Spir Dynamics 1246-1278; 1236-39 4/26/98

DOCTRINE OF PERSPECTIVE

A. The Proper Perspective of the Spiritual Life of the Church Age.

1. The spiritual life of the Church Age is the only spiritual life that truly has a fantastic impact in the last one thousand years of history (the millennial reign of Christ).

2. The spiritual life of the dispensation of the Church has results beyond time on this earth, beyond death, and beyond resurrection.

3. Never in the history of the human race has God given so much responsibility to the ordinary believer through the filling of the Holy Spirit to execute the unique spiritual life of the Church Age.

4. Our spiritual life has invisible but real implications now, but more visible and real implications in the last one thousand years of human history.

5. The transitional period for us is the resurrection of the Church (which is immanent—no prophecy has to be fulfilled first) and the first day of the second Advent of Christ. The winner believer of the Church Age will then rule with Christ for the last one thousand years of history. The loser believer will be there only as an observer but will not have the fantastic rewards and blessings of the winner believer.

6. The study of prophecy must never destroy our perspective of why we are here and the uniqueness of the Church Age with its fantastic spiritual life. Therefore, the believer must never study prophecy from the standpoint of curiosity.

7. Understanding certain things about the future recorded in the word of God must be related to understanding and utilizing our spiritual life now.

8. Love in the integrity of God gives us the key to our spiritual life. We have a contact with divine love in divine integrity because God loved the world so much that He gave His uniquely-born Son that anyone who believes in Him shall never perish but have eternal life.

9. When we believe in Christ, God the Father imputes to us His very own perfect righteousness. This allows God the Father to love us just as He loves the Son and the Holy Spirit. Because He loves us, He has given us the wonderful spiritual life of the Church Age.

10. Our perspective must come from the teaching of the infallible word of God. Love in the divine integrity gives a key to our spiritual life just as righteousness and justice provided the basis for eternal salvation by faith alone in Christ alone.

B. Scripture.

1. 1 Jn 4:17, “Because of this [Because God’s love is fulfilled in us, because we have believed the love which God has for our benefit, and because God is love], virtue-love has been brought to completion with us, that we may have confidence in the day of evaluation; because just as He is, so also we are in this world.”

a. The meaning of this verse depends upon the context, especially the last phrase of verse 12 and the first sentence in verse 16. These two passages are the contextual links to 1 Jn 4:17.

(1) 1 Jn 4:12d, “and His love is fulfilled in us.”

(2) 1 Jn 4:16, “And so we have come to know and have believed the love which God has for our benefit. God is love,...” There is no spiritual life unless you understand God’s love, and that His love is a part of divine integrity. It is a love that never makes you miserable; therefore, it is nothing like human love.

(a) Since the original sin of Adam in the garden of Eden, mankind’s relationship with the integrity of God may be described as follows. The righteousness of God is the point of responsibility toward sin as noted in the sphere of salvation and in the sphere of rebound. The result is the judgment of sin by the justice of God. So the justice of God is the point of contact for the believer and unbeliever from the time of the fall of mankind. (b) The love of God is the point of reference for believers in fellowship with God during the Church Age only. Love is the go-between between the integrity of God and the spiritual life. The whole spiritual life comes from the integrity of God.

(d) This agape love demands that we link up with the righteousness and justice of God rather than legalism and Christian activism which is human good and dead works.

(e) This agape love is a link-up with the virtue and honor of the righteousness and justice of the integrity of God as portrayed in the mechanics of the unique spiritual life of the Church Age. The point of reference for the operational spiritual life for the Church Age is the love of God.

(f) We have one thing from the garden of Eden prior to the fall of man—perfect environment in the soul. Perfect environment in the soul is the acquiring of the love of God in the soul through the perception, metabolization, and application of Bible doctrine.

(g) Under the definition of the spiritual life, the believer must have harmonious rapport with God. This is why occupation with Christ is so important. This harmonious rapport with God is directly related to the integrity of God. The righteousness of God is the point of responsibility related to sin. The justice of God is the point of contact for logistical grace (to give us equal privilege and opportunity to execute the plan of God) and divine discipline. The love of God is the point of reference for the modus vivendi of the spiritual life.

(h) Everything in the postsalvation spiritual life of the Church Age is directly related to the integrity of God.

(i) The love of God motivates the believer to advance in the spiritual life. Our determination to advance in the spiritual life, even when we do not understand things, is dependent upon motivation. The love of God motivates us, 2 Cor 5:14, “The love of Christ motivates us.” cf. Eph 3:17,19. The secret to almost everything that is blessing in life, everything that is happiness, everything that is worthwhile, everything that is honorable, everything that is related to integrity is true love.

(j) It is the integrity of God that turns around our spiritual life. It is not sentimental stupidity that turns our spiritual life around.

b. The verb in the phrase “virtue-love has been brought to completion with us” is the perfect passive indicative from TELEIOO, which means “to be brought to completion” in every passage of Scripture except one.

