Spiritual Dynamics Special 7/1/92 through 8/16/92
A. Introduction.
1. The spiritual life that God has provided for you is not designed to change your personality
. a. The Christian way of life is not designed to destroy your personality or make you different in your personality, as legalists attempt to do.
There are all kinds of personalities in the Christian life. Each personality has its very own purpose. Every believer is different. There are no two personalities that are alike. The spiritual life does not demand that we all act a certain way.
b. God has given you your very own spiritual life, and you are the only one who can live it. Believers are all different, yet all are in the same hand of God. God has provided for every believer his very own spiritual life with a uniform set of principles and divine mandates, and a means of glorifying Him.
c. There are changes which occur in you as a result of your Christian life, but there is no mold in the Christian life into which you must fit. All kinds of personalities commit the same sins, but remain different personalities.
d. We are all different personalities, but are all on the same team.
e. The spiritual life is not a uniform personality. It is a uniform system of biblical mandates and biblical principles, not designed to change your personality, but designed to glorify God as He intended it to be.
2. In eternity past, God the Father in His omniscience knew all about you, and He knew that you would make that one great decision to believe in Christ for eternal salvation, and He provided for you in eternity past your very own portfolio of invisible assets. God provided a special portfolio for each Church Age believer. This portfolio has uniform categories but variations within the categories. While the spiritual life, which God has given to us in category one of our portfolio, is uniform in its mandates, modus operandi, and support systems, it is not designed to attack and change your personality. Our portfolio is mentioned in several passages.
a. Eph 1:6-7, “To the praise of the glory of His grace, which (grace) He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, on the basis of the riches of His grace.” The “riches of His grace” is our portfolio and extend into every aspect of our life, and they are provided in grace—you do not earn them or deserve them.
b. Eph 1:17-18, “That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you a lifestyle of wisdom and of revelation concerning Him through metabolized doctrine. {I also pray that} the eyes of your right lobe may be enlightened, so that you may know what is the confidence of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints.”
(1) There has to be in your spiritual life a total replacement of all of the blackout of the soul, scar tissue of the soul, and garbage in the subconscious. This is accomplished by having a lifestyle of wisdom, a process that takes a long time and demands Bible doctrine be your number one priority.
(2) God the Father gives us a lifestyle of wisdom so that we may know what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints—our portfolio of invisible assets.
c. Eph 3:16, “That He may give you, on the basis of the riches of His glory, to become strong by means of power through His Spirit in the inner man.” God’s grace is extended through our very own portfolio of invisible assets. The last half of this verse describes your very own spiritual life.
d. Rom 9:23, “That He might make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory.” God provided a portfolio of invisible assets billions of years ago, so that you have a life of meaning, purpose, and definition which is beyond anything you could imagine, and a glory that exceeds any glory of any category that this world has ever known. This requires a phenomenal change in the stream of consciousness of right lobe of the soul, where there are so many things that have accumulated by way of scar tissue of the soul.
e. Eph 2:7, “That in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in generosity toward us in Christ Jesus.”
f. Phil 4:19, “My God will supply all your needs on the basis of His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.” How does God provide our needs? In the process of learning doctrine, the believer begins to use his portfolio and the portfolio meets the needs of his life. God cannot supply your needs apart from you living your very own spiritual life.
g. Col 2:2, “That their hearts may be encouraged, having been knit together in love, and {attaining} all the riches of full assurance of understanding, {resulting} from epignosis of the mystery of God, {that is,} of Christ.” The portfolio of invisible assets as a part of his unique spiritual life was a total mystery to all Old Testament believers.
3. The Categories of Our Portfolio of Invisible Assets.
a. The Spiritual Life of the Believer.
(1) This includes the spiritual gifts and the power of the spiritual life, which is the filling of the Holy Spirit, metabolization of doctrine, and the ten problem solving devices circulating in the stream of consciousness. You and you alone are the only one who can live your spiritual life. To abandon your spiritual life is one of the greatest tragedies in life.
(2) The spiritual life is defined in 2 Cor 4:18 under its simplest concept, “While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.” Many believers do not discover until death how useless their life has been, because they have spent their life trying to prove something to others.
(3) When we ignore the power of God found in the filling of the Holy Spirit and metabolized doctrine, we will self-destruct through our own bad decisions and avoid taking the responsibility for them. This puts us into direct contact with the supreme court of heaven for divine discipline.
(4) True wealth is not measured by God in terms of materialistic things, but in terms of what you have in the stream of consciousness of your right lobe. Therefore, the emphasis in Scripture is on saving the soul. Thought is wealth. The thinking of doctrine or the “mind of Christ” is provided by God. When we have it circulating in the seven compartments of the right lobe of the soul, our spiritual wealth begins to pay great dividends.
(5) The enemy of our spiritual life is false ideas, created by false teaching. 1 Tim 6:3-6, “If anyone teaches a different doctrine, and does not concur with sound doctrines, those of our Lord Jesus Christ, even with the doctrines pertaining to spiritual life. He is arrogant, understanding nothing; but he has a morbid obsession about controversies and verbal conflicts, from which originate envy, jealousy, discord, evil speculations, and constant friction between men of depraved mind and deprived of the truth, who suppose that the spiritual life is a means of gain. But the spiritual life is a means of great gain, when accompanied by contentment.”
(a) The Greek word EUSEBEIA means spiritual life. It means that you have a basis from Bible doctrine in the seven compartments of your stream of consciousness of having true Christian fellowship, which is fellowship with God.
(b) Arrogance is defined here as “understanding nothing.” Arrogance has no doctrine circulating in its stream of consciousness. Arrogance perpetuated, not only denies reality, goes into morbid obsession about controversies. Morbid obsession about controversies does not mean taking a position against someone else as such, but always being on the wrong side when it comes to Bible doctrine. Morbid obsession means never applying doctrine to yourself, but applying it to someone else. Self- righteous arrogance resists applying doctrine to self and puts an antagonistic attitude into the soul. Then that antagonistic attitude is turned into a system of human self-righteousness, human dynamics. A morbid obsession about controversies develops into psycho Christians and Christian activism. Inevitably, an arrogant person will take their own unrealized flaws and project them on someone else in gossip, maligning, judging, malice. Their vocabulary is designed to justify self, because they cannot stand to think of themselves as being wrong. They also cling to their own morality to maintain their self-righteousness.
(6) Bible doctrine pertinent to Church Age believer is called “the mysteries of God” in 1 Cor 4:1. It is a mystery in the sense that it is only understood by those who are filled with the Spirit and positive to doctrine on a consistent basis. The spiritual life is a process, a system of values you retain every day of your life regardless of setbacks of any kind. 1 Tim 3:9, “Keep holding the mystery, even doctrine, with a pure conscience.” A pure conscience is a complete and total understanding of spiritual dynamics, i.e., what the spiritual life is.
(7) Col 2:2, “That their hearts may be encouraged, having been held together by means of love, therefore, resulting in all riches from the full assurance of the technical knowledge and the epignosis knowledge God’s mystery, Christ Himself.”
(8) Eph 1:19-20, “And what is the surpassing greatness of His power to us who have believed in the working of His superior power which He put into operation by means of Christ, when He raised Him from the dead, and enthroned Him at His right hand in the heavens.” The function of metabolized Bible doctrine or epignosis circulating in your stream of consciousness by means of the filling of the Spirit is your spiritual life.
(9) Part of your spiritual life is extrapolation from metabolized doctrine of the ten problem solving devices. Adversity and prosperity are the two great enemies of the soul. They create pressures in life which attempt to break through the FLOT line of the problem solving devices to form stress in the soul. Stress in the soul is sin nature control of the soul, so that your spiritual life no longer functions.
b. The Second Category—Spiritual Production and Spiritual Skill.
(1) Spiritual production and spiritual skills are the basis for your Christian service, but spiritual skills must precede production skills.
(2) Spiritual skills plus production skills equal the production of divine good. Production skills minus spiritual skills equal the performance of human good, dead works, and evil.
(3) The spiritual skills are related to category one of the portfolio of invisible assets—the filling of the Holy Spirit and Bible doctrine circulating in your stream of consciousness.
(4) Production skills are related to your Christian service. There are five categories of Christian service.
(a) Christian service is related to whatever your spiritual gift is.
(b) Christian service is related to your royal priesthood— prayer, giving.
© Christian service is related to your royal ambassadorship- -witnessing, leadership in administration.
(d) Christian service is related to your invisible impact, your invisible testimony to angels of the power of the problem solving devices in the soul.
(e) Christian service is related to the laws of divine establishment—law enforcement, military service, your job.
c. The Third Category—Escrow Blessing.
(1) God the Father, as the grantor, billions of years ago, knowing that you would believe in Christ, deposited into escrow greater blessings for time and eternity.
These are the greatest blessings God can ever give you, but you must fulfill the conditions of the escrow by advancing to maturity.
