Eph 435 12/5/86, 3/16/86, 631 8/28/87, 633 8/30/87
A. Introduction.
1. There are three stages of spiritual adulthood: spiritual self- esteem, spiritual autonomy, and spiritual maturity.
2. There are three categories of suffering for blessing to advance each of the three stages above.
a. Providential preventative suffering for spiritual self-esteem.
b. Momentum testing for spiritual autonomy.
c. Evidence testing for spiritual maturity.
3. This doctrine is being taught specifically in anticipation of the Doctrine of Evidence Testing.
B. Definition and Description.
1. The mature believer is defined as a member of the royal family of God who executes the protocol plan of God in the great power experiment of the Church Age by his advance to gate #8 of the divine dynasphere.
2. There are two classifications of the mature believer for this study.
a. The mature believer is classified as a winner because of the tactical victory in the great power experiment of the Church Age.
b. The mature believer is classified as an invisible hero because of his impact on human history. The greatest impact in the last 2000 years and an impact that will continue until the Rapture of the Church comes from the mature believer. God has designed a system whereby invisible impact from an invisible hero is far, far greater than that of any visible hero.
3. The mature believer glorifies God in two stages.
a. The attainment of spiritual maturity and subsequent distribution of escrow blessings for time. The first thing God ever did for us is the means of glorifying Him, Eph 1:3. Billions of years ago in eternity past, God the Father deposited in escrow two categories of greater blessing for you: for time and for eternity.
b. The mature believer’s passing of evidence testing and becoming a witness for the Prosecution in the rebuttal phase of Satan’s appeal trial. This is the ultimate in glorifying God.
4. Spiritual maturity represents the maximum spiritual growth of the believer in time.
5. Spiritual maturity is the objective for keeping the believer in time after salvation.
6. Spiritual maturity is the tactical victory of the angelic conflict designed to compliment our Lord’s strategic victory in being seated at the right hand of the Father.
7. Spiritual maturity is the complement of our Lord’s battlefield royalty.
8. Therefore, spiritual maturity is the divine objective for the believer in time, the purpose for all commands of Scripture related to time, the only way to glorify Jesus Christ in time, and the basis for all temporal and eternal rewards and blessings.
9. Since spiritual maturity is related to the grace of God, it becomes necessary to study the relationship between spiritual maturity and grace.
10. Under the protocol plan of God, grace is all that God can do for man from salvation to the eternal state, totally apart from the believer’s merit, ability, planning, behavior, or talent.
a. Grace is the genius of God. Doctrine is the manifestation of that genius. Spiritual maturity is the glorification of that genius.
b. Grace is all that God is free to do for man on the basis of the work of Jesus Christ on the cross, Eph 2:8,9.
c. Grace is also the function of the justice of God in providing for the believer his needs and his blessings for his advance to spiritual maturity or for his failure to execute the protocol plan of God. In other words, logistical grace is for all believers, winners and losers alike. That is because logistical grace is imputed from the justice of God to the indwelling righteousness of God in every believer.
d. Logistical grace not only provides the necessities to keep you alive, but it also includes all blessings you receive before spiritual maturity.
e. Under grace, everything depends on who and what God is, on the essence and attributes of God.
f. Grace is not only the means of salvation, but grace is also the policy of God for the believer’s advance to spiritual maturity. In His grace policy, God has provided five categories of suffering for the believer’s advance.
11. Spiritual maturity, then, is the maximum expression of the grace of God utilized in the protocol plan of God.
12. In eternity past, God provided everything necessary for the believer’s advance to spiritual maturity. No believer can attain spiritual maturity apart from the use of his portfolio of invisible assets, specifically his computer assets, under the two categories of election and predestination.
a. Election is the expression of the sovereign will of God for you in eternity past: that you receive the highest and best, your escrow blessings. With this in mind, God the Father provided equal privilege and equal opportunity to you to advance to where you can receive these escrow blessings. Equal privilege is your royal priesthood. Equal opportunity is your logistical grace provision.
b. Predestination is the provision of the sovereignty of God in eternity past for the fulfillment of the protocol plan of God and the conveyance of your escrow blessings. This provision again includes equal privilege and equal opportunity. Equal privilege is your positional sanctification, your union with Christ by means of the baptism of the Spirit at salvation. This makes you royal family of God. Equal opportunity is the provision of your very own palace, the operational-type divine dynasphere with its eight gates.
