Spir Dynamics 1467-1522 5/18/99
A. We must learn Bible doctrine to live Bible doctrine.
1. The first step in learning is to recognize our Mentor in Jn 14:26, “But your Mentor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, He will bring to your memory all that I said to you.”
2. The first step is to learn Bible doctrine through the mentorship of God the Holy Spirit through the accurate teaching of spiritual gift of pastor-teacher.
3. Once Bible doctrine circulates in the seven compartments of the stream of consciousness, you live that epignosis doctrine as the function of your spiritual life.
4. The objective is to learn doctrine to live the spiritual life.
B. Learning Versus Living.
1. There are two ways to learn anything.
a. By experience; the hard way. This is classified as live and learn.
b. By knowledge; the easy way. This is classified as learn and live.
2. In the spiritual life of the believer, we learn the hard way by the experience of divine punishment—the principle of live and learn, Heb 12:6,11.
3. Live and learn is the pattern of living under divine discipline and learning by punishment—to learn by being disciplined by the Lord. In other words, to be punished by the Lord for sin, failure in our postsalvation spiritual life.
4. Learn and live is the pattern of the unique spiritual life of the Church Age. Learning by doctrine and living under the power and blessing of God the Holy Spirit. The easy way of learning is by knowledge. This is the principle of learn and live.
5. The spiritual life of the Church Age is learn through perception, metabolization, application of Bible doctrine. When it comes to our spiritual life, the divine order is always learn and live, not live and learn.
6. Bible doctrine must be learned as epignosis before we can live the spiritual life. It has to be inculcated into the stream of consciousness. The alternative to the spiritual life is learn the hard way, the experience of being punished by God.
7. On the other hand, perpetual carnality (which is live and learn) becomes a memorial to the ignorance of Bible doctrine—the destructive power of arrogance combined with emotion to blot out the thinking of Christ. The principle of live and learn is found in Heb 12:6, “Whom the Lord loves, He punishes, and He scourges with a whip every son whom He receives.”
(1) This is the pattern of divine discipline from the love of God extended to the carnal Christian.
(2) Live and learn is the hard way. Learn and live, on the other hand, is the pattern of the unique spiritual life of the Church Age.
8. If we learn first and then live what we learn, then we are going to grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
9. So the spiritual life of the Church Age is based on the mystery doctrine found primarily in the New Testament epistles. Therefore, epignosis knowledge of pertinent Bible doctrine precedes the implementation of the unique spiritual life, which was invented, tested, and proved by the impeccable human nature of Jesus Christ in hypostatic union.
10. Living does not mean learning. Living means you are going to be punished because you have failed to learn.
11. All divine punishment and divine discipline is a memorial to the ignorance of Bible doctrine, the destructive power of arrogance in the believer combined with emotion to eliminate that knowledge called the thinking of Christ, 1 Cor 2:16.
12. Learn and live is the order of the filling of the Spirit. Live and learn is the order of grieving the Holy Spirit in Eph 4:30, or quenching the Holy Spirit in 1 Thes 5:19.
13. The principle of live and learn is the law of double punishment: sowing to the wind and reaping the whirlwind, or Col 3:25, “For he who does wrong will receive the consequences of that wrong. And there is no partiality.”
14. In perpetual carnality, the loser believer’s experience is the law of double punishment, 1 Cor 11:30, “For this cause many of you are weak [warning discipline], and sick [intensive discipline], and a number of you sleep [dying discipline].”
15. We must learn and live, not live and learn.
C. How to Know the Infinite Love of God.
1. God is infinite, eternal, invisible. We, as human beings, are finite, temporal, and visible. Therefore, how can our finite minds come to know infinite and eternal God who created us. How can there be such a thing with God as learn and live.
2. God is beyond our comprehension in the function of our limited mentality. We lack the cognitive ability to see and to talk with God.
3. While the finite limitation of human cognition to know and understand God, to talk with God, to be with God, or to love God exists, these things only exist through Bible doctrine; therefore, the importance understanding doctrine, as in the case of eternal God having revealed these to us. Since He loves us, He makes Himself know to us.
4. We are introduced to God by the word of God. There are many manifestations of His existence, however, in the very order and structure of the universe.
5. God takes the initiative and reveals Himself to us in writing in one book, the infallible word of God.
6. We always have the system for postulating the person, character, and power of God as revealed in the Holy Scriptures. Heb 11:1-3, “Now doctrine is the reality of things we have confidence in, the evidence of things not being seen. For by this doctrine, men of old became witnesses. By doctrine we understand that the worlds were designed by the speaking of God, so that what is seen came into existence by the things which are seen.”
7. There is no subject more exalted to the human mind than the person and the character of God.
8. The Propositions.
a. God exists.
b. Since God exists, God reveals Himself.
c. God makes sense.
d. God has a plan and a purpose for our life.
e. If we can say we are a person, then we can conclude that God has a plan for us personally.
f. God is perfect; therefore, His plan is perfect. Perfect God can only create a perfect plan. Perfect God has created a perfect plan for imperfect persons.
9. How does the love of God solve the problem of spiritual death? If He did not love us with a maximum love in spiritual death, He could not solve the problem for us. He solves the problem because His love is backed by His righteousness and His justice. Jn 3:16; Rom 5:8; 2 Cor 5:21, “He made Him who knew no sin a substitute for us that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”
D. The Personality of God.
1. God is a person. Personality connotes self-consciousness and self- determination. God recognizes Himself as a person, and therefore, always acts rationally.
2. God is infinite. He is without boundary or limitation. He unites in Himself those perfections which belong to His own character. Therefore, God cannot be complicated by ignorance or absurdities.
3. Infinity characterizes all that God does—His word of truth, His love, His holiness, and the function of divine integrity.
4. God exists in three persons in eternity past. There never was a time when God did not exist in three persons in eternity past. Therefore, God is the cause of all existence outside of Himself. The tetragrammaton means “self-existing one.” There never was a time when the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit did not co-exist in all eternity. The words “father, son, and spirit” are language of accommodation for human understanding.
5. Are all of God’s actions toward His creatures free, arbitrary, and indifferent? Definitely not.
a. God is governed by His own integrity. He must act in accordance with His absolute righteousness, justice, and love.
b. If His integrity requires the punishment of sin, and it does when we fail, He is not free to disregard or omit it. He is not free to make exceptions. God never looks the other way and lets us sin. But whether we succeed or fail, God’s love never diminishes.