(2) Failure to execute the conditions of the escrow means these blessings remain on deposit in escrow forever as a memorial to lost opportunity.
d. The Forth Category—the Unique Assets of the Church Age.
(1) The creation of a new spiritual species.
(2) The creation of the royal family of God.
(3) Equal privilege under the baptism of the Spirit or positional sanctification.
(4) Equal opportunity under logistical grace.
(5) The creation of a unique plan for this dispensation.
(6) The creation of a universal priesthood, allowing you to represent yourself before God.
(7) The ten problem solving devices.
(8) The royal ambassadorship.
(9) The mystery doctrine of the Church Age in a completed Canon.
(10) The indwelling of all three members of the Trinity.
(11) A dispensation of no prophecy.
(12) A dispensation of invisible heroes related to your invisible impact.
4. There is no spiritual life related to physical birth. The spiritual life occurs after being born again. The spiritual life is mandated by the Word of God but is only lived by those believers who are positive to doctrine. Spiritual dynamics is optional.
5. The spiritual life is not only the dynamics of the Christian way of life but has a practical application to every phase of our experience on earth. Human relationships, relationship with God, your environment, both adversity and prosperity, objectivity from maximum doctrine circulating in your stream of consciousness through the filling of the Holy Spirit, discernment, common sense, and wisdom are some of the by-products of using this spiritual life. The spiritual life is a body of doctrine for the believer in Jesus Christ with very practical applications to every aspect of your life as a believer.
6. The spiritual life combines the filling of the Holy Spirit with cognition, inculcation, metabolization, application of Bible doctrine to postsalvation experience on earth.
7. One of the greatest set backs in the spiritual life is to resent your parents, either father or mother or both. As adults, we recognize that parents represented our first authority in life. Often, reaction to parents means reaction to all kinds of authority in life. If you live in the past, you cannot advance in the present in your spiritual life. As an adult, you have a great deal more control over your life in the use of your volition to determine your destiny, your attitude, and your outlook on life. By living in the past, we often react to authority creating scar tissue of the soul and garbage in the subconscious. Then we resent and reject authority or deny and project our flaws on others. We do not apply doctrine to ourselves. Your destiny must come under God’s plan for your life. Postsalvation spiritual life is related to the function of your soul in thinking, in motivation, in decision, and in action. The source of your spiritual life is in thinking and motivation.
a. Your spiritual life demands that you look forward from the point of salvation rather than backward. You become very weak when you blame your own bad decisions on someone else. If we fail to take responsibility for our bad decisions, we are already looking backwards.
b. Your spiritual life demands that you begin to reason within the content of Bible doctrine which you hear.
(1) You are still alive after salvation. You are still alive because of the sovereign will of God and His grace policy and provision for you personally. Therefore, you can conclude that God has a plan, will, and purpose for your life, and the purpose is your continuation and learning what that will is. This plan is related to the spiritual life provided for you in your very own portfolio of invisible assets.
(2) This spiritual life does not center around change in personality. Changing the personality is not spirituality. In order to be spiritual, you do not have to change your personality to conform to some legalistic mold into which others attempt to place you. There are many types of personality forms in human beings. Each personality form is a combination of many influences: biological life, environment after birth, and the sin nature trends. When the spiritual life takes hold in your thinking, it begins to make the most fantastic changes.
c. Many believers today are looking backward instead of forward. They are seeking answers and explanations for their failures from social environment of their past childhood, bad marriage, or failure in some endeavor in life. This backward retrospection abandons the future and the fantastic spiritual life which God has provided for us in regeneration. The one exception to not looking back at the past is awareness of the garbage in our own subconscious. It is very important to know about your own garbage because you must deal with your own garbage. It should give you a renewed desire for Bible doctrine and the answers that the Word of God has to give. Looking backward is often blaming your first authority in life—your parents for wronging you. So you have been wronged. So what? You have wronged others also. When you forgive others, is there any bitterness or other mental attitude sin after you have forgiven them? If there is, then you haven’t really forgiven them at all. You are not using your spiritual life.
(1) Birth separates you from your parents, so that their failures and functions of their sin nature can be handled after being born again. (The one exception is incest.) Your spiritual life is a process, a day-by- day system of values. Is God more real to you than all of the things that you suffer? Your genetic heritage is never an excuse for failure or blaming the way you are.
(2) Phil 3:13-15, “Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it [the spiritual life] yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the objective for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let us therefore, as many as are mature, have this attitude; and if in anything you have a different attitude, God will reveal that also to you.”
(3) Even if you had a difficult childhood, sooner or later you are going to have to move on with your life. So you failed in some facet of your life, sooner or later you are going to have to move on. Move on with your spiritual life; you cannot move on without it. Do not be distracted by past failures, except to learn from them, but not to blame others for them. Our spiritual life teaches us how to live in the light of eternity. Our spiritual life instructs us to forget the past and move toward the high ground of spiritual maturity. Past failures must never become present handicaps. As long as we are alive, our objective must sooner or later come to the point of forgetting those things which are behind. But we cannot do it in our own strength, because the spiritual life was never designed for us to function in our own strength. The assimilation, cognition, inculcation, metabolization of Bible doctrine in your very own stream of consciousness on a continual basis will eventuate in destroying the garbage in your subconscious. We do not glorify God by allowing any of the adversities of life becoming the inside pressures of stress in the soul.
8. The believer must learn to distinguish between the spiritual life and morality and at the same time to understand morality’s relationship to the Christian life. See the doctrine of Morality.
9. Spiritual denial occurs when the believer is divided from reality, therefore, reality is gone and in its place he has entered into dissociation resulting in psychosis. This principle is taught in the following passages.
a. 2 Tim 3:7, “Always learning but never able to come to an [epignosis] knowledge of truth.”
b. 2 Tim 3:5, “Holding to an outward form of the spiritual life [EUSEBEIA], although they have denied its power; and avoid such men as these.”
c. Our Lord teaches about spiritual denial through two analogies,
(1) Lk 5:36, a new patch on an old garment. The old garment represented the self-righteous arrogance from legalism. The true spiritual life is the patch which is torn from a new garment. That has ruined the new garment and, at the same time, it does not match the old garment. The old garment has to do with the dispensation of Israel and the Mosaic Law. By tearing a patch from the spiritual life of the Church and by sowing it on to the Mosaic Law, the believer has torn up the spiritual life of the Church. He has sewn it on the Mosaic Law where it does not match.
(2) Lk 5:37-39, new wine in old wineskins. The new wine represents the spiritual life of the Church Age believer under the protocol plan of God. The new wine is tantamount to hearing the teaching of doctrine but never applying it to oneself. Old wineskins represents any system of legalism or self-righteous arrogance. If you try to put the spiritual life into any system of legalism, you ruin the spiritual life and it cannot function. The new wine of your very own spiritual life cannot exist in an old wineskin of converting the outside pressures of prosperity or adversity into the inside pressures of stress in the soul. Three things ruin the spiritual life.
(a) Repression, in which the believer is unable to remember or to be cognitively aware of feelings thoughts or experiences related to garbage in his own soul.
(b) Spiritual denial, in which the believer has no perception of reality and fails to acknowledge some aspects of external reality that are obvious to others.
© Projection, in which the believer falsely attributes his own unrecognized and unacknowledged sins, failures, flaws, lusts, antagonistic reactions and impulses to others. Projection explains blaming others for one’s spiritual condition of stress and garbage in the soul. Projection explains why so many believers enter into vilification, gossip, maligning, judging, assigning blame to others for one’s own bad decisions.
(3) You cannot pour the new wine of your very own spiritual life into the old wineskin of any form of legalism, arrogance, the emotional complex of sins, or garbage in the soul related to repression, denial, and projection. The conversion of the outside pressures of adversity into the inside pressure of stress in the soul is like pouring new wine into an old wineskin.
(4) The new wineskin is the mystery doctrine of the Church Age, which is the environment and frame of reference for our spiritual life.
(5) “No one drinking the old desires the new.” This means, if you are involved in repression, denial, projection, you have neither the motivation nor the desire to live your own spiritual life. You can listen to doctrine year in and year out and never grow spiritually—the new wine just keeps pouring out of your old wineskin. “For he thinks, `The old is good enough [suitable].’” The Greek word CHRESTOS means suitable or useful devise for avoiding reality. You can listen to the teaching of doctrine and still avoid the reality of your own self-righteous life and legalistic status quo.
(6) Matt 9:17 is a parallel passage. “But they put new wine in new wineskins and both are preserved.” When you back your spiritual life with the metabolization of doctrine, you are putting new wine into new wineskins. When you put new wine into new wine skins, both your very own spiritual life (new wine) and the protocol plan of God for your life (new wineskin) are preserved.