(1) The intensive imperfect means a present state resulting from a past action. The past action is the execution of the postsalvation spiritual life of the Church Age through the two power options. The present state is the believer’s advance to spiritual maturity and PLEROMA status.

(2) Jesus Christ executed this spiritual life perfectly and has given this spiritual life to us. Church Age believers in the past have executed this spiritual life in the past resulting in PLEROMA status—having been brought to completion. You are completed as you advance to PLEROMA status in the spiritual life; first as you advance to spiritual maturity, and then as you go from spiritual maturity to PLEROMA status. You have completed the spiritual life when you have attained PLEROMA status. This advance is possible for any and every believer because we have true equality. Every believer is a priest; therefore, we have equal privilege and equal opportunity to advance spiritually.

(3) After the fall of mankind in the garden of Eden, the Church Age is the only dispensation in which the love of God is the point of reference for mankind.

c. We are going to be evaluated by the Lord Jesus Christ (probably in private) as to how well we executed the spiritual life. Rom 14:10, “But you, why do you judge your brother? Or you again, why do you regard your brother with contempt? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God.” We can have confidence in the day of evaluation by the execution of our spiritual life and reaching PLEROMA status.

d. “Just as He is in the world” emphasizes the impeccability of our Lord in His humanity during the first Advent. The love of God is the point of reference for the Church Age because God the Father loves us personally just as He loved Jesus Christ during the first Advent and we are in union with Him. The love of God is our point of reference because Jesus Christ gave us the very same spiritual life which He had during the first Advent. The correct translation is “so also we are” (not “so also are we” which is a wrong translation).

e. The prototype spiritual life used by the humanity of our Lord Jesus Christ during the hypostatic union is inherited by every believer at the moment of salvation. The execution of this spiritual life is the greatest challenge in all of human history. The love of God becomes the point of reference in the Church Age at the moment of regeneration.

(1) The word “reference” means to direct attention to something important, something of personal interest. Reference means recourse for the purpose of information. Reference means to endorse a person or course of action.

(2) The point of reference from the love of God directs attention to something important—the Church Age believer.

(3) The point of reference from the love of God provides something of personal interest—New Testament doctrine. The point of reference means recourse or access to the infallible word of God and accurate Bible teaching for the purpose of information about the unique spiritual life.

(4) The point of reference endorses a course of action related to virtue-love and metabolized Bible doctrine; therefore, a reference to the Church Age only. The point of reference—divine —is for the Church Age only. The point of reference is the love of God, the sponsorer of the greatest life that ever existed.

f. Two unique dispensations in history are directly related to divine love as part of the integrity of God—the dispensation of perfect humanity and the dispensation of the Church. (1) The dispensation of perfect humanity on the earth, also known as the age of innocence, had divine love as the point of contact (not reference) until the original sin. As a result of the original sin of Adam and the woman, they lost divine love as the point of contact and divine justice became the point of contact for all humanity for the rest of human history.

(a) Divine love was the point of contact in the garden of Eden as long as Adam and the woman remained in a state of perfection and innocence.

(b) The original sin of Adam and the woman changed the point of contact from the love of God to the justice of God for the rest of human history.

(2) There is an exception. Not until the dispensation of the Church did the love of God become the point of reference for only one things, namely, the unique spiritual life of the Church Age. This is because, after the session of Christ at the right hand of the Father and His glorification as our great High Priest, then the spiritual life that He gave to us as an inheritance became the point of reference for the love of God.

(a) This fact of doctrine is attributed to the prototype spiritual life executed by the human nature of Jesus Christ in hypostatic union.

(b) The Church Age believer inherits the prototype spiritual life executed by the human nature of Jesus Christ in hypostatic union. We inherit the spiritual life to use it. This inheritance is only good if we use it. This inheritance is part of the heritage of positional sanctification.

© Positional sanctification is synonymous with the doctrine of the baptism of the Spirit, which occurs at the moment of salvation. The baptism of the Spirit/positional sanctification is one of thirty-nine irrevocable absolutes received at the moment of salvation, 1 Cor 12:13; Gal 3:26-28.

(d) Every Church Age believer is an instant beneficiary of many things through the baptism of the Spirit, including: the eternal life of Jesus Christ (1 Jn 5:11-12), the righteousness of Christ (2 Cor 5:21), the destiny of Christ (Eph 1:5,11), the sonship of Christ (Jn 1:12 tells us that we are the children of God, “But as many as receive Him, to them gave He the power to become the sons of God, even to those who believe in His person.”; Gal 3:26), and the inheritance of Christ (1 Pet 1:4; Rom 8:16-17, “The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are the children of God, and if children, also heirs, heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ, provided that (EIPER) if we suffer with Him, we may also be glorified with Him.” We are joint-heirs with Christ provided that we suffer with Christ. We are heirs of God because we are in union with Christ, and we are joint-heirs with Christ by reaching spiritual maturity. You are qualified by the execution of the spiritual life of the Church Age to be a joint-heir with Christ and rule with Him for one thousand years. Jn 1:12 tells us that we are the children of God, “But as many as receive Him, to them gave He the power to become the sons of God, even to those who believe in His person.”

g. Divine love becomes the point of reference for the dispensation of the Church through positional sanctification (union with Christ).