6. Can God forgive sin apart from propitiation—satisfaction of His righteous claims?
a. Not so long as He is righteous. And since He is always righteous, He can never forgive sin apart from propitiation.
b. To forgive without propitiation would be to fail in the proper function of God’s perfect integrity. That would deny His perfection and proper function of the absolute attributes of His divine integrity. What the righteousness of God demands, the justice of God executes, so that the love of God provides the solution through the fantastic concepts of grace.
c. God has never been unfair to anyone. Therefore, never complain about the way God’s treating you, and never blame God for what is our own fault, our own decisions, our own response to the distractions of life.
d. God’s propitiation cannot be satisfied and He cannot save or forgive sin apart from the substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus Christ being judged for every sin on the Cross. If a person believes in Christ, he has in affect accepted the love of God. But if he rejects Jesus Christ as savior, he has rejected God’s love. God can do nothing about someone who rejects His love, because God’s love is a part of His integrity.
7. Why should Christ be judged for the sins of the world, if other means of salvation were available? Or, why couldn’t God the Father spare His own Son if an alternate procedure was available?
a. Because of the absolute integrity of God there was and is no alternate procedure. The personality of God cannot be arbitrary—free from His own righteousness, justice and love.
b. To fulfill the propitiatory function, Jesus Christ had to go to the Cross. But as God, He could not go to the Cross. He had to be reduced to a human being and reject temptation in every way.
8. The Absolute Attributes of God.
a. Spirituality.
(1) Life.
(2) Personality.
b. Infinity.
(1) Self-existence.
(2) Immutability.
(3) Unity.
(4) Absolute consistency.
c. Perfection and Integrity.
(1) Truth.
(2) Love.
(3) Holiness (righteousness and justice).
9. The Relative Attributes. These are the perfections and qualities in God which find expression in His relationship to other beings
a. Relative attributes are related to time and space.
(1) God is eternal.
(2) God is not subject to space. He is immanent and transcendent.
b. Relative attributes are related to creation.
(1) Omnipresence. God is everywhere. The whole of God is in every place. This is not pantheism, since pantheism denies the person of God.
(2) Omniscience. God knew simultaneously in eternity past all the knowable for time and eternity.
(3) Omnipotence. God is infinitely able to do all the things which are the objects within the range of His perfect and holy character.
c. Relative attributes are related to qualified human beings.
(1) Love. Divine love is infinite love in action related to personal and impersonal love.
(2) Grace. Grace as the solution to the problems of love; therefore, the reflection of divine integrity.
(3) The absolute of love. God is love with or without an object. God does not need an object for love. God’s love existed before objects existed. Therefore, the principle is personal or impersonal love or a combination of the two. Love in the person of the Godhead is spiritual, immutable, and perfect as a part of the integrity of God.
(4) Both the function of divine integrity and the imputation of divine righteousness are related to Bible doctrine. Both veracity and faithfulness are related to Bible doctrine.
(5) Ps 33:4-5, “For the word of the Lord is righteous, And all of His work is in faithfulness. He loves righteousness and justice. The earth is full of the unfailing love of the Lord.” You cannot make God hate you. You cannot make God angry.
(6) Ps 89:14, “Righteousness and justice are the foundation of Your throne; Unfailing love and doctrine go before You.” Love always stays the same in God’s integrity whether He is disciplining or blessing us.
(7) Love is the stabilizer of the integrity of God. Love is the stabilizer in relationship with God. There is no relative factor in the love of God. God loves us just as much when we are sinful as when we are not. God loves the unbeliever just as much on the day he is born as on the day of the Last Judgment. He has the same impersonal love for them. God loves the believer on the day he is born again just as much as on the day the believer reaches spiritual maturity. God’s love never changes. It is an absolute.
(8) No believer has any true love apart from the filling of the Holy Spirit. True love only comes through the filling of the Holy Spirit. If you do not have that love, you are a loser believer. The greatness of human love is integrity, and integrity is righteousness in the soul.
(9) The righteousness and justice of God the Father does not punish us when we sin. They punished our sins in Christ on the Cross. We are punished by the love of God. “Whom the Lord loves, He punishes.” You are loved by God all the way to the grave and beyond by the same perfect love of God.
10. The Affections of God. You cannot be judged for a sin that was judged at the Cross.
a. Affections are defined as emotion, sentiment, human love in the emotional connotation of the word.
b. Do affections (or emotions) belong to God? Is God emotional?
(1) Affections imply dependence, passion, and possible distress.
(2) The absolute attributes of God are on a much higher plain than human emotion and affections; for the attributes of God are compatible with His divine person, including His divine integrity.
(3) There is no emotion with God. God does not need emotion.
(4) As seen and experienced by God, human emotions have no existence in God. In the word of God, such things as affections and emotions are ascribed to God only as anthropopathisms. An anthropopathism is ascribing to God a human characteristic which He does not have, but which explains a divine policy, Rom 9:13, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”
(5) God does not repent or change His mind, Gen 6:6. Repentance means a change of mind. God changed His policy and Scripture used a human characteristic to explain it.
(6) God is not jealous, angry, hateful. These are sins.
c. God’s love cannot be complicated by ignorance, silliness, absurdities, or emotion.
d. The love of God must be compatible with all the absolute attributes of His divine essence or personality.
e. Because God is perfect virtue, His love is totally devoid of sin, human good, altruism, or any source of evil reaction.
f. Since God is love, always has been love, and always will be love, He cannot and does not fall in love. Nor can God’s love be patronized, compromised, or bribed by any form of human works or legalism, including Christian activism.
g. Perfect divine love is a part of divine virtue, and as a result functions with righteousness and justice in the integrity of God.
h. At the moment of salvation we are the recipients of the irrevocable righteousness and love of God.
i. No matter what happens to the believer in time, there is no greater security than the personal love of God for the believer as a part of divine integrity. God’s love is guaranteed to the most awful believer who ever lived. Righteousness and justice change in their functions within divine integrity, but the love of God does not change. The love of God is the great stabilizer of divine integrity.
j. Therefore, the personal love of God guarantees relationship with God forever whether we are being blessed or punished, even to the most carnal and sinful of believers.
11. Conclusion.
a. God’s love for the believer never diminishes even in carnality.
b. God blesses in love and God punishes in the same undiminished love, which gives the believer the option of blessing or living under punishment.
c. God’s love blesses under two principles.
d. God blesses under learn and live. Learn Bible doctrine, live the spiritual life.
e. God blesses under live and learn. Mixed in with the punishment and the hurting there will be blessing. This is why the wicked are blessed. God does this without compromising Himself because He gave each one of us His righteousness at salvation.
f. There is no partiality in God’s love, Col 3:25, “For he who does wrong will receive the consequences of that wrong and there is no partiality.” God loves the believer going down as much as the believer going up in the spiritual life.
