1 Jn 4:3 8/16/81; 1 Jn 4:18 9/27/81; Rev 445; PPG 91
(See Ephesians #265 for a discussion of morality versus virtue. The context is Elihu’s speech in Job 35:4-8 that neither immorality nor morality affect God.)
A. Introduction.
1. Without motivational virtue toward God (i.e., personal love, confidence, and worship), the believer reacts to injustice and unfair treatment.
a. Reaction characterizes the believer who is not occupied with Christ. But remember that if you are a believer with momentum, God will work together all things for good in your life.
b. Therefore, you are wasting your time with the usual reaction and bitterness.
c. This applies to lawsuits. If you follow right principles of doctrine and their right application, you don’t need to sue.
2. Apart from occupation with Christ, the believer will react to life. Then his response to God is zero.
3. Reaction to life manufactures preoccupation with self and arrogance. That means you’re divorced from reality, and you have no wisdom, common sense, or discernment. When you become distracted through reaction, arrogance will inevitably lead you into some form of crusader arrogance.
4. Virtue is the visible manifestation of the invisible, i.e., metabolized doctrine and the power of the Holy Spirit. It is the function of virtue that develops common sense.
5. Happiness depends on virtue manufactured inside the divine dynasphere in fulfilling the protocol plan of God. Happiness does not depend on fame, success, prosperity, power, approbation, sex, etc.
6. Arrogance is the visible manifestation of Satan’s invisible cosmic system.
7. Virtue is the monopoly of God. Therefore, it can only be manufactured inside the divine dynasphere.
B. Definition.
1. Virtue is not only a Biblical subject, but it is verified by the etymology and usage of the Greek word ARETE.
2. Virtue is the sum total of those human characteristics manufactured by residence and function in the divine dynasphere.
3. Since virtue is the monopoly of God, it is restricted to life inside the divine dynasphere; it cannot be duplicated or reproduced in the cosmic system.
4. Therefore, virtue is the distinctive characteristic of the royal family, the inevitable result of executing the plan of God.
5. Basic virtues developed in the divine dynasphere include enforced and genuine humility, love, worship, morality, courage, and confidence. Humility is the foundation for all virtue.
6. Virtue is the quality of intrinsic good; it is not proving one’s worth. The believer who is trying to prove something cannot improve spiritually.
7. Proving one’s worth is arrogance; improving one’s worth spiritually is prudence. Arrogance is the antithesis of and is antagonist to virtue.
8. Virtue is manufactured from perception of doctrine and results in occupation with Christ, while arrogance is manufactured in the cosmic system and is preoccupation with self.
9. Virtue is the quality of intrinsic good and the modus operandi of the Christian way of life manufactured only inside the divine dynasphere.
10. Believers who reside and function in the divine dynasphere produce virtue, while believers who reside and function in the cosmic system destroy virtue and produce pseudo-virtue.
11. Virtue manufactured inside the divine dynasphere is the source of all true happiness in life. Therefore, virtue and happiness coexist. There is no happiness in the cosmic system. Pseudo-virtue manufactured in the cosmic system is the basis of all hypocrisy in life.
12. The cosmic system makes a special offer to all believers: wealth, success, promotion, sex, authority, lifestyle, approbation, and fame, but without honor, integrity, ability, virtue, love, leadership, capacity, or happiness.
13. Inside the cosmic system there is a constant search for happiness, while in the divine dynasphere God’s perfect happiness looks for you. There are degrees of true happiness which accompany the function at every gate of the divine dynasphere and relate to every virtue.
14. The source of virtue is the function of the integrity of God related to divine love.
15. The production of virtue means both happiness and orientation to God’s plan for the Church Age.
C. Documentation for Virtue.
1. Phil 4:8, “Therefore royal family, everything that is true, everything that is honorable, everything that is righteous, everything that is pure, everything that is capacity for love, everything that is commendable, if there is any virtue and anything worthy of praise, concentrate on these things.” This is the principle of virtue first.
2. 1 Pet 2:9, “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, that you may proclaim the virtues of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light [divine dynasphere].”
