8/8/77; 7/11/78

DOCTRINE OF THE WEAK AND STRONG BELIEVER

A. The Strong Believer.

1. The strong believer is defined as one who has attained maturity. He is in Z radical of the plan of God. He is confident that by continuing in maturity (doctrine), and by being challenged with regard to eternity (undeserved suffering), he has the third hope: confidence of the imputation of eternal rewards and blessings at the Judgment Seat of Christ.

2. Therefore, the strong believer functions under the royal family honor code, rightly dividing the Word of Truth, and is inflexible with regard to essentials and flexible with regard to non-essentials.

3. The strong believer has received the initial increment of his escrow blessings and will continue to receive blessings until the point of dying grace.

4. Temporal blessings are parlayed into reward at the Judgment Seat of Christ, and the strong believer is sure of the fact that if God provided greater blessings at maturity, He will provide the easier blessings at the Judgment Seat of Christ.

5. The strong believer also has maximum production as an ambassador. But he advances by his priesthood, and is never confused by these two functions. He knows he never advances by production. Production is only the manifestation of his spiritual growth.

6. The strong believer is also known as the crisis personality. He is totally oriented to reality. No problem in life is too great for the mature believer. Because of his flexibility in the non-essentials of life, and his resultant sense of humor, he is able to handle every difficulty, tragedy, disaster in life whether it is personal or historical.

7. Since the mature believer has his priorities straight, he is inflexible with regard to the essentials (the intake of doctrine), and flexible with regard to non-essentials (anything else in life). This is why it is easy for the mature believer to replace the law of liberty with the law of love where weak believers are concerned, or with the law of expediency where unbelievers are concerned, or with the law of supreme sacrifice in his relationship to the Lord.

8. It is flexibility regarding the non-essentials which provides such excellent orientation to life and common sense.

9. All high priorities are assigned to the essential: perception of doctrine.

10. The crisis personality combines inflexibility regarding the essentials with flexibility regarding non-essentials. He can cope with any disaster in life, whether personal or historical. He doesn't follow any overt mold or pattern but possesses the inner dynamics of doctrine to meet every situation that occurs.

11. Therefore, the crisis personality is a synonym for the strong believer with emphasis on undeserved suffering.

12. The historical or personal crisis gives the strong believer the opportunity to apply doctrine to the reality of the situation, demonstrating the total adequacy of doctrine in his life.

13. The imputation of divine blessing to the strong believer includes undeserved suffering, which demonstrates the dynamics of Bible doctrine resident in his soul and labels the strong believer as the crisis personality.

14. The strong believer demonstrates the principle that if God doesn't promote you, you are not promoted.

B. The Weak Believer.

1. There are two categories of weak believer.

a. The ignorant believer who is positive to doctrine.

b. The ignorant believer who is negative to doctrine.

2. The weak believer is defined as one who for several different reasons is ignorant of Bible doctrine, therefore in a state of being spiritually weak.

3. Bible doctrine in the soul is the strength of any believer.

4. The weak believer is flexible regarding the essentials and inflexible regarding the non-essentials. For example, the emotional believer is weak, and regards tongues as an essential because he becomes inflexible about his experience. He is flexible about the truth taught in the Word of God.

5. For this reason the weak believer is totally divorced from reality. He has no true norms and standards.

6. He is either distorting grace into antinomianism, or zealously working for divine blessing, therefore being legalistic.

7. Because he is ignorant of doctrine, the weak believer is arrogant, rejecting all authority. He has hidden arrogance.

8. As an arrogant person he is frustrated by a saturation of mental attitude sins, which motivate verbal sins.

9. The weak believer is a sociopath, having no doctrinal norms and standards in his soul. He is a law unto himself, or a victim of his own emotions.

10. The weak believer is ignorant of the royal family honor code, the protocol plan of God, his portfolio of invisible assets, his equal privilege and opportunity.

11. He does not understand or utilize the provision of logistical grace, therefore the meaning of the Christian life has eluded him.

12. The weak believer who is positive toward doctrine is tolerated by the strong believer's flexibility in the non-essentials. All believers start out as weak believers and must be given time and room to grow.

13. While toleration is the order of the day for the weak believer, separation is the divine order regarding the weak believer who is negative to doctrine and in reversionism.

14. When the weak believer is negative to doctrine and involved in reversionism, he is constantly under divine discipline. Association with him invites disaster by association.

15. The weak believer has false norms and standards. He has a conscience distorted through rationalism, empiricism, or emotionalism.