13. All this provision in eternity past matches the provision in time: the protocol plan of God itself. The protocol plan of God is the only plan for the Church Age. The “protocol” in the term connotes the means of carrying out the protocol plan of God; that is, a right thing must be done in a right way. A wrong thing done in a wrong way is wrong. A right thing done in a wrong way is wrong. A wrong thing done in a right way is wrong.
C. Characteristics of Spiritual Maturity.
1. The mature believer has cognitive independence built on post- salvation epistemological rehabilitation, resulting in the advance to spiritual adulthood. Its momentum comes from metabolized doctrine plus suffering for blessing. Cognitive independence results in cognitive self-confidence which is the basis for passing each stage of suffering for blessing.
a. Spiritual self-esteem is characterized by epistemological rehabilitation, the accumulation of all the doctrine you learn between salvation and the point of spiritual self-esteem, all the doctrine it takes to advance you to spiritual self-esteem.
b. Spiritual autonomy is characterized by cognitive self- confidence, which is the result of additional metabolized Bible doctrine plus passing providential preventative suffering.
c. Spiritual maturity is characterized by cognitive independence, which results from additional metabolization of doctrine plus passing four momentum testings: people, system, thought, and disaster testing. This means spiritual maturity can meet and face every problem in life with a maximum amount of inner happiness. There is no tragedy, disaster, difficulty, or heartache that can overcome the tremendous entrenchment of cognitive self-confidence and its +H.
d. Cognitive independence is maximum perception, maximum metabolization, and maximum accurate application of doctrine to life.
e. The mature believer is totally independent of any form of advice, counseling, or human encouragement (often a terrible arrogance trap). However, this does not imply that the mature believer or any believer will ever be independent of expository Bible teaching from his right pastor.
f. Job’s eventual failure in evidence testing originated from the malfunction of cognitive independence.
2. The mature believer has maximum use of the four great problem solving devices of spiritual adulthood which are invisible. Only when they come into contact with people or problems do they have any visibility.
a. Cognitive self-confidence relates to hope 2 and hope 3. For example, understanding the doctrine of resurrection gives great comfort and hope or confidence.
b. Personal love for God is invisible. It is the motivational virtue of spiritual adulthood. Since God is invisible, we cannot love God in ignorance of doctrine. We must know Bible doctrine in order to love God. This occurs in full beginning at spiritual self-esteem. Your personal love for God does manifest itself occasionally because your motivation is right and virtuous!
c. Impersonal love for all mankind is the functional virtue in the protocol plan of God. With impersonal love you can handle the unfairness of life, the criticism and adversities that come from others judging, maligning, and hurting you, and all the problems from human relationships. Impersonal love for all does give capacity for personal love for individuals, a visible manifestation. Impersonal love will be especially exercised because people do not understand spiritual maturity. Those in spiritual maturity are different in that they are not self- righteous, but they have virtue-righteousness. They don’t mind others’ business, they do not become crusaders against government or other immoral causes as do most Christians, and so they come under very heavy criticism. They are misunderstood when they maintain great self-restraint and self-control in the face of all the idiocies of Christianity.
d. +H, sharing the happiness of God, is invisible. God shares His happiness with you through your perception of doctrine. It is a happiness in the soul, the ultimate in problem solving devices.