E. Heb 12:4-6. 1. Reasons For Studying This Passage.
a. As a believer in Jesus Christ we will be punished when we sin.
b. The punishment will be accomplished in love; for the love of God does not diminish when the believer sins and enters into the status quo of carnality.
c. Since every believer is a member of the royal family of God in the Church Age, divine discipline through punishment for sin is designed for blessing. The blessing of rebound. The blessing of the execution of the unique spiritual life. You learn something from hurting. God never punishes us apart from having blessing tied into it. Blessing will be the result of enduring the punishment.
d. Without responding to disciplinary punishment from the supreme court of heaven, the believer will make himself miserable all his life in his mortal body. He will make carnal decisions for the sin nature and eventually die the sin unto death.
e. This self-imposed misery results from disorientation to the doctrines of Heb 12:4-9.
f. This includes the doctrine of live and learn, in which we live under divine punishment and learn God’s plan for our life the hard way. The antithesis is to learn and live, which is to learn Bible doctrine and live the unique spiritual life of human history under the protocol plan of God.
g. In divine punishment of Heb 12:6, “Whom the Lord loves He punishes” the love of God provides doctrine to be applied to restore the battle line of the soul—your spiritual life with its blessings.
h. You must have the power line before you can have the battle line. The battle line is the plan of God for your life as related to the unique spiritual life of the Church Age. In Heb 12:5, if divine punishment causes you to faint (instead of responding to discipline with rebound and keep moving), then you will be a loser believer in time and a lesser believer in eternity.
i. If divine punishment causes you to faint, then you do not understand the love of God, which is the stabilizing factor of the integrity of God.
2. There are three aspects of the spiritual life. An aspect is the way in which a doctrine may be viewed or regarded in accuracy.
a. The execution of the spiritual life occurs through the filling of the Spirit, perception, metabolization, and application of Bible doctrine. The spiritual life is fellowship with God. Fellowship with God is harmonious rapport with God through doctrine in your soul applied to God. We learn to see Him who is invisible. The spiritual life is based on doctrine in the soul, not experience. The battle line in the soul is doctrine under the filling of the Spirit, not experience. The first aspect of the spiritual life is the execution of the spiritual life through the filling of the Spirit and perception, metabolization, and application of Bible doctrine.
b. The second aspect of the spiritual life is that the believer fails to execute the spiritual life when he is in carnality and subsequent punishment. This is coward running away in battle. Carnality and subsequent punishment is part of the spiritual life.
(1) 1 Pet 2:22-24, “who committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in His mouth, and while being reviled, He did not revile in return; while suffering, He uttered no threats, but kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously; and He Himself carried our sins in His own body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed.”
(2) God has provided punishment to bless you. Confusion leads to panic. To the extent that you are confused under punishment, to that extent you are going to panic and get into emotionalism and dead works. God punishes us so that we have an option—1 Jn 1:9. Punishment results from four things:
(a) The old sin nature taking control of the soul.
(b) Believers fail to execute the mandates of the spiritual life, like Eph 5:18, “Keep on being filled with the Spirit” or Gal 5:16, “Keep on walking by means of the Spirit.”
© The believer is in the status of grieving the Holy Spirit, Eph 4:30.
(d) The believer is in the status of quenching the Holy Spirit, 1 Thes 5:19.
(3) We develop a scale of values through punishment and learn that certain things are not worth doing. If we do not learn from punishment, all that is left is to live in a state of misery, self-pity, arrogance, and rejection by others. You are going to be rejected by people you are attracted to and by society if you never learn and live. People who live and learn are rejected by others.
(4) Punishment is the key to momentum or failure. How we handle punishment is the key to spiritual life success or failure.
(5) We learn to love the Lord through knowledge of Bible doctrine.
(6) We learn to respect the Lord through divine punishment.
(7) If we reject the doctrine, we will resent the punishment.
(8) If we rebound and keep moving, we will both love and respect the Lord. After rebound, we must keep moving, Phil 3:13-14, “Brethren, I do not evaluate myself to have attained [PLEROMA status], but one thing I do, disregarding what lies behind, and pressing forward to those things which lie ahead. I keep advancing toward the objective for the decoration of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”
(9) Beware of forgetting your sins through self- justification. Self-justification is not tantamount to rebound.
c. The third aspect of the spiritual life is that morality or human works is not our spiritual life. Morality is a part of the spiritual life, but the spiritual life is far superior to morality. It is a life of virtue.
3. Heb 12:4, “Not yet to the point of blood have you formed a battle line in your face-to-face combat against sin,”
a. The Greek word ANTIKATHISTEMI means to form a battle line. You have not yet learned enough doctrine, understood enough of the word of God, to form a battle line in your soul. None of us are ever going to have a truly happy moment or life without forming a battle line in the soul. You are going to have to have this doctrine in your stream of consciousness.
b. The worst thing that could happen to you after salvation is to live and learn. The best thing that could happen is that you learn Bible doctrine a bit at a time.
c. The believer who lives and learns receives divine discipline but can never lose his salvation. The believer who learns and lives avoids discipline by doing what is right because of what he has learned.
(1) We are all going to be tempted by our sin nature, which has no mercy on us, because we are a part of the angelic conflict.
(2) We are all going to be tested by God. Testing comes from God in grace, and He never gives us more than we can bear. When a right thing is done in a right way it brings blessing to a person, and there is nothing phony about it. We advance by testing, by overcoming various tests in our lives.
d. The spiritual life is called here a battle line. As long as you have not formed a battle line in your soul in face-to-face combat against sin, you are not going to advance in the spiritual life. We may sin in private, but God knows everything we do and everything we think.
e. The battle line is said to be face-to-face combat against sin or the fight against sin.
(1) The only organized part of some believers is their sin nature. The sin nature resides in every believer from birth. The sin nature is organized.
(2) We are in contact with the enemy. The enemy is us
(3) The sin nature is well organized. The enemy has an area of strength (certain sins we would never think of doing and are never tempted). The enemy also has an area of weakness—the areas in which we are tempted and easily sin. The area of strength is the covering force or screen for the area of weakness. We have trends toward antinomianism—from which legalism and arrogance comes, and the trend toward lasciviousness.
(4) Therefore, being in contact with the enemy, it is necessary for us to form a battle line in our face-to-face combat with sin.
(5) The deployment of both the execution of Eph 5:18 (“Keep on being filled with the Spirit”) plus the principle of learn and live is essential.
(6) The initial deployment of the battle line is the perception, metabolization, and application of Bible doctrine. Once we are deployed and stabilized, the we go in for offensive action. Offensive action is the use of the problem solving devices. To recover and redeploy we have to use rebound. Then we can continue our offensive action.
(7) The casualties always occur when we grieve the Holy Spirit—that is the initial function of caving into temptation. Quenching the Holy Spirit (1 Thes 5:19) is a continual retreat.
(8) The only solution is the rebound technique of 1 Jn 1:9.
