Spir Dynamics 1279-1326 7/12/98
A. Introduction.
1. There is only one way you will ever come into harmonious rapport with God and it starts with the filling of the Holy Spirit, because the fruit (gain, profit) of the Spirit is love.
2. It is profitable to love God. There is no greater profit in life. It should number one on your scale of values to love each member of the Trinity, but you will first come to a love for God the Holy Spirit because He is our mentor, our teacher, and He brings to our memory those things which we have forgotten.
3. The love you have for good must be the same as the two categories of love which the man and the woman bring to the alter in marriage.
a. The man brings an aggressive love called enduring devotion to the marriage. The word aggressive means a vigorous initiative in persistence of perception, metabolization, and application of Bible doctrine through the function of the two power options (the filling of the Spirit and metabolization of doctrine).
b. The woman brings a responding love called respect to the marriage.
4. Love never functions apart from grace. All true love is grace. God provides true love to us through grace. We deserve nothing. God never rejects the unbeliever. The unbeliever rejects the love of God.
5. How are we going to have a love for invisible God? There is only one way—we have to know God.
a. All spiritual life is related to the thinking of God as mentioned in 1 Cor 2:16. The whole system of love and the spiritual life is a system of thinking doctrine. But you cannot think what you do not know.
(1) How does God enable us to understand what is normally beyond our comprehension—the spiritual phenomena, the doctrine of the inerrant word of God? How does God accomplish the seemly impossible task of communicating to the finite minds of mankind those perfect divine attributes related to the integrity of God?
(2) God has revealed Himself to our finite minds through the ministry of the Holy Spirit in verbal plenary inspiration, resulting in the infallible word of God. The infallible word of God, known to us as the Bible, contains the mind, the faculty of thinking of Christ.
(3) 1 Cor 2:16, “For who has known the thinking [NOUS should never be translated “mind” but “thinking"] of the Lord that we should instruct Him? But we have the thinking of Christ.”
(4) The thinking of Christ is tantamount to Bible doctrine, but to us in the dispensation of the Church, it is a specific kind of Bible doctrine. In Eph 3:3-10; Col 1:26-27; 1 Tim 3:16; Eph 5:32 it is called “the mystery doctrine, mystery doctrine, this mystery.” Rom 16:25-26 gives the definition of mystery doctrine, “Now to Him who is able to establish you according to my gospel, the preaching of Jesus Christ on the basis of the revelation of the mystery which has been kept secret for long ages past, but now has been revealed by the Scriptures.” This doctrine is part of your portfolio of invisible assets, your spiritual heritage. We have a spiritual life which is far greater than morality. Morality leads to arrogance and legalism when adopted by believers as the Christian way of life.
b. If you have no true love for people (as you may have demonstrated by a love-hate relationship with someone over a period of years), then you certainly do not have any true love for invisible God. How can you love someone you have not seen, when you cannot even love someone you have seen? How can you love God when you know nothing about Him? How can you love God without His thinking in you? How can you love anyone without getting to know them? You cannot.
c. When we believe in Jesus Christ, we enter into a postsalvation spiritual life which mandates love. All believers are the beneficiary of God’s love. God’s love has not rejected us. But we have rejected the love of God, when we as believer’s reject the spiritual life. Therefore, there is divine discipline, which is also performed in love. Therefore, understanding the love of God is one of the most important things in our spiritual life.
d. God loves you. Do you love God?
6. You have the potential through the perception and metabolization of Bible doctrine for enduring devotion as one category of love for God. It is an aggressive function of the soul in the vigorous pursuit of metabolized doctrine and its application. Enduring devotion for God comes through Bible doctrine and no other way. It is thinking, not emotion. Most people think of loving God as having something to do with emotion, and therefore, the more emotional they are the more they love God. But emotion is not even a part of the spiritual life. It is only a result of the spiritual life occasionally because of something wonderful in response.
7. You have the potential through the perception and metabolization of Bible doctrine for respecting God. Respect for God is true love also. Respect for God includes admiration (worship), deference (your scale of values), honor (the honor code of royal family), esteem, consideration, partiality (by always exposing yourself to the teaching of the word of God).
8. How is God going to get your admiration, deference, honor, esteem, consideration, and partiality? You can make Bible doctrine your highest priority in life and learn about God, or you can ignore God and learn to respect Him through divine discipline. Therefore, the spiritual life goes deeper than a casual knowledge of what God demands in both categories of true love.
9. We have to have both categories of true love to love God.
a. We must have an enduring devotion toward God as an aggressive function of our soul.
b. We must also have respect for God.
10. So there are two categories of true love in the soul. These two categories are potential. Without Bible doctrine circulating in the stream of consciousness they remain potential. They are illustrated by the love between a man and a woman.
a. First there is the aggressive love of enduring devotion. The husband must bring to the marriage enduring devotion. Devotion in Christian marriage is intense love for and enduring loyalty to one’s wife, plus consecration to the biblical principles of Christian marriage. The biblical principle includes the concept of “for better or for worse,” intimacy without shame (Gen 2:25), coalescence of souls on the part of the husband that protects his wife as a responder to one man. Enduring devotion is made up of: intensive love, enduring loyalty, consecration, and dedication.
(1) Enduring devotion is aggressive in the function of the soul. It is the vigorous pursuit of the cognition, metabolization, and application of Bible doctrine.
(2) Devotion is intense love for and profound dedication, consecration, and occupation with God; hence, dedication to God based on Bible doctrine circulating in the seven compartments of the stream of consciousness. Your dedication is your daily attitude toward the word of God.
(3) Consecration is dedication to the principle of harmonious rapport with God as a mature believer resulting in advance to PLEROMA status. Consecration is the function of enduring devotion as a mature believer.
b. The second category is respect. Respect is the key to the woman’s love for her husband. Respect includes her admiration, deference, honor, esteem, consideration and partiality. These also describe our worship for the Lord as we come to know Him through Bible doctrine. Respect is a response to the grace of God as the ultimate expression of God’s love from His integrity.
(1) Respect is the response to the grace of God as the ultimate expression of God’s love from His divine integrity. Respect demands the fulfillment of Prov 3:34 as quoted in Jam 4:6 and 1 Pet 5:5, “God makes war against the arrogant believer, but He gives grace to the humble believer.”
(2) If you are not on the right road with regard to your love for God, you will have arrogance in some form. It may be blind arrogance and you will not see it, but it will be there.
(3) Respect demands we remain in the status of humility.
(4) Respect denotes that through Bible doctrine God becomes the focal point of the believer’s approbation, wonder, and astonishment.
(5) Deference means submission to the judgment, opinion, and will of God.
(6) Honor is the highest form of respect for the integrity of God.
(7) Esteem assigns the highest value and admiration to God.
(8) Respect as a love response means to show consideration and partiality to the eternal and invisible Godhead.
(a) Consideration means careful thought, meditation, and divine viewpoint in the evaluation of the circumstances of life.
(b) Partiality is the divine viewpoint with regard to those circumstances.
11. Testing demands the use of Bible doctrine in the form of problem solving devices. Temptation demands overcoming the sin nature.
a. Even though Adam and the woman were perfect, they failed the test. Only occupation with Christ could have prevented the original sin. The only potential problem solving device they had was personal love for Jesus Christ. They were so wrapped up with each other, their personal love for each other kept them from having the proper love for the Lord Jesus Christ. Their love for Jesus Christ was not as strong as their love for each other. They were preoccupied with each other to the point that they never became occupied with Christ.
b. Satan eventually revolted against God because he had no respect for God and no enduring devotion. So you have an exact duplication between what happened to Satan in his fall and what happened to Adam and the woman in their fall. Perfection is not the answer until you have a resurrection body. No one will ever fail in a resurrection body.
(1) 2 Cor 11:3, “But I am concerned that, just as the serpent completely deceived Eve by his cunning misrepresentation, your thinking may be led astray from that noble simplicity and virtue, which is with reference to Christ.”
(2) The serpent was the most beautiful of all creatures and was a biped or quadruped. The serpent was not actually speaking, but Satan speaking through this animal.
(3) Adam was so much in love that he was being led instead of leading. He should also have done something about her doing a lot of talking to a stranger.
(4) You cannot lose your relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ, but you can be corrupted in your thinking. Rapport with God means you have to think as Jesus Christ thought.
c. What is paramount in both testing and temptation is love for God, occupation with the person of Christ. Even in the state of perfection, Adam and Eve lacked the cornerstone of true spirituality, which is harmonious rapport with God. They were perfect, but never got around to the ultimate—personal love for Jesus Christ.
12. So there is no substitute for the filling of the Holy Spirit, personal love for God the Father and occupation with Christ.
a. The spiritual life goes deeper than casual knowledge and relationship; for the love for God demands both categories for true love of God.
b. We have the potential for enduring devotion as the aggressive function of the soul in the vigorous pursuit of cognition, metabolization, and application of Bible doctrine. If that does not take first place, you may have married the greatest person in the world and have great response, and yet something is always going to be missing because the marriage is not built on the solid rock of personal love for God.
c. The highest form of spiritual life is the fact that the Church Age believer is given the capability of loving God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
d. There are two categories of love that every Church Age believer must have to love God, and without them you can have everything in life but there is always something missing. Eventually some test comes along where you can advance with doctrine, but the doctrine is not there, and you flunk the test and are in terrible misery.