16. The weak believer has erroneous concepts of Christian virtue. He places emphasis on superficialities such as self-righteousness, human good, sincerity, socialism, pseudo-morality, taboos, legalism, and the welfare state.

17. Because the weak believer is ignorant of doctrine, he possesses very strong opinions which are completely and totally erroneous.

18. In the weak believer, lack of doctrine means erroneous application, therefore lack of common sense, lack of capacity for life, lack of orientation to reality, lack of orientation to authority, and lack of grace orientation.

19. The weak believer parlays human good into evil and rationalizes his modus operandi as the Christian way of life.

20. The weak believer can only gain strength by discrediting the strong believer. Therefore the weak believer constantly seeks to judge, malign, and vindictively criticize the strong believer. He resents the strong believer and therefore uses his false norms and standards and arrogance to attack the strong believer. The strong believer operates on impersonal love and doesn't try to defend himself, apologize, or explain himself. The weak believer continues to pour it on, in order to get a reaction from the strong believer. If the strong believer retaliates, he has accepted the weak norms and standards of the weak believer. This is the only way the weak believer can gain strength.

21. Such action only weakens the weak believer and subjects him to divine discipline for his judging.

C. The Relative Concept of Nomenclature.

1. Weak and strong are relative terms based on the amount of doctrine in the soul, and have nothing to do with lifestyle.

2. The word "strong" is not unconditional praise and approbation, while the word "weak" is not unconditional reproach and condemnation.

3. Both strong and weak believers continue to possess in this life the old sin nature with the potentialities of sin, human good, and evil.

4. Therefore the difference between the weak and strong believer is the difference between ignorance and cognizance of doctrine, plus the amount of time logged in the filling of the Holy Spirit. But it is not a difference in lifestyle.

5. Both strong and weak believer have their own peculiar occupational hazards. And the principle that no one is perfect must be understood by all, 1 Jn 1:8, 10. 6. Pride is a subtle sin, and creeps into bed and seduces the sleeping believer whether he is weak or strong. However, that pride manifests itself in different ways regarding the weak and strong believer.

7. For the weak, pride is demonstrated in judging others, revenge tactics, verbal sins, and retaliation. For the strong, pride is demonstrated by intolerance of the weak believer and ridicule. 8. The weak believer has the arrogance of ignorance, while the strong believer has the pride of cognizance and achievement.

9. False standards are used with arrogance in the weak believer to turn him into a spiritual bully. While true standards in the strong believer are linked with pride to vent sarcasm and intolerance toward the weak believer.

10. Both impersonal love and privacy of the priesthood in the honor code provide the necessary freedom for every believer to live his life as unto the Lord and advance to maturity.

11. Freedom of opportunity is equality of opportunity. But freedom always results in the greatest inequalities, which make some believers strong and others weak. Freedom plus equality is a guarantee of inequality.

12. Ignorance of doctrine makes one believer weak, while cognizance of doctrine makes another believer strong.

13. Normal spiritual growth through perception of doctrine involves variations of standards. Your norms and standards are replaced as you grow. At maturity they level off. God's norms and standards of doctrine replace your old norms and standards. You don't get doctrinal norms and standards by someone bullying you or you bullying others.

14. The strong believer lives by the mature norms and standards formed through doctrine resident in his soul. The weak believer lives by the background standards of environment, academic, and other pre-Christian norms.

15. Christianity sanctions tolerance for immaturity and recognition that each stage of growth has its own standards for that stage. Therefore variation in standards are necessary and permissable for advance to the next stage.

16. A believer can only adopt standards for his own stage of growth. If he goes up and tries to adopt mature standards, when he is only immature, then he'll be distracted, fall-off, and fail. No believer can operate effectively on the basis of doctrine he does not possess in his own soul, or which resides in someone else's soul.

17. God accepts the baby believer with his 1% divine norms and standards. Therefore, so must all strong believers, Rom 15:1.

D. The function of the royal family honor code provides for variation in standards at each stage of growth.

1. Around the principle "live and let live" are a series of encapsulating doctrines which give breathing space for each believer to advance to maturity: the laws of divine establishment, and the royal family honor code. These provide privacy so that the weaker believer can advance. God permits certain standards to exist at each stage of spiritual growth.

2. Such honor code principles as impersonal love, privacy of the priesthood, inflexibility regarding the essentials and flexibility regarding the non-essentials, all result in orientation to spiritual reality, Christian common sense, elimination of subjectivity and the inclusion of objective perception of doctrine within the framework of the body of Christ.