(1) Divine love is the point of reference for the unique spiritual life only. We are in union with the hypostatic union. We are union with the one Person who invented the unique spiritual life of all human history and executed it. We inherent the operational type spiritual life because we are in union with Christ and are joint-heirs with Jesus Christ. Being joint-heirs means we have the same spiritual life that our Lord had. We now have the love of God as our point of reference. We would not have the love of God as our point of reference were it not for union with Christ.

(2) Everything that we have is because we are in union with Christ. Therefore, we inherent the prototype spiritual life along with the love of God as our point of reference.

(3) The love of God is the point of reference for the spiritual life of the Church Age only. The love of God is directed toward our spiritual life, not toward us. The love of God as the point of reference is only toward the spiritual life God has given us. God loves the believer—spiritual or carnal. But as a point of reference, divine love was directed toward the human nature of Jesus Christ in fulfilling the prototype spiritual life, because “just as He is.” In the Church Age, divine love is directed toward the operational type spiritual life, “so also we are in this world.” This explains the importance of rebound of 1 Jn 1:9 and keep moving of Phil 3:13-14. This also explains the extrapolation of Christian marriage from the divine institution of marriage and the corporate testimony from the spiritual life of Eph 5:22-33.

h. Every Church Age believer has the availability of the power of Christ, 2 Cor 12:7-9, “For this reason, that I should not become arrogant because of the extraordinary quality of the revelations, there was given me for my benefit a thorn in the flesh, an angel from Satan, that he might torment me that I should not become arrogant! Concerning this [thorn in the flesh] I implored the Lord three times that it might leave me. Then He said to me, `My grace has been and still is sufficient for you. My power is bought to completion in helplessness.’ Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may take up quarters in me.”

(1) 1 Cor 10:13, “Testing [suffering for blessing] has not caught up with you except the human kind; moreover, God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tested beyond what you are able to handle, but with the testing He will also provide a way of escape, so that you can endure it [carry the pressure].” The way of escape is a divine solution.

(2) Paul’s arrogance was coming from human self-esteem. You are never going anywhere in the spiritual life unless you get into a state of humility.

(3) Prayer is not the answer for testing from God for spiritual advance. Paul went to the elative conclusion. Elative is a grammatical nomenclature which combines a superlative adverb HEDISTA (“most gladly”) with a comparative adverb MALON (“rather”) to denote superiority through inclusion and exclusion. The comparative denotes inferiority by what is excluded. The superlative denotes what is included, the absolute— that the divine solution is the only solution, while the comparative indicates what is excluded—the human solution is no solution. Paul recognized that the divine solution is the only solution; therefore, the human solution (prayer in this case) is no solution. Paul was being distracted by prayer, which was only a distraction in this testing.

(a) The divine solution is the only solution. The human solution is no solution.

(b) The human nature of Jesus Christ in hypostatic union invented, tested, and proved the prototype spiritual life to fulfill the objective of the incarnation, and subsequently the prototype spiritual life became a grace gift to the Church Age believer as the unique operational type spiritual life of all human history.

(d) The Church Age believer advances in the unique spiritual life in only two ways: cognition of Bible doctrine and testing.

(e) There are no human solutions, only divine solutions related to the unique operational type spiritual life of the Church Age. Prayer is not one of the divine solutions to suffering for blessing.

(f) In the postcanon period of the Church Age we do not understand the will of God through prayer, but through metabolized Bible doctrine circulating in the stream of consciousness.

(g) God speaks to us through His word. Therefore, when we pray for the will of God and at the same time reject Bible teaching, we fail to understand the will of God for our lives.

(h) Prayer is not designed to manipulate people or to use leverage on God to force others into a course of action that you want.

(i) Divine blessing is in the divine solution, not in the thorn suffering. Take away the suffering and you take away the divine solution. Take away the divine solution and you take away the divine blessing. Take away the divine blessing and you take away the momentum of the unique spiritual life.

(j) 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 divine love of the integrity of God, Heb 12:6. By asking God to take away the suffering, Paul was very close to divine discipline. Instead he was choosing his respect for the Lord over his love for the Lord. Love and respect are part of the same package, and when you split them, you destroy both. You never truly love anyone unless you respect. You never truly respect anyone unless you love them.

(k) When the rate of learning Bible doctrine exceeds the rate of forgetting Bible doctrine, the believer advances to spiritual maturity and then on to PLEROMA status. Between the two is some type of thorn in the flesh. Do not pray to take it away.