13. Principles.
a. We must never think of love as separate from integrity.
b. We learn to love the Lord through doctrine. We learn to respect the Lord through discipline.
c. There is no true love in your life unless you have virtue and integrity in your soul. Without virtue and integrity in your soul, there is no such thing as true love. The only love that has substance is based on integrity, and integrity has no emotion.
d. The key to true love is in your soul, not in your body. When you have sexual sins outside of marriage, you immediately have a very serious problem, because there is no possibility of any true love in your life. You cannot violate the marriage vows and have integrity in your soul.
e. Many Christians will never find there own true love, because the Lord Jesus Christ is not first place in their life.
f. The love of God has never rejected us, it is we who have rejected the love of God.
g. Love is the highest and most effective function of integrity. If you hate your enemies, then you have no integrity.
h. Divine love has demonstrated that fact that true love and integrity are never separated but part of the virtue of the human soul. This is why we learn to love the Lord through doctrine and we learn to respect the Lord through discipline and doctrine.
i. Therefore virtue-love in the believer is a reflection of divine love as part of the integrity of God.
B. Loving God, Who is Invisible, 1 Pet 1:8.
1. In 1 Pet 1:8 we are told we can love God who is invisible to us and that we can love the Lord under the same circumstances. Therefore, it is very important for us to understand just exactly what we have in our soul that gives us this great power of love. Bible doctrine gives us this power to love invisible God.
This power is made up of two parts: the aggressive love of enduring devotion and the responding love of respect.
2. We learn to love the Lord through metabolized Bible doctrine circulating in the stream of consciousness. We learn to respect the Lord through divine discipline from that divine love found in the integrity of God.
a. Love without integrity is not love.
b. True love is always based on integrity.
c. We love God because He loved us first.
d. The power for this integrity is the filling of the Spirit and Bible doctrine circulating in the stream of consciousness.
e. Our love for God must be compatible with the spiritual life. Therefore, you cannot love God unless you know what the spiritual life is.
f. With God’s righteousness imputed to you, you are qualified to have an aggressive love toward God as God has had an aggressive love toward you from eternity past.
g. You do not stick to the plan of God unless you love the author of the plan. Love from God is not emotion. Love for God is not emotion.
h. God’s love does not compromise the integrity of God. Likewise, our love for God must not and will not compromise the integrity of God.
3. Principles.
a. The Church Age believer cannot have a love for God or a true perspective of the spiritual life unless he becomes cognizant of the potential for true love for God in his own soul. With personal love for God, everything else in the spiritual life is going to fall into place.
(1) Every believer is responsible for the success or the failure of his or her own spiritual life. God has provided everything necessary in our very own portfolio of invisible assets.
(2) Whether a winner or loser believer, there is no greater security than the personal love of God for the believer. You have never been and never will be abandoned by God. However, the loser believer will receive the most unique discipline prior to death and the winner believer will receive the most fantastic blessings.
(3) The spiritual or winner believer has activated the potential of his love for God in two categories—aggressive love for God and responding love for God. Both categories are a potential in the soul of every believer.
b. The highest form of spiritual life is the fact that the believer in the Church Age is given the capability of loving God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in his soul under two categories.
In the Church Age, as never before in human history, there is a potential for the individual believer to love God, to have a harmonious rapport with God, to have a relationship with God that has never existed before in all of history and will never exist again after the resurrection of the Church.
(1) The Church Age believer cannot have a love for God or a true perspective of the spiritual life of the Church Age unless he becomes cognizant of the potential for true love for God in his own soul.
(a) The highest form of spiritual life is the fact that the believer in the Church Age is given the capability of loving God in the fulfillment of our spiritual life.
(b) The spiritual life is a system of thinking, “Let this thinking be in you which was also in Christ Jesus,” Phil 2:5.
© Thinking reached it peak with the thinking of Christ on the Cross, which enabled Him to remain on the Cross and bear every sin of human history.
(2) In this dispensation, our postsalvation spiritual life goes deeper than casual knowledge and relationship with God. The spiritual life demands you get on God’s agenda, which never conflicts with normal things in life.
c. Category one is enduring devotion as the aggressive function of the soul in the vigorous pursuit of cognition, metabolization, and application of Bible doctrine. Aggressive love toward God is persistance in the perception, metabolization, and application of doctrine. You cannot develop aggressive love without developing responding love.
(1) Devotion is defined as intensive love for and profound dedication, consecration, and occupation with the person of Christ.
(2) Enduring devotion is the aggressive function of the soul in vigorous pursuit of consistent perspicacity in the field of Bible doctrine. The pattern of perspicacity is perception, metabolization, application of Bible doctrine on a consistent basis.
(3) Enduring devotion is profound dedication to God on the basis of the Greek word EPIGNOSIS, which refers to metabolized Bible doctrine circulating in the seven compartments of the stream of consciousness of your soul—the frame of reference, memory center, vocabulary, categorical, conscience, momentum, and wisdom compartments.
(4) Enduring devotion is the thought, the thinking of Christ, 1 Cor 2:16. It is not academic thinking or emotion. The spiritual life is the greatest system of dynamic thinking in all of human history.
(5) Consecration is dedication to harmonious rapport with God resulting in the status quo of the mature believer with the spiritual motivation to advance to the high ground of PLEROMA status. Consecration is dedication to the perception, metabolization and application of Bible doctrine.
(6) Dedication to God is based on metabolized Bible doctrine circulating in the stream of consciousness. As the doctrine in your soul increases, the light increases and you see yourself clearly in the mirror of the word of God. The light is the word of God circulating in your stream of consciousness.
(a) Eph 3:19, “And come to know the love for Christ which surpasses academic knowledge that you may be filled resulting in all the fullness of blessing from God.” This love is built on EPIGNOSIS. “All the fullness of blessing from the source of God” is PLEROMA status, which is maximizing the spiritual life. When you reach PLEROMA status, you have enduring devotion to God. This is the point of aggressive love for God.
(b) Eph 3:20, “Now to Him who is able to do infinitely more than all we could ask or think on the basis of the power that keeps on working in us,” .The power that keeps on working in us is the fantastic spiritual life executed by the human nature of Jesus Christ which was given to us so we could have aggressive love for God.
© Eph 3:21, “to Him the glory by means of the Church and by agency of Christ Jesus with reference to all generations of this unique age of the ages. Amen.”
d. Category two of personal love for God is respect. This is the responsive side of personal love for God. Every believer has both enduring devotion and respect in their soul as a potential.
(1) Respect is the response to the grace of God as the ultimate expression of God’s love directed toward us.
(2) Therefore, respect is the response to the love of God as a part of divine integrity.
(3) True love must always be related to integrity. Without integrity there is no true love for God or anyone else.
(4) Since the believer’s response to the love of God as expressed by the grace of God is the passive part of our love for God, our respect demands the fulfillment of 1 Pet 5:5 and Jam 4:6, “But He gives a greater grace. Therefore it [Prov 3:34] says, `God makes war against the arrogant, but gives grace to the humble.’” We only learn in the status quo of humility. Arrogance resists the truth.
(5) Love for God in our souls cannot co-exist with the arrogance complex of sins. To the extent that you entertain bitterness, you have no respect for God. To the extent you have guilt in your thinking, you have no respect for God. This includes fear, worry, anxiety, jealousy, vindictiveness, vilification, malice, revenge. To the extent you enter into these sins you enter into irrationality, you do not have respect for God, and they destroy any possibility of fulfilling the spiritual life. Irrational people do not love.
(6) Love for God is not emotion. Therefore, respect always emphasizes thinking, especially Bible doctrine pertaining to God.
(7) This is thinking with respect to the concepts of true love, such as the astonishment and deference that comes from this. By deference is meant respect, that respect which is submission to the judgment, to the opinions, to the will of God.
(8) While human opinion falls short of the absolute, divine opinion as stated in the infallible word of God is absolute truth about any subject so mentioned.
(9) Honor is a part of respect. Honor is the highest form of respect for the integrity of God, and therefore, the unique spiritual life of the Church Age has an absolute and perspicuous honor code.
(10) Therefore, respect as a love-responder means to show consideration and partiality to eternal and invisible God as revealed in the Scriptures.
(a) Consideration means careful thought and meditation on Bible doctrine you have learned. Evaluating the circumstances of life from the divine viewpoint through Bible doctrine.
(b) Partiality refers to your scale of values based on Bible doctrine circulating in your stream of consciousness. Partiality functions around what is first in your scale of values.
e. As believers, we all have in our souls both enduring devotion and respect (the two categories of true love) as a potential, a potential that is only realized through maximum metabolized doctrine circulating in the stream of consciousness. We have the opportunity to have the greatest love that has ever existed in all of human history. Nothing like it has ever existed before and nothing like it will ever exist again after the Church Age.
f. The illustration of these two categories of love is found in Christian marriage. The husband brings true love to the altar in the form of enduring devotion. The wife brings true love to the altar in the form of respect.