3. Each believer must live his life as unto the Lord. He is not required to meet the standards of a more advanced believer. He is responsible to meet God's standards for his stage of spiritual growth. This principle makes doctrine the true issue in life.

4. Therefore, only doctrine has the right to intrude on the privacy of another believer's priesthood. And doctrine must intrude, otherwise you will have false standards from start to finish.

5. In fact, doctrine must interfere with the privacy of the priesthood for your spiritual advance and growth in grace. Everyone grows because doctrine changes the norms and standards of their soul.

6. All positive believers must be tolerated and accepted into the fellowship of the body of Christ. Variation of standards and differences of opinion must be tolerated under the principle of impersonal love. This gives believers at different stages the same opportunity of advancing spiritually.

7. God does not reject or punish believers on the basis of non- essentials. Therefore, it is presumptuous to reject a believer whom God has accepted.

E. The Difference Between Essential Doctrine and Non-Essential Application.

1. The honor code demands rigid adherence to the essentials of Bible doctrine.

2. Variation in application does not permit variation in essential doctrine. The weak believer is flexible with regard to essentials. Therefore never understands what "love your brother" means.

3. Due to variation of growth, different stages of ignorance do not change the absolute truth of Bible doctrine.

4. Therefore, concerning doctrine we must be dogmatic; about application we must be flexible.

5. Tolerance for the various stages of spiritual growth does not imply tolerance for error in the essentials of doctrine.

6. The royal family honor code binds the weak and strong believer together in their mutual advance to maturity, and does so in such a way so as to overshadow their differences in application at different stages of growth.

7. Rom 14 has shown that two Christians can believe in the deity of Christ, yet differ in their attitude toward a non-essential such as holy days. Two Christians can believe in the doctrine of eternal security, or the doctrine of the baptism of the Holy Spirit, or the eschatology of the pre-tribulational Rapture, and yet differ in their attitude on non- essentials.

F. The Difference Between Equality and Freedom.

1. Every believer possesses freedom, privacy, and property as part of the honor code to advance to the objective of maturity through doctrine resident in the soul. (You cannot have one of these without the others. Authority exists to protect them, whenever they are present.)

2. Freedom guarantees that there is no equality among believers in either time or eternity. 3. All believers are given both freedom and time to advance.

4. However, such freedom cannot guarantee equality in the Christian or in his life. We are equal only at the new birth, but we still have the freedom to advance. 5. Some believers use their freedom in time to reject doctrine; others to learn doctrine.

6. God starts all believers out on an equal basis at salvation with forty things.

7. But from salvation on, inequalities exist through the use of freedom to accept or reject Bible doctrine.

8. The result is our subject: the weak and strong believer.

9. Some believers are mature and some are not; this is inequality based on freedom. Some believers are positive to doctrine; others are negative. This is inequality and results in inequality. Some believers advance to maturity; others retrogress to reversionism.

10. Some believers have dying grace; others the sin unto death. There are inequalities in eternity regarding rewards and blessings based on the believer's attitude toward doctrine in time.

11. Inequalities demonstrate that freedom abused does not deserve what freedom used deserves. And God cannot be unfair. There will always be inequalities because man will always have a free will. Equality is only a base from which you start.

12. Some believers are rewarded at the Judgment Seat of Christ, and some have nothing: that's inequality. Equality is a myth; freedom is a reality. Freedom does not guarantee equality.

13. Equality is the devise of the arrogant; freedom is the motivation of the grace oriented. 14. Forced equality is the policy of Satan; grace freedom is the policy of God.

15. Equality is the epitome of evil when demanded. Freedom is the vehicle of grace when accepted.

16. Freedom is dogmatic and inflexible regarding the essentials of doctrine; and at the same time flexible regarding the non-essentials of life. Therefore, freedom is both common sense and orientation to reality. But freedom must have content of thought: Bible doctrine.

G. Impersonal love is the application of freedom.

1. Impersonal love emphasizes the subject of love. It observes establishment principles as well as the Christian honor code principles in recognizing freedom, privacy, property, authority, imputed righteousness and the non-essential opinions of weak believers.

2. Impersonal love does not lower one's standards to those who are antagonistic.

3. When you are the victim of gossip, a grudge, judging, retaliation, you do not reciprocate under the principle of impersonal love.

4. To retaliate is to lower yourself to the norms and standards of your antagonist.

5. Every time you hold a grudge, seek revenge, express hatred, arrogance, bitterness, vindictiveness, etc., you have abandoned the principle of impersonal love.

6. Impersonal love gives breathing space for the function of freedom.

7. All of these principles are a prerequisite to understanding the function of the royal family honor code.

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