(9) No rebound means an equal and opposite power of divine punishment of the carnal believer. Failure to execute the spiritual life of the Church Age means the defeat of the battle line.
f. For those who want to live and learn there is the “sin face- to-face with death.” Or for those who want to learn and live there is the battle line face-to-face against sin.
g. Punishment from the supreme court of heaven is a definite part of our spiritual life.
(1) Punishment from God is a challenge in our spiritual life to follow God’s plan exactly.
(2) God’s plan is that we reform our battle line against sin by using rebound (1 Jn 1:9) and keep moving (Phil 3:14-15). We do not form a battle line because we do not know how to take punishment.
(3) Punishment gives us the chance to be a better person. It does more for us than we realize. We are punished because we have not stopped grieving the Holy Spirit. we suffer under punishment because we have denied the power of God.
(4) We are to take our punishment, learn from our punishment, and move on. We will never grow up until we learn how to take punishment. By taking our punishment as the Lord intended in love the blessing is phenomenal.
(5) We have to hurt to grow up. Hurting from divine punishment is a source of blessing. God is going to hurt us because He loves us. The whole point of hurting us is to turn us around.
h. The power line of capacity righteousness from the filling of the Holy Spirit must be formed before the battle line can be formed in the soul. The power line was tested and proved by our Lord and then given to the Church as our spiritual heritage. Righteousness (2 Tim 4:7; 1 Tim 6:11), love (Jam 1:12), and joy (1 Pet 1:8; Rev 22:7) (capacity righteousness, personal love for God and impersonal love for all mankind, and sharing the happiness of God which includes occupation with Christ) are the battle line of the soul. When you have these things in your soul, you go into battle line in the soul against sin. You deploy the power line in your soul through the filling of the Holy Spirit and perception of metabolized doctrine.
i. There is no answer to the enemy of the sin nature except Bible doctrine. Bible doctrine defeats our enemy—the sin nature.
4. Heb 12:5, “and so you have forgotten the doctrinal principle of encouragement which teaches you as sons [Prov 3:11], ‘My son, stop despising the punishment of the Lord, and stop fainting when you are being punished by Him.”
a. The Greek verb EKLANTHANO means to forget from neglecting to expose oneself to the correct and accurate teaching of Bible doctrine. You have forgotten because you have deceived yourself and not exposed yourself to accurate Bible teaching. Therefore, you have wrong ideas. This is forgetting from neglect of repetition because you think you already know it. You have to reenforce your spiritual life on a daily basis.
b. The rate of forgetting has exceeded the rate of learning Bible doctrine, plus the fact that rebound has been rejected in favor of perpetual carnality.
(1) When the rate of learning exceeds the rate of forgetting Bible doctrine, the believer deploys the battle line on the FLOT line of the soul and advances spiritually.
(2) When the rate of forgetting exceeds the rate of learning Bible doctrine, the believer becomes a casualty, is careless, distracted, indifferent, and is described in 2 Tim 3:4 as a lover of pleasure rather than a lover of God. Rebound is rejected in favor of perpetual carnality. Hurting intensifies as we reject rebound and God’s plan for our lives. This believer only wants to know doctrine to be argumentative, to put others down.
c. Divine punishment is a part of the spiritual life and is designed for our benefit to bring us into the reality of the spiritual life from the negative viewpoint. We are never punished for our sins, because they were judged on the Cross. We are punished for failing to maintain the filling of the Spirit, grieving the Holy Spirit, quenching the Holy Spirit, failure to execute the spiritual life, and failure to rebound. Never despise the punishment of the Lord. If we turn against the Lord, we are only destroying ourself. Carnality hates punishment from God. The believer in fellowship is thankful for punishment.
d. If God punishes, do not hate it. If we hate divine punishment, we are going to react and continue our retreat. If we hate God’s punishment, we will faint in our soul when we are punished, and we will never learn the blessing from punishment. If divine punishment causes us to faint instead of responding with rebound, then we are a loser believer at that point and in danger of perpetual carnality. If divine punishment causes us to faint when we are being punished, then we do not understand the love of God.
(1) Fainting is all the terrible mental attitudes that come into the soul to blame others when being punished.
(2) The believer who lives and learns is fainting all the time when punished by the Lord, because he cannot stand the punishment.
(3) We are never going to recover from sin if we faint; we are only going to go in the wrong direction. We are not punished for our sins, which were imputed to Christ on the Cross and judged. We are punished for our failure to live the spiritual life of learn and live. The punishment for grieving and quenching the Holy Spirit is greater than the punishment for the sin.
(4) As long as we are alive we are going to receive the teaching of encouragement from divine punishment.
(5) To hate divine punishment for carnality is to reject the love of God as part of the integrity of God. Hatred of divine punishment results in perpetual carnality, reaction instead of respect for God.
e. This passage quotes the Septuagint of Prov 3:11-12, “My son, do not reject the discipline of the Lord or loathe His reproof; For whom the Lord loves He punishes, as a father to a son in whom he has accepted with delight.”
(1) The Hebrew word for love used in this passage is AHAB. In Heb 12:6, the equivalent word which is used is AGAPAO. But in Rev 3:19- 20 the Greek verb is PHILEO. There is a different emphasis in each passage. PHILEO is the verb for a very intimate love. AGAPAO is the verb for impersonal love, the love which God had for us at the moment of physical birth and while Christ was bearing our sins on the Cross. PHILEO is the intimate love which God has for us as believers, even while we are receiving divine discipline.
(2) God always punishes us in love. God is never disappointed because we fail. God has provided solutions for us when we fail. God’s love for us never changes, even though we never live the spiritual life God has provided for us.
(3) Punishment is a part of the spiritual life.
f. Live and learn means to learn from the discipline. All divine discipline is given to us in love. We are punished because we are grieving and quenching the Holy Spirit. There are those who never learn from punishment.
g. Learn and live begins with rebound (1 Jn 1:9). We are punished by God because we have not used the divine solution, we are grieving and quenching the Holy Spirit, and we are not obeying the divine mandates of the spiritual life. We are not punished for the actual sins we commit, because they were punished in Christ on the Cross.
h. Who would make light of corrective discipline? Anyone who is under divine discipline and is a complainer. You make light of discipline by complaining that the devil is after you, when in fact you are being disciplined for failure. Believers who have a tendency to fail and keep on failing often disregard or make light of their discipline by saying that the discipline is unfair. Legalistic believers, arrogant believers, and emotional believers say they are right when they are absolutely wrong.
i. Principles.
(1) Divine punishment is not working for you, if you faint in your soul. Fainting in your soul is hatred of God’s gracious punishment of us; it includes justifying yourself and blaming others.
(2) Divine punishment of the believer only works when you endure it with the staying power of Bible doctrine (personal love for God and impersonal love for all mankind) in the soul after rebound. Staying power is developed to the maximum when we are being punished. This is the great blessing of punishment.