3. 2 Pet 1:2-9, “Applying all diligence, in your doctrine supply virtue, and in your virtue, knowledge....for if these virtues are yours and are increasing, they render you neither useless nor unproductive in the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
a. We become partakers of the divine nature by residence and function in the divine dynasphere.
b. Virtue is supplied by diligence toward doctrine.
D. The Direction of Virtue.
1. The right direction.
a. All virtue must have an object toward which it is directed.
b. Enforced humility is directed toward authority; genuine humility is directed toward God and man.
c. Worship is toward God; morality is toward man.
d. Confidence is toward God, courage is toward man and circumstances.
e. Personal love is toward God; impersonal love is toward man.
f. Virtue toward self is humility.
2. Misdirection.
a. Enforced humility directed toward God or man is compulsion rather than virtue, therefore not a virtue. Hence, misdirection destroys both the virtue and its motivation.
b. Worship toward man is arrogance, religionism, while morality toward God is legalism.
c. Courage toward God is blasphemy and presumption; confidence toward man is idiocy or naive arrogance. Confidence is only a virtue directed toward God.
d. Impersonal love toward God is arrogance. Personal love toward man is weakness, the intensification of the problems in one’s life.
e. Misdirected love is robbed of its virtue and distorts strength, converting it into weakness.
f. While virtue is objective in its function, arrogance is subjective. This means that virtue has an outside object for its function; e.g., God, man, authority, law, or circumstances.
g. Arrogance destroys virtue because arrogance in its subjectivity is directed toward self.
h. None of these misdirections imply loss of salvation.
3. Principle of Motivation.
a. There are two categories of virtue depending on their direction.
b. Virtues toward God are classified as motivating virtues, while virtues toward man or circumstances are classified as functional virtues.
c. Virtue directed toward God motivates virtue directed toward man.
d. Personal love toward God motivates impersonal love toward man.
e. Confidence toward God motivates courage toward man and circumstances.
f. Worship toward God motivates morality toward man.
g. Enforced humility toward authority motivates genuine humility toward God and man, and life in general.
h. Therefore, motivating virtues include personal love toward God, confidence toward God, and worship toward God.
i. Functional virtues include impersonal love toward man, courage toward man and circumstances, and morality toward mankind and life.
j. All of these virtues are exclusive, the monopoly of God, and manufactured only in the divine dynasphere.
E. Documentation for the Direction of Virtue.
1. 1 Jn 5:1-3, “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born from God. Furthermore, everyone who loves the Father loves everyone who has been born from the Father. By this we have come to know that we keep loving the children of God, whenever we love God and execute His mandates. For this virtue is love for God, that we keep executing His mandates, and His mandates are not burdensome.”
2. 1 Jn 4:21, “Furthermore, we have this mandate from Him that he who loves God should also love his fellow believer.”
F. The Environment of Virtue: the Divine Dynasphere. (See the Doctrine of the Divine Dynasphere.)
G. The Illustration of a Motivating Virtue: Confidence toward God and Eternal Security. (See the Doctrine of Eternal Security.)
H. The Illustration of a Functional Virtue: Impersonal Love toward Mankind. (See the Doctrine of Impersonal Love.)
I. The Distraction to Virtue.
1. The Demand Syndrome.
a. The demand syndrome is part of the narcissist complex, manufactured inside cosmic one.
b. The demand syndrome is a total preoccupation with self and the function of subordinating everyone to that preoccupation.
c. Since arrogance destroys virtue, the narcissist complex and demand syndrome replaces that loss of virtue.
d. Involvement in the cosmic system manufactures the demand syndrome in the same way that the divine dynasphere manufactures virtue. Preoccupation with self is accompanied by lust for attention, and results in the vanity of seeking to control one’s environment or be the center of attention.
e. The demand syndrome not only eliminates virtue, but destroys true happiness, e.g., by feeling sorry for self or being obnoxious.
f. Happiness and virtue coexist in the divine dynasphere. Therefore, what destroys virtue also destroys happiness.
g. The frustration of no happiness inside the cosmic system is manifested by two factors: the demand syndrome and the narcissist complex.
h. Narcissistic preoccupation with self demands complete and total attention from every person in one’s periphery.