(1) Christian marriage is extrapolated from the divine institution of marriage as a corporate testimony for the Prosecution in the rebuttal phase of Satan’s appeal trial. Therefore, Christian marriage is a dramatic analogy to the mystery doctrine of the unique dispensation of the Church.
(2) Christian marriage is the high point for development of the spiritual life in the husband and the wife because they both must have enduring devotion and respect. The husband must love his wife as Christ loved the Church and he must also develop a responding love to the teaching of the word of God. The wife must respect her husband but she has an aggressive love of enduring devotion toward Bible doctrine. Both have equal privilege and equal opportunity to execute the spiritual life.
(3) This explains the two categories of love sponsored by the prototype spiritual life of the humanity of Christ in hypostatic union. To be effective, both categories of love must first be directed toward God, and then toward husband and wife. Enduring devotion and respect as the two categories of love between a man and a woman in Christian marriage will not function unless these two categories of love first exist toward God. The mandates of Ephesians chapter five cannot be executed until the man or the woman has the two categories of love (enduring devotion and respect) toward God. There is no true love in the soul of a believer unless there is first of all true love in the soul for God. The husband cannot love his wife unless he first loves God. The wife cannot respect her husband unless she first loves God.
(4) God designed sex as a coalescence of souls resulting in a coalescence of bodies. Sex was designed for their mutual benefit and pleasure, but it could only be beneficial and a pleasure when there was coalescence of souls. The coalescence of souls was the execution of the spiritual life and the development love which Adam and the woman in the Garden of Eden had for each other.
(5) The husband must bring an aggressive love called enduing devotion to the wife. The wife must bring responsive love called respect to the husband.
(6) True love cannot survive without respect, and respect cannot survive without true love.
(7) If the man does not bring enduring admiration and the woman does not bring respect to the marriage alter, both husband and wife are ships that pass in the night. They do not know each other, therefore, they do not have true love for each other. You cannot love someone by simply being attracted to what you see physically. You cannot love someone apart from knowledge in the soul.
(8) Many Christians will never find their true love because the Lord Jesus Christ does not hold first place in their life.
(9) If a man cannot bring enduring love to the marriage relationship, he cannot be respected. If a woman cannot bring respect to the marriage relationship, she cannot be loved.
(10) A man cannot love without respect, a woman cannot respect without love.
(11) The husband is commanded to love, but if he cannot love, he will not be respected. The wife is commanded to respect, but if she cannot respect, she will not be loved.
(12) The real issue is the unique spiritual life of the Church Age. Love demanded in Christian marriage cannot be performed by the husband or wife without this love first being directed toward God. That comes only through the execution of the unique spiritual life of all human history—the spiritual life of the Church Age. You do not look for the right man or right woman, you are the right man or the right woman, and God will provide.
(13) For soul rapport in Christian marriage, the husband is under the mandate of enduring devotion. That is his aggressive love. In his spiritual life toward God, the Christian husband also has a strong responsive love toward God. That is his respect. His respect is found in his obedience to the word of God, in his function of metabolization and application of doctrine. For the soul rapport in Christian marriage of the wife, she is under the divine mandate of a strong responsive love of respect for her husband and obedience to his authority. But in her spiritual life directed toward God the wife must also have a strong active love toward God in perception of doctrine; hence, enduring devotion. In their relationship to each other the husband must have that aggressive love of enduring devotion toward his wife and she must respect him. But the wife must also have enduring devotion toward Bible doctrine and the husband must have respect for the word of God or they will never be able to fulfill these commands separately in marriage.
(14) Both of these categories of love in the soul must be developed in our love for God. Love for God is the staying power for marriage. You must have both categories of love for God before you can fulfill the commands of Ephesians chapter five.
4. 1 Pet 1:8, “Although you have never seen Him, you continue loving Him, with reference to Whom at the present time not seeing Him you continue believing, and you rejoice with unalloyed happiness, inexpressible and full of glory.”
a. The subject of this sentence is “Jesus Christ,” the last two words of the previous verse. You will continue to love Him as long as you persist in learning and applying Bible doctrine. The rate of learning must exceed the rate of forgetting, otherwise your love for Him will lag.
b. “Believing” here is not faith in Christ but faith perception of Bible doctrine. You continue believing the Bible doctrine you are taught.
c. The Greek verb AGALLIAO means to rejoice and represents happiness based on doctrine circulating in the stream of consciousness. With this we have a conceptual cognate dative CHARA. This is an expression of maximum happiness which means unalloyed or pure happiness
. (1) “Joy” is unalloyed or pure happiness. It is a system of thinking, not emoting. It is sharing the happiness of God. It is the reality of thinking doctrine resulting in a unique happiness which is related to God. It is the application of virtue and values as a part of harmonious rapport with God. It is the result of consistent love for God based on maximum doctrine in the stream of consciousness. It is the result of loving God with aggressive love in the function of enduring admiration and responding love in the function of respect for God.
(2) Unalloyed means not mixed, pure, and refers to the removing the slag from the metal to purify it. Slag is analogous to the various categories of sin, emotionalism, and the various stages of reversionism that distract the believer from the execution of the spiritual life. Sin and emotion is all removed from this happiness. Joy is the reality of thinking doctrine resulting in unalloyed or pure happiness, a happiness that is absolutely pure. The pureness is doctrine. The pureness is thinking. This happiness has no association with the things of this life.
(3) This joy may be classified in two ways:
(a) Sharing the happiness of God, which means you have personal love for God the Father and you have impersonal love for all mankind. Joy becomes a part of human personal love for God and impersonal love for all mankind.
(b) The continuation of Bible doctrine circulating in the stream of consciousness.
(4) Joy is having the same happiness as our Lord Jesus Christ in His humanity during the dispensation of the hypostatic union. Joy is the mental attitude of the soul of the human nature of our Lord in hypostatic union and the phenomenal staying power of His virtue love. Love and joy go together. Joy and love combine to produce tranquility (CHARA + AGAPE = EIRENE). Love and joy eventually merge and become tranquility.
(5) The basic concept of CHARA is unalloyed or pure happiness in harmonious rapport with God. Personal love for God is the basis for pure happiness. We do not have rapport with God on the basis of what we think. Harmonious rapport is when we are on His level of thinking, what He has revealed, what does the word of God say.
(6) Joy becomes the application of virtue and values for harmonious rapport with God, especially in the area of occupation with Christ. Joy has both personal and impersonal love, just as agape love has both personal and impersonal love.
(7) Joy results in fulfilling both categories of true love in the soul—aggressive true love, the function of enduring admiration, and responsive true love, the function of respect for God.
(8) Without personal love for God, the believer cannot and does not possess the joy of unalloyed happiness. Joy is not mixed with sin or emotion, but with metabolized doctrine in the purity of the filling of the Spirit. Gal 5:22, “The fruit of the Spirit is AGAPE, CHARA...” Love and pure happiness go together. Then comes EIRENE, which means “tranquility.” Love and joy bring tranquility. Pure happiness is tranquility in life in the soul. The greatest happiness any man can have is pure happiness.
(9) The great thing that happens in the spiritual life is when you reach spiritual adulthood, a personal sense of destiny. At that point you have the combining of love for God and unalloyed happiness. This glorifies God and gives you an unparalleled soul happiness. It is the beginning of entering the pinnacle of the spiritual life. If you ever get there, you will never want to turn back. You will be tested, but you will pass the test. This is what happens to all PLEROMA believers.
(10) Joy is a system of thinking doctrine under testing, Jam 1:2, “Think it all joy, brethren, whenever you fall into various testings.” cf. Jam 1:12.
(11) In the prototype spiritual life, the staying power on the Cross is attributed to joy in Heb 12:2, “Be concentrating on Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our doctrine, who because of His exhibited joy, He endured the Cross, disregarding the shame, then He sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”
(12) The two strategic objectives of the spiritual life emphasize joy and personal love for God—occupation with Christ and PLEROMA status quo. Eph 3:19, “And come to know the love for God...resulting in the fullness of blessing from the source of God.”
(13) At the Cross, joy is part of the human personal love of our Lord for God the Father and impersonal love for all mankind, which was used by Christ while bearing our sins. His human personal love for God the Father motivated Him to stay on the Cross.
d. Aggressive true love of enduring devotion is inexpressible. Intense love for God the Father, profound dedication to the mentorship of God the Holy Spirit and occupation with Christ is inexpressible. The impersonal love of Jesus Christ for the human race resulted in our Lord making the decision to receive the imputation of every sin in human history at the Cross. The responsive true love of our Lord for God the Father— respect for the Father—resulted in receiving the judgment of every sin in human history on the Cross.
e. The responding love of respect as a response to the love of God is the believer’s attitude toward accurate Bible teaching by which we come to know God. Respect is responding to the love of God, which shows consideration and partiality to God the Holy Spirit as our mentor, God the Father as the author of the divine plan and occupation with Christ as the ultimate objective of our spiritual life. Respect means submission to the will of God. Respect is giving the highest honor to God in everything.
f. When you love the Lord, you will have both of these categories operational. When you do not have both of these categories operational, you do not love the Lord.
g. There is no emotion in this love. The grace of God is based on love without emotion, love based on thought. Emotion will never bring you to a love for God. We have the Bible so you can think, not emote. The love of God is part of God’s divine integrity, and it is expressed by the grace of God. Therefore, the grace of God is based on love without emotion. Since divine love is part of the integrity of God, it functions in compatibility with His righteousness and His justice. The only love that has substance is based on integrity, and integrity has no emotion. The emotion you add to integrity wipes out integrity.
h. There are two descriptions of this joy.