(3) The staying power of Bible doctrine in the stream of consciousness only works when the believer is filled with the Spirit.
(4) Therefore, the filling of the Spirit can only be restored to the carnal believer through rebound and keep moving.
(5) Divine punishment from the integrity of God is administered with exactly the same divine love as divine blessing.
(6) There is no change in divine love toward the believer in the varying circumstances of the spiritual life. Success to failure and failure to success fulfill the principle of live and learn. Divine punishment only works when the believer endures it with the staying power of Bible doctrine in the soul after rebound.
(7) The greatest advance in your spiritual life will occur after you switch over to learn Bible doctrine and live it under the sponsorship of the love of God.
j. Divine punishment is a part of the spiritual life. It is the motivation to recover the filling of the Spirit and start deploying the problem solving devices in our soul to resist temptation. It restores our respect, deference, admiration, honor, esteem, consideration, and partiality for God.
k. The interpretive word in this passage is the word HUIOS, which means “son.” It refers to being a member of the family of God. Gal 3:26, “You are the sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.” “Sons” refers to males and females alike, cf. Gal 3:28, “There is neither male nor female.” The interpretive doctrine is the love of God.
5. Heb 12:6, “’for whom the Lord loves He punishes, and He whips [(warning discipline), flogs (intensive discipline), scourges (dying discipline)] every son whom He receives with love.’”
a. Jude 21, “Guard yourselves by means of love for God, ...”
(1) We are to guard ourselves by means of our love for God as God has guarded us by His love for us.
(2) There is a connection between this verse and Heb 12:6. It is the love of God that preserves us from losing our salvation by the things He provided for us at the moment of salvation. It is not a matter of what we do after salvation. The same love which God has for us to provide salvation is the same love which punishes us when we fail.
(3) If we fail, the love of God is never diminished toward us. The love of God must now manifest itself toward us in the same way that the love of God manifested itself when God imputed every sin to Christ on the Cross and judged them.
b. Why divine punishment?
(1) Punishment of the believer is designed to motivate rebound and keep moving.
(2) Punishment is designed to reestablish the true values of Bible doctrine.
(3) Punishment is designed to cause us to make decisions compatible with the will and plan of God for our lives.
(4) Punishment is designed to remind us that the love of God for us is far more important than the distractions of the wages of sin. (5) Punishment is designed to realign our lives in compatibility with fellowship with God, which is total compatibility with God through the filling of the Holy Spirit and to restore the spiritual circulation of our soul.
(6) Divine punishment is designed for our blessing capacity from God and to avoid the pitfalls and often the substantives of perpetuating carnality in our lives.
(7) Divine punishment is part of the spiritual life to rebound and to recover the values related to harmonious rapport with God.
(8) Divine punishment is the only blessing of the spiritual life given to us when we are in a state of sin.
c. Definition of Divine Punishment.
(1) Divine punishment is the sum total of punitive action taken by the integrity of God with emphasis on the love of God. God does not become angry with us, does not denounce us. If we do not respond, He increases the punishment to bring us back in line. His love for us never changes.
(2) The purpose of the punishment is to correct and train, to motivate the Church Age believer to utilize the recovery procedure of rebound, and to utilize the staying power of the spiritual life for maximum glorification of God.
(a) We change but God does not. God loves us just as much in sin as when we are in fellowship or harmonious rapport with Him. (b) God does not disapprove of us when we fail. That is blasphemy. God’s love for us never changes. When we name our sins, God forgives us and purifies us from all wrongdoing because His love has not changed. And He gives us back the power of the filling of the Spirit.
(3) This purpose demands respect for God as part of motivational virtue-love. This respect for God comes from divine punishment. The key to all true love is respect. Respect for God as part of motivational virtue-love for God is the execution of the spiritual life.
(4) Divine discipline punishment must be distinguished from divine judgment punishment. Divine discipline punishment is punitive action directed toward the carnal believer under the love of God, while judgments of God is a more general biblical term directed toward all categories of the human race, as illustrated by the five cycles of discipline of Lev 26 and Deut 38:49-67.
(5) Certain technical nomenclature must be understood regarding believers.
(a) Carnality means “fleshly", 1 Cor 3:1-3. This is the believer out of fellowship through sin.
(b) Divine solution recovery procedure of “rebound” of 1 Jn 1:9, following by the momentum procedure through keeping our advance in the spiritual life, “keep moving” of Phil 3:13-14.
d. The Greek verb PARADECHOMAI is used of a citizen who wishes to return to his home city and be received favorably after living in a strange land. That came to mean “to be accepted or received with love.” God accepted each one of us and received us in love the moment we believed in Christ.
6. Heb 12:7, “Because of punishment you keep on enduring; therefore God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom a father does not punish?”
a. God deals with us as with family. We will always be sons.
b. We can sin and fail and destroy ourselves, but we will always have eternal life because we are sons. We are still in the family.
c. A father punishes his sons because, when they are out of line, this is the only way to bring them to maturity in the right orientation to life.
7. Heb 12:8, “If, let us assume for the sake of argument, you are without punishment from God of which all [believers] have become partakers, then you are bastards and not sons.”
a. The idea that we are perfect after salvation is totally erroneous. All believers sin, and all believers receive punishment.
b. If we did not receive punishment, we would not be sons, but bastards. A bastard is a person who has not been born again.
F. Rev 3:14-20 is a parallel passage to Heb 12:6.
1. Introduction.
a. Part of every believer’s portfolio of invisible assets includes his very own spiritual life.
b. As a believer in Jesus Christ, you and you alone are the only one who can live your spiritual life, which means that no one can live it for you.
c. God has provided everything necessary for us to live that spiritual life on a daily basis and at the same time to advance to spiritual maturity and from there to PLEROMA status, Eph 3:19, “to know the love for Christ which is beyond gnosis, resulting in all the fullness of blessing from God.”
d. The spiritual life of the believer resides in the soul. Therefore, the soul becomes the battlefield for the historical phase of the pre-historical angelic conflict.
e. Every category of the human soul is involved in the spiritual conflict: volition, self-consciousness (which is the perception of reality), mentality, emotion (must be a responder to Bible doctrine), and the conscience.
f. Our spiritual life functions on two categories of divine power: the filling of the Spirit and metabolized doctrine circulating in the stream of consciousness.
g. There are two great enemies to our spiritual life which attack the soul: the outside pressure of prosperity and the outside pressure of adversity.
h. There are eight categories of the outside pressure of adversity which have the potential of being converted into the inside pressure of stress in the soul: historical disaster, criminal disaster, victim of vilification, loss of health, death of loved ones, economic disaster, weather disaster, and rejection by people we love.
i. There are five categories of the outside pressure of prosperity which have the potential of being converted into the inside pressure of stress in the soul: wealth and riches, love and romance, promotion and power, success and approbation, achievement and recognition.
j. The believer is the product of his volition and values, not his environment. If our values are related to Bible doctrine, then we will win the battle. If not, then the outside pressures will be converted into stress in the soul.
k. The pattern of failure begins when the outside pressure of prosperity or adversity becomes the inside pressure of stress in the soul. It signifies no problem solving devices on the FLOT line of the soul and it signifies the sin nature control of the soul, beginning with the sins of the soul—the arrogance and emotional complex of sins.
l. The lukewarm believer begins with self-fragmentation, which, unchecked by rebound, results in two categories.