(7) Putting new wine into new wineskins emphasizes the fact that every believer is a new spiritual species, 2 Cor 5:17, “Therefore, if anyone is in union with Christ, he is a new spiritual species. Old things have lost their power [power that influences you], behold, new things have come.” The new wine is your very own spiritual life; the new wineskin is maximum metabolized doctrine circulating in the stream of consciousness by means of the filling of the Spirit. The new wine of your spiritual life cannot coexist with the old wineskin of stress in the soul resulting in repression, denial, and projection on the one hand, and a series of sin nature blunders on the other hand.
B. The Spiritual Life As Described By Paul.
1. The Greek word EUSEBEIA is mistranslated in the English language “godliness.” Professor Gunther Bornkamm of Hiedelberg University defines EUSEBEIA as: “Christian life and faith, conduct in relationship to God, and manner of life.” The spiritual life functions by epignosis circulating in your stream of consciousness.
2. The Use of EUSEBEIA by Paul in Scripture.
a. 1 Tim 6:3-6, “If anyone teaches a false doctrine, and does not concur with sound doctrine, those of our Lord Jesus Christ, even the doctrine pertaining to the spiritual life [EUSEBEIA], he is conceited and understands nothing; but he has a morbid interest in controversial questions and disputes about words, out of which arise envy, strife, abusive language, evil suspicions, and constant friction between persons of depraved mind and deprived of truth, who assume that the spiritual life is a means of profit. But the spiritual life is a means of great profit, when accompanied by contentment.”
(1) Arrogance rejects true doctrinal teaching, blinds the believer to the truth, cannot comprehend Bible doctrine, is too preoccupied with self or others in relationship to self, cannot apply doctrine to self. This is why God makes war against the arrogant believer but gives grace to the humble believer, Jam 4:6; 1 Pet 5:5.
(2) When Bible doctrine does not have number one priority in the life, we have the sins of the soul and morbidity. We deprive ourselves of truth through our own negative volition.
(3) People assume that the spiritual life is simply a means of profit. There is profit in the spiritual life, but not as they assume it. The true spiritual life is a means of great profit, and begins when we share the perfect happiness of God. Sharing the happiness of God prevents the outside pressure of prosperity or adversity from becoming the inside pressure of stress in the soul. Sin nature control overruns the command post of the soul and puts our spiritual life out of action. There is a true and a false spiritual life. The true spiritual life is built and constructed on metabolized doctrine circulating in your own stream of consciousness. The false spiritual life is rejection of doctrine, which creates a vacuum into which is sucked all false doctrine.
(4) The word contentment means the most fantastic capacity for life, capacity for love, capacity for happiness, capacity for whatever environment you find yourself in at a given moment in your life.
b. 1 Tim 4:6-8, “In pointing out these things to the brethren, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, constantly nourished on the words of the faith and sound doctrine which you have been following. But have nothing to do with worldly fables fit only for old women. On the other hand, discipline yourself for the purpose of your spiritual life; for physical exercise has some value, but the spiritual life is profitable for all things, having a promise for the present life and for the life to come.”
(1) Worldly fables are related to false concepts of the spiritual life. They are anti-spiritual life concepts, false spiritual life concepts which are erroneously construed as part of the Christian way of life: Christian activism, cults, legalism, false doctrines. These old women were wealthy and had nothing to do except to get in trouble by coming up with all these wild ideas and causing problems in the local church.
(2) All believers must discipline themselves. Self-discipline is related to several things: your motivation in life, your priorities related to that motivation, and to your decisions based on your priorities. You must crowd the garbage out of both your stream of consciousness and your subconscious.
(3) You cannot handle the problems of life without your very own spiritual life being operational. If you have put your spiritual life in mothballs, you are going to have double discipline. You will produce discipline from your own bad decisions under the law of volitional responsibility and from divine discipline. The only ones who derive any blessing from the future are those who possess spiritual life; for they have confidence with regard to dying and they are not afraid of death. You have promises for the present life and for the life to come. Claiming those promises is one way of handling the pressures of prosperity and adversity.
c. 2 Tim 3:2-7, “For persons will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, slanderers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, implacable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of divine good, treacherous, thoughtless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God; who hold to a superficial form of the spiritual life, but they have denied its power; consequently avoid such persons as these. For among them are those who creep into homes and captivate silly women weighed down with sins, and led on by multifarious lusts, always learning but never able to come to an epignosis knowledge of the truth.”
(1) These are illustrations of living outside of your spiritual life. When believers give up on the spiritual life, they become lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.
(2) Holding to a superficial form of the spiritual life is ritual without reality, being exposed to doctrine on a limited basis and thinking that is all you need. There are two powers in the spiritual life which are denied: the filling of the Holy Spirit and the power of the word of God. This results in no metabolized doctrine circulating in the stream of consciousness. When you are out of fellowship and have abandoned the spiritual life, garbage leaks in from the subconscious and begins to push the doctrine you have learned out of the soul. (3) You are to avoid such people as these because they can have a great influence on your life. They say such things as, “Do not go to that church, come to our church. We have the whole realm of the spiritual life. We associate with nice Christians. We do things together as Christians. We do not put so much emphasis on doctrine.
(4) Silly women are those who think they are strong, when they are very weak. They derive their strength from their stubbornness, their concepts of morality, but they have no problem solving devices. They know something is wrong, so they come back to Bible class, but they come with a subconscious full of garbage.
d. The origin of the spiritual life is given in 1 Tim 3:16, “And by consent of all great is the mystery of the spiritual life: the Unique One was revealed in the flesh, was vindicated by means of the Spirit, was observed by angels, proclaimed among the nations, was believed on in the world, was taken up in glory.” Jesus Christ was the origin of the spiritual life. In the resurrection, ascension, and session of our Lord Jesus Christ, God gave a stamp of approval to the spiritual life of the humanity of Christ and made it the spiritual life of the believer in the Church Age. It is the most fantastic thing God has ever given to believers.
e. Tit 1:1, “Paul, a servant of God, and an apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the faith of those chosen of God and the epignosis knowledge of the truth which is the basis of the spiritual life.” The spiritual life is related to epignosis.
3. Principles and Applications.
a. Principles. (1) At the very moment of salvation, every believer receives his very own spiritual life tailored to his own soul and personality.
(2) While every believer receives his own spiritual life at salvation, the function of that spiritual life is common to all believers. All believers have the same set of instructions—the mandates of Bible doctrine as revealed in the New Testament epistles.
(3) The spiritual life possesses both individuality on the one hand, and uniformity of modus operandi on the other hand. The purpose of the spiritual life is never to change your personality, but to give your personality the expression that God designed for it in providing your own spiritual life.
(4) The individuality of your spiritual life is based on the fact you have an individual soul; you have your own personality to go with your spiritual life.
(5) This is why the Holy Spirit teaches the human spirit as noted in Rom 8:16, and this is why the teaching ministry of the Holy Spirit is so important to your own spiritual life.
(6) The human soul of the believer is both the location of the spiritual life and the battleground for the spiritual life.
(7) There are two categories of the spiritual life.
(a) The absolute—the filling of the Holy Spirit.
(b) The relative—related to Bible doctrine in the soul.
b. Application Principles of the Spiritual Life.
(1) You and you alone are the only one who can live your spiritual life; no one else can live it for you.
(2) Consequently, you and you alone are responsible for your own decisions, good or bad, positive or negative to doctrine; which means you cannot blame environment, childhood, people, or anyone or anything else for your failure to live your own spiritual life.
(3) Your spiritual life was designed by God in eternity past and functions under divine power only—the power of the Spirit, the power of the Word. Therefore, Bible doctrine and the filling of the Holy Spirit must have number one priority in your life after salvation.
(4) Since both the filling of the Spirit plus cognition, inculcation, and metabolization of doctrine are mandated for all believers, you have to undergo a change, and the first change has to be your scale of values. Sooner or later you must assign number one priority to Bible doctrine. The word of God is the revelation of God’s will, plan and purpose for your life. You cannot know the will of God apart from Bible doctrine. You can pray that God will guide you; however, it is a prayer that will not be answered if Bible doctrine is not your number one priority. The only way that you are going to know the will of God is through the word of God.
(5) Only through living your very own spiritual life through utilization of divine power can you glorify God and fulfill His will, His purpose, and His plan for your life.
(6) The right lobe of the soul is the location of your very own spiritual life, which was assigned to you at the moment of salvation through faith in Christ. While the spiritual life was given to you as an individual, it was actually provided in eternity past.
(7) The soul is the location of four great battles of your spiritual life: the battle of stress in the soul, the battle of sin in the soul, the battle of false doctrine in the soul, and the battle of defense mechanisms in the soul. The battle of defense mechanisms in the soul is the most difficult because it is the result of having been a loser in the first three battles.
The forth battle is the soul conflict of garbage versus metabolized doctrine in the stream of consciousness. You cannot live your spiritual life with garbage in your soul, either in your subconscious or in your stream of consciousness.