3. The mature believer has mental stability, which is the ability to think metabolized doctrine and apply it to every circumstance in life. This is the fulfillment of Rom 12:2-3. “Stop being conformed to this world but be transformed by the renovation of your thought, that you may prove what the will of God is, namely, the good of intrinsic value achievement, the well-pleasing to God, and the mature status quo. For I say through the grace which has been given to me to everyone who is among you: stop thinking of self in terms of arrogance beyond what you ought to think, but think in terms of sound judgment [humility] for the purpose of being rational without illusion, as God has assigned to each one a standard of thinking from doctrine.”
a. We conform to this world by seeking visibility or being occupied with those who are visible.
b. You renovate your thought through your perception of Bible doctrine.
c. Mental stability is the ability to put doctrine before experience.
d. Mental stability also includes maximum courage, plus the ability to make the correct and accurate application of metabolized doctrine to evidence testing. Remember that evidence testing always comes without any warning of any kind. You only know it’s coming once you receive your escrow blessing. But the mature believer is ready for it, having a phenomenal mental stability far greater than that in spiritual self-esteem and in spiritual autonomy.
4. The mature believer has the function of objective reality. Objective reality begins with cognition of invisible God through the perception of Bible doctrine inside the divine dynasphere.
a. Since grace is the policy of God, He must reveal Himself to us in a permanent form, i.e., the Canon of Scripture. We have neither the ability nor the mentality as human beings to understand and to love God. So God must come to us.
b. Objective reality is cognition and metabolization of the mystery doctrine of the Church Age, reaching peak function in spiritual maturity, the status of reality of God in your life. God must be more real to you than anything else.
c. Objective reality for the Christian is orientation to the grace policy of God, including grace thinking, grace motivation, grace decisions, and grace actions, which are all dependent upon Bible doctrine in your soul.
d. The mature believer avoids subjective reality in the form of legalism, emotionalism, asceticism, self-effacement, fanatical or sociopathic behavior. When you fail to function in grace toward others, you lower yourself to their level. When you do function in grace toward others, you may raise them to your level. Subjective reality is often related to arrogance in both thinking and function, but not in the mature believer.
e. Historical reality is the status of your environment in life. The mature believer balances and equates objective reality from doctrine with the historical reality in his life. Therefore, he overcomes environment.
5. The mature believer functions under maximum effectiveness in life. Maximum effectiveness is:
a. Maximum contentment, maximum capacity for happiness. (1) The finalization of contentment; maximum capacity for happiness is a result of combining spiritual autonomy with momentum testing, Phil 4:11-13; Heb 13:5; 1 Tim 6:6-8.
(2) Apart from Bible doctrine, God graciously provides adversity in our experiences and suffering for blessing, that we may grow stronger and that our happiness will have been tested, developed, and completed in adversity as well as in prosperity.
b. Maximum problem solving capabilities totally apart from any outside counsel or help.
c. Maximum grace orientation to life.
(1) Grace orientation in the mature believer literally “sandpapers” the rough edges of life into smooth grace thinking, along with very wonderful grace motivation, grace decisions, and consistent grace functions and actions.
(2) Until spiritual maturity, you can become arrogant over being gracious. But once in spiritual maturity, you become consistent in your grace orientation to life.
(3) Grace orientation brings with it a consistent, enforced humility to the point of maximum virtue without asceticism, without ridiculous self-sacrifice, without legalism, and without some form of self-effacement.
(4) Each stage of spiritual adulthood advances and perfects grace orientation in the life. In spiritual self-esteem, the process begins. In spiritual autonomy, the process continues. In spiritual maturity, the process is perfected and completed.
d. Maximum control of your own life.
(1) This means maximum utilization of the privacy of your royal priesthood, used properly before God as a part of your personal love for God.
(2) This means maximum use of impersonal love toward all mankind. This means the elimination of false applications in your life, of which three are disastrous to your life: competitiveness from arrogance (inordinate ambition), comparativeness from subjectivity, and conspiracy from inordinate ambition. When you subjectively compare yourself with others, you are always making mental adjustments so that you always come out the best.