i. Therefore, the demand syndrome is directed toward all in a negative way, just as the virtue of impersonal love is directed toward all in a positive way.
j. But when one goes to the source, all similarity ends; for the source of impersonal love as a virtue is the divine dynasphere, while the source of the demand syndrome is the cosmic system.
k. The demand syndrome is the arrogance of seeking to regulate and control everyone in one’s periphery, demanding for self complete devotion, praise, flattery, and submission.
l. Everyone in the vicinity of this megalomaniac must contribute to arrogant preoccupation with self.
m. Demand for attention and approbation also develops hypersensitivity, so that all persons in view must conform to a pattern of subservience or be bullied, punished, ridiculed, and disgraced.
n. Conformity to someone’s arrogance is the name of the game as illustrated by five demand syndrome functions.
(1) The arrogant adolescent who demands that his parents conform to him.
(2) The entitlement generation who demand what they have neither earned, achieved, or deserve.
(3) The frustrated man or woman in personal relationship.
(4) The talented athlete subverted by crowd approbation.
(5) The successful entertainer who parlays applause into arrogance and flattery into megalomania.
2. Disillusion.
a. This is the misdirection of personal love toward man or confidence in people. Both are normal but minus virtue.
b. There is nothing wrong with having confidence in people, but there is no virtue in it, and it can lead to disappointment and disillusion when these people fail you.
c. Paul’s confidence expressed in the Corinthian congregation, 2 Cor 2:3, 7:16, 8:22, 10:2, 11:17, was not virtuous, since confidence is only a virtue when directed toward God. Paul’s confidence depended on the virtue of the Corinthians.
d. Like personal love toward man, Paul’s confidence was virtue dependent for effectiveness. The fact that Paul had virtue made his confidence in the Corinthians effective. It was confidence related to their positive volition to doctrine.
e. Personal love toward man is normal, but not virtuous. Personal love toward man falls into three categories: romance, friendship, or family love. All three are legitimate expressions of human love, but do not possess virtue.
f. Like confidence toward man, personal love toward man is virtue-dependent for its effectiveness. Confidence toward man can only be sustained where the virtue of confidence toward God exists to sustain it and protect it from disillusionment.
g. Personal love toward man can only be sustained where the virtue of impersonal love exists to provide integrity and honor to meet and resolve the problems of personal love.
h. Misdirected love has no virtue. Therefore, we must depend on some virtue to guard love from disillusion.
i. For virtue to exist in love, it must follow the right direction: personal love toward God and impersonal love toward man.
3. The misdirection of hypersensitivity leads to delusion.
a. The true principle is that virtue only exists in personal love toward God and impersonal love toward man.
b. Impersonal love toward God is arrogance and the megalomania of superimposing one’s standards on God.
c. Personal love intensifies the problems of human interaction, resulting in disillusion, the feet of clay syndrome, self-pity, jealousy, vindictiveness, implacability, revenge, and disappointment in the object of personal love.
d. The reason for this is that God is perfect and worthy of personal love, so that personal love toward God is never a basis for disillusion. There can be no disillusion with God apart from blasphemy.
e. People are not perfect, and the few we fall in love with have weaknesses and flaws just like we have. Personal love will have disillusion unless there is virtue to sustain the one who is tempted to be disillusioned.
f. Therefore, personal love toward man frequently becomes the tragic flaw. Personal love minus virtue establishes vulnerability to weakness such as sin, as in fornication, human good, as in altruism, and evil, as in incest or homosexuality.
g. Personal love toward God is virtuous and depends on Bible doctrine for its development. Personal love toward man is non-virtuous, and depends on attraction, emotion, rapport, or mutual admiration for its function.
h. The key to avoiding misdirection of virtue is to remember:
(1) God is perfect and worthy of personal love, confidence and worship. Worship, confidence, and personal love toward man results in the tragic flaw of vulnerability to the cosmic system.
(2) Without virtue manufactured in the divine dynasphere, there is disillusion about people, reaction to that disillusion through arrogant preoccupation with self and condemnation of the object of disillusion.