C. The Garbage in the Soul Dilemma.
1. Introduction.
a. Dilemma is used here under the definition of any difficult or perplexing situation or problem.
b. French psychologist Pierre Janet, 1859-1947, developed the concept of the subconscious. He taught that if the psychic strength which holds the integrated stream of consciousness together becomes deficient from things like fatigue, stress, or shock, it results in psychoneurosis. Traumatic experiences that could not be handled in the stream of consciousness goe into the subconscious. This becomes the basis for defense mechanism for stress, hysteria, etc. He taught that certain mental processes go on in the subconscious independently of or dissociated from the main stream of consciousness. Repression of a concept by the patient’s stream of consciousness went into the subconscious.
c. The biblical nomenclature for the right lobe of the soul is called the heart. The heart has two parts: the stream of consciousness with its seven compartments and the subconscious. The subconscious is the location for garbage, known in psychology as dissociation or repressed thoughts, and emotions which are related to arrogance and other complexes of sins.
d. How is it possible for a believer to be constantly exposed to accurate teaching of Bible doctrine and experience no growth, no advance in his spiritual life?
(1) Failure to metabolize doctrine.
(2) Failure to make Bible doctrine number one priority in the life.
(3) Failure to learn and apply the ten problem solving devices resulting in the prevention of outside pressures of adversity becoming the inside pressure of stress in the soul.
(4) Stress in the soul or sin nature control of the soul as the major source of garbage in the soul.
(5) Garbage in the subconscious developed before salvation or after salvation does not remain in the subconscious, but bleeds into the stream of consciousness when there is no spiritual strength from metabolized doctrine in the stream of consciousness. Often arrogance acts as a catalytic agent to bring garbage out of the subconscious into the stream of consciousness where it conflicts with metabolized doctrine.
2. How does garbage accumulate in the soul, in the subconscious and in the conscious mind?
a. Garbage in the subconscious is described by psychologists under the term defense mechanisms. Defense mechanisms are defined as patterns of feeling, thought, or behavior that are relatively involuntary. The Scripture says that many of them are impulsively voluntary. Hence, they occur as reaction or response to psychic danger. Defense mechanisms are designed to hide or to alleviate the conflicts and stresses in the soul that cause anxiety, hysteria, fear, worry, or other categories of the emotional complex of sins, the worst being guilt. Defense mechanisms are designed to bury any reaction you might have, any lack of esteem, any explanation for impulsive behavior or failure on your part.
(1) Acting-out is a defense mechanism in which a person acts without reflection or apparent regard for negative consequences.
(2) Autistic fantasy is a mechanism in which a person substitutes excessive day dreaming for the pursuit of social relationships. Social interaction through day dreaming is much easier than direct and effective social intercourse or use of the problem solving devices.
(3) Denial is a defense mechanism in which a person fails to acknowledge (buries in the subconscious) some aspect of external reality that would be obvious or apparent to others. Therefore, denial is a false perception of reality. This false perception of reality is necessary for some people because they must be good, they must be self-righteous, they can never be wrong. Therefore, they are very strong on self-justification. Denial is a false perception of reality related to the content of Scripture, especially the mystery doctrine of the Church Age.
(4) Dissociation is a mechanism in which a person sustains a temporary alteration in the integrated function of the stream of consciousness or personal identity. It includes certain functions of projection and suppression as part of its applications. Dissociation is the major pipeline into the subconscious with regard to things you cannot deal with in your stream of consciousness.
(5) Idealization is a defense mechanism in which a person attributes exaggerated positive qualities to self and others. When others are idealized, we call that role model arrogance. When self is idealized, we call that self-righteous arrogance or making a role model out of self.
(6) Intellectualization is a defense mechanism in which a person engages in excessive abstract thinking to avoid reality or experiencing some very disturbing feelings about self.
(7) Isolation is a defense mechanism in which a person is unable to experience simultaneously the cognitive and affective components of an experience because the affects are in the garbage of the subconscious. They cannot deal with it, so they must dump part of it into the garbage can of the subconscious to isolate it from the stream of consciousness. There is no leakage of the garbage into the stream of consciousness apart from traumatic experience.
(8) Projection is a mechanism by which believers take their own flaws, sins, and failures which they are not consciously aware of and assign them to any object of antagonism, and therefore, rid themselves of their failures. This creates a problem in the stream of consciousness which keeps out metabolized doctrine on the one hand and destroys metabolized doctrine on the other hand.
(9) Rationalization is a defense mechanism in which the believer devises reassuring or self-serving but incorrect explanations for his or her behavior.
(10) Repression is a defense mechanism in which the believer is unable to remember or to be cognitively aware of disturbing lusts, wishes, feelings, thoughts, or experiences related to sin.
(11) Suppression is a defense mechanism in which the believer intentionally avoids thinking about disturbing thoughts, problems, experiences, or feelings.
b. Defense mechanisms are the function of human volition.
(1) Defense mechanisms are the function of your volition when you are living outside of your spiritual life. There is a tremendous conflict between defense mechanisms and metabolized doctrine. This is one of the great battles fought in the soul of the believer. A major soul conflict exists in the life of every believer between defense mechanisms and metabolized doctrine at any stage of growth.
(2) Defense mechanisms are no substitute for the function of the ten problem solving devices in the protocol plan of God. The believer must first have cognition, inculcation, and metabolization of rebound. If ever there is to be recovery, it has to begin with the rebound technique. If you are on a self-righteous kick and have related it to defense mechanism, this equals your pseudo tranquility. This continues with no rebound and ruins your spiritual life.
3. Garbage in the stream of consciousness originates from the eight stages of reversionism. This is a postsalvation experience. Garbage in the stream of consciousness causes the believer to have no power to mix the promises of God or doctrinal rationales with faith as a part of the faith- rest drill.
a. How can a believer have an effective and wonderful relationship with God apart from the filling of the Spirit, personal love for God the Father, and occupation with Christ?
b. How can a believer have wonderful interaction and relationship of blessing with other people without doctrinal orientation and grace orientation?
c. How can the believer have a life of meaning, purpose, and definition apart from a personal sense of destiny?
d. To understand the mechanics of the ten problem solving devices, how can I have the necessary metabolized doctrine in the stream of consciousness when I am functioning with maximum garbage in the soul, both the stream of consciousness and the subconscious? How can I have the necessary metabolized doctrine in the stream of consciousness when I have all of these defense mechanisms rather than the problem solving devices on the defense line of the soul?
e. Every believer has an option in his postsalvation experience: defense mechanisms to avoid reality in life and become a loser (even though you think you are always right and have a pseudo self-esteem) or the function of the ten problem solving devices to become a winner. If you do not know how the ten problem solving devices function, then you cannot apply metabolized doctrine to your Christian experience and you can only fall back on the defense mechanisms which function in your soul.
4. At the moment any person believes in Jesus Christ, God does forty things for that person. One of the most overlooked things is that God forgives and forgets all past sins and failures. It is useless for a believer to probe his pre-salvation experience for answers to his current failures because it is old garbage.
a. Isa 43:25, “I, even I, am the one who wipes out your transgressions for My own sake; And I will not remember your sins.” All sins, failures, and reaction to injustice were wiped out at salvation. Why do you want to go into your childhood and into your past when every bit of that was blotted out at salvation?
b. Isa 44:22, “I have wiped out your transgressions like a thick cloud, And your sins like a heavy mist. Return to Me, for I have redeemed you.” If you believe the word of God, why are you probing into your past to find answers instead of probing into the future through perception and metabolization of Bible doctrine? We do not want to face the fact that we made the bad decision. We want to justify ourselves. We feel better if we feel righteous.
5. The soul, and especially the heart, is the location of the spiritual life. The heart is the battleground of your spiritual life. There are four battles fought in the soul.
a. The battle of stress in the soul. Both adversity and prosperity attack the soul. Your defense line is the ten problem solving devices extrapolated from metabolized doctrine in the stream of consciousness. Your counterattack to stress in the soul is the rebound technique.
b. The battle of sin in the soul. This battle is the result of losing the first battle. You are committing sins of ignorance and sins of cognizance. This means stress in your soul is overrunning the command post of your soul and putting your spiritual life out of action. This is how the worst of all sins—arrogance and emotion—gain control of the soul. To the extent we are being punished in our souls for our failures, we have gaps in our FLOT line, and this is how the sin nature gets control of the soul.
c. The battle of false doctrine in the soul. As a result of losing the first two battles, we create a vacuum in the soul which sucks up anything false into the soul. Eph 4:17, “Therefore, I communicate this doctrine and because of the Lord, I insist that you no longer walk even as Gentiles [unbelievers] walk, in the vacuum of their mind.” The vacuum in the soul attracts every system of false doctrine and results in seeking solutions through self-righteous arrogance, through legalism, through the irrationality of emotional revolt of the soul, through popular cults.
d. The battle of the defense mechanisms and the ten problem solving devices. This conflict is the result of losing the first two battles plus retreat and confusion of the soul from being set back by the third battle. Once you have false doctrine in the soul, it gives muscle to the garbage in your soul. This battle may be described as garbage versus metabolized doctrine in the stream of consciousness. When the believer is losing the forth battle, he or she accumulates two categories of garbage in the soul: garbage in the subconscious related to certain defense mechanisms such as suppression, repression, dissociation, and denial, and garbage in the stream of consciousness related to idealization, role model arrogance, and unrealistic expectation.