(3) In spiritual maturity, the believer lives his own life as unto the Lord rather than as unto mankind. Therefore, he is able to control his life under the Lord. Since the Lord really has all the control and his volition is subordinate to the Lord, he is in a state of maximum happiness.
(4) The believer in spiritual maturity takes responsibility for his own decisions. When given any form of authority, he takes responsibility immediately, be it a small or large task. He takes responsibility for others under his authority or command, but he does so without becoming possessive or without seeking to control and interfere in the lives of others. Therefore, the spiritual maturity believer is motivated without being possessive or lusting for power.
(5) The believer in spiritual maturity is not possessive of those whom he loves, thus avoiding the pitfall of jealousy. The mature believer does not seek to control or interfere in the lives of others, and is free from power lust.
(6) You cannot control your own life when through inordinate ambition and inordinate competition you seek to control the lives of others. You cannot tamper with the lives of others and maintain control of your own life.
(7) Spiritual maturity avoids self-righteous arrogance without losing righteousness. Spiritual maturity avoids the moralistic orgies of crusader arrogance without losing morality.
e. Maximum use of your spiritual gift.
f. Maximum production in Christian service.
6. The mature believer has a strong personal sense of destiny. This includes organized thinking, an organized life, self-command, poise, self- control, self-regulation, and self-restraint. This overflows into personal relationships and the exploitation of your very own portfolio of invisible assets.
7. The mature believer glorifies God in his body according to Phil 1:20-21. “According to my intense concentration and resultant confidence that in nothing shall I be disgraced, but with all integrity, even now as always, Christ shall be glorified in my body. For me, living is Christ; dying is profit.”
a. Intense concentration is love. The mature believer concentrates on the #1 priority: relationship with God over relationship with people, God emphasis over people emphasis. Concentration produces a mental attitude of hope. Intense concentration on doctrine results in intense application of doctrine, and intense application results in spiritual maturity.
b. Disgrace comes from cosmic involvement, being a loser in the spiritual life, and flunking undeserved suffering testing.
c. Integrity, now as always, refers to spiritual adulthood. Relationship with self peaks out at gate #5. Relationship with people peaks out at gate #6. Relationship with God peaks out at gate #8.
d. Each stage of spiritual adulthood is characterized by a specific experiential relationship with Christ.
(1) Spiritual self-esteem is characterized by “Christ being formed in the body,” Gal 4:19.
(2) Spiritual autonomy is characterized by “Christ being at home in your right lobe,” Eph 3:16-17.
(3) Spiritual maturity is characterized by “Christ being glorified in your body,” Phil 1:20.
e. The ultimate mental attitude function is the ability to equate living with dying. Perfect happiness in living overflows into perfect happiness in dying.
8. The mature believer has a dynamic mental attitude from accumulated metabolized doctrine plus maximum utilization of the four problem solving devices of spiritual adulthood.
a. Phil 3:15, “Therefore, as many as are mature believers, let us keep on thinking this. Nevertheless, if you think differently on some point, God will even reveal this to you.” In other words, the thinking of the mature believer as a winner and invisible hero is not infallible but always adjustable through the use of maximum metabolized doctrine and the four problem solving devices of spiritual adulthood.
b. Phil 3:16, “However, as a result of what you have attained, let us keep advancing in ranks by means of the same.” The same thinking, the same problem solving devices, the same utilization of divine power in spiritual adulthood results in passing evidence testing, glorifying God to the maximum in the great power experiment of the Church Age, and the historical extension of the angelic conflict.
9. Doctrinal orientation to reality includes maximum capacity for prosperity which comes in the form of escrow blessings for time, plus the ability to deal with evidence testing as Job did in Job 1:21. This is the perpetuation of happiness into both prosperity and adversity, like Paul expressed in Phil 4:11-13. From maximum ability to apply doctrine to experience emerges a crystallized and powerful spiritual common sense. This gives you an entirely new outlook on life. You have the ability to unsnarl every traffic jam in your life.