(1) The domination of the lust pattern of the sin nature: power lust, approbation lust, pleasure lust, social lust, sexual lust, chemical lust, crusader lust, monetary lust, inordinate ambition, lust for revenge, and criminal lust.
(2) Polarized fragmentation. The sin nature trend toward self-righteous arrogance results in legalism. The sin nature trend toward sexual, chemical, or criminal lust results in antinomianism.
(3) This leads to the eight stages of reversionism (reaction/distraction, a frantic search for happiness, operation boomerang, emotional revolt of the soul, locked-in negative volition, blackout of the soul, scar tissue of the soul, reverse process reversionism), which is the principle of self-induced misery.
(4) This results in Christian degeneracy. The trend toward legalism ends up in Christian moral degeneracy. The trend toward antinomianism ends up in Christian immoral degeneracy.
(5) The final result is the psycho-believer—the double souled or double minded believer of Jam 1:8, 4:8.
m. The law of double punishment includes the law of volitional responsibility and divine punishment. We make ourselves miserable by the function of our own volition when we sin and God punishes us. Hos 8:7; Gal 6:7-8; Col 3:25.
(1) The believer is the production of his own volition. The believer is also the production of his own values. Hos 8:7; Gal 6:7. Our great values disappear when we react in bitterness to divine punishment. When the believer is the product of his volition, it is because of the stress in his soul, and therefore, producing the so-called “lukewarm Christian.” Lukewarm is always going from hot to cold, never from cold to hot.
(2) The second half of the law of double punishment is divine punishment. God punishes every son, Prov 3:12; Heb 12:6. There are three categories of divine punishment mentioned in 1 Cor 11:30. The supreme court of heaven adds to what we have started in sin.
(3) The law of double punishment means that we are punished by both ourselves and God. They go together, are never reversed, and are not separated experientially, Col 3:25.
(4) The first law is the law of volitional responsibility. All human sin is the result of our volition succumbing to temptation under the pattern `I wanted to do it and I did it.’ Therefore, we do it to ourselves; hence, the principle of self-induced misery.
(5) But we never understand the significance of doing it to ourselves under the first law of double punishment until the supreme court of heaven adds divine punishment as a consequence.
(6) This is classified as the law of punitive action, in which God does it to us under three categories of punishment.
(7) The second law, therefore, provides the reality of what we have done to ourselves in the use of our own volition to sin.
(8) It is imperative to understand the law of double punishment as the total of divine judgment. You cannot have the first law without the second law. You cannot have the second law without the first law. The sequence is always the same: we sin, we punish ourself, then God punishes us.
(9) Since we cannot have the first law without the second law, it is obvious that the divine punishment under the second law provides reality of our sins.
(10) To isolate our case before the supreme court of heaven, God adds to our self-induced misery the proper divine punishment to bring us to the reality of our status quo in carnality and to motivate us to rebound and keep moving. The results of rebound are: the recovery of the filling of the Holy Spirit who is our mentor and our teacher, restoration with fellowship with God, and resumption of our spiritual life.
n. To be influenced by your environment is a sign of stress in the soul; therefore, the sin nature controls your soul.
2. Rev 3:14-16, “To the messenger [pastor] of the church of Laodicea write: The Amen [the Lord Jesus Christ], the faithful and true Witness [the first Advent of Christ], the Ruler of the creation of God [the ruler of Israel and the Church], communicates these things: ‘I know your modus operandi, that you are neither cold nor hot; I wish you were cold or hot. So because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I am about to vomit you out of My mouth.’”
a. The word “cold” refers to the unbeliever. The word “hot” refers to the growing believer who has momentum from doctrine and must rebound and keep moving to advance. The word “lukewarm” refers to the carnal and reversionistic believer, who is going no where in the spiritual life.
b. Hierpolis, six miles north of Laodicea, was famous for its hot springs and hot water. Colossae, ten miles to the southeast of Laodicea, was famous for its very cold mountain water. Laodicea was a wealthy banking city, but had no permanent water supply near the city itself. The Laodiceans built a pipeline for getting hot water from Hierpolis. But by the time the water got to Laodicea, it was lukewarm. The cold water from Colossae was still cold when it got to Laodicea. Laodicea never solved the lukewarm water problem.
c. The Lord wished that they were cold or hot. If they are cold, they can believe in Christ. If they are hot, they can continue their momentum by staying interested in doctrine. But the lukewarm believer is in a state of live and learn and must rebound.
d. These believers were hot for doctrine after salvation, but they have become distracted from doctrine and lukewarm by their great prosperity. They have converted the outside pressure of prosperity into the inside pressure of stress in the soul. Stress in the soul means the sin nature controls the soul.
e. The interpretive word in this passage is “lukewarm.” It refers to the believer who has converted the outside pressure of prosperity into the inside pressure of stress in the soul. Adversity is obvious in our lives, but prosperity blind-sides us. Lukewarm indicates that something was hot and became lukewarm. Prosperity caused them to go from hot to lukewarm. They cannot go from lukewarm to cold, because they cannot lose their salvation.
f. Vomiting out from the mouth is a reference to the administration of the sin unto death to these lukewarm believers. 1 Jn 5:16b-17, “There is a sin face-to-face with death; ...All unrighteousness is sin, and there is a sin not face-to-face with death.” The verb “leading” does not occur in the original. This is a dramatic ellipsis.
(1) The supreme court of heaven practices capital punishment, administered to believers who do not recover from reversionism and cosmic involvement. Every so often, the Lord gathers up a group of lukewarm believers and takes them out of this life through some natural disaster or disease. The Laodiceans have used their wealth to intensify their pleasure. They have become lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.
(2) The administration of capital punishment does not cancel the salvation status of the believer in Jesus Christ. We are still in the family of God.
(3) No believer, no matter how evil, can cancel the thirty- nine irrevocable absolutes given at the instant of faith alone in Christ alone.
(4) God’s love is not diminished in the administration of divine punishment of the believer. God’s love is not diminished in blessing. No one changes God’s love by success or failure in the spiritual life; it is always the same—maximum.