(1) The Greek word ANEKLALETOS, which means “in expressible, incapable of being described by words.” There are no words to adequately describe the pure happiness which comes to the believer from personal love for God.
(2) The Greek verb DOXZAZW, which means in the passive voice “to be glorified.” When you have personal love for God and joy, you glorify God to the maximum. Here the participle should be translated like a noun “full of honor.” Neh 8:10, “The joy of the Lord is your strength.”
g. There is no slag in joy. Slag is analogous to all the emotion, sin, and reversion that distracts from the execution of the spiritual life, 1 Pet 1:7, “that the proof of your faith [doctrine], being more precious than gold which is perishable even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”
C. The True Love of Jesus Christ.
1. Introduction.
a. The greatest manifestation of the dynamics of human love occurred at the Cross, when the human nature of Jesus Christ in hypostatic union received the imputation and judgment of all of our sins. Our Lord’s staying power on the Cross came from His human love from His human nature. We never advance in the spiritual life without this same staying power.
b. The dynamics of love originate in the soul. True love always originates in the soul, 1 Pet 1:8.
c. Our Lord Jesus Christ had these same two categories of love for God the Father and God the Holy Spirit when He was on the Cross being judged for every sin in the history of the human race. Our Lord had enduring devotion and respect for God the Father and God the Holy Spirit while bearing our sins.
d. When Jesus Christ received the imputation and judgment of all of our sins, He did this because He had these two unique categories of love directed toward God the Father and perfect human impersonal love for the human race.
e. His aggressive love of enduring devotion and responding love of respect came from His true humanity. His prototype spiritual life was centered around this love. He demonstrated under the most awful circumstances of the Cross His enduring devotion and respect for God.
f. Aggressive and responding love were used to break the back of Satan in his appeal trial and to provide the most dynamic spiritual life in human history.
g. The humanity of Jesus Christ had perfect personal love for God the Father because He was born perfect and He never sinned. He had to have perfect personal love for God the Father and perfect impersonal love for every member of the human race to bear our sins. The power of love is phenomenal. Christ could not go to the Cross without perfect love for God the Father who was about to judge Him and for us to be a sacrifice for us. He had perfect enduring devotion and respect for God the Father. He had to remain in a state of respect for God the Father while bearing our sins. He didn’t depend on His deity at any time.
2. In the person of incarnate Jesus Christ are two natures, divine and human, inseparably united, without mixture or loss of separate identity (The divine nature always remains the divine nature and the human nature always remains the human nature, and there is no bleeding over of the attributes of one into the other. Our Lord’s human nature kept its identity on the Cross, and the power was in His personal love for God the Father and impersonal love for the human race.), without loss or transfer of properties or attributes (The attributes of the deity of Christ always adhered to His deity. The attributes of the humanity of Christ always adhered to His humanity.), the union being personal and eternal.
a. The divine and human natures of Jesus Christ in hypostatic union remain distinct, complete, unchanged, without any transfer or loss of attributes at any time or under any circumstances.
b. Therefore, the hypostatic union does not imply two separate and distinct persons. The doctrine of the hypostatic union means one Person with two natures—divine and human—which maintain their separate identity.
c. Therefore, our Lord Jesus Christ has been, is now, and always will be undiminished deity and true humanity in one person forever.
d. The attributes of each nature, divine and human, belong strictly to their corresponding natures, while at the same time, the attributes of each nature belong to one person—our Lord Jesus Christ. The divine nature of our Lord Jesus Christ possesses all of the attributes of deity, but no attributes of humanity. The human nature of our Lord Jesus Christ possesses all of the attributes of perfect humanity, but no attributes of deity. The attributes of deity are never attributed to His humanity and the attributes of humanity are never attributed to His deity.
e. Therefore, there never has been and never will be any transfer of divine attributes to the human nature of Jesus Christ, and there will not be human attributes of Jesus Christ transferred to the divine nature in hypostatic union in the past, now, or forever. Jesus Christ is no less God because He is true humanity. He is no less true humanity because He is God.
f. Therefore, at the same moment while on earth, our Lord seemed to possess contradictory qualities. But the attributes of both natures are properly attributed to one Person. For example, Jesus could be weak and omnipotent at the same time. He could be increasing in knowledge in His humanity while omniscient as God.
3. The deity of Jesus Christ had perfect personal love for God the Father and God the Holy Spirit and His own righteousness from eternity past. The humanity of Jesus Christ in hypostatic union also had perfect personal love. This was perfect human love for both God the Father and God the Holy Spirit from His human nature in hypostatic union in the prototype spiritual life. Our Lord also had perfect human impersonal love for all mankind from His human nature. His perfect human impersonal love for all mankind while bearing our sins demonstrated His respect for the plan of God the Father. He had perfect impersonal love for all mankind from His humanity while bearing our sins or He would not have stayed on the Cross.
a. It is not His divine love that is the issue while bearing our sins on the Cross, but it is the human love of Jesus on the Cross for God and for all mankind that is the issue.
b. Jesus Christ did not want to go to the Cross in His humanity because He knew what He would face. He knew that every sin in human history would be imputed to Him and judged, and He knew that this was the Father’s plan. Yet His love in His humanity was strong enough to go to the Cross because He said “Not My will but Your will be done,” and that was the responding love of respect for the Father’s plan.
c. There is no transfer of attributes from His deity to His humanity while bearing our sins. The humanity of Christ did not depend on His deity while bearing our sins—the doctrine of Kenosis. Therefore, our Lord had to depend on His personal love for God the Father from His humanity and the impersonal love for all mankind from His humanity while bearing our sins. The human love of Jesus Christ for God the Father and all mankind was His motivation for going to the Cross and remaining on the Cross while bearing our sins.
d. 1 Pet 3:18, “For Christ also once and for all suffered as a substitute for our sins, the Righteous One as a substitute for the unrighteous ones [all members of the human race], in order that He might bring us to God, on the one hand having been put to death in the flesh, but on the other hand made alive by the agency of the Spirit.” Compare Rom 8:11, “But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus Christ from the dead dwells in you, and He does, He [the Holy Spirit] who raised Jesus Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who indwells you.”
4. The perfect human love of Jesus Christ.
a. When the prototype spiritual life, invented and executed by the human nature of Jesus Christ in hypostatic union, was passed on to the Church Age believer, the human love of Jesus Christ was included.
(1) Jesus Christ stayed on the Cross because of His human love for God the Father and His human love for the human race.
(2) We have this same fantastic love passed on to us at salvation. This means that we have a perfect reflection of the integrity of God. True love is never without righteousness and justice. True love always has integrity and is fair. Righteousness and justice which always function with the love of God also define it in terms of absolute righteousness and absolute justice expressed in grace.
(3) Therefore, we are mandated to execute this same fantastic love and we are given the meaning of doing it in our spiritual life. Our spiritual life is our harmonious rapport with God, which is our human love for God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. It begins with the filling of the Spirit and continues to develope as we metabolize the problem solving devices. Personal love for God the Father is the same personal love which Christ had on the Cross. Our impersonal love for all mankind is the same human love which our Lord had for all mankind on the Cross.
b. The greatest love for God in all human history came from that human love of Jesus Christ for God the Father and His plan for the human race plus our Lord’s love for the Holy Spirit. There has never been anything like it before, nor will there ever be anything like it in the future. We approximate this love by executing a spiritual life that is far greatest than any other spiritual life before or in the future.
c. The pattern of our Lord’s human love for God became the pattern for the unique spiritual life of the Church Age.
d. This means that the human nature of Jesus Christ in hypostatic union loved God in two categories—the aggressive love of enduring devotion and the responding love of respect.
e. Both categories of personal love in the prototype spiritual life are the same as the personal love of the Church Age believer in two directions—toward God, Rom 8:28, and toward certain persons in marriage, Eph 5:22-33.
(1) The staying power of the man’s love for his Christian wife is loving her as Christ loved the Church.
(2) The staying power of the woman’s love for her Christian husband is respect for her husband through obedience. Respect includes the wife’s deference for her husband, submission to his will, his judgment, his opinion. This is based on admiration for him. Respect includes honor which emphasizes response to the integrity of her husband. Esteem is that part of respect that places her husband above all other men. The wife will inevitably demonstrate respect in terms of consideration and partiality.
(3) Both have equality of spiritual life.
f. The ultimate testimony of both categories of personal love are found in the Christian institution of marriage, where they provide the coalescence of souls resulting in the coalescence of bodies. The greatest testimony that ever existed in all human history against Satan in his appeal trial is the corporate testimony of Christian marriage. In every generation, just a few couples attain this. Their impact goes way beyond the fantastic marriage they have.
g. Both categories reside in the soul of the believer as a potential love for God and the ultimate of the spiritual life of the dispensation of the Church.
h. The ultimate for these two categories of personal love is the function of the unique spiritual life of the Church Age directed toward God. This is the modus vivendi of the mature believer.
i. The aggressive human personal love of Jesus Christ in hypostatic union directed toward God is enduring devotion, and specifically on the Cross where it was tested far beyond anything any human being has ever had to face.