(l) We must never think of love as being divorced from integrity.

(4) Rom 8:26-27, “In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes us with groanings too deep to utter for words; and He who searches the hearts knows the thinking of the Spirit, because He makes intercession as a substitute for the saints on the basis of the will of God.”

2. Ps 37: 23-25, 28-31, 34.

a. Verses 23-25, “The steps of a warrior [a winner believer] are established from the Lord, And He delights in his way. When he falls, he shall not be utterly cast out, Because the Lord is the One who holds his hand. I have been young and now I am old, Yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken Or his descendants begging bread.”

(1) The steps of a man has to do with your lifestyle, your quality of life. Quality of life must be related to harmonious rapport with God. Harmonious rapport with God includes the filling of the Spirit, personal love for God the Father (1 Jn 4:16-19), and occupation with Christ (Heb 12:2; Phil 2:5). The Hebrew word for man here is not the ordinary word for man. It is GEBER, which means “a warrior,” a person who overcomes obstacles and problems.

(2) “When he falls” is a reference to postsalvation sin. “He shall not be utterly cast out” is a reference to eternal security.

(3) David’s testimony in old age is that if you are living the spiritual life God has provided for you, then you are never forsaken by God. There is also blessing by association for the invisible hero.

b. Verses 28-31, “For the Lord loves justice And does not forsake His godly ones; They are preserved forever, But the descendants of the wicked will be cut off. The righteous will inherit the land And dwell in it forever. The mouth of the righteous utters wisdom, And his tongue speaks justice. The Torah of God is in his heart; His steps do not slip.”

(1) The “godly ones” is a reference to believers and the believers referred to by David here are advancing spiritually. “They are preserved forever” refers again to eternal security.

(2) Those believers who execute the spiritual life will rule the world with Jesus Christ for one thousand years.

c. Verse 34, “Wait for the Lord and keep His way, And He will exalt you to inherit the land; when the wicked are cut off, you will see it.”

C. The Importance of the Love of God as the Point of Reference for Our Spiritual Life. 1. Introduction.

a. Every Church Age believer has equal privilege and equal opportunity to fulfill the spiritual life for the Church and possess the quality lifestyle that is exceedingly abundantly above all we could ever ask or think.

b. Divine love is part of the essence of God and one of the three attributes related to divine integrity. Therefore, the love of God must always be compatible with the attributes of the essence of God, especially divine righteousness and justice. The divine love provided for us is always compatible with the spiritual life and totally incompatible and non- operational when we are out of fellowship with God through sin. Compare Eph 3:19c, “and to know the love of Christ that you may be filled, resulting in all the fullness of blessing from God.”

(1) The love of God in divine integrity is expressed by the grace of God. Therefore, the grace of God is based on love without emotion. The grace of God is based on a higher form of love that is without emotion.

(2) Integrity has no emotion. True love in human beings has no emotion. True love is based on integrity and has no emotion. Your integrity is thought. You can have emotional response to integrity and thought, but emotional response is not thinking.

(3) Divine love has demonstrated the 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 learn to respect the Lord through discipline and two have to be together. If you are ever going to have true love for God, you have to have two things in your soul that mesh: the love that comes through doctrine and the respect that comes through discipline. When the two mesh, you have a very healthy and marvelous spiritual life. If you resent the discipline, you will reject the doctrine. If you do not understand the doctrine, you will hate the discipline.

c. Some believers will never find their own true love because the Lord Jesus Christ is not under consideration for first place in their lives. The quality of life demands true love in the soul, which means the thinking of Christ circulating in the stream of consciousness, 1 Cor 2:16.

d. Christian marriage is both the mandate and the illustration of both categories of virtue-love. Each of us the potential in directing enduring devotion and respect toward God. In marriage, each person brings something of his or her soul to the marriage. That unites them in the same harmonious rapport that they had with God. Each one has something that the other needs to complete coalescence of the souls. When you bring them together, you have the most phenomenal thing.

e. Christian marriage is the corporate testimony against Satan in his appeal trial. We are designed in marriage to be witnesses against Satan. Christian marriage is the only exception in all of human history to marriage as part of the laws of divine establishment. In the Church Age, Christian marriage is pulled out of the laws of divine establishment to be the corporate testimony against Satan. His rebuttal to this testimony is only violence during the Tribulation.

