Several men have influenced my spiritual understanding. The first was Ray Stedman. Pastor at Peninsula Bible Church, my first pastor out of high school. This is the same Ray Stedman who wrote Body Life, Authentic Christianity and numerous other publications.
Many years later, post eight years of college and three years in the US Army Security Agency, I was privileged to teach a very large Sunday School class at Grace Community Church in Tempe, Arizona. Bob Wade attended this class and introduced me to The Sermon on the Mount by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones. Two other members and I met every Saturday morning for two years before we finished this Lloyd-Jones classic.
Lloyd-Jones is a meticulous thinker, trained as a medical doctor, he views everything in the context of the bigger picture. I read his 13 volumes on Romans, his 9 volumes on Ephesians, his 720 plus pages on John 4 and his volume on John 17 plus numerous other expositions by “The Doctor”. The point being, Lloyd-Jones will train you to think from God’s point of view. Give Spiritual Depression a try, it is instructive and an easy read!
Reading Lloyd-Jones over the years has shaped my reading and study habits to be sensitive to our natural inclination to see things through our own interests. Sometimes this innate self orientation prevents us seeing what is right in front of our eyes. Our natural human inclinations, which we all share, hinders our reading and hearing what God’s Word actually says. Our self orientation is naturally rooted in the flesh.
We have a way of interpreting what we read, including scripture, to fit into our natural experience. We glean from our experience values we hone into judgments about what we can and cannot trust. Unfortunately, this naturally trained skill sometimes works against what scripture declares as true. For example, we read in Romans 8:9, “You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you.” The common judgment of the believer is, they definitely are in the flesh. They believe this even though they know the Spirit of God is within them and passages like this one flat out contradicts this point of view.
It is commonly held among evangelicals, the believer has two natures, which is half-true. But, I would suggest, this common evangelical view is taught as 100% true because we take a human point of view and spin our experience to accommodate a comfortable theology.
The scripture is unequivocal, “if you are in the Spirit you are Not in the flesh” because you contain the life of God within you. We are not here to exegete this very critical hinge point. We are merely drawing attention to what we think scripture says can be different than what the scripture actually says. And while it may seem on the surface something easily discernable and fixed, it is not! Once we have an accepted a point of view, we have the tendency to reinforce it from other passages making it harder and harder to change belief even when it is wrong. There are “angles of light” who aid our self deception.
Lloyd-Jones is an expositor of the word. He examines the scripture in its setting and context and explains it more fully. His job is to help us understand what the text is intending to convey. This is in contrast to preaching that is topical or textual, i.e., taking a verse or passage and reading into it what the speaker wants to teach. Reading Lloyd-Jones and other expositors, like, Stedman, Pink, MacArthur and many others tear down our ideas of truth not meshing with scripture’s eternal truth. You can quickly see how important this issue is.
When we are born again, we receive God’s gift of the Holy Spirit and the capacity to see and hear spiritually. When this occurs, our body is not magically changed into something it was not before. What does occur is, we are given Life in a spiritual seed. It is not a fully grown life. It has to be nurtured and the old ways (our old nature) has to be rooted out so that we begin relying upon our new source of life.
Our new life is undefined in many ways until it confronts daily experience. We are “babes in Christ” until we begin to understand who we are in Christ. It is a personal relationship which means there is a time of getting to know each other and understanding the terms of our relationship. Grace is a relationship based on God’s gift but there are terms and there is a spiritual anatomy that did not previously exist before our “new creation”.
All our comfortable human skills, still valuable in the hands of our new spirit, can become potholes if we allow them to reign over God’s grace. It takes time to transition into a new way of thinking, from what is seen to what is not seen. God is our hope rather than total reliance on natural self.
When Saul, who later became the apostle Paul, was converted he did not immediately go into ministry, although he tried. God worked in him for more than ten years before Barnabas went to Tarsus seeking his ministry help in Antioch. It may take some of us a lifetime of sorting out our self orientations, biases, and sin, the things keeping us from being who God has called us to be.
One of the fundamental issues for the believer is our identity in Christ. Yes, we are literally “in Christ” but what does that mean? We typically use the term as a label rather than a tenant of actually experience.
This is a prologue providing background for our next three Grace Notes. We will attempt to introduce our identity “in Christ” through (1) Knowing, (2) Accepting and (3) Being who we are in Christ. This will simply be an introduction to what may be more fully developed in a web site currently being contemplated.
In Salted with Fire we began questioning some of our spiritual assumptions. Our spiritual anatomy is distinct from the sin in our body as Paul describes in Romans 6 and 7. It is helpful to visualize our spiritual function so we can be more effective transforming our soul into the new nature God has given us through our resurrected Jesus. We are not called to do this on our own. We are given the Holy Spirit whose job it is to reveal Jesus to us. But we must discipline our soul and body into spiritual maturity.
We want to build our understanding upon what scripture actually declares as true. God’s word is our source and authority. The scripture has been given to us for this purpose.
Relying upon God Himself through the Holy Spirit, we approach scripture always in prayer, placing our mind and heart into His hands Who is prepared to open to us what we are prepared to receive.
You can participate in a tangible way by going to www.eternalgrace.net and tell us what you think. Help us know who we should be and who you are!