For by grace you have been saved through FAITH.
And this is not your own doing;
It is the gift of God,
Not a result of works,
So that no one may boast.
For we are his workmanship,
Created in Christ Jesus for good works,
Which God prepared before hand,
That we should walk in them. Ephesians 2:8-9.
If we live by the Spirit,
let us also walk by the Spirit. Galatians 5:25
Breathe into Behavior was our last GN and we are working on The Life of Peter. This piece, BORN of GOD,, is borrowed from 2015. Inserting it here freshens it into its practical theme of fruit production. Fruit is what we will be examining in the Life of Peter. Behavior is “our” fruit from breathing into our soul the logos Word of God.
But breathing also implies strength for walking, walking through the soil of our soul. We are learning discernment by walking into the soil of our soul by putting to death the earthliness of our humanity. We are to consider ourselves dead to sin but alive to God. Much of this putting to death is about soul behavior.
We all need to plow the soil of our soul, deepening it into communion with our Holy Spirit, into the rooting of our faith, to yield “much more” fruit. Each of us is an individual fruit bearing branch in our Lord’s Abundant Life.
We are grafted into the Vine by our Father God, Who inspects and maintains our healthy clean joint. God the Father nurtures it, keeping it clean from infections and disease. This is a major way our Father God glorifies us in Jesus; He grafts into His Vine our branch, into His root.
“Therefore, as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.” – Col. 2:6-7.
We observe three levels of fruit production from John 15 in the life of the believer, (1) no fruit, (2) fruit and (3) much fruit. Abiding in the Vine, since Jesus is our Life giving root, opens our door to abiding faith. Our fruit yield depends on abiding faith. How can a believer produce no fruit? Ignore God’s grace?
Faith thru grace receives the washing of regeneration into our personal container of contamination. The pollution in the soil of our soul is Sin. Its cancerous, eating both inside and out. Humanities’ superficial treatment of our internal soil merely complicates the sin problem, deepening the contamination of fleshly soil. Its an inerrant problem more penetrating than our temporal capacity but is Spiritually handled by grace thru faith, but our faith must go deeper, to be deep enough!
A silent, severe war rages within the believer who is eternally secure while complexity and subtle twists of mind lie hidden from personal understanding attacking a believer’s heart and mind, their soul! It is like peeling enumerable layers of onion skins from our soul’s oval surface, one at a time. It is why the believer is warned about the salvation of his own soul. Its about walking in flesh while at the same time living Spiritually in Christ Jesus. We already possess God’s Living Hope; our Father God has begotten into us by the resurrection of Jesus, our eternal Hope!
The salvation of the soul is distinct from our everlasting life. Our Spirit is eternally saved but the sanctification of our soul is a process producing God’s righteousness into our eternal reward. Yes, our soul is saved but we are Christ’s workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works. Our soul is targeted to produce the righteousness of Jesus. The righteous deeds of the saints are the fine linen worn at the wedding of the Lamb, our King Jesus.
We are talking about Living in the Spirit so that we can Breathe into the soul our Behavior, the logos Word of God. When God birthed us the second time, He equipped us with a Spiritual sense, a capacity the unbeliever does not have.
A person is Spiritually dead if they are not equipped with this Spiritual sense to communicate with and in God. This Greek word is used in Hebrews 5:14 and translated “discernment.” The soul’s habit and skill level is temporal. Our Spirit has been joined to God and now through our will to choose, we can begin training this Spiritual sense of “discernment” gifted to us in our new creation. Breathing into our soul through the logos Word exercises our will to choose the righteousness of Christ moving our worldly bias out of our soul. This is now possible because we have become a Spiritual Person equipped to grow Spiritually in Christ Jesus.
The “born from above” believer is a new eternal Identity; we are a Spiritual Identity. We are a Spiritual Person created and begotten new, born from above, in Christ Jesus. Our nature is now Spiritually birthed by God Himself. We are righteous and Holy but our soul is not sinless, that is, our soul is still filled with self requiring the penetration of our new Abundant Life into the deep recesses of our fleshly soil, so that, we are begotten into participation in His likeness.