3. Rev 3:17-18, “’Because you say, “I am rich, and have become extremely wealthy, and have need of nothing,” in fact you do not realize that you are under stress and miserable and poor and blind and naked, I advise you to buy gold from Me which has been refined by fire that you may become rich, and white clothes that you may clothe yourself, and that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed; and eye salve to rub in your eyes that you may keep on seeing.”
a. The word “wretched” is TALAIPOPOS and is found only twice (Rom 7 “Oh wretched man that I am"), and means they have converted the outside pressure of prosperity into the inside pressure of stress in the soul. It means acute physical or mental suffering in the sense of distress, pain, sorrow, anxiety, affliction, trouble, worry, exhausted by strain. This is the first stage of reversionism—reaction and distraction.
b. The word “miserable” is ELEEINOS, meaning self-centered with no capacity for blessing, happiness, or appreciation. Therefore it refers to a frantic search for happiness. They want comfort in the sense of approbation when God is giving them divine discipline. The comfort of others only adds to the problem. They gravitate toward those who give them approbation, which only increases their arrogance and compounds the problem.
c. The word “poor” is PTOCHOS and refers to having no values from the spiritual life because they have been replaced by emotional revolt of the soul. They begin to live by false values related to their prosperity. When the values in our soul change, we change.
d. The word “blind” is TUPHLOS and refers to blackout of the soul.
e. The word “naked” is GUMNOS refers to the fact they have nothing left of Bible doctrine from scar tissue of the soul.
f. This passage demonstrates the law of metaphorical parallel considerations. If a passage has one metaphorical interpretive word and two subjects, you have to look for a second metaphorical interpretive word for the second subject.
(1) Lukewarm is a metaphorical interpretive word. Gold is a metaphorical interpretive word. The use of these two words teach the principle of going from riches to rags.
(2) The interpretive word in verse 18 is the word “gold.” The slag, which is burned off, is rebound. The fire is the punishment.
(3) The Laodiceans did not lust for wealth. They had it. They were investing emotionally now in the plan of God. Emotional investors are always poor investors. So they were going from riches to rags. Emotion is a great disaster when it takes over the life of the carnal believer. They did not rebound because they got tied up in emotion under reversionism.
(a) Divine love has no emotion.
(b) There is no emotion in the divine decrees or the omniscience of God.
© There was no emotion involved in the judgment of sins on the Cross, and this was the greatest demonstration of love in the history of the human race. The love of God for us has never diminished in all of human history, but it is not an emotional love.
(4) The great investment is based on consistent positive volition toward Bible doctrine, consistent time logged in the filling of the Holy Spirit, metabolization of Bible doctrine in the stream of consciousness as epignosis. The gold of the spiritual life is metabolized doctrine circulating in your stream of consciousness.
(a) Gold is a metaphor for the riches of glory from the execution of the unique spiritual life of the Church Age. Eph 1:18, 3:16; Col 1:27; Rom 11:33-34; Phil 2:5; Heb 10:35-36.
(b) A metaphor is defined as the application of a word to a concept it does not literally denote, a concept that has to do with the spiritual life.
© The concept is the perception, metabolization, and application of Bible doctrine under the filling of the Holy Spirit. Our capital investment is Bible doctrine circulating in the stream of consciousness.
(d) Gold, as the highest value of the ancient world, is analogous to the execution of the will and plan of God through the perception, metabolization, and application of doctrine, and the great blessing in time and the greatest rewards in our resurrection body at the evaluation throne of Christ.
(e) The gold metaphor requires rebound. Rebound is necessary to remain in harmonious rapport with God under the doctrine of true Christian fellowship. This is the importance of gold refined by fire, or separated from its slag through fire. Slag is the fused matter separated from gold during the process of separating gold from its ore. Slag is a metaphor analogy to carnality or sin. The slag is removed by rebound. Rebound is the smeltering process. Fire is the motivation of double punishment.
4. Rev 3:19, “’Those whom I love, I reprimand and punish; therefore keep on being motivated and change your mind.’”
a. The Greek verb PHILEO means to have an intimate love for someone, and is only used in the New Testament of God’s intimate love for the believer. When God is the subject of PHILEO in the New Testament it means that God is talking to believers only. So while God is disciplining us, He still loves us intimately.
b. It is objectively possible for God to love us in the time of our greatest failure, and to show His love for us by punishing us. We have a relationship with God that cannot be broken by our failure. God never fails us, but we fail Him every time we sin.
c. Our mental attitude when being disciplined by the Lord is critical. We have to have the self-discipline to take our punishment and learn from it. Bitterness is the worst thing we can do when being disciplined.
d. God’s intimate love for us is never broken. It is not broken by our failure, nor is it broken by God’s discipline. When we are under punishment and reprimand, He still loves us.
e. Since God loves us just as much when we are in fellowship as when we are out of fellowship, then we must keep on being diligent about rebound.
5. Rev 3:20, “Behold, I stand at the door and I keep on knocking [punishment]. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door [rebound], I will come in to him and dine with Him and he with Me [restoration of fellowship with God and resumption of our spiritual life].”
G. 1 Pet 1:8.
1. Learn and live is our greatest profit in life. On the other hand, live and learn is our greatest loss in life. We can take into eternity the greatest wealth of history as winner believers and we can have the greatest of blessings in time.
2. 1 Pet 1:8, “And although you have not seen Him, you continue loving Him, and concerning Whom although you do not see Him now, but keep on believing [faith-perception], you rejoice to the maximum with joy inexpressible, having been honored.”
a. The interpretation of this verse depends upon the understanding the relationship between the aorist active indicative of HORAO, which means “to see,” and the present active indicative of the verb AGAPAO, which means “to love.” Peter is saying that the way to love the Lord Jesus Christ is by knowing Him through Bible doctrine rather than seeing Him physically. We can have a far greater love for the Lord than any human being.
(1) If we have true love in our soul, that true love is not going to be changed because someone does not dance to our tune, someone does not do what we want them to do, someone hurts our feelings, someone does something that distresses us.
(2) True love does not change. Our Lord has true love for us and it does not change whether we are spiritual or carnal. God has never changed His love toward any member of the human race, even those who reject His love.
(3) We cannot change God’s love for us. We cannot change the humanity of Christ. He demonstrates His own love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died as a substitute for us. The capacity of God’s love is eternal and infinite. God’s love is immutable.
(4) Seeing someone is not the best way to know or love them. It is what goes on in the soul that counts.