2. The analogy of God’s love is found in Christian marriage, Eph 5:22- 26, 33, “Wives, be under the authority of your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, He Himself is the Savior of the body. But as the church is subject to Christ, so also you wives be subject to your husbands in all things. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, that having purified her, He might cause her to be sanctified [experientially] by means of the washing of water in association with the spoken word [accurate communication of Bible doctrine from the infallible word of God],...In any case however, let each individual among you also love his own wife even as himself; and the wife, see to it that she respects her husband.”

a. The wife is mandated to bring true love in the form of respect into Christian marriage. The husband is mandated to bring enduring devotion. The wife obeys the husband as to the Lord, not as to the husband. Her obedience is based upon her relationship with the Lord, not her relationship with her husband. You can never be any better in marriage than you are in your spiritual life. The husband is not the head of the wife for abuse, but for love.

b. The phrase “But as the church is subject to Christ” refers to the spiritual life system of the Church Age.

c. Any woman who cannot obey this command will never make herself happy and will certainly never make her husband happy, and it is the loss of the greatest corporate testimony in the appeal trial of Satan. If you revolt against Jesus Christ, you will never be happy with any spouse. When you reject the authority of your husband, you have rejected the authority of the word of God. You cannot reject the authority of the word of God and be happy.

d. Husbands cannot love their wives as Christ loved the church unless he advances to spiritual maturity and beyond to PLEROMA status. A person is no better in marriage than he is as a person. It is impossible for a Christian marriage to succeed without the spiritual life.

e. The love demanded of the husband is the same soul love which Jesus Christ had in the prototype spiritual life. Soul love is always based upon integrity—righteousness and justice in the soul. The soul love that the man has for the woman in marriage purifies her. As a result of coalescence of souls, the woman is purified. This makes sex between a married couple pure.

(1) Soul love demands love, which is an enduring devotion in the soul, and respect, which is to be esteemed, to be honored, to show consideration, to show partiality. Love and respect cannot be separated without the destruction of true love in marriage.

(2) Respect without love becomes iconoclastic arrogance, resulting in the feet of clay syndrome. You make a role model out of someone you admire and place them on a pedestal. Eventually you see that person’s feet of clay (sinfulness) and react to them in bitterness, vindictiveness, hatred, etc. Then you seek revenge, and in malice want to hurt the idol you have created. When a woman does this, she withdraws her respect immediately. When a man does this, he withdraws his true love. Iconoclastic arrogance is one of the greatest antagonisms in the world. It produces the war of two sin natures. There is nothing left except the power to hurt each other.

(3) Once the arrogance is created in the split of true love and respect, there is a pseudo respect from the wife and pseudo love from the husband. The only solution is in the spiritual life.

f. The phrase “even as himself” has nothing to do with any kind of human self-esteem or human arrogance. It is spiritual self-esteem. At the point of spiritual self-esteem you have the highest form of love and great confidence in your love for others regardless of how they treat you. You now have the peace of God which passes all understanding that garrisons your heart and thinking in Christ Jesus. This same love was used by each of the members of the Trinity toward each other in eternity past.

(1) True love in the man’s soul as a part of his integrity is a reflection of the integrity of God and it manifests the truest concept of love in the spiritual life.

(2) The greatest integrity he can have is in love. The greatest honor he can have is in love. This true love is a reflection of the integrity of God manifested in the prototype spiritual life and a reflection of the love of God in eternity past.

(3) When he is executing this love in the spiritual life, he is doing exactly what our Lord did in His humanity during the first Advent. 1 Jn 4:19 says, “We love because He first loved us.” The love mentioned here is the love of people for people, not our love for God.

(4) True love combines with respect to give us the biblical view of what soul love is and capacity in the soul.

g. The soul of the man brings true love into the relationship. The soul of the woman brings respect to the marriage. Each brings something in the soul to the relationship so there can be coalescence of souls. The coalescence of souls in Christian marriage must never be broken by wrong decisions, such as adultery, fornication, or choosing an unborn child over the mother. The man needs respect and the woman needs love. When they were perfect in the garden they each needed these things, and things have not changed after the fall. A spiritually mature man in marriage has fantastic integrity-love to offer to a woman. The woman can have that same love, but it is called respect. They both have the same kind of spiritual love but they are different.

(1) The woman is a responder and brings into a marriage something that is a response—respect for her husband. Her response is a human mirror reflecting the love given to her by the man. Her agape love comes out as respect, but it is the same love as the man’s love. Obedience is no problem for a woman where the man loves her. She gives him respect as he gives her integrity-love. The inner beauty of the woman’s soul is her integrity. There is no true love without integrity. The woman adds her respect to his love for the coalescence of their souls. This fulfills her command to be under the authority of her own husband as to the Lord.

(2) The man gives her love. She gives him respect. They have coalescence of souls. The man initiates a love, and the woman takes that love and responds to it. As that love goes through her soul it comes out as respect. It comes out stronger as a far greater love. This produces a fantastic coalescence of souls and bodies (in marriage) because it is strictly bound up in integrity. In true love, they both have capacity for love from their spiritual life. Because the woman is a responder, she responds to integrity. Therefore, the relationship is one of virtue. It is romance based on virtue and integrity.