This is possible because we are begotten Spiritually into Jesus’ Abundant Resurrected Life; our carnal soul is still polluted in secular space; our soul no longer is our identity. We are begotten alive in Christ whereas, we were and are spiritually dead in our fleshly soul. The soul and body are carnally alive but no longer dominate us, they no longer are who we now are! We have been created and begotten “whole” into Spiritual participation with Jesus Christ but not our soul and body. They remain Spiritually dead while we are birthed alive from above, with Abundant LIFE, Spiritual Life in Christ Jesus!
Our new Spiritual nature is united to God. We are now a Spiritual person; our nature and identity is now Spiritual. We do not have two natures. We are now holy, the abiding place of Christ Himself and we are joined to God to produce holy righteous fruit. We can only produce righteousness because we are righteous abiding in the agape Love of Jesus, 1John 3:7. Not only are we “in Christ” but Christ is literally in us, Col. 1:27. We are now in Jesus and He is in us!
The zest of three young girls romping, playing tag on green turf is such a delight. It draws our souls into life’s splendor without encumbrances. It is seeing the exuberance of divine intent. But then … an interruption! An assertive hurt feeling and the delight evaporates. The innocence of pure glee is replaced by fighting, complaint and tears. Miniatured pollution in youth displays earth’s reality. Self displays a rude presence substituting earthiness for heavenliness. Children display the natural life of excitement, fun and adventure but is interrupted with conflict and pride!
Nestled in earth’s corrosive skullduggery are little shows of life’s beauty. It’s evident everywhere, it surrounds us. Life is born into settings of harsh threats. In our gardens we till our external relationships. But it’s not limited to surrounding landscapes. We breathe it into our mortal souls. Contaminated air fills our lungs where providence intends unmolested fragrance. Our soul has the croup polluted with human gasps, grasping for idols of faith, truth and love. Our infested mortal darkness finds substitutes for replacing faith, truth, righteousness and love.
Absolute values vanish awaiting redeemed souls to reclaim eternal absolutes. Neglected and lost in the pollution of worldliness, the natural secular system battles constantly with the pure qualities of God’s nature; His created Life is begotten within the believer while our soul flirts with the burden of sin requiring the washing of regeneration.
The natural soul’s wisdom is corrupted by man’s self assertive interests hardening hearts. Man’s moral “right” is relative, infested with perversions. A believer may go out into their own way; some may harden their own heart, dulling their ears to Spiritually hear. Jesus said, “He that hath ears, let him hear.”
It is like the miracle fiber, asbestos. It can withstand the heat of the hottest flame while at the same time enter into our breath, suffocating and sealing our internal lungs from our own oxygen. Like frogs cooked in their own water, pride deceives self, separating us from the source of Living Water leading us blindly into death. It reminds us of Israel in Isaiah 59. We cannot Breathe into Behavior the Logos Word of God while in our soul we are walking in man’s moral perversion of righteousness.
The contrast of choices within the believer is brought to our attention in Romans 12:2. We can conform to external worldly wisdom or we can transform within the resurrection power of God’s begotten Life.
Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
We can know a thing without understanding it. A believer can know with absolute certainty ruling in our heart without having the physical certification unbelievers require to prove it. Believers can know without knowing. This is faith! Not Webster’s faith, biblical faith, birthed within a believer by the One who called everything into being by the word of His mouth, even Life itself.
Mystic? Not really, biblical faith! This is why Job could say, “I know that my redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth,” Job 19:25. This is why Elijah could stand before King Ahab and declare no rain for three years, “As the Lord God of Israel lives, before whom I stand … ,” 1Kings 17:1. Jehovah was Elijah’s God.
Job’s God and Elijah’s God is the same God who raised Jesus from the dead creating brand new life within each believer. He is our Redeemer asking us to be stewards of His powerful grace in which we stand, Romans 5:2.
We find comfort in filial familiarity rather than absorbing our Spiritual reality which sits before our will to choose. We mix our “faith” with worldliness and live within the terms of “common sense,” or our best advantage. We choose to enable our humanity with “good choices.” Our mock wisdom may be humanly astute but the cost is divine intimacy. This is why the wisdom of man is Spiritual foolishness.
Faith is knowledge of God, an intimate participatory grace relationship with God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. It becomes a life force because His Abundant Resurrection Life thrives in us as we abide in Him … we must open the door.