(1) Devotion is defined as the human personal love of the human nature of Jesus Christ directed toward God in three categories:
(a) In the dispensation of the hypostatic union with emphasis on the Cross.
(b) In the rest of human history from the resurrection, ascension, and session of Christ until the end of human history.
© Throughout the eternal state.
(2) Devotion also includes dedication.
Dedication is based on cognition of the will and plan of God for the incarnation, the rest of human history, and the eternal state.
(3) Devotion includes consecration, which describes harmonious rapport with God the Father, with His own divine nature in hypostatic union, and with God the Holy Spirit under the filling of the Spirit.
(4) Dedication and consecration to the will of God demand thinking doctrine in the human soul of Jesus Christ. This doctrine nourished capacity for perfect soul love in the human nature of Jesus Christ, a perfect soul love that gave Him staying power on the Cross. The greatest staying power in all of human history came from true love in the human soul of Jesus Christ.
(5) All true love and its perpetuated capacity existed in the humanity of Jesus Christ, hence “the thinking of Jesus Christ.” Therefore, we have a phrase in 1 Cor 2:16 mistranslated “the mind of Christ” which should be translated “the thinking of Christ.”
(6) Every Church Age believer has the thinking of Christ in the Scripture, “we have the thinking of Christ.”
(7) The objective of the believer is to transfer the thinking of Christ into his own soul through the mentorship of God the Holy Spirit. Jn 14:26, “But our Mentor, the Holy Spirit, the Father will send in My name. He will teach you all things, and He will remind you of the all things which I said to you for your benefit.”
(a) The rate of learning Bible doctrine must always exceed the rate of forgetting Bible doctrine for the love of God to flourish in the soul resulting in harmonious rapport with God.
(b) When the rate of forgetting Bible doctrine exceeds the rate of learning Bible doctrine there will be a decline in your capacity for love. Hence, the importance of rebound on the one hand and repetition in learning Bible doctrine on the other hand.
© The spiritual life is constructed from thinking, never from emotion. Emotion does not build or construct anything. Emotion is a responder. When emotion becomes an initiator, it is irresponsibility, irrational, a disaster. Emotion at best is only the result or realization of thinking Bible doctrine pertinent to enduring devotion directed toward God from your human soul. True love in the soul is always related to the integrity of God, the integrity of the soul. There is no such thing as love on this earth with out integrity.
(8) In the case of our Lord Jesus Christ, true love for God was the quintessence of integrity expressed in the impeccability of His human nature in hypostatic union. That gave Him the staying power to be judged for our sins. Staying power is always thought, never emotion. Those who have staying power think; those who depend on ability emote. Emotion and staying power are antithetical. If you depend upon emotion, you run out of emotion.
5. The Staying Power of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
a. The doctrine of impeccability not only includes the hypostatic union but the fact that our Lord’s humanity resisted real temptation through the filling of the Holy Spirit as per Heb 9:14, “How much more will the blood of Christ, who through the agency of the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” Often people are working, thinking this is the spiritual life. But this working is not based on staying power, because staying power is the power of God the Holy Spirit and Bible doctrine circulating in the stream of consciousness. In addition to the filling of the Holy Spirit from birth, our Lord deployed the problem solving devices on the FLOT line of His soul.
b. Heb 12:2 is one of the major verses on staying power, “Be concentrating on Jesus [the humanity of Christ], the founder and perfecter of our doctrine, who because of His exhibited happiness [CHARA—pure, unalloyed happiness], He endured the Cross, disregarding the shame, then He sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”
(1) The execution of this command demands staying power just to begin this spiritual life, to continue it, and to never stop growing spiritually. Too many people are enthusiastic at first, but soon distracted. You will face many distractions and temptations to discontinue the spiritual life.
(2) Sharing the happiness of God was the result of our Lord’s obedience to the Father’s will to remain on the Cross and be judged as a substitute for our sins. Jesus Christ remained pure with personal love for God and true happiness while bearing our sins.
(3) The phrase “He endured the Cross” is the verb HUPOMENO, which means “to endure” and is a reference to the staying power of the human nature of Jesus Christ through His human love for God the Father. Our Lord’s staying power on the Cross was motivated by personal love for God the Father and God the Holy Spirit from His human nature, not His deity. Our Lord also had harmonious rapport with His own divine nature.
(4) Our Lord handled the worst shame in all human history with His staying power—personal love for God the Father and God the Holy Spirit.
c. What our Lord accomplished in His human nature is the greatest unbreakable record of staying power, when He stayed on the Cross long enough to receive the imputation and judgment of every sin. He gave us the same spiritual life with the filling of the Spirit and Bible doctrine to carry us through every testing, blessing, and punishment. Rebound is the basic key to staying power for us. If you do not rebound your sins, you have no staying power.
d. Staying power is seen in the Greek verb HUPOMENO, meaning “to endure” (“He endured the Cross”) .He stayed on the Cross when He came into contact with our worst sins. Nothing was more repugnant to our Lord than sin and to be judged for someone else’s sins. Our Lord set the world’s record for staying power.
e. So part of our spiritual life is staying power, and we are going to be tested in every stage of our spiritual life concerning our staying power. Suffering for blessing is the testing of our staying power.
f. Principles.
(1) In the human nature of Jesus Christ, the perfect, aggressive, human love of enduring devotion not only resisted every temptation to maintain His impeccability and to sustain His love, but the greater reflection of the soul integrity expressed His enduring devotion. This is a demonstration of unique power, the staying power of the last three hours of the Cross—intensified suffering beyond our imagination.
(a) The impeccability of our Lord was on the line. This was the perfect, personal, human love for God the Father, who was imputing and judging these sins, so that the human nature of Jesus Christ fulfilled the plan of God under the greatest testing of all human history. This is described in Phil 2:5-8, “Keep on thinking this in you which [was] also in Christ Jesus, who though He existed in the essence of God He did not think equality with God a gain to be seized, but He laid aside His privileges, taking the form of a slave, having come to be in the likeness of men, and being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even the death of the Cross.”
i. The spiritual life is a system of thinking doctrine, the same thinking which was in the humanity of our Lord Jesus Christ in hypostatic union during the first Advent. The spiritual life is not a system of emotion. Emotional revolt of the soul is counterproductive to the mechanics of the spiritual life. You are to think in the spiritual life, not emote. This thinking is based on metabolized doctrine circulating in your stream of consciousness. The thinking of this spiritual life was invented, tested, and proved by our Lord during the Incarnation.
ii. Jesus Christ had to become a man or God would be a liar, because God made a promise to David that he would have a son who would rule forever. Jesus Christ had to become a man to offer Himself as the only perfect efficacious offering to God for sin—unlimited substitutionary atonement.
iii. Jesus Christ never thought it was a gain to be equal with God, because He always was God. It was not something He needed to gain. He was always equal with God. He was not petty.
iv. “He laid aside His privileges” as deity in order to become true humanity, a perfect slave to the plan of God. “The likeness of mankind” is a reference to the hypostatic union. The true doctrine of kenosis is that during the dispensation of the hypostatic union our Lord Jesus Christ voluntarily restricted the independent use of His divine attributes in compliance with the Father’s plan for the Incarnation and first Advent. Jesus Christ voluntarily restricted the independent use of His divine attributes in compatibility with His own objective and purpose of living among men and their limitations. During the hypostatic union our Lord veiled His preincarnate glory of His deity by giving up the outward appearance of God. He did not use His divine attributes to aid his human nature.
v. Verse 8 is the ultimate statement in the respect as a part of our Lord’s true love for the Father’s plan and the staying power of true humanity in the spiritual life. Our Lord did not quit on the Cross. The same thinking, the same humility, the same spiritual mechanics are available to every Church Age believer as the unique spiritual life of all human history.
(b) The aggressive, perfect human love of enduring devotion demonstrated the unique power of the spiritual life in two ways on the Cross. First, there was the impeccable, personal, human love for God the Father, so that the human nature of Jesus Christ fulfilled God’s plan under the greatest testing of all time. Second, Christ was judged for every sin of every human being in the history of the human race, both believer and unbeliever—the doctrine of unlimited atonement, Rom 5:6; 2 Cor 5:14-15,19; 1 Tim 2:8, 4:10; Tit 2:11; Heb 2:9; 2 Pet 3:9; 1 Jn 2:2, “And He is the propitiation as a substitute for our sins and not for ours only but also as a substitute for the sins of the entire world.”
© Let us translate the doctrine of unlimited atonement into our Lord’s perfect human love for God the Father related to His staying power on the Cross. So perfect was the human love of Jesus Christ for God the Father that He demonstrated the highest degree of staying power in all of human history in two ways. First, He received the imputation of all the sins of human history imputed to Him on the Cross, 1 Pet 2:24; 2 Cor 5:21. Secondly, Jesus Christ endured the judgment of each sin of human history with the enduring staying power of enduring devotion, Rom 5:8; Isa 53:5-6; 1 Pet 3:18, “For Christ also once and for all suffered as a substitute for our sins, the Righteous One as a substitute for the unrighteous ones, in order that He might bring us to God, on the one hand having been put to death in the flesh, but on the other hand made alive by the agency of the Holy Spirit.”