(3) But if the man does not bring true love to the marriage and the woman does not bring respect, they are ships that pass in the night. Sex outside of marriage is punished to the maximum by God, and the punishment often brings about scar tissue in the souls of the one’s involved, so that when a man or a woman in this state get married they never have the capacity to fulfill the true principle of marriage. The only solution is rebound and keep moving. If the man does not bring love into the marriage, but only lust, and if the woman does not bring respect into the marriage, but only her constant complaining, arrogance, and bitterness, then they are ships that pass in the night. They are strangers in constant battle. The only solution is in the ten problem solving devices. Sex is not a problem solving device, but the inevitable result of the corporate testimony of Christian marriage. Christian marriage is extrapolated from the divine institution of marriage as a corporate testimony for the Prosecution (God) 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 Age. “This is a great mystery but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the Church.”

(4) The joining of souls in marriage is the joining of two parts of soul-love. The same thing is true in friendship. The husband brings true love as a reflection of divine love in the integrity of God. The wife brings true love in the form of respect—the response to the integrity of true love. The woman has to have the same capacity for true love, but her capacity for true love means she is not in competition with her husband. One brings love and the other brings respect—that is mutual support, that is the royal family honor code. It is tremendous admiration and not lust. In marriage you have desire for a physical relationship which is perfectly normal. Outside of marriage you have lust and it is a matter of integrity to say “no” to it.

(5) Love cannot survive without respect. Respect cannot survive without love. The two must come together. The bodies are not involved outside of marriage, but the bodies are involved inside of marriage. So the coalescence of love and respect in the souls of a man and a woman united in marriage results in a coalescence of their bodies in a fantastic vacation in sex which takes them back to the garden of Eden. The only thing recoverable from the garden of Eden is sex for pleasure in marriage.

(6) Many Christians will never find their true love because the Lord Jesus Christ is not under consideration for first place in their life through the unique spiritual life of the Church Age.

(7) If the man cannot bring true love to a relationship, he cannot be respected by a woman. If a woman cannot bring respect to a relationship, she cannot be loved by the man.

(a) Each gender has something the other needs to complete the coalescence of souls which results in coalescence of bodies in marriage. The man’s love in marriage cannot survive without respect. The woman’s respect cannot survive without the man’s love. Each brings what the other needs for marriage. This is the spiritual life inserted into Christian marriage.

(b) The man is commanded to love. If he cannot love, he will not be respected. The woman is commanded to respect. If she cannot respect, she will not be loved. A man cannot love without respect. A woman cannot respect without love.

© Therefore, the man must bring love to the relationship to receive respect, and the woman must bring respect to the relationship to receive true love. That is why love is the point of reference for the unique spiritual life of all human history.

(d) If you are single, you do not look for the right person, you are the right person. You have to become the right person through the execution of the unique spiritual life of all human history. God provides the right person.

h. A person is no better in marriage than they are as a person. This is why we must never think of love as being separate from virtue and integrity of the soul.

(1) Premarital sex does not prepare a person for marriage. Fornication is neither system of happiness, nor a system of security. Fornication is self-induced misery plus self-destruction of integrity. The same is true for adultery.

(2) To be promotable in the spiritual life, we must be compatible with the integrity of God. Compatibility with the integrity of God is the function of the unique spiritual life of all human history. The success or failure of the spiritual life goes hand in hand with the success or failure of marriage.

(3) Whether carnal or spiritual, winner or loser, under love discipline or love blessing, there is no greater security than the love for the believer which God has given to us.

(4) Sex only has meaning when the true love in marriage exists on the part of the husband and respect exists on the part of the wife from the same true love. God has designed sex as an expression of the true love in marriage. Therefore, sex outside of marriage is lust, followed by temptation, and then sin.

(5) True love in marriage is located in the soul, where metabolized doctrine is accumulated in the seven compartments of the stream of consciousness. Consequently, true love is compatible with the integrity of God and reflects the virtue of divine righteousness, the decisions of divine justice and the virtue of divine love. Virtue in the soul neutralizes the lust pattern of the sin nature and resists sexual sins. Without soul involvement from Bible doctrine, the true meaning of love and the true meaning of sex are destroyed. So marriage is the envelope for sex.

i. Rom 5:8 says the same thing as Eph 5:25, “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died as a substitute for us.” cf. “Just as Christ also loved the Church and gave Himself as a substitute for her.”

(1) The husband’s part in marriage is to have the same kind of substitutionary love as our Lord Jesus Christ has for the Church.

(2) This love has three categories: personal love, impersonal love, and spiritual self-esteem. The integrity of God is in Christian marriage where the spiritual life is utilized.

j. The destiny in marriage between a husband and wife is defined in terms of love. The woman’s love is called respect. Respect is defined as admiration, deference, honor, esteem, consideration, and partiality. The man’s love is called enduring devotion. Enduring devotion is defined as intense love for and enduring loyalty to one’s wife, plus consecration to the biblical principles of marriage.