There are believers grappling with this truth and others who believe with their mind only, avoiding the deeper issues of their will. The power, the Resurrection Power is in the believer’s love for the One who loved us and gifts us with this eternal inheritance and hope. This is a deal breaker! Agape Love penetrates everything including the zest of three young girls romping, playing tag on green turf to asbestos suffocating and sealing our internal lungs from our own oxygen, Breathe into Behavior extracts the vocational participation of our Lord Jesus into our Life through our vocational participation into His Life!
There should be a gage measuring the density of sin in a person’s soul. We would be shocked at the pervasiveness of sin’s penetration into our behavior and a believer’s shallow perspective. Elijah comes immediately back to mind. He confronted Ahab before the whole of Israel calling down God’s fire with a mighty demonstration of authority and power. Elijah withheld the rain from the land for three years by prayer! Then Jezebel came to town … he fled, rescued by God Himself. Consider Peter’s denial of Jesus or Moses’ anger by striking the rock of Christ. In these two cases, agape Love prevailed because Peter and Moses had an intimate participatory grace relationship with God the Father.
We want to bring into focus the sinfulness of sin. This separates us from the fellowship of our heavenly Father. Regeneration births God within us and sets His resurrection power free by joining our spirit to His Spirit, 1Cor. 6:16. It is sin that hinders us from producing spiritual fruit on our Spiritual branch but we have His Resurrection Power, we have His Abundant Life. Our faith makes it participatory, making it effective into our behavior. It is not isolated to a mind issue or a heart issue; it is a desire issue! It includes our total person summed up in agape Love. After receiving the gift of new created Life as a believer, we must walk in it, with intention, with faith!
The spiritual reality of conflict, because Christ is in us, is more severe than temporal crucibles of social pressure. In fact, social believers will create a substitute relationship for faith rather than depending upon Jesus Himself. The overriding Spiritual principle is agape love, provided by Jesus Himself. God’s agape love contains faith, prayer and the Logos Word itself, and “so much more.” Because of Jesus, we are in Him, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption.
Abiding faith produces God’s righteousness into our self-tainted soil. But the soil of our soul is not just tainted, it is deeply polluted with assertive rebellion against the holiness of God’s righteousness. It continually wars against our Spirit’s union into God’s Spirit, 1Cor. 6:17; it is the believer’s circumstance, happening in his mortal body. The weapons of the believer’s warfare have divine power to destroy strongholds. We are God’s holy clay container, 2Cor. 4:7, and holy because He is holy. We cannot do righteousness without being righteous, 1John 3:7. While our body’s soul is sinful, we are not. We have become Spiritual, not just symbolically, it is as real as our union is in Christ, John 17:22ff. It is God’s divine love driving our faith through His grace. It is our Spiritual opportunity to grow our faith into God’s provisions of Abundant Life.
We need to plow into the soil of our soul exposing its perversions to God’s sanctifying Word. We can increase fruit production, purify our soul and bring about its salvation, 1Pet. 1:9. Faith is man’s response to God’s gift of Life and grace. This is our calling in Christ Jesus, to live by faith not by sight, 2Cor. 5:7. But faith comes by hearing and hearing by breathing God’s logos Word into our soul. Our soul responds with the sweet fragrance of the knowledge of Him drawing us into worship, into joy and praise. We are the aroma of Christ to God drawing us personally into His presence with communion and humility.
Prayer is our communion, exposing our vulnerability to God’s powerful grace and our soul’s polluted soil. Prayer humbles us into the reality of our sinfulness so that the light of God’s righteousness will reveal to our heart’s blinded eyes the riches of our hope and inheritance because we are now begotten righteous in Him. Prayer exposes His grace in us.
It isn’t any one thing, faith, or the Word, or prayer. We need to deal with the “I AM” in His totality. God is agape love. Love contains all the attributes of God singularly and wholly. When we intellectually strip doctrine into parts, we loose truth contained in its completeness. The wholeness of God is greater than the sum of His parts. As we consider producing much fruit in our branches of Abundant Life, we must not neglect to keep in mind the wholeness of God and our frailty of selective enquiry, into individual things like faith, the logos Word or prayer.
The task can seem complex but let us remember, we are commanded to bear much fruit. It is God’s will and our calling. It only seems complex in human terms but the issue for us is abiding in the root of our righteousness. We can, therefore, live and walk in our Lord’s adequacy, abiding in His Love, living in His grace by our faith. 1John 2:26-27.