(2) The power of this true soul love is far greater than anything else in life. It is available to every believer of the Church Age in the unique postsalvation spiritual life which was given to us by our Lord. It is the love of maximum integrity directed toward God. It is a gift from Jesus Christ to everyone of us the moment we believe as one of the thirty-nine irrevocable assets we receive at the moment of salvation. It is the transfer of the prototype spiritual life to the operational type spiritual life for the Church Age only.
(a) Jesus Christ reflects the love of the integrity God the Father in His human nature more than anyone who has ever lived. He did this in the prototype spiritual life and then gave this spiritual life to us as members of His royal family.
(b) Rom 5:5, “And confidence does not disappoint us because the love for God has been poured out in our hearts by means of the Holy Spirit who was given to us.”
© 1 Cor 2:9, “And just as it stands written, `Things that the eye has not seen nor the ear heard, neither has it entered into the heart of man the things that God has prepared for those who love Him.”
(d) 1 Jn 2:5, “Whoever guards His word, truly the love for God has been brought to completion in Him.”
(3) Jam 1:12, “Happy is the person who has staying power [HUPOMENO] under testing, because, when he has passed the test, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him.” The greatest power in the spiritual life is love. All true human love in history is the monopoly of the soul, so that it is totally compatible with both the righteousness and justice of God and results in the harmonious rapport with God. In the same context we have Jam 1:2, “Think it all joy [pure, unalloyed happiness free from sin and emotion through personal love for God] whenever you encounter various testings.”
(4) 2 Thes 3:5, “And may the Lord direct your hearts into love for God even with reference to the staying power of Christ.”
(a) The word “direct” is the Greek verb KATEUTHUNO, which means to make a straight path, to direct something to someone. This is a potential based on the believer executing the spiritual life of the Church Age.
(b) The “heart” refers to the stream of consciousness, the location of the seven compartments of the soul (the frame of reference, memory center, vocabulary storage, categorical storage, conscience, momentum department, wisdom department), where thought is circulated.
© Our first concept of love for God is related to the filling of the Holy Spirit. The filling of the Holy Spirit produces love. As we learn doctrine, we come to the point of personal love for God the Father and eventually occupation with Christ.
(d) The “Lord” is a reference to the Lord Jesus Christ in His hypostatic union who produces the action of directing our thoughts into personal love for God the Father and into the same staying power which He had on the Cross. Jesus Christ directs your heart, your thinking into the same love for God the Father which our Lord had as a human beings in hypostatic union.
(e) The noun HUPOMONE means “endurance” or “staying power.” The staying power of Christ refers to everything our Lord did from rejecting the temptation to sin in the desert to the point of staying on the Cross and being judged as a substitute for us. The staying power of Jesus Christ on the Cross is a demonstration of the perfect human love of Jesus Christ from His human nature in hypostatic union directed toward God the Father.
(f) We have been given at the moment of faith in Christ as one of the thirty-nine irrevocable assets the same potential for this staying power in true love developed in the soul. You do not have true love in your soul until you have true love for God. It is the execution of the unique spiritual life of the Church Age. It is reflected in the love which the husband and wife have for each other in Eph 5:22ff. This love is the only love which is totally compatible with the love of the integrity of God.
(g) The staying power of the Cross endured both imputation and judgment of all sins in human history. The staying power of Jesus Christ was motivated by perfect human personal love for God the Father, and perfect human impersonal love for all mankind. He had enduring devotion and respect. He responded to the imputation of our sins with love, respect, dedication, esteem for the Father, consideration and partiality for God the Father. All of this was thought in His stream of consciousness.
(h) The prototype spiritual life of the human nature of Jesus Christ in hypostatic union was motivated by this true love.
(5) 2 Cor 5:14-15, “For the love of Christ motivates us; having reached this conclusion, namely that One died as a substitute for all, therefore all died; in fact He died as a substitute for all, that they who live no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died as their substitute and rose again.”
(a) The phrase “The love of Christ” is a subjective genitive rather than an objective genitive (which would be translated “the love for Christ”) .We are talking about the love from the human nature of Jesus Christ in hypostatic union.
(b) The Greek verb SUNECHO means to sustained, to hold together, to be occupied with, to absorb in, to urged on, to impel, to be motivated. The love of Jesus Christ motivates us. How does the love of Christ motivate us? By going back to the Cross and seeing how Jesus Christ utilized the spiritual life that makes love the greatest power and the greatest dynamics spiritually that has ever existed. The gnomic present tense makes a statement of general, timeless fact. It happens in every general. The love of Christ motivates us without time limits throughout the Church Age. We are motivated to attain the love which our Lord had for God the Father in His humanity.
© The fact that our Lord died as a substitute for all is a reference to His staying power, His personal love for God the Father, which motivated Him to remain on the Cross and be judged for every sin. When anyone rejects Jesus Christ as savior, they are rejecting the love of Christ.
(d) Believers never execute the spiritual life because they are living for themselves and what they can get out of life by way of entertainment and stimulation. If you live for yourself, the love of Christ will never motivate you.
(6) Jam 1:22-25, “But become doers of the word, and not hearers only, constantly deceiving themselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer [carnal believers], he is like a person who observes his natural face in a mirror; for once he glances at himself, then off he goes, and immediately he forgets what sort of a person he was. But he who looks intently into the perfect law, the law of freedom, and has persisted, not having become a forgetful hearer but a doer of accomplishment, he will be happy in what he does.”
(a) A doer of the word is a believer who metabolizes Bible doctrine. Metabolization of doctrine is how the mirror of Bible doctrine is formed in the soul. A hearer of the word is someone who gives the teaching of the word of God a hearing and reject it. Therefore, there is no metabolization of that doctrine. Rejection of Bible doctrine results in self-deception.
(b) If we do not develop this mirror through Bible doctrine circulating in the stream of consciousness, we will fail.
g. The aggressive true love of enduring devotion our Lord Jesus Christ for God the Father resulted in the decision to receive the imputation of all personal sins on the Cross. The responsive true love of respect for God the Father motivated our Lord to receive the judgment of those sins. The result is stated in one phrase in 2 Cor 5:21, “He made Him who knew no sin to become sin as a substitute for us, with the result that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” Christ had to be made sin by imputation. But He retained His perfection while bearing our sins and being judged for them.
6. The Decisions of the Impeccable Human Nature of Jesus Christ on the Cross Related to His Substitutionary Atonement.
a. Two decisions are based on the imputation of all human sins to Christ on the Cross and the judgment of all human sins in Christ on the Cross.
b. The imputation of all human sins to the impeccable human nature of Jesus Christ in hypostatic union required impersonal love for all mankind in His status of spiritual death.
c. The judgment of all human sins by God the Father required our Lord to have personal love for God the Father as the judge and never become bitter.
d. No one is fulfilling the spiritual life until he has personal love for God the Father and impersonal love for all mankind.
e. The aggressive true love of enduring devotion for God the Father resulted in the decision to receive the imputation of every sin in human history.
f. The responsive true love of enduring respect for God the Father resulted in receiving the judgment of every sin in human history.
7. There are three great powers of human love as found in the word of God.
a. The power of the human love of Jesus Christ in hypostatic union loved God the Father so much that He not only received the imputation of every sin in human history and its judgment, but He stayed on the Cross until that judgment was finished.
b. The potential power of human love in the Church Age believer as a result of the transfer of the prototype spiritual life invented, tested, and utilized in the dispensation of the hypostatic union and then given to the Church Age believer.
c. The power of human love in the Christian institution of marriage as a part of the corporate testimony of the Prosecution in the rebuttal phase of Satan’s appeal trial.
d. In each case, this harmonious combination of power occurs in two categories, resulting in maximum glorification of God.
(1) The greatest manifestation of this dynamic human love occurred at the Cross, when the human nature of Jesus Christ in hypostatic union received the imputation and judgment of all of our sins, resulting in eternal salvation through faith alone in Christ alone. He used both aggressive and responding love.
(2) In every case, this dynamic love in two categories (aggressive and responding) combines or originates in the soul of certain categories of mankind.
(a) The soul of the human nature of Jesus Christ in hypostatic union, Rom 5:8.
(b) The soul of the Church Age believer who executes the unique spiritual life of the Church Age, 1 Pet 1:8.
© In Christian marriage, the soul of the husband with emphasis on aggressive love of enduring devotion and the soul of the wife with emphasis on responsive love of respect. In the function of Christian marriage two subcategories must be recognized.
i. The husband is under the divine mandate to have aggressive love for his wife. In the husband’s spiritual life directed toward God, the Christian husband also has a strong responsive love toward God called respect. Most Christians do not have respect for God.
ii. The wife is under the divine mandate of responsive love or respect for her husband and obedience to his authority. At the same time in her spiritual life directed toward God, the wife has strong aggressive love toward God in enduring devotion to perception of doctrine.