10. Greatest of decisions come from a position of maximum strength. The greatest decisions in life are made in spiritual maturity. Every decision becomes a great decision, due to your total understanding of the mechanics of God’s plan. You relate your every decision in life to what God has provided for you.
a. The mature believer is consistent in living in the divine dynasphere.
b. The mature believer has established right priorities in life. Hence, his good decisions originate from a great scale of values.
c. This attribute progresses throughout spiritual adulthood. Spiritual self-esteem makes good decisions from a position of strength. Spiritual autonomy makes greater decisions from a position of strength. But spiritual maturity makes the greatest decisions from a position of maximum strength.
d. God postpones some of the greatest decisions we will ever make until we have the power, the ability, and the spiritual strength to make them.
11. Maximum Living.
a. The mature believer has a maximum personal sense of destiny. No matter what happens in his life, he relates all the good and the bad to the fact that God has a purpose for his life. He understands that purpose, applies it to situations, maintains his happiness and passes evidence testing, the greatest challenge in the spiritual life.
b. Therefore, the mature believer recognizes that he has fulfilled his purpose and destiny in life; he has executed the protocol plan of God. He can face any problem in evidence testing, and so witnesses a great testimony against Satan in the historic trial of the angelic conflict.
c. The believer in spiritual maturity has consolidated and increased his personal love for God. He has become aware that, in fulfilling the plan of God for his life, he is fulfilling his own destiny to God.
d. Most people think of destiny in relationship to people or in relationship to success and prosperity. But the mature believer thinks of destiny in relationship to God.
e. By relating to God instead of to people and circumstances, spiritual maturity increases one’s personal sense of destiny. Destiny must always be related to God rather than to people, circumstances, or human success standards.
f. In passing momentum testing to reach spiritual maturity, the believer refocuses his life by relating his destiny to God rather than to man, to history, or to circumstances.
g. Spiritual maturity results in maximum poise, self-control, self-restraint, and self-regulation. As a result, he has a life of maximum production. In a short period of time, the mature believer actually has far greater production than the legalistic believer in all his Christian life will ever have.
h. Maximum production means maximum exploitation of your spiritual gift, whatever it is. It means maximum effectiveness in Christian service so that you will have gold, silver, and precious stones at the Judgment Seat of Christ.
i. Maximum production means understanding your human limitations and never allowing human ambition to exceed your human limitations.
j. Instead of living your life by standards that you have developed or by standards that people have developed for you (by flattery, encouragement, persuasion), instead of drowning in that rat race of arrogance; spiritual maturity develops a fantastic common sense, a marvelous sense of humor, and a modus operandi of flexibility that shows you when, how, and where to pull up short and go no further.
k. You are never envious of those whose abilities are greater than yours, whose success (by human standards) outstrips yours.
l. Therefore, spiritual maturity wipes out all the cobwebs of frustrations of life caused by not meeting your own standards, by not succeeding as you or others thought you would.
m. How many times have your ambitions been brought to a screeching halt? Maybe you didn’t know your goals were totally incompatible with your human abilities. Maybe you didn’t realize your ambition was a distraction to the plan of God for your life.
n. You have a destiny far greater than that of any person who’s ever been successful or great in this life! Your attitude toward Bible doctrine will determine what happens to the United States of America as a client nation to God.
12. Escrow Blessings. The mature believer receives the conveyance of his escrow blessings for time, by which he glorifies God.
13. Evidence Testing. The mature believer is qualified for evidence testing by which he glorifies God to the maximum.
a. The utilization of divine power reaches its peak in the mature believer. Never before in history has God made so much divine power available, and never in the lifetime of the mature believer does he have a greater use of divine power.
b. The mature believer spends the rest of his life living and dying under maximum utilization of divine power, a phenomenal characteristic.
D. The Environment for Attaining Maturity: Spiritual Freedom.
1. In this protocol plan of God is a new type of freedom which has never existed before in any other dispensation. Only in the Church Age is there a dual system of freedom: human freedom provided by the observance of the laws of divine establishment, and spiritual freedom provided by residence in your palace, the divine dynasphere. The 8 gates of the divine dynasphere are:
#1, Entrance: filling of the Spirit, obtained by rebound.