(5) We are honored at the BEMA of Christ after the resurrection of the Church.
b. We have a far greater opportunity to glorify God than the disciples ever had while they saw Jesus on earth. They did not have the infallible New Testament or the spiritual life of the Church Age which you have. Peter is saying that although I have seen Christ, you (the second generation of Christians around 65 A.D. and the rest of believers in the Church Age) have a far better system for loving Him through Bible doctrine. There is no substitute for Bible doctrine metabolized and circulating in our stream of consciousness.
c. Although we do not have the benefit of seeing our Lord at the present time, but we have the benefit of seeing our Lord in Bible doctrine. The only doctrine that benefits you is the doctrine you believe, the doctrine you metabolize.
d. The principle of happiness based on Bible doctrine circulating in the stream of consciousness is the highest quality of happiness in life. It is a gift from God to each one of us. “Unalloyed” means a pure metal separated from the ore. “Joy” is personal love for God. Without personal love for God, the believer cannot and does not possess the joy of pure happiness. Joy is a system of thinking doctrine under testing.
(1) Joy is a word used for happiness. Joy is not mixed with our emotion, but with metabolized doctrine in purity of the filling of the Spirit, Eph 5:18.
(2) The power of this joy or happiness is seen in Heb 12:2, “Be concentrating on Jesus, the founder and the perfecter of our doctrine, who because of His exhibited joy, He endured the Cross, disregarding the shame, and He has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”
(3) Happiness gives us tremendous staying power under testing.
(a) Jam 1:12, “Happy is the person who has staying power under testing, because when he passes the testing he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him.” Staying power under testing comes from happiness. To pass the testing you have to love the Lord.
(b) Jam 1:2, “Think it all joy, brethren, whenever you encounter various testings.”
e. The phrase “full of glory” should be translated “having been honored.” This is a reference to our escrow blessings for eternity. How can a believer be decorated with a crown of righteousness after the resurrection? Paul explains in 1 Tim 6:11, “But you, oh man of God, flee these things [sins], and keep on pursuing capacity righteousness, the spiritual life, doctrine, virtue-love, perseverance, and thoughtfulness of others.” You execute this command two ways.
(1) Resist temptation, when it comes.
(2) Rebound when you do sin.
3. Aggressive love.
a. The first characteristic of aggressive love is enduring devotion.
(1) Enduring devotion is the staying power of Jesus Christ in His spiritual life, where virtue-love was introduced into the human history as the quintessence of spiritual power.
(2) Enduring devotion toward God the Father and respect for what God the Father was doing at the Cross (imputation and judgment of sin) were used by our Lord Jesus Christ on the Cross. Jesus Christ respected the judging of God the Father. Both enduring devotion and respect came from our Lord’s personal love for God the Father. Impersonal love was directed toward all mankind. Apart from the personal love of Jesus Christ on the Cross for God the Father there can be no impersonal love for all mankind. This is seen in unlimited atonement.
(3) In enduring devotion, the human nature of Jesus Christ in hypostatic union included dedication to the will and plan of God. Dedication is doing the will of someone you love. Dedication is cognition of the will and plan of God.
(4) A part of aggressive love is consecration. Consecration is the harmonious rapport of our Lord Jesus Christ with God the Father. When the believer transfers the thinking of Christ into his own soul through the mentorship of God the Holy Spirit, subsequent harmonious rapport with God advances the believer to spiritual maturity and PLEROMA status. Enduring devotion comes out of this.
4. Responding Love.
a. Responding love is an equal love with aggressive love.
b. If you have intensive love for God, then you respond with deference and admiration for Him.
c. If you have enduring loyalty, you honor God.
d. If you have consecration, then you have esteem for Him.
e. If you have dedication, you have consideration and partiality for Him.
f. Respect is responding love.
(1) Respect is response to the love of God as part of the integrity of your spiritual life. True love is related to integrity, and without integrity true love does not exist.
(2) Respect means submission to the will of God as revealed in the infallible word of God.
(3) Respect is the believer’s attitude toward accurate Bible teaching by which we come to know God and thereby to love God.
(4) Respect is giving the highest honor to God in everything.
(5) Respect is the key to harmonious rapport with God, including recognition of His authority and leadership.
(6) Respect is a responding love for God which demonstrates consideration and partiality to God the Holy Spirit as our mentor and teacher. Respect demands knowledge of the one that you respect.
5. The Power Line.
a. Capacity righteousness in the soul produces virtue-love in the soul, which leads to the greatest happiness that has ever existed on earth, a present from God to the believer.
a. The power line: CR (capacity Righteousness) in V-L = +H.
(1) Your integrity comes from your capacity righteousness first.
(2) From your capacity righteousness comes virtue-love.
(3) From your virtue-love comes sharing the happiness of God.
b. You will never form the battle line in your soul against sin (Heb 12:4) until you have formed the power line in your soul.
c. The righteousness of God is the basis for the love of God. God loves the believer in fellowship just as much as the carnal believer. He has the same amount of love for both believers because He has perfect righteousness. God’s impersonal love for all unbelievers comes from His perfect righteousness. Our impersonal love comes our capacity righteousness.
d. God has never lost any of His happiness, any of His love, or any of His righteousness. God has made His happiness available to us, but we never receive that happiness until we have capacity righteousness to the maximum and virtue-love from the ministry of God the Holy Spirit.
e. Scripture.
(1) Better things come from the infallible word of God, Heb 4:12, “The word of God is alive and powerful...”
(2) Better things come from the word of God in your soul, Prov 6:22, “When you walk, it [Bible Doctrine] will lead you; when you lie down, it will guard you; when you wake up, it will talk to you.”
(3) Better things come from taking refuge in the Lord, Ps 118:8-9, “It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man. It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in princes.”
(4) If you fail in those areas mentioned in Ps 118:8-9, then Ps 30:15 applies, “Weeping may endure for the night, but joy comes in the morning.” (5) Neh 8:10, “Do not be grieved; for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”
f. The power line is the solution to grief, the solution to sorrow, the solution to adversity, the capacity for blessing, the capacity for life. Happiness is your strength in disaster.
g. The power for capacity righteousness was given to us at the moment of salvation as a part of our spiritual heritage. “But you shall receive power, when the Holy Spirit comes upon you.”
h. Imputed perfect righteousness we receive at salvation as a part of our positional sanctification. Capacity righteousness is given to us as a part of our experiential sanctification at the moment of salvation with the filling of the Holy Spirit. Only when we are filled with the Spirit do we have the function of personal love for God and impersonal love for all mankind. This true love will not function without capacity righteousness or the filling of the Spirit. This is why Gal 5:22 says that “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, tranquility.” The power line only opens up and works when we rebound. There is no spiritual life when the power line shuts down. Life in the power line is love, happiness, tranquility.
i. Capacity righteousness belongs to the function of the unique spiritual life of the Church Age and is a part of experiential sanctification. Capacity righteousness is related to the spiritual life and the spiritual life is related to experiential sanctification. God has given us everything, so that we can make decisions every day for Him, instead of making decisions to please ourselves in some form of sin. Capacity righteousness is the filling of the Spirit, metabolized doctrine circulating in the stream of consciousness, the utilization of the ten problem solving devices.
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© 1989, by R. B. Thieme, Jr. All rights reserved.
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