(d) Therefore, in the believer’s love for God as a major part of spiritual dynamics, we follow the colors in two ways. We are aggressive in our love toward God through perception, metabolization, and application of Bible doctrine; hence, enduring devotion. We are responsive in our love toward God by obedience to the word of God.
D. True Love In Marriage—Corporate and Personal Testimony.
1. 1 Cor 2:16 says, “For who has known the thinking of the Lord that we should instruct Him? But we have the thinking of Christ.”
a. We will spend our entire lifetime on this earth learning and understanding, and growing in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ, because He has provided for us His very own thinking. The very idea that we can understand what the Lord Jesus Christ thinks and that which has been recorded in the Scripture as His thinking is in itself phenomenal.
b. The Corinthian believers had learned a little doctrine and they thought they knew it all. As a result, in their blasphemy they were guilty of trying to teach the Lord.
c. The thinking of Christ is recorded in the New Testament epistles. No believer is capable of any kind of love which is mandated for the spiritual life apart from the thinking of Christ. Love is a part of thinking in the soul. It is not emotion.
d. The mandates that are given to us with regard to Christian marriage cannot be fulfilled apart from love for God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, and that love only comes when we possess in our soul the thinking of Christ. No Christian ever has true love in his soul for God unless he has true love circulating in the stream of consciousness, and that comes through perception, metabolization, and application of Bible doctrine.
2. Principles.
a. The power of the human love of Jesus Christ in hypostatic union is the potential power of human love in every Church Age believer. This is a part of the heritage of the Church Age.
b. The potential power of human love in the Church Age believer is the result of the transfer of the prototype spiritual life that Jesus Christ invented, tested, and proved throughout the dispensation of the hypostatic union, especially on the Cross.
(1) This power was illustrated when Jesus Christ was on the Cross and God the Father called for the printout of all the sins of human history and imputed them to Jesus Christ for judgment.
Our made the decision to receive the imputation of all of the sins of human history. He received the imputation and judgment of these sins.
(2) This is the greatest spiritual function of all human history, and it came from the very spiritual life which He invented and has given to us as Church Age believers. This spiritual life is exceedingly abundantly above anything we could ever ask for or think. The spiritual life is a system of thinking. So who has known this thinking of Lord? Anyone who is a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ and has exposed themselves to the teaching with regard to the greatest spiritual life that ever existed.
(3) Every mandate we have requires the filling of the Spirit and personal love for God.
c. This love comes in two categories: enduring devotion and respect. Every believer has the potential for enduring devotion, which is the aggressive part of true love, and respect, which is the responding part of true love.
(1) You cannot ever commit any kind of a sin and at the same time have respect for God.
(2) Therefore, as we grow in grace and as we have respect for God and give Him deference, admiration, honor, esteem, consideration, and partiality, then when we face certain temptations, we will resist those temptations and continue our spiritual advance.
d. While enduring devotion is demanded of the man in marriage, respect as part of the same true love package is demanded of the woman. Respect is just as strong a love as enduring devotion.
The Greek word AGAPE describes these two concepts of true love.
(1) The husband is responsible for the aggressive part of true love—enduring devotion. The wife is responsible for the responding part of true love—respect.
(2) We cannot execute all of the mandates related to marriage (Eph 5:22-33) unless we have both categories of love for God.
3. Christian marriage is the peak of the prehistoric, angelic conflict; for it is the only argument which Satan did not deal with during the Old Testament. Satan appealed his sentence to the lake of fire. In the Old Testament every argument of Satan is answered except why Adam and the woman were not condemned to the lake of fire as a couple after they sinned. The answer is found in the corporate testimony of Christian marriage during the Church Age.
4. The souls of the husband and wife have true love in two categories, which are the two categories of AGAPE love.
a. He has aggressive love or enduring devotion, which includes intensive love, enduring loyalty, consecration, and dedication. Simultaneously he develops respect for God, which includes deference, admiration, honor, esteem, consideration, and partiality.
b. The soul of the husband emphasizes aggressive love or enduring devotion. The soul of the wife emphasizes responsive love of respect.
c. In the function of Christian marriage, there are two subcategories of true love—enduring devotion and respect. For soul rapport in Christian marriage, the husband is under the divine mandate of aggressive love. This is his corporate responsibility.
d. In his spiritual life directed toward God, the Christian husband also has a strong responsive love toward God called respect by obedience to the word of God. Personal love for God the Father and occupation with Christ come out of the application of respect for God. Whenever certain temptations come along, it is always respect for God which causes you to say “no.” If you do not have respect for God at the point of temptation, then you will instantly change your values, commit the sin, and enter a frantic search for happiness.
e. For soul rapport in Christian marriage, the wife is under a divine mandate to obey and respect her husband. This is her corporate responsibility. The husband has the authority in the Christian institution of marriage.
f. In her spiritual life directed toward God, the Christian wife has enduring devotion to the word of God.
g. Both husband and wife have the potential for each one of these categories of true love. The husband, who has aggressive love toward his wife, must also have respect for God. The wife, who has respect for her husband, must also have aggressive love toward God. Each has an equality in the spiritual life of equal privilege and equal opportunity. Both categories of love are directed toward God. This is the staying power of the spiritual life, just as these mandates are the staying power of Christian marriage.
h. Staying power is the greatest power in the spiritual life, and it is always related to love. Love has a dynamic that this world has never understood.
5. Individual responsibility belongs to every believer in the execution of the spiritual life of the Church Age. The development of spiritual love is the greatest power in the spiritual life. For the believer’s love for God as a major part of spiritual dynamics, we follow the colors in two ways:
a. We are aggressive in our love toward God through perception, metabolization, and application of Bible doctrine. That is the staying power of the spiritual life.
b. We are responsible in our love toward God by obedience to the word of God, including rebound (1 Jn 1:9) when necessary, and changes in our modus vivendi which are incompatible and non-productive both to our spiritual life and the fulfillment of the objective which God has given us for keeping us in this life—to glorify Him.
6. The Doctrine of Corporate Responsibility.
a. Introduction.
(1) Three Principles of Corporate Responsibility.
(a) Corporate responsibility is for the Church Age believer only.
(b) Corporate responsibility is related to the extrapolation of Christian marriage from the divine institution of marriage. Therefore, it is unique to the Church Age.
© It is related to the two divine mandates for love in marriage. Hence, the existence of two categories of true love in the soul (true love is always found in the soul, not in the body)—enduring devotion and respect. In marriage, enduring devotion and respect are separated and become a corporate responsibility. Satan has no answer for this and it breaks the back of Satan in his appeal trial. God makes His point in every generation with these PLEROMA believers in marriage.
(2) In the creation of rational creatures, God always provides a system or a multi-system of authority.
(3) Marriage is no exception. In Christian marriage, the husband has authority over the wife, and in family, the parents have authority over the children. When this is exercised properly, then the next generation has a chance. Where there is failure in the proper exercise of authority by parents, then the next generation has little or no chance. This is the problem of the fourth generation curse.
(4) The authority of the Christian husband over the wife is not demeaning. It was never designed to be a system of bullying or a system of arrogance on the part of the man. This authority is necessary for the survival and blessing to the nation and to the human race in general. This is why God has provided both nations and their boundaries, Acts 17:26, “And He made from mankind every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation.” God decides how long a nation or a race is going to survive.
b. The Doctrine of Christian Responsibility in Christian Marriage.
(1) This doctrine is pertinent to the unique postsalvation spiritual life of the Church Age. This doctrine is pertinent to equality of husband and wife in the execution of their own spiritual life. We have a system of authority and the husband is the leader. His authority comes in the greatest possible leadership. His aggressive love for God is translated into his aggressive love for his wife. There is no bullying in this system of leadership. His has an aggressive love for God, and when he marries, his wife will respect him because of the way in which he utilizes his authority.
(2) The husband’s authority over the wife is related to the corporate testimony part of the rebuttal phase of Satan’s appeal trial. Each one has a spiritual life, and they both have equal privilege and opportunity to execute their spiritual life. Both are under personal responsibility to execute the unique spiritual life of the Church Age.
(3) There is equality of husband and wife in Christian marriage under personal responsibility to execute the unique spiritual life of all human history. There is corporate responsibility in marriage related to the rebuttal phase of the prehistoric angelic conflict. The husband is responsible to use aggressive love of enduring devotion to his wife and responding love of respect for the word of God. These are potentials for the spiritual life and absolutely necessary to execute the spiritual life.
(4) The wife is responsible for responsive love of respect for the authority of the husband. Eph 5:22 says, “Wives obey your husbands as to the Lord.” This means that the wife must have an aggressive love for God in order to have a responsive love toward her husband. No wife can execute this command unless she has both categories of love (enduring devotion and respect) for the Lord. The wife will only do this effectively if she has both categories of love directed toward God. If she does not have both categories of love directed toward God, she will never have respect for her husband.
(5) The amplification of Eph 5:22 is in verse 24, “But as the Church is subordinate to Christ, so also wives are under the authority of your husbands in everything.” The Church becomes subordinate to Christ by the execution of the spiritual life through the metabolization of Bible doctrine. This almost sounds like slavery, but not when there are the two categories of true love involved. When there is love on the part of the husband, there is respect on the part of the wife, Eph 5:33, “In any case however, you husbands also, each one of you individually must love his own wife even as himself, and the wife see to it that she respects her own husband.”