(1) Children use denial, repression, projection, and dissociation as problem solving devices in order to survive. This is perfectly normal for their survival. What is a problem solving device for a child, however, is a problem for an adult.
(2) Garbage in the subconscious is related to certain defense mechanisms such as repression, dissociation, and denial. In denial, you have no perception of what you really are. Projection is the reaction to unrealistic expectation.
(3) Some people have little pockets of garbage in the soul as a part of blackout of the soul. Others have large pockets of garbage in the soul as a part of scar tissue of the soul. People have garbage in the soul which is known to them and unknown to them and this is why doctrine is not metabolized.
6. While defense mechanisms bury garbage, as much as they can, in the subconscious, they also trash the stream of consciousness with a littering of garbage as a result of losing these four battles. This creates a lack of reality which results in justifying self. The longer you have been out of fellowship, the more trash you have in your soul and the more difficult your recovery is. If you want to know how much garbage is in your soul, try to evaluate your life in terms of how much you are self-righteous and defending yourself against being wrong. This lack of reality results in justifying your vilification of others, committing verbal sins against others.
a. Defense mechanisms are no substitute for the function of the spiritual life and must never replace the function of the ten problem solving devices on the FLOT line of the soul. Defense mechanisms battle and destroy the application of metabolized doctrine to experience. The exception is the child who often must use defense mechanisms to survive.
(1) The believer must have cognition, inculcation, and metabolization of rebound. Without rebound, we can never recover the filling of the Holy Spirit. Without the filling of the Spirit, He does not teach our human spirits, when we hear Bible doctrine taught. Therefore, we are always learning but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth.
(2) Garbage in the subconscious originates from repression and denial, while garbage in the stream of consciousness originates from the eight stages of reversionism. If you have collected garbage, then your life is not a spiritual life but a life of garbage-in and garbage-out. You will constantly be angry with people, bitter toward people.
(a) Garbage-in can be illustrated by repression and denial. This means a complete lack of reality with regard to self, usually a locked in arrogance and self-righteousness. Therefore, every time there is a problem with anyone, you think they are wrong and you are right. Another example is reaction to rejection, which produces self-pity, bitterness, or the emotional complex of sins. Bitterness is garbage in the stream of consciousness.
(b) Garbage-out is the whole concept of projection. Projection is the reversal of the faith-rest drill. Projection assigns the blame to others. To blame others, you must in your subconscious mind have the unconscious awareness of your own flaws. Justifying malice and revenge is an example of garbage-out.
(3) Without the understanding and use of the problem solving devices, you cannot have an effective spiritual life. Without a personal sense of destiny, you are going to drift through life. Garbage in the soul always produces unrealistic expectation.
b. As a believer, you have an option in your postsalvation experience.
(1) The option to advance in the spiritual life, Phil 3:13-14, “Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it [the objective]; but one thing I do: forgetting what is behind and advancing toward what is ahead, I press on toward the objective for the prize of the upward call from God in Christ Jesus.” Forgetting what is behind can be things that happened to you in your childhood or as a teenager. These things were dumped into your subconscious.
(2) The alternative is 2 Tim 3:5, “Holding to a superficial form of the spiritual life, but they have denied its power; and avoid such men as these.”
7. Psychotherapy may be necessary for some believers but there are some pitfalls to probing into your past through psychotherapy.
a. The defense mechanism (denial, repression, projection, dissociation) that saves the child destroys the adult.
b. After salvation through faith in Christ, defense mechanisms are no substitute for the extrapolation and use of the problem solving devices. If a believer does not learn these problem solving devices, it is inevitable that he will lean on defense mechanisms and be divorced from reality (some of the time or all of the time).
c. You and you alone are the only one who can live your spiritual life. That means counselling is, in a sense, walking on crutches.
d. Some believers may need therapy because of certain extreme or unusual traumas in their past; others may need help to cope with specific situations. The decision must be left to the individual so involved and the fewer people who know about your problems the better. The goal of the therapy process is change, not to establish blame or prevent the function of your spiritual life. When the process of therapy becomes an end rather than a means, the believer may become stuck in the past to the detriment of his spiritual life.
e. Evaluation of past events may help the believer avoid future mistakes. Unfortunately, many believers refuse to learn from their own past failures.
f. Past events should never be evaluated for self-justification or to assign blame to someone else in projection.
g. Psychotherapy can never replace the spiritual solution to problems but it can expedite the ability to use the spiritual problem solving devices.
8. The Classification of Garbage. All garbage in the soul is related to the essence of the sin nature.
a. Garbage is related to the sins of the arrogance complex.
b. Garbage is related to the sins of the emotional complex.
c. Garbage is related to the lust pattern of the sin nature.
d. Garbage is related to stress in the soul.
e. Garbage is related to the blackout of the soul.
f. Garbage is related to the scar tissue of the soul.
g. Garbage is related to defense mechanisms.
9. We do not battle sin from a state of perfection, but from the status quo of fellowship with God.
a. This is emphasized by 1 Jn 1:8, 10, “If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us.” If the truth is not in you and His word is not in you, then you lose the battle. True Christian fellowship is fellowship with God.
b. Loss of fellowship with God results in tactical defeat in any or all of the four battles of the soul. We battle sin from the status of fellowship with God, which means, you cannot win any of the four battles while out of fellowship.
D. The loser fails to live the spiritual life.
1. When the outside pressure of adversity is converted into the inside pressure of stress in the soul, that is the beginning of a process by which the believer becomes a loser. The process goes in downward stages as you lose each battle in the soul unless you halt it.
a. For example, the person who goes through iconoclastic arrogance creates an environment of self-righteousness. Iconoclastic arrogance is a perfect example for how you can substitute for the power of God your very own self-righteous arrogance.
b. Such a believer constructs two things out of the new environment of locked in self-righteousness: inability to utilize the ten problem solving devices and a role model of self. The role model of self becomes a system of two false reactions: denial and projection, and pseudo self- esteem. These two false reactions can never win the battle between defense mechanisms and problem solving devices or the battle of stress in the soul.
c. Iconoclastic arrogance is defined as subjective preoccupation with other people, and results from disappointment, disenchantment, or disillusion. The believer begins by creating an idol or a role model out of another believer and putting them on a pedestal. Eventually, the role model’s failures and flaws show through (the feet of clay syndrome) and this produces disillusion, disappointment in you. The role model is inflated under the defense mechanism of idealization—the believer attributes exaggeratedly positive qualities in the role model. You have to create unreality to keep anyone on a pedestal. Through rejection of the idol, iconoclastic arrogance then uses the sins of the emotional complex and arrogance complex to destroy the idol it created.
d. The next step in tactical defeat is unrealistic expectation, which expects everyone else to share their inflated view of self. When this does not occur, unrealistic expectation enters into a state of frustration and unhappiness resulting in a secondary system of projection—blaming others for their very own frustration and unhappiness. This flaw wipes out any possibility of you ever fulfilling the plan of God for your life.
e. Losers cannot solve problems. The unrealistic expectation of the believer in repression and denial not only blames others for his or her miserable state, but becomes aggressive under legalism to change others to conform to his or her unrealistic expectations.
f. Unrealistic expectation plus denial and repression never realizes that you can never change anyone else in the spiritual life, you can only change yourself.
g. You and you alone are the only one who can live your spiritual life; therefore, no one can live it for you. Once you have destroyed all the idols you have created, the only thing left for you to do is put yourself on the pedestal. You make a role model out of self and this is pseudo self-esteem.
h. Jam 1:20-25, “For the anger of a person does not achieve the virtue from God. Therefore, remove all pollution and excess of evil, receive with humility the implanted doctrine, which is able to deliver your souls. Moreover, keep on becoming doers of the word, and not hearers only who delude themselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a person who looks at his natural face in a mirror; for once he looks at himself and departs, he has immediately forgotten what kind of a person he was. But he who looks intently into the perfect law of freedom, and has persisted, not having become a forgetful hearer but a doer of accomplishment [maximum metabolized doctrine in the stream of consciousness], this believer will be happy in what he does [execution of the protocol plan of God].”
(1) If you do not approach the teaching of the word of God with humility, you make an issue out of something else, like the pastor’s personality, instead of the content of the message.