4. Reaction to Unfairness and Injustice.
a. Without a motivating virtue directed toward God, the believer will react to every act of injustice and unfair treatment, real or imagined.
b. As ambassadors of Christ and royal family of God, reaction is not a part of the Christian way of life.
c. Reaction manufactures preoccupation with self, blaming others for the function of our own free will, arrogant divorcement from reality, and total loss of common sense, wisdom, or discernment.
d. Reaction leads to crusader arrogance, the church becoming involved in politics, deemphasis of Bible doctrine, social engineering, and total distraction from the plan of God.
e. Every believer must face a certain number of momentum tests in the area of personal animosity as well as collective injustice.
f. To maintain one’s integrity requires confidence in God and courage toward man, worship toward God and morality toward man, personal love toward God and impersonal love toward man.
g. Response to God avoids reaction to mankind. Positive volition to doctrine avoids distraction and departure from the plan of God.
5. Frustration.
a. In a civilized society, where actual survival is not a daily issue as in a primitive society, people have more time to be preoccupied with self, and to experience frustration and self-pity.
b. Frustration is generally being checkmated in life by one’s own arrogant reaction to life or by making bad decisions in life.
c. Frustration is arrogant preoccupation with self, disappointed desires, thwarted lusts, or vain ambition.
d. Most people are frustrated over situations and circumstances in which they have control through their own volition, but they use their free will to make bad decisions, thereby producing self-induced misery and frustration.
e. Through poor judgment and bad decisions and lack of acquired wisdom from Bible doctrine, believers manufacture their own frustrating circumstances as well as their own frustrating environment.
f. Without the motivating virtues, frustration becomes a major characteristic of civilization.
g. The motivating virtues not only remove the frustration of the defeated believer, but add happiness and capacity for life in place of narcissistic preoccupation with self.
h. When frustration is permitted through residence in the cosmic system or prolonged function in the cosmic system, it results in total disorientation to life, self-induced misery, possession of the accouterments of happiness, but minus the actual happiness and blessing.
i. A frustrated Christian lives in the cosmic system as the enemy of God and servant of Satan.
j. Perpetuated frustration motivates the believer to the function of evil. Illustration: the frustration from a false sex perspective.
(1) Sex was designed by God to be an expression of category two love between one man and one woman in the state of marriage.
(2) Therefore at best, sex is not happiness or virtue; it is only an expression of love, happiness, and virtue on the part of the participants. Sex itself is not even virtuous in marriage.
(3) Frustration occurs when anyone associates sexual activity with happiness. Sex, like any form of physical stimulation, is not happiness.
(4) Frustration also occurs when members of the opposite sex are attracted to each other physically and sexually, and enter into marriage on the basis of potential sexual compatibility.
(5) If all sexual experience in one’s lifetime were added up it is only a minute part of one’s living moments. Out of an entire life, the amount of time spent in sex cannot carry a marriage relationship, or sustain love. Therefore, frustration occurs if sex is depended upon for happiness in marriage.
(6) A lifetime partnership requires other more time- consuming compatibilities than sex. Sex is virtue-dependent for success. Otherwise, sex becomes a source of frustration, unhappiness, and incompatibility, which leads to arrogant preoccupation with self, more frustration, and sometimes even degenerate reaction.
(7) Motivating virtues for the believer are all related to God and they result in functioning virtues related to mankind, so that the believer does not destroy or harm his fellow believer through arrogant reaction to his own frustration.
(8) Worship toward God motivates morality toward man; personal love toward God motivates impersonal love toward man; confidence in God motivates courage toward man.
(9) People compensate for their frustrations by seeking pleasure, by going to church, by going crazy, by emotional frenzy, and ecstatic experience.
(10) Sex is a luxury which only the married can afford; outside of marriage it leads to frustrations and the destruction of virtue. Sex is a luxury not necessary for happiness.