#2: Basic Christian modus operandi.
#3: Enforced and genuine humility, from which comes objectivity and teachability.
#4: Operation Z: perception, metabolization, and application of Bible doctrine, the momentum gate.
#5: Personal love for God, highest motivation in life. Overlap: From this motivation comes spiritual self-esteem.
#6: Impersonal love for all, a result of attaining spiritual autonomy.
#7: Spiritual autonomy advances through the valley of momentum testing.
#8: Spiritual maturity, the point at which we receive the conveyance of our escrow blessing, the first point at which we glorify God.
2. So this spiritual freedom provided inside the divine dynasphere is a very important factor. Spiritual freedom can exist with or without human freedom.
3. Spiritual freedom is the divine provision of logistical grace to execute the protocol plan of God through residence, function, and momentum inside your divine dynasphere.
4. Spiritual freedom is the protocol plan of God.
a. This was prophesied by our Lord in Jn 8:32, “You shall know the doctrine, and the doctrine shall make you free.” That refers to perception of doctrine inside your own divine dynasphere.
b. Gal 5:1, “It is for freedom [spiritual] that Christ has set you free. Therefore, keep standing fast [residence, function, and momentum in divine dynasphere under enabling power of Holy Spirit and momentum from metabolized doctrine] and do not again be entangled in the yoke of slavery [dungeon of the cosmic system].”
c. 2 Cor 3:17-18, “Now the Lord is the Spirit [the deity of the Holy Spirit plus His enabling power in divine dynasphere], and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”
(1) The Holy Spirit indwells the body of every believer, but that is not what is meant here. The Holy Spirit indwells the body of the believer to manufacture a temple for the indwelling of Christ as the Shekinah Glory, the guarantee of our escrow blessing.
(2) But this verse refers to the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in your very own palace. So when you are in the divine dynasphere, filled with the Spirit, you have spiritual freedom.
(3) The Holy Spirit resides in the divine dynasphere as the enabling power for the execution of the protocol plan of God. Verse 18, “But we all with an unveiled face [in contrast to Moses, we have power of the Holy Spirit in divine dynasphere] looking into a mirror [Word of God] to produce a reflection [Jesus Christ as Shekinah Glory], namely the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image [through residence, function, and momentum in divine dynasphere] from glory [Shekinah Glory] to glory [Church Age believer in divine dynasphere produces the same glory in the operational divine dynasphere as Christ did in the prototype divine dynasphere] from the Spirit of the Lord.”
(4) Our Lord went to glory inside His prototype divine dynasphere. We glorify Him by living inside our operational divine dynasphere, the place of the enabling power of the Spirit, the place of metabolization of doctrine, the place of advancing to spiritual self-esteem, which combined with providential preventative suffering advances us to spiritual autonomy, which combined with momentum testing advances us to spiritual maturity, which combined with evidence testing glorifies God to the maximum in this historical stage of the angelic conflict.
E. Attainment of Spiritual Maturity.
1. The means of attainment of spiritual maturity is two-fold.
a. Through metabolized doctrine.
b. Through suffering for blessing.
2. Consistent residence, function, and momentum inside your very own palace is the means of attaining the three stages of spiritual adulthood, which, when combined with the three categories of suffering for blessing, advance us to maturity and the glorification of God.
F. Results of Reaching Spiritual Maturity.
1. The erection of the edification complex of the soul.
2. The distribution of escrow blessing. (See the Doctrine of Escrow Blessings.)
G. Warning about Failing to Reach Spiritual Maturity. Heb 10:35-36, “Therefore, do not throw away as worthless your confidence [in signature guarantee of Holy Spirit at salvation], which keeps having rich distribution of blessing. For you keep on having need of perseverance [daily residence, function, and momentum in divine dynasphere], so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive the deposit which was promised [Eph 1:13-14].”