(2) Self-righteous arrogance can be a hearer of the Word but is never a doer of the Word. No epignosis in the right lobe means a flawed believer who cannot apply doctrine to self and distorts doctrine by only applying it to others. The self-righteous person is always criticizing, running down, gossiping, slandering, maligning, competing against others. They have turned their life over to defense mechanisms and they hear only what they want to hear.
i. Stress is sin nature control of the soul and establishes the pattern for failure in the spiritual life. The emotional complex of sins create stress in the soul and destroy the spiritual life. The solution is described in Ps 56:3-4, “When I am afraid, I will put my trust in You. In God, whose word I praise, In God I have put my trust; I shall not be afraid. What can man do to me?”
(1) Fear is outside pressure of adversity being converted into stress in the soul. The battle in the soul is between the faith-rest drill and the adversity of fear attacking the soul.
(2) “Whose word I praise” indicates the Bible doctrine is number one in the psalmist’s scale of values. “In God I have put my trust” is the faith-rest drill with the additional problem solving device of occupation with Christ.
(3) “I shall not be afraid” is the conclusion. 2. There are several principles of stress related to adversity. a. Adversity is always an outside pressure of life, any suffering or pressure that is outside your soul. Stress is the inside pressure of life.
b. Stress is what you do to yourself, adversity is what circumstances do to you. When you have stress in the soul, you have no one to blame but yourself. You use your own volition to create that stress. Life is full of unfairness and injustice, but that is no excuse for creating stress in your soul or allowing defense mechanisms to take over control of your soul. There are no battles in the soul for the unbeliever; they are consistently good, bad, or evil, because they have no battles in the soul.
c. Adversity is inevitable; stress is optional. Without using the problem solving devices, there are no solutions for the believer.
3. The Profile of the Christian Loser.
a. Christian losers are defined as believers who use their own volition to convert the outside pressure of prosperity or adversity into the inside pressure of stress in the soul.
b. There are seven descriptions of losers in the Bible.
(1) A believer who “has drifted off course from grace,” Gal 5:4. This believer has no grace orientation as a problem solving device on the FLOT line of his soul.
(2) A believer who “has come short of the grace of God.” They come short because they have entered into repression, denial, and projection. They have loaded up the subconscious with garbage.
(3) A believer who “is lukewarm, neither hot [growing in grace] nor cold [an unbeliever],” Rev 3.
(4) A believer who “is a tormented soul,” 2 Pet 2:7-8. The pattern of the tormented soul is always the same: you make the decisions which torment your own soul.
(5) A “shipwrecked believer,” 1 Tim 1:19.
(6) The “psychotic or neurotic” [doubled minded] believer, Jam 1:8, 4:8.
(7) The “flawed believer,” Jam 1:23-24.
4. The Christian loser contradicts the protocol plan of God for the Church. In this contradiction, he is in the status of grieving the Holy Spirit, Eph 4:30, quenching the Holy Spirit, 1 Thes 5:19, being the enemy of the Cross, Phil 3:18, being the enemy of God, Jam 4:4, being flawed, Jam 1:23-24.
5. Under the law of volitional responsibility, we punish ourselves, Hos 8:7; Gal 6:7-8. Under the law of divine punitive action, God punishes us with warning discipline, Rev 3:20, intensive discipline, Heb 12:6, and dying discipline, 1 Jn 5:16. Divine discipline is described in Prov 3:12, “For whom the Lord loves He disciplines, Even as a father, the son in whom he delights.” Prov 22:8 mentions both laws, “He who sows wickedness shall reap trouble, And the rod of His wrath shall be ready.” Col 3:25, “For he who does wrong will receive the consequences of that wrong which he has done, and there is no partiality.”
6. You do not have to go on with this process when you are a loser, but you have to follow a grace procedure established by God. 1 Jn 1:9, “If we acknowledge our [known] sins, He is faithful and righteous with the result that He forgives us our [known] sins and purifies us from all wrongdoing [unknown sins].”
a. This is the first problem solving device in the Christian life and will always come to your rescue. You can recover instantly and bring other problem solving devices to bear on the problem and reestablish your defensive line of doctrine in the soul.
b. There is no spiritual life, there is no glorification of God, there is no fulfillment of the reason God sustains us on earth after salvation apart from the rebound technique and the filling of the Holy Spirit. Some people will never use rebound, and so will never have a spiritual life. No believer out of fellowship is functioning under his spiritual life.
c. The same system of rebound was used in the Old Testament by David, Ps 32:5, “I acknowledged my sin to You, And my iniquity I did not hide; I said, `I will confess my transgressions to the Lord’; And You forgave the iniquity of my sin. Selah.”
d. The procedure for using the rebound technique is to first recognize the problem. When the sin nature controls the soul, it does not start with an overt sin but with a soul sin. Secondly, you must utilize the solution—rebound. Thirdly, you must emphasize the biblical priority of God emphasis over people emphasis in your life and the biblical priority demands that Bible doctrine have number one priority in your life.
7. The loser produces emotional sinning in its five categories.
a. The hysteria of emotional sinning is composed of: fear, worry, anxiety, panic, consternation, irrationality, dissociation. With the emotional sins, the soul becomes unraveled and you become irrational. God has commanded us not to be afraid, 2 Tim 1:7, “For God has not given us a lifestyle of fear, but of power and virtue-love and sound judgment.” There is no power in emotion. Fear and power are antithetical; you either have the power of the filling of the Spirit or you have fear as an emotional sin.
b. The hatred category of emotional sinning is composed of: hatred, anger, bitter jealousy, loathing, animosity, vulnerable to imagined insult or injury, implacable, full of malice (you lust to hurt someone who has wronged you), tantrums, irrational violence, murder. The sins of arrogance combine with the sins of the emotional complex.
c. The self-centered category of emotional sinning is composed of: arrogant self-righteousness, egotistical irrationality which expresses itself in being hypersensitive about self and insensitive to others. This category results in projection, denial, self-pity, whining, and never taking the responsibility for your own failures but always finding someone else to blame.
d. The reaction category of emotional sinning also combines the sins of arrogance with the emotional sins. It includes: irrational jealousy and bitterness, vindictiveness becomes compulsive, vilification of others.
e. The guilt category of emotional sinning includes: morbid self- reproach, emotional feelings of culpability for real or imagined or inculcated offenses, a sense of inadequacy, an arrogant preoccupation with the correctness of one’s behavior from self-righteous arrogance.
(1) Guilt is a sin which is also related to repression. Repression is a defense mechanism, a reaction from the stream of consciousness regarding painful or disagreeable ideas, memories, feelings, or impulses. It leads to denial. Repression puts garbage in the subconscious and sinful guilt into the stream of consciousness.
(2) Guilt becomes a sin when a believer uses rebound and then fails to forget those things which are behind.
(3) Guilt motivates manipulation by stipulation. Without rebound, guilt becomes a motivator for your whole life rather than metabolized doctrine in the stream of consciousness. This results in a state of irrationality. You become a dictatorial person to anyone who will listen to you. Guilt causes you to be manipulated by legalism, controlled by self- righteous arrogance. Guilt causes people emphasis over God emphasis, so that the weak control the strong.
(4) Guilt eliminates grace orientation from the FLOT line of the soul.
E. The Spiritual Life As Described By Peter, 2 Pet 1:2-8.
1. Peter uses the Greek word EUSEBEIA to describe the principle of the spiritual life and the word EPIGNOSIS to describe the function of the spiritual life. EUSEBEIA occurs three times in this passage—verses 3,6,7.
2. 2 Pet 1:2, “May grace and peace be multiplied to you for your benefit by means of the epignosis doctrine about God [the Father] and Jesus our Lord.”
a. Your spiritual life multiplies grace in you. Your spiritual life is grace. Grace never depends on our character. Grace is never added to you, it is multiplied to you. Grace is never subtracted from you, no matter how horrible you are. The other thing that is multiplied to you is a peace or tranquility of soul that cannot be penetrated by the environmental adversities, the tragedies, or heartaches of life. Only God can multiply grace in your life, and He does not do it because you are good, or give, or do something for God. God multiplies grace on the basis of who and what He is, never what we are. Part of the tranquility of soul is the fact that you have taken metabolized doctrine and extrapolated ten problem solving devices and stationed them on the defensive line of your soul. The policy of God with regard to your spiritual life or lack of it is grace.
b. Grace and peace are multiplied to you for your benefit by epignosis doctrine metabolized in the right lobe of your soul and circulating in your stream of consciousness. Epignosis is your spiritual life. Doctrine circulating in your stream of consciousness through the filling of the Holy Spirit is your spiritual life. Your spiritual life is not a set of overt activities, but what goes on in the privacy of your soul.
c. There are seven propositions about grace which is multiplied in God’s plan.
(1) God exists.
(2) God reveals Himself through the Bible as the word of God. It is necessary for God to break through the barrier of man’s spiritual death.
(3) God has a plan for you as a member of the body of Christ, the royal family of God. The name of the plan is the protocol plan and centers around your very own portfolio of invisible assets.
(4) God’s plan functions on who and what God is; therefore, God’s plan is based on the divine policy of grace. Grace is the reflection and actual revelation of the character of God. Everything depends on who and what God is, never who and what we are.
