned in rebound about faith. Faith always functions under the filling of the Spirit. Rebound functions apart from the filling of the Spirit. It is designed for the believer out of fellowship with God. It is the means of recovery of the filling of the Holy Spirit.
2. The filling of the Spirit is given only to the Church Age believer and can be lost the moment you sin after salvation. The indwelling of the Spirit of irrevocable. The filling of the Spirit is not irrevocable.
3. Believing or having faith in Christ is the function of an unbeliever. Naming or acknowledging your sins in rebound is the function of a believer. The believer uses his volition to follow the instructions to recover the filling of the Spirit and to be restored to fellowship with God.
4. Recovering fellowship with God is a matter of following instructions, not a matter of faith. When you are out of fellowship, your faith is not functioning. You cannot recover fellowship with God through faith. All you can do is name your sins.
5. The fact the believer sins after salvation is found in 1 Jn 1:8, 10. There are five characteristics of the carnal believer.
a. Carnality is the state of the believer, when the sin nature controls the soul and rebound becomes necessary, 1 Cor 3:1-3.
b. When the sin nature controls the soul, the Holy Spirit is grieved and quenched. The Holy Spirit still indwells the body, but not the soul, and therefore, the Holy Spirit is quenched and grieved.
c. The believer still retains thirty-nine irrevocable things.
d. The believer remains in the status of eternal security. Personal sin after salvation does not cancel salvation.
e. Without the filling of the Spirit, the believer’s spiritual life is defunct.
6. Rebound is not a victory over sin. The purpose of rebound is recovery from sinfulness, recovery of the filling of the Spirit, restoration to fellowship. Victory over sin is the modus operandi of the four spiritual mechanics of the protocol plan—the two power options, the three spiritual skills, the deployment of the ten problem solving devices, and the execution of the three stages of the adult spiritual life.
7. Principles.
a. You must recognize the reality of the problem before you can recognize the reality of the solution.
b. When you recognize the reality of the problem, you first examine yourself for culpability. Our first tendency is denial that we have done anything wrong and to blame it on others. You must look into the mirror of Bible doctrine in your soul and from the privacy of your priesthood evaluate yourself.
c. If you rationalize the problem, you will rationalize the solution. A rationalized solution is no solution.
d. Strength can come out of adversity, but never out of diversity. Problems that involve you and someone else are diversity. Diversity rationalizes the problem resulting in denial and projection.
e. If in objective analysis of your problem in the light of the infallible word of God you discover culpability, accept the blame and follow instructions of 1 Jn 1:9—name the sins you know are sins to God in the privacy of your priesthood. No works, no faith, no emotion is required. You do not use faith, you are out of fellowship.
f. Because of spiritual death, the divine solution is faith in Christ. Because of postsalvation sin, the divine solution is name your sins to God. God always provides a solution that meets the status quo of the person involved. You name your sins to God and God takes over from there.
g. The believer priest simply follows divine instructions, while the unbeliever in spiritual death believes in Christ.
h. It does not take faith to name your sins to God, only the function of your royal priesthood—your first and last pipeline to heaven.
8. The Approach.
a. While salvation is by faith alone in Christ alone and while the function of faith is involved in the function of nine out of the ten problem solving devices, rebound is an exception.
b. Rebound is an exception, because rebound only goes into action when the believer is out of fellowship in a state of carnality. This means that rebound does not function by faith or through the filling of the Spirit. There is no filling of the Spirit when you are in a state of carnality. The function of faith in the spiritual life is all tied up in the three stages of the faith rest drill. You are not claiming promises in rebound, you are following instructions.
c. The carnal believer cannot deploy the faith rest drill in rebound as a problem solving device because he is out of fellowship. God’s solutions are not emotions, follow instructions.
d. Therefore, rebound is based on the function of the believer’s royal priesthood. As a carnal or sinful priest, believers simply fulfill the function of the Greek verb HOMOLOGEO, meaning admit, name, cite, acknowledge your sin to God. The verb does not include the concept of faith, because all postsalvation faith is related to one of three stages of the faith rest drill, which functions based on the filling of the Spirit. The recovery of the filling of the Spirit causes faith to again become operational.
e. When you name your sins by following instructions, God is faithful and always does the same thing—He forgives you your sins and purifies you from all wrongdoing. His righteousness is not compromised by forgiving you when you name your sins. God does all the work in rebound. This is grace from eternity past and the temporal grace of God in time meeting at 1 Jn 1:9.
D. Summary.
1. Divine integrity is never compromised by the failure of mankind.
2. Divine integrity includes the righteousness of God.
3. There are three ways in which the righteousness of God could have been compromised, but are not.
4. The integrity of God is never compromised by the failure of the believer.
5. The integrity of God is never compromised by faith alone in Christ alone at salvation.
6. The integrity of God is never compromised by divine personal love for the believer.
7. The integrity of God is never compromised by the function of the rebound technique.
8. A successful spiritual life demands that each believer deploy the tandem problem solving devices to live inside the integrity envelope
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R. B. Thieme, Jr. Bible Ministries 5139 West Alabama, Houston, Texas 77056 (713) 621-3740
© 1996, by R. B. Thieme, Jr. All rights reserved.
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