3. The importance of the love of God as the point of reference for our spiritual life is seen in the Latin prepositional phrase A FORTIORI, which means “with stronger reason.” It is one of the greatest systems for logic and inference that has ever existed in any language. It became a system of logic related to comparison and inference. It is a conclusion or recognized fact of doctrine, which is inferred as being inescapable or more certain. Therefore, a fortiori uses an inferential conclusion as being more conclusive than a recognized fact through the function of comparison and inference. In the comparison there must be absolute truth—Bible doctrine. There are comparisons in certain verses in the New Testament, and in these comparisons there are inferences, and from that inference there is a stronger and greater reason that establishes the doctrine, even beyond its direct statement.

a. The a fortiori of deliverance from the last judgment illustrates the function of this system of logic and is found in Rom 5:8-9, “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died as a substitute for us. Much more therefore [the a fortiori conclusion], having been justified by His blood, we shall be delivered from the wrath of God through Him.”

(1) If the greater benefit was given by God at the Cross and it was, He will not withhold the lesser benefit to the believer in Jesus Christ after salvation.

(2) If the believer is benefitted by the integrity of God (His perfect righteousness and justice), how much more will he be benefitted as a believer through the love of God as expressed in the grace of God.

(3) If we are benefitted by the fact that the righteousness of God condemned all sins in eternity past and the justice of God judged them all at the Cross so that the love of God provides this so great salvation, how much more does the love of God firm up the concept through the grace of God of the tremendous deliverance from the last judgment.

(4) It is much easier to deliver the believer from the last judgment than for God to impute all sins to the human nature of Jesus Christ on the Cross and judge every one of them.

(5) If God did the almost impossible thing at the Cross, it is much easier for Him to do the easier thing at the last judgment. You will never face the last judgment and you have been given the greatest spiritual life in all of human history.

b. We have the a fortiori of escrow blessing in Rom 5:17, “For if by the transgression of that one [Adam], [spiritual] death ruled through that one, much more those who receive in life the surplus from grace [your spiritual life with escrow blessings] and the gift of righteousness will rule through the One, Jesus Christ.”

(1) The surplus from grace is your spiritual life with far greater blessings than any Old Testament believer ever had. It took more for God the Father to provide eternal salvation for us than to give us the greatest spiritual life of all time.

(2) If the integrity of God did the most for us at salvation, it follows a fortiori that the integrity of God will provide much more than the most at the point of reference of love to both the believer who attains spiritual maturity and above all to the believer who advances to PLEROMA status.

(3) The integrity of God did the most difficult thing in the imputation and judgment of all human sins at the Cross. Therefore, it is easier for the integrity of God to do the less difficult thing in blessing the PLEROMA believer.

c. We have the a fortiori conclusion in Rom 8:31-32, “What shall we say face to face with these things? If God [is] for us, who [is] against us? Who indeed did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over as a substitute for all of us all, how will He not also with Him graciously give to us the all things?”

(1) “If God for us, who against us?” is rhetorical elation. Hence, it is a rhetorical expression of happiness related to the spiritual life of the Church Age.

(2) The greater difficulty of the Cross is compared with the lesser difficulty of giving to us the unique spiritual life of all human history. If God accomplished the greater difficulty at the Cross, it is obvious that He can accomplish the lesser difficulty by giving to you the postsalvation spiritual life of the highest quality that ever existed.

(3) The greater difficulty was the imputation of all human sins to Jesus Christ on the Cross and their judgment. The lesser degree of difficulty is the imputation of divine righteousness at salvation through faith alone in Christ alone. There are three results of the imputation of divine righteousness:

(a) Justification by faith.

(b) The Church Age believer becomes the object of the personal love of God.

4. Rom 8:28, “Now we know that to those who love, He causes all things to work together for good of intrinsic value, to those who are called according to His purpose.”

a. Knowledge comes before love. You cannot love someone you do not know. You do not love God unless there is enough Bible doctrine circulating in your stream of consciousness pertinent to the subject of the spiritual life. If you do not love God, you will accept the cheap substitute—emotion.

(1) In the soul of every believer, the potential for true love and the potential for respect reside. True love and respect always go together. With true love comes respect. If you love God, there are certain things you would not do, even when you are tempted, because you respect Him.

(2) You would make a lot of different decisions in your life if you respected God. When we sin, we have rejected the love of God. We have no respect for God. There is something more important for us in erroneous thinking than there is in respect for God. We do not love God when we sin. Our sins demonstrate that we do not love God because we do not respect Him.