(5) Grace comes to us as believers in three categories.
(a) Pre-salvation grace. This includes common grace, in which God the Holy Spirit functions as a human spirit to make the gospel perspicuous, the divine call or invitation to salvation is a grace invitation.
(b) Salvation grace. This includes efficacious grace, in which God the Holy Spirit makes your faith as a spiritually dead person effective for salvation. Salvation grace includes forty things which God does for you immediately at the moment you believe in Christ.
© Postsalvation grace.
Jam 4:6, “But He gives greater grace. Therefore it says, `God makes war against the arrogant, but gives grace to the humble.’”
(6) The Church Age believer is saved by grace, therefore, he is mandated to live by grace. Living by grace is a process, a part of the spiritual life. This process is not something you do all at once; it is a matter of daily decisions to learn doctrine and adjustment of your scale of values.
(7) Because of the grace of God, every believer owes both the plan and the grace of God a hearing.
d. Grace is all that God is free to do for mankind without compromising His essence. All we can bring into the spiritual life is faithfulness to the Lord, to never give up on doctrine, to persevere no matter what happens. You cannot persevere in ignorance. All things are received from God as a free gift. Grace is free; you cannot earn it; you cannot buy it. In grace, God works and provides and mankind benefits and receives. Grace is the basis for God establishing a relationship with mankind. In grace, God has provided everything necessary for the believer to execute His plan, His will, and His purpose. Grace provision includes every blessing the believer will ever receive in both time and eternity. Your spiritual life is designed for both grace modus vivendi and grace modus operandi.
e. The result of living your spiritual life by grace is peace with God, the peace of God which passes all understanding, the peace of tranquility and stability of mind from metabolized doctrine in the soul. Building up a FLOT line in your soul is a matter of grace.
3. 2 Pet 1:3, “Because His divine power has given to us for our benefit all things with reference to life, even your spiritual life, through epignosis knowledge of Him [God the Father] who called us by His own glory and virtue.”
a. “All things” of the spiritual life are described in Rom 8:28; Phil 4:13; Jn 14:25; 1 Cor 3:21. b. God has given to us all things of the spiritual life through epignosis knowledge of Bible doctrine. Epignosis is the functional concept of your spiritual life. It is the thought content of your soul that counts in the spiritual life. Your spiritual life is what you think, not what you feel.
c. God invites spiritually dead unbelievers to believe in Christ; the spiritually dead unbeliever has no ability to invite Christ anywhere (e.g., into his life or into his heart).
4. 2 Pet 1:4, “Through which things [eusebeia and epignosis] He has given to us for our benefit His most valuable and very great promises, that through these things you may become partners in the divine endowment, when you have escaped from degeneracy in the world [caused] by lust.” a. “These things” include: our portfolio of invisible assets, the function of our spiritual life, metabolized doctrine in the stream of consciousness, the extrapolation from metabolized doctrine and the development of the problem solving devices for God’s plan, the faith-rest drill, handling injustices by putting them in the hands of the Supreme Court of Heaven.
b. The promises go into doctrine. Doctrinal rationales are a series of doctrinal promises put together in a most fantastic way. You need spiritual strength from metabolized doctrine in the stream of consciousness to claim promises.
c. It is God’s will, plan, and purpose that you become partners, sharers of His divine endowment. We are in partnership with God with regard to the plan for the Church Age. Your portfolio of invisible assets contains an equal share (forty things from God) in the divine endowment with all other believers in the Church Age and equal opportunity through the function of your spiritual life to participate in the divine endowment and receive equal dividends in time and eternity. There will be great differences in heaven because of spiritual freedom and equality provided by God. The divine endowment is described by Peter in 1 Pet 1:3, 23, “Blessed be God even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who on the basis of His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, ...for you have been born again not from seed which is perishable but imperishable through the living and abiding word of God.”
(1) 1 Pet 1:23 explains Paul’s dissertation on regeneration or the new birth in Tit 3:5, “He saved us. Not on the basis of works which we have done in righteousness, but on the basis of His mercy, by the washing which brings about regeneration even the renewal from the Holy Spirit,” and Eph 5:26, “That He might sanctify her [the Church], having cleansed her by the washing of water by the word.” Water is used here as an analogy to the word of God.
(2) Our spiritual endowment begins as of the moment of our spiritual birth (the new birth or regeneration). Our endowment starts with regeneration.
(a) A spiritual birth demands a spiritual life.
(b) Our very own spiritual life is the reflection of our new birth and the possession of God’s perfect righteousness and eternal life.
© However, the function of spiritual life is optional as an extension of the postsalvation experience related to human volition.
d. Being partners in the divine endowment refers to four things.
(1) You have equal shares with all other believers.
(2) You have equal privileges with all other believers from your portfolio of invisible assets.
(3) You have equal opportunity through the function of your very own spiritual life.
(4) You have equal dividends from the protocol plan of God for the Church.
5. 2 Pet 1:5, “Now for this very reason also, make every effort to provide by means of doctrine, virtue, and with virtue, knowledge [gnosis];”
a. Living your very own spiritual life must come from the motivation of your own soul. God demands that you live your spiritual life. Motivation must precede indoctrination.
b. There are three concepts in the word virtue as described by the Latin at the time of writing of the New Testament.
(1) Excellence of achievement. This refers to the believer executing the protocol plan of God through consistent cognition, inculcation, metabolization, and application of Bible doctrine.
(2) Mastery in a specific field. This refers to creating a FLOT or defense line in your soul from the problem solving devices to protect the outside pressures of adversity from being converted into the inside pressures of stress in the soul.
(3) Endowment with higher power. This refers to the utilization of divine power, the power of God the Holy Spirit when filled with the Spirit and the power of metabolized doctrine circulating in the stream of consciousness.
c. Every believer is given his very own spiritual life and the basis for the function of that spiritual life is virtue.
(1) Virtue is not what people see on the outside; virtue is what you are on the inside. The spiritual life of the Church Age believer is identified with two doctrinal concepts: life in the operational type divine dynasphere and utilizing your problem solving devices. The spiritual life of the believer is the monopoly of the protocol plan of God. The spiritual life of the believer produces virtue in contrast to morality, which is available to the entire human race. Virtue is infinitely greater than morality.
(2) Virtue is produced by the filling of the Holy Spirit, by metabolized doctrine in the stream of consciousness, by the function of the problem solving devices on the FLOT line of the soul. Anything the unbeliever can do is not a part of your spiritual life. Morality provides two dangers to the believer in the fulfillment of his spiritual life: the sins of morality and self-righteous arrogance or legalism.
(3) Virtue is a grace provision from God, operational in the spiritual life of the believer who is using the power of God the Holy Spirit and the power of the word of God. Christian virtue is a monopoly of God, restricted to the function of the power of God in the life of the believer. Christian virtue is a distinctive characteristic of the royal family of God, the inevitable result of compliance with divine mandates related to the protocol plan of God for the Church. Christian virtue is not proving one’s worth; for the believer who is trying to prove something cannot improve. Proving one’s worth is arrogance; improving one’s grace and doctrinal orientation is the quintessence of Christian virtue.
(4) Virtue is related to the conscience of the believer. This is why Paul said in Phil 4:8, “Therefore, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is righteous, whatever is pure, whatever is kind, whatever is commendable, if there is any virtue, if there is any praise, concentrate on these things.”
d. The Greek word GNOSIS is used instead of EPIGNOSIS because the subject of our understanding is God. We must understand the essence of God, and yet, God is inscrutable. Understanding the essence of God is called GNOSIS in the New Testament because we can never fully understand [EPIGNOSIS] how the Trinity could exist eternally. However, we can understand as EPIGNOSIS what the Bible reveals about God. For example, God is love, but God’s love is beyond human comprehension, except what is revealed in Scripture. When God is described using anthropopathisms and anthropomorphisms, these are human terms, and therefore, GNOSIS. There are some things about God which are impossible for us to understand as EPIGNOSIS. Therefore, GNOSIS type doctrine is a part of the spiritual life as academic understanding of doctrine before we believe it.
6. 2 Pet 1:6, “And in your knowledge, self-discipline, and in your self- discipline, perseverance, and in your perseverance, spiritual life;”
a. The spiritual life is a process which requires self-discipline. Self-discipline is not just a physical thing, but requires motivation, thought, reason. The spiritual life is a daily function.
b. Perseverance connotes courageous endurance which persists in spite of all opposition.
c. The spiritual life is a technical term with a dual connotation.
(1) The first connotation has to do with residence, function, and momentum inside the operational type divine dynasphere—the utilization of the divine power of the filling of the Holy Spirit.