H. Spiritual Maturity and Rewards.
1. There’s fantastic distribution of escrow blessing for the mature believer in the eternal state. See the Doctrine of the Judgment Seat of Christ, point 12, for details of the rewards, crowns, and decorations.
2. The Crown of Righteousness is for the believer who attains spiritual maturity.
3. The Crown of Life is for the spiritual maturity believer who passes evidence testing. There’s also double escrow blessing in time for the spiritual maturity believer who passes evidence testing.
4. The Crown of Glory is given to the pastor who is faithful in teaching the Word and bringing believers to maturity.
5. Other eternal decorations for the spiritual maturity believer include the Order of the Morning Star, being a part of the new order of chivalry, wearing the uniform of glory, being recorded on the Honor’s List, presented in the Court of Heaven, awarded a new order of knighthood mentioned with his name in the Lamb’s Book of Life, ruling with Christ in the Millennium, receiving his own coat of arms, and becoming a member of the paradise club forever.
I. A Summary of the Doctrine of Supergrace.
1. Description.
a. Nomenclature: James 4:6, MEIZONA CHARIN means “greater or supergrace,” 1 Tim 1:14, “the grace of our Lord had super-abounded.”
b. Definition. Supergrace is the adult stage of spiritual life of the royal family of God. It is maximum glorification of Jesus Christ and complements His strategic victory on the cross. Supergrace is where the normal function of the royal priesthood begins. It is the status of effective production of divine good in the spiritual life. Supergrace maturity is accompanied by divine blessing beyond human imagination, Eph 3:20-21.
2. Synonyms.
a. I.Q synonym: CHAKMAH is the Hebrew word for maximum Bible doctrine in the soul. The Greek word EPIGNOSIS places the emphasis on spiritual I.Q.
b. Priestly synonym: “the altar of the soul.” Every believer builds his own soul’s altar from which his worship extends. The altar is made up of Bible doctrine pertinent to worship, Heb 13:10.
c. Building synonym: the edification complex of the soul, Heb 4:12,16.
d. Sanctification synonym: The Greek word EUSEBEIA, translated godliness in 1 Tim 6:3,4 and 2 Pet 1:3 means experiential sanctification, achieving the objective for which God has kept you alive.
e. Chemical synonym: “Salt,” is used for the mature believer as a preservative of the nation and as the flavor of society. This refers to the believer’s blessing by association and historical impact to the client nation.
f. Military synonym: “Putting on the full armor from God,” Eph 6:11-18; “Following the colors to the high ground,” Heb 12:1-2; “Establishing a command post of the soul,” Col 2:5-8. All of these synonyms emphasize the principle of advance, the principle of progress in spiritual growth, stability in spite of opposition, and advance in spite of any discouraging thing.
g. Volitional synonym: Eph 6:10, “the inner rule of His endowed power” refers to Bible doctrine in the soul, the inner dictator of the soul.
3. Objective: spiritual maturity is the objective of phase two. Logistical grace is designed to keep the believer alive in the devil’s world so that he can attain the tactical objectives of spiritual maturity.
4. The means of attaining maturity. The daily function of GAP is the only means of reaching supergrace, moving across no-man’s-land and attaining ultra supergrace, Eph 3:16-19.
J. The Promotion of the Mature believer.
1. As a part of the blessing of supergrace, God promotes the believer in maturity. If God doesn’t promote you, you aren’t promoted.
2. There are two kinds of promotion:
a. By Satan. This is temporary and not accompanied by happiness or blessing.
b. By God. This relaxes the believer and insulates him against arrogant ambition and pushiness.
3. Ps 84 says when you first reach maturity you are promotable. You are either promotable or promoted. Reversionism cancels promotion. But once you are promotable or promoted, you are vulnerable to reversionism, Ps 84:11.
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© 1989, by R. B. Thieme, Jr. All rights reserved.
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