(3) That is why this verse does not apply to all believers, but only to those believers who have reached the early stages of spiritual maturity and beyond. We spend our lives as Christians doing what we want to do and then trying to justify it, and that is the quintessence of evil. All things do not work together for good for you unless you have reached spiritual self-esteem and your scale of values puts doctrine first out of respect for God.

b. The phrase “to those who love God” is a reference to personal love for God the Father. The whole verse is dedicated to the believer who has reached spiritual adulthood. This passage is for adult believers. You do not love God apart from knowledge of God. All things do not work together for good for people who do not love God, for believers out of fellowship, for believers in perpetual carnality, for believers who do not have the values of the spiritual life. This promise is for mature believers, not for believers who are not even close to the spiritual life. Why is this verse only for mature believers? Because love is a part of the integrity of God. Love, righteousness, and justice always function together.

c. Knowledge comes before love. All true love is preceded by accurate knowledge of the object of that love, and God is no exception. Your knowledge of God is based upon the word of God.

(1) No believer can attain true love for God without knowledge of God. Therefore, the role of love and respect in the soul of the believer before rapport with God is established on the basis of grace orientation interacting with doctrinal orientation. We may react to or even reject the love of God, but the love of God never rejects any believer no matter how evil or carnal he may become after salvation.

(2) This principle is based on the doctrine of the integrity of God related to eternal security. All of your failure and success in the spiritual life is always within the framework of eternal security. You cannot do anything to change the fact you have eternal life, imputed divine righteousness, and union with Christ.

(3) All Church Age believers receive thirty-nine irrevocable absolutes at the moment of salvation through faith alone in Christ alone, and these irrevocable absolutes include your very own portfolio of invisible assets by which you execute the unique spiritual life of the Church Age.

(4) The thirty-nine irrevocable assets cannot be rescinded through carnality, evil, or any failure on the part of the believer in time. The believer may reject the love of God (and he does in carnality), but the love of God never rejects the believer.

(5) For the believer who becomes a winner and attains both spiritual maturity and PLEROMA status, it is God who causes all things to work together for good.

(6) When you know God, you love God. When you love God, you respect God. When you respect God, you accept the authority of God. When you accept the authority of God, you obey God. When you obey God, you grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, 2 Pet 3:18. When you grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, you fulfill the rest of 2 Pet 3:18, which says, “To Him be the glory both now and unto the day of eternity (an idiom which means `forever and ever’).” This is also expressed in Eph 3:19-21, “And come to know the love for Christ [note the parallel with Rom 8:28] which surpasses knowledge that we may be filled resulting in all the fullness of blessing [PLEROMA] from God. Now to Him [God the Father] who is able to do infinitely more than all we ask or think on the basis of the power that keeps working in us, to Him the glory by means of the Church by the agency of Christ Jesus with reference to all generations of this unique age of all the ages.”

(7) You never benefit from the punishment of God until you respond to the love of God. If you are punished and you rebel, you enter into reversionism. If you are subjective at all, your objectivity is gone. When we come to love God, it is because doctrine in the stream of consciousness has replaced these things.

(8) Typically, people love on the basis of some kind or wonderful or great thing that is done to them or for them. They never stop to realize that love sometimes comes in exactly the opposite way, because they are too self-centered to have capacity for love. You can only break out of this self-centeredness through Bible doctrine circulating in the stream of consciousness.

(9) 1 Pet 1:9, “Whom having not seen, you love. And though you do not see Him now, yet believing, you rejoice.”

(10) Soul love demands that you know the object of the love. When you do know the object, then you have a responder in your soul. The highest type of response in love is respect. You do not love God until you respect God. You do not respect God when you constantly ignore His word, reject His word, violate His mandates, and have no motivation to get into the magnificent spiritual life of the Church Age provided for you.

(11) God has never stopped loving you, but you have rejected the love of God. God will even discipline you in love.

(12) When you think you love people because of emotion or physical attraction and there is no soul involvement, that is not love, but it is very self-destructive. That kind of love leads to putting a person on a pedestal and idolizing them. When you idolize from emotion, that is not love. When you destroy the idol which you created, you destroy in yourself your capacity to love. The only hope you have is to get your eyes off people, grow up spiritually, and love God. If you do not love God, you really do have the capacity to love people. God has given you everything you need to love Him.

c. The words “all things” are not the subject of the next clause, because it is the accusative plural direct object (not the nominative case which is the case used for subjects) from the adjective PAS. The third person singular suffix of the verb SUNERGEO is the subject. “He” (God) is the subject. God causes all things to work together for good. God the Father indirectly causes all things to work together for good, but not directly. It is Bible doctrine in your soul that directly causes all things to work together for good. The direct cause is your positive volition to Bible doctrine, so that you advance to personal love for God the Father and deploy that problem solving device in your soul.

d. The whole point of the Church Age is the volition of every believer. The issue of your volition is “What is your scale of values?” Whatis more important to you than anything else in life? If it is not God, then you will have no capacity in the soul to appreciate or love that thing you want more than God. The quality of your life, depends upon your attitude toward God.

(1) Testing demands the use of Bible doctrine.

(2) Temptation demands the use of the sin nature.

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