(2) The second connotation has to do with cognition, inculcation, metabolization, and application of Bible doctrine—the utilization of the divine power of the word of God.
d. The benefits of the spiritual life are eternal and indestructible. 7. 2 Pet 1:7, “And in your spiritual life, brotherly love, and in your brotherly love, virtue-love.”
a. Brotherly love, here, is social intercourse with other believers and emphasizes impersonal love. 1 Jn 4:21 relates brotherly love to personal love for God the Father. “Furthermore we have this mandate from Him, that he who loves God [mature believer] should also love his fellow- believer.” What is missing in our relationship with other Christians is love for God. Your relationship to other believers depends on your relationship to God. When people and personal relationships become more important than Bible doctrine, then the believer begins to lose the battles of the soul (stress, sin, false doctrine, and defense mechanisms). Association with legalistic believers is the kind of fellowship you do not want. The same is true with antinomian believers. b. Virtue-love is personal love for God and impersonal love for all mankind. Virtue-love emphasizes the spiritual life of the subject. Impersonal love for all mankind is a part of the spiritual life; personal love for all mankind is not. The concept of this verse is the importance of impersonal love.
(1) Impersonal love emphasizes the virtue, honor, and integrity of the subject. Impersonal means not involving one’s personal feelings or emotions in relationship to an object. Being impersonal, this category of virtue-love places emphasis on the honor, integrity, and virtue of the subject rather than any attractiveness on the part of the object. (2) Impersonal love is a problem solving device of the protocol plan of God for the Church which produces unconditional love toward all mankind. This requires the filling of the Holy Spirit, metabolized doctrine in the stream of consciousness, and the perseverance of the spiritual life to the point of execution of the protocol plan of God for the Church.
(3) Impersonal love for all mankind is the ultimate expression of maximum metabolized doctrine circulating in the seven compartments of the stream of consciousness, the ultimate application of metabolized doctrine in the right lobe of the soul. The subject is in a state of humility, grace orientation, objectivity, and full of cognizance of how the problem solving devices function. It is the exact antithesis of bitterness or other mental attitude sins and garbage in the stream of consciousness or subconscious.
(4) Impersonal love requires a tremendous amount of virtue, especially humility. Arrogant people are constantly seeking from others unconditional love while offering in return conditional love minus virtue. The lust pattern of arrogance covets wealth without honor, success without integrity, promotion without ability, approbation without humility, love without virtue, sex without happiness. On the other hand, impersonal love provides the basis for problem solving devices related to human relationships and interaction.
(5) Impersonal love has to have grace orientation and doctrinal orientation with it. Impersonal love begins to function on a more or less regular basis once the believer reaches the point of spiritual self-esteem. Impersonal love perpetuates its own honor, its own integrity, its own virtue in every stage of the spiritual life. There can be no impersonal love where there is reaction or frustration, retaliation or revenge, prejudice or discrimination, arrogance or hatred, self-righteousness or self-pity, jealousy or implacability, vindictiveness or slander, gossip or maligning, controlling or judging.
(6) Concepts. (a) Personal love emphasizes the attractiveness of the object. Impersonal love emphasizes the virtue of the subject.
(b) Personal love is optional in the Christian life. Impersonal love is a divine mandate in the Christian life.
© Personal love emphasizes rapport with the object. Impersonal love emphasizes the virtue of the subject.
(d) Personal love is conditional. Impersonal love is always unconditional.
(e) Personal love is virtue dependent for its effectiveness. Impersonal love is doctrinally dependent for effectiveness.
(f) Personal love is subjective and possessive. Impersonal love is objective and grace oriented.
(g) Personal love is the expression of the believer’s ego. Impersonal love is the expression of the believer’s doctrinal orientation.
(h) Personal love is directed toward a few. Impersonal love is directed toward all mankind.
(7) Impersonal love is the virtue and integrity of the subject overcoming all problems related to the object. Impersonal love is the spiritual status quo of the believer living the spiritual life. The integrity of the subject exceeds the obnoxiousness of the object. Impersonal love is motivated by personal love for God the Father, occupation with Christ, and receives its power from the filling of the Holy Spirit. Mercy is a part of the virtue of impersonal love.
(8) Scripture.
(a) Jn 15:17; 1 Jn 3:23, 4:7,20-21. If you hate your fellow believer, you cannot love God.
(b) Our Lord described impersonal love in Lk 6:27-36. We are ordered to be merciful as God the Father is merciful. Impersonal love is merciful to all and does not commit verbal sins against others. In impersonal love, God the Father gave His Son as a sacrifice for us, Jesus Christ received the imputation and judgment of our sins, and God the Holy Spirit makes the gospel understandable to the spiritually brain dead unbeliever.
© Rom 12:14-21 is Paul’s description of impersonal love. Never pay back evil for evil to anyone. As much as it depends on you, live in harmony with all mankind. Give place to punishment from the Supreme Court of Heaven. Conquer evil by means of the good (impersonal love).
(d) 1 Pet 1:22, “Since you have been in obedience to doctrine purify your souls from a non-hypocritical love of the brethren, fervently love each other from your hearts.” If you find in your soul that you are filled with any mental attitude sins or have verbal sins against them, then you have flunked the test of impersonal love. Any form of antagonism toward others is indicative of the fact you do not yet have impersonal love in your spiritual life. 8. 2 Pet 1:8, “For if these {qualities} are yours and are increasing, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
F. The Spiritual Dynamics of Dying.
1. There are two major categories of the dynamics of the spiritual life related to the pressures of life. There are the outside pressures of living (adversity and prosperity) and the outside pressure of dying. The ten problem solving devices on the FLOT line of the soul prevent these two categories of pressure from ever becoming stress in the soul. Dying creates pressure on the soul. There is just as much pressure on the believer in dying as there is in living.
2. The total dynamics of the spiritual life is found in one short sentence. Phil 1;21, “For me living is Christ, and dying is profit.”
a. The basic passage for the living phase of the spiritual life in all of Scripture is Eph 3:19-21, “And to come to know the love for Christ which is beyond gnosis, that you may be filled up to all the fullness from God. Now to Him who is able to do infinitely more than all we could ever ask or imagine, on the basis of the power that works for us, to Him be glory by means of the Church and by means of Christ Jesus with reference to all generations of this dispensation of all dispensations. Amen.”
b. In living, you apply doctrine; in dying, you live doctrine. In the living phase of the spiritual life the believer applies doctrine as illustrated by the function of the problem solving devices. In the dying phase of spiritual dynamics, the believer lives the doctrine of dying. Both dying and death, then, become the greatest profit in life. Dying is the demonstration of the power of the word of God circulating in your very own stream of consciousness.
c. Every believer who lives his life in the light of eternity has established a FLOT line of ten problem solving devices in his soul. These problem solving devices prevent any living or dying pressures from entering the soul. With maximum doctrine circulating in the stream of consciousness and the function of the ten problem solving devices, you have no fear of death, no stress in the soul, and the reality of dying is no problem at all. Dying is strictly profit because you have invested in doctrine during your life.
d. God provides for us in dying as He does for us in living.
3. Death is God’s victory.
a. 1 Cor 15:55, 57 “O death, where is your victory? O grave, where is your sting?” “But thanks be to God, who gives to us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
b. No one is prepared for death apart from faith in Christ and the spiritual dynamics of Bible doctrine circulating in the stream of consciousness. No believer is prepared for death apart from spiritual dynamics related to metabolized doctrine and the problem solving devices. The reality of dying is an outside pressure that demands the only preparation possible—maximum metabolized doctrine in the stream of consciousness and the ten problem solving devices operational on the defense line of the soul.
c. When a believer dies, it is the most wonderful thing in the world because the believer is now absent from the body and face-to-face with the Lord where there are no more sorrows, no more tears, no more death, the old things have passed away. Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of the believer.
d. Job 1:21, “And he said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, And naked I shall return there. The Lord gave [soul life at birth] and the Lord has taken away [soul life at death, but eternal life has now been added]. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”
e. Death is God’s victory because He has selected the time, place, and manner of our death. God makes our dying the most wonderful time of our life, if we have invested in Bible doctrine during our life. God is perfect and His timing for our death is perfect.
f. Life must go on after loved ones have preceded us in death. God alone through Bible doctrine provides the comfort and strength for the believer to carry on when a loved one is taken in death, so that your sorrow and grief both honors the Lord and reflects doctrinal attitudes with regard to the dying of a loved one. Therefore, we avoid dishonoring the death of a loved one with bitterness, panic, irrationality, hysterics, guilt toward self, hatred, malice and implacability toward others. Life must go on so that we who are still alive can fulfill God’s will, plan and purpose for us before we join loved ones in heaven. Your grief becomes a private matter between you and the Lord. Mental attitude sins toward others who are not grieving become stress in the soul and the malfunction of the spiritual life.
g. Jesus comforted Martha at the grave side of Lazarus with the following, Jn 11:25, “Jesus said to her, `I am the resurrection and the life; anyone who believes in Me shall live even if he dies.’”
_
© 1989, by R. B. Thieme, Jr. All rights reserved.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------