(a) The husband is given the strongest possible command that he must lead the way, reach a personal sense of destiny, and have spiritual self-esteem.
(b) The wife is commanded in a more subtle way to do exactly the same thing. The woman is commanded just as strongly, but in a more subtle and refined way with a more gentle tone.
(6) The Christian husband now must execute aggressive love for God, which is enduring devotion. Aggressive love is vigorous initiative in persistance in perception, metabolization, and application of epignosis doctrine in the stream of consciousness. The husband’s enduring devotion advances from spiritual self-esteem to occupation with the person of Christ, which provides the motivation for his intense love for his wife. The wife responds with deference and admiration. His enduring devotion to God becomes the staying power for his loyalty and faithfulness to his wife, so that the wife responds by honoring her husband. Therefore, his consecration of her matches her esteem of him. His enduring devotion results in responding love in her soul of partiality and consideration of him.
(a) The husband must develop respect for God as well enduring devotion for his wife, because this is the only way he will stay out of temptations that will destroy the marriage. The same is true for the wife. She must have fantastic love for God, because that is the greatest power to resist temptation.
(b) The husband developing respect for God and the wife developing enduring devotion for God is the only way they will keep bitterness out of marriage.
7. Why Christian Marriages Fail and the Solutions.
a. Marriage is a private matter between the husband, the wife, and the Lord. You never pray for a person’s personal problems, because personal problems are dwelt with by the problem solving devices and not by prayer. If you have personal problems as a part of spiritual testing, they should never be mentioned to others. Private problems are private and personal.
b. Failure to execute the unique spiritual life of all human history is the basis for failure in Christian marriage. Disillusion results in either to husband or wife or both falling in love with someone outside of the marital bond, which is forbidden in Scripture. The result is the failure to fulfill the divine commandments of Eph 5:22,24-25,33. How do you handle this? If you have that staying power of personal love for God when you are tempted to enter into fornication or adultery, then to enter into that sin you have to ignore Jesus Christ entirely. You have no love for the Lord at that moment; you are not occupied with Christ. Heb 13:4, “Marriage must be held in honor by all, and the marriage bed must be undefiled. For you see, God will judge fornicators and adulterers.” Adultery and bitterness are the worst sins related to marriage and destroy marriages. They are severely judged by the supreme court of heaven.
c. The temptation to fornication and adultery becomes a sin because the believer does not respect God. As you grow in grace you develop respect for God. Respect for God is far more powerful than the temptation to commit adultery or fornication. Adultery and fornication is a malfunction of the spiritual life when the temptation becomes a sin, because the believer has no respect, no esteem, no consideration, no partiality toward God. A person’s love for another human being outside of marriage has become greater than their love for God. Therefore, respect, esteem, consideration, and partiality are directed toward pseudo-love, and results in horrible punishment from the supreme court of heaven. Under these conditions you never attain spiritual self-esteem with its capacity for loving God and staying power in marriage. David failed in the advanced stages of his spiritual life because of this problem. His enduring devotion to God was gone until he came to his senses and rebounded.
d. When there is a failure on the part of a spouse in Christian marriage, the other spouse has the option of impersonal love toward the failing spouse to execute the divine mandate for Christian marriage. Two solutions are immediately available: the spouse who fails has the option to rebound and keep moving, the spouse who does not fail has the option to continue personal love for God in motivation and impersonal love for the spouse who failed. This follows the pattern and the precedence of our Lord’s spiritual dynamics and staying power while receiving the imputation and judgment of all sins on the Cross.
(1) The impersonal love solution toward the failing spouse must be implemented by personal love for God. The impersonal love solution directed toward the spouse follows the staying power of Jesus Christ on the Cross receiving the imputation and judgment of all sins. The primary solution is always the dynamics of human nature of Jesus Christ directed toward God the Father during the dispensation of the hypostatic union with emphasis on the Cross. A simultaneous solution is the dynamics of the impersonal love of the human nature of Jesus Christ directed toward the entire human race.
(2) The prototype spiritual life of the human nature of Jesus Christ was motivated by His personal love for God the Father to perpetuate His impeccability in the face of every possible category of temptation that could ever exist. He went beyond this capability, and on the Cross He endured something far greater than we can even imagine. The power of personal love for God the Father carried our Lord up to the pinnacle of resistance to temptation when He received the imputation of our sins and their judgment.
e. When a believer marries an unbeliever, the equality factor of the spiritual life is no longer applicable. A mixed marriage is a marriage where one spouse is a believer and the other spouse is an unbeliever. A Christian marriage requires both spouses to be believers in Christ. A mixed marriage is not part of the corporate testimony. The believer in a mixed marriage is qualified for personal testimony against Satan but not for corporate testimony.
(1) Mixed marriages are prohibited by divine mandate. 2 Cor 6:14-16, “Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness [believer] and lawlessness [unbeliever] have in common, or what fellowship has light with darkness? Or what harmony is there between Christ and Beliar [worthlessness, referring to both Satan and the Man of Sin of 2 Thes], or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever? Or what agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God; just as God said, ‘I will dwell in them and walk among them; And I will be their God, and they shall be My people.’”
(a) If a woman marries an unbelieving man, she has equal privilege and opportunity to execute the spiritual life, but her husband as an unbeliever has no such equality with his wife. But he is sanctified through his wife for blessing in the marriage, if she does not become bitter. There can never be perfect harmony between a believer and unbeliever in marriage.
(b) To deliberately get into a marriage with an unbeliever is a temptation, and occurs because you have no love or respect for Jesus Christ.
© There is no corporate testimony in a mixed marriage.
(2) The exceptions to the mixed marraige principle is found in 1 Cor 7:13-16, “Now if a woman has an unbelieving husband, and he is willing to live with her, she must not divorce him. For the unbelieving husband has been sanctified [set apart for blessing] through his wife, and the unbelieving wife has been sanctified through her believing husband; for otherwise your children are unclean, but now they are holy. But if the unbeliever divorces, let him divorce; the brother or the sister is not bound in such circumstances, but God has called us to live in tranquility. For how do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife?”
(a) The word “sanctified” here refers to being set apart for blessing by association with the believing spouse who has reached spiritual maturity. It does not refer to being saved by being married to a believer.
(b) The children being unclean means the gospel is in the home, doctrine is in the home, and doctrinal application is in the home. Therefore, there is blessing by association to the children and often the children become believers.
(3) 1 Cor 7:32-34a,35, “I would like you to be free from concern. One who is unmarried is concerned about the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord; but one who is married is concerned about the things of the world, how he may please his wife, and he is divided. ...I am saying this for your own benefit; not to restrict you, but that you may live in a right way in undivided devotion to the Lord.” A divided believer never advances in the spiritual life. If the Lord is not first in our relationships, then we are in for distraction and discipline.
8. Marriage in the Garden of Eden Compared to Christian Marriage of the Church Age.
a. The first thing that happened in perfect environment after the creation of the woman was marriage. Marriage was the thing that Satan saw was going to be the major issue of all human history. Marriage was to become the final testimony, a corporate testimony, against Satan.
b. The man and the woman had perfect coalescence of souls, which came from a perfect love, and this perfect love was the first challenge to Satan. He had to destroy the marriage and the coalescence of souls along with the true meaning of sex, which would condemn him.
c. Marriage was the first legal function and the most important legal function in the Garden. God designed marriage from the beginning as the only way the human race could survive to the end of time in the prehistoric angelic conflict. From marriage would come evangelism, and from evangelism would come the spiritual life, and from the spiritual life would come the testimony that would break the back of Satan.
d. This marriage was destroyed by the volition of both the woman and the man. The first marriage had to go through a sin and failure and the perpetuation through marriage of the witnesses for the Prosecution.
e. Marriage had to be taken out of its relationship for all mankind, which is still operational, and be related to the spiritual life of the Church Age because the staying power of the spiritual life of Jesus Christ on the Cross was given to Christian marriage to break the back of Satan forever.
f. When a husband and wife fulfill this concept of Christian marriage, they fulfill a principle that destroys Satan. In every generation there are always a few believers in Christian marriage who testified against Satan as PLEROMA believers.
g. It takes Christian marriage for us to understand that the personal love for God the Father which Jesus Christ had on the Cross has two different categories. They are both mentioned and mandated in marriage because marriage was the original issue when mankind was created to resolve the prehistoric angelic conflict.
h. Therefore, Jesus Christ gave to His royal family this fantastic spiritual life the greatest staying power which has ever existed. The mandates to the husband and the mandates to the wife are the two categories of this staying power. Personal love for God the Father is the only way that in Christian marriage the husband and wife are going to obey their mandates.
(1) The husband is able to love his wife as Christ loved the Church under the principle of enduring devotion.
(2) The wife is able to obey her husband as unto the Lord under the principle of the responsive love of respect.
i. Impersonal love is the solution to failure of a partner in marriage. If one fails, the other can suceed under impersonal love for all mankind. As a result, sharing the happiness of God becomes the greatest happiness that could ever exist and leads to occupation with Christ.
_
© 1989, by R. B. Thieme, Jr. All rights reserved.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------