J. The Axioms of Virtue.
1. Principle one.
a. For the believer, virtue and integrity is composed of epignosis doctrine in the soul, not abstaining from sin. Sin and carnality doesn’t necessarily mean loss of virtue, 1 Jn 1:8-9. A short time in the cosmic system doesn’t destroy your virtue. The key is rebound. Get out of the cosmic system before you lose your virtue. Carnality is the loss of the filling of the Holy Spirit, and ejection from the divine dynasphere, but it is not the loss of virtue if rebound follows.
b. Everyone sins, not everyone is virtuous. Sinning is symptomatic of loss of virtue, if the believer remains in the cosmic system.
c. Residence in the cosmic system is the believer pursuing after the devil, not the devil after the believer.
d. Virtue is not only happiness but strength. Virtue makes weak people strong. Arrogance makes strong people weak. Stubbornness is not strength. Talent is not genius, but acquired or natural ability without virtue. Stubbornness is subjectivity.
e. Virtue comes from the divine dynasphere, not from talent, genius or ability. Talent, genius, and ability can be enhanced by virtue.
f. Without virtue and taking responsibility for your own decisions, there are no solutions to the problems of life. The believer is born into a system of virtue but must remain there through rebound, impersonal love, enforced humility & genuine humility, perception of doctrine, and saying “no” to temptation.
g. Volition in the divine dynasphere is the source of virtue. Volition in the cosmic system is the source of sinfulness, human good and evil.
h. Arrogance produces a false sense of honor and virtue, a code of subjectivity and inflexibility, hypersensitivity, and preoccupation with self. This means subordination is not inferiority, vulgarity is not manliness, manners and good taste is not weakness.
i. History is in the hands of a few: those who manufacture virtue through residence and function inside the divine dynasphere. When directed toward man, personal love is a problem maker, impersonal love is a problem solver.
2. Principle two.
a. Personal love is optional; impersonal love is imperative. Personal love cannot be perpetuated apart from impersonal love, which is strength.
b. Virtue characterizes interaction in the divine dynasphere. Justification of the old sin nature characterizes interaction in the cosmic system.
c. Unconditional love is the virtue of impersonal love toward all. personal love is conditional love for a few.
d. There is no unconditional love in personal love; to seek it results in frustration.
e. Only the narcissist complex and the demand syndrome arrogantly insist in a preemptory manner on unconditional love from all.
f. The demand of unconditional love from all is the antithesis of the virtue of unconditional love freely given to all.
g. The visible manifests the invisible. Functional virtue is the manifestation of the invisible life in the divine dynasphere, of the invisible motivating virtues.
h. God’s perfect happiness, +H, depends on virtue, not health, power, sex, or approbation.
i. Equality is not a virtue. Man was never designed for equality. Where equality exists freedom is gone. (Except under the equal privilege and opportunity of election and predestination inside the divine dynasphere).
j. There is neither virtue nor authority in counselling others. Authority exists in teaching Bible doctrine so people can make their own decisions. And virtue exists from learning doctrine.
k. To improve one’s worth is objective reality in the divine dynasphere, but to try to prove one’s worth is subjective reality in the cosmic system.
3. Principle three.
a. Virtue is the manifestation of invisible power: God’s system. Arrogance is the manifestation of invisible power: the Cosmic system.
b. Arrogance derives great power from glorifying and romanticizing self. Virtue derives great power from glorifying the Lord Jesus Christ.
c. Visible personality is not the true index of invisible character. For visible personality can be the vehicle for representing either virtue or evil.
d. Confidence toward God is a virtue acquired through the perception of doctrine. Confidence toward man is a normal function in life without virtue, but virtue dependent where it is successful.
e. Personal love toward God is a virtue acquired through residence and function in the divine dynasphere. Personal love toward people is a normal function without virtue.
f. Worship of God is a virtue from living in the divine dynasphere. Worship of man is an abnormal function of the cosmic system.
g. Virtue toward God is motivating. Virtue toward man is functioning.
h. Decisions without virtue are disastrous to living. This is why moral men without virtue make immoral decisions.
i. All mankind is designed for servitude, which means every person either serves God in the divine dynasphere or Satan in the cosmic system. You can’t reject doctrine and serve God.
j. Failure to rebound guarantees loss of virtue. You must chose every day whom you will serve. Josh 24:15, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
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© 1989, by R. B. Thieme, Jr. All